Strengthening Indigenous Peoples’ Voices on Climate Change
Indigenous peoples are and will be among the worst affected by climate change, and by large-scale carbon reduction projects; they have valuable information from monitoring the changing climate and their traditional knowledge is essential to mitigation and adaptation. Yet indigenous communities in the humid tropics often have limited information about the causes of climate change, or how it affects other peoples. And most have little or no say or representation in local, national or international climate change debates. As a result international climate policies, national adapation strategies, and carbon reduction schemes are all being developed without any meaningful participation by some of the people most affected by these decisions.
LifeMosaic is developing a project to support the wider goal of indigenous peoples taking a lead role in the global transformation to adapt to and mitigate man-made climate change. The project aims to support increased indigenous peoples’ participation in climate change decision-making by disseminating relevant information to communities, networks and policy-makers.
For further information please contact Serge Marti: serge(at)lifemosaic.net
“Although they contribute very little to the underlying causes of climate change, indigenous peoples are helping enhance the resilience of ecosystems they inhabit and are interpreting and reacting to the impacts of climate change in creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies to find solutions which may help society at large to cope with impending changes.” (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Press Release, 16th April 2008)
“Indigenous peoples have experienced not only the effects of climate change most dramatically, but they have borne the brunt of misguided mitigation measures.” (Patricia Cochran, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Council)
