Agantuk's Desk – Explore, Implore, Reverberate

“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes…” Greta Thunberg

In the 21st century, climate change will be the primary cause of the disruption of human lives and all other forms of life on our planet. At a time when children are skipping schools and taking part in climate change marches all over the world to urge governments to take action, there are communities of people who are silently living a sustainable life for centuries.

Many indigenous peoples are living examples of societies thriving with sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles. Successfully meeting the global climate change challenge requires that much of the world shift from high carbon-living to low.

This shift is daunting. Current emissions for Australia and the United States average about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person. In the coming decades that needs to fall to two tonnes per person as it is currently in Brazil or the Dominican Republic.

Emissions from most indigenous peoples are even lower and are amongst the lowest in the world.

Yet, the first blow of climate change always falls on the indigenous communities who lose their crops, their land, and sometimes even occupations. Despite being at the receiving end,  it is their ways of living which may show us the way forward.  In fact, the UN COP24 proposals of 2018 acknowledged the climate actions of local indigenous people and called for measures to strengthen it. 

Over the past 50 years, scientists have accumulated a huge pool of evidence that shows the existence of these TEK ( Traditional Ecological Knowledge) amongst the indigenous communities of the world. Now, this can be anything and everything under the sun which utilizes the viability and reproducible quality of nature. 

Through years of experience of living in the environment, these communities have developed mechanisms of food supply, irrigation, crop production, water engineering, soil and water conversation, even astronomy and architecture. These certainly could help in developing effective long term mitigation strategies.

Even if carbon dioxide emissions came to a sudden halt, the carbon dioxide already in Earth’s atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years… NOW IMAGINE, IF WE CONTINUE AS WE HAVE

The need of the hour: ADAPTATION  

As headlines of global climate change become more alarming, it’s easy to forget that climate change is also an intensely local problem.

Mountain ecosystems are probably the most vulnerable to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with several extreme impact events attributed to warming. For many mountain communities  climate change is already a very real threat.

Silently, climate change has started to leave a trail of disasters in these mountains, and that has consequences for major lowland cities that rely, knowingly or not, on mountain ecosystems for food and water, agriculture, and livelihoods.

In the majestic mountain ranges of Cordillera Blanca, local communities found it hard to believe that global warming was to blame for local rivers turning red laden with heavy metals. As the glaciers melted on these mountain ranges, metal-rich rocks were exposed to the air for the first time in thousands of years.

The glacial meltwater washing over the exposed rocks carried metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and iron into area waterways, turning rivers like the Rio Negro a rust-red. This contaminated both soil and water and posed a significant health risk. Over time, people, wildlife, and livestock who drank the water became sick, and crop productivity plummeted.

In the remote mountain villages around the Rio Negro, the ingenuity to adaptation took over in a  curious and innovative form. To restore the poisoned river water and contaminated landscape around it, villagers collaborated with scientists from the Mountain Institute and with academic specialists. With training, they built a water purification system that collects the acidic river water in small ponds. Then, using local traditional knowledge, they planted native plant species that could absorb metals from the water.

Closer home, the Nicobarese people of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands saved them from the deadly tsunami of 2004 by remaining inland and at higher ground. However, these people had to bear the cost of the ‘one-size fits all’ rehabilitation plan which robbed them of their natural resources and the indigenous knowledge. The effects of the situation is still visible in Carr Nicobar, more than 15 years after the nature calamity happened.

So, the true test of their knowledge is inclusivity and making them part of the climate change narrative.  

The way forward…..

Involving the communities on the front lines of climate change in this way is vital to finding concrete solutions to local problems; the open dialogue and collegial relationship with the scientists empowered the local community, sparking a palpable sense of pride in both local traditions and scientific solutions to complex climate problems.

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Indigenous People are not mere victims of climate change, they are the solution providers of climate change