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Proposing A Global Indigenous Centre for Climate Change Resilience: A Vision for the Future

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In the face of escalating climate change challenges, Indigenous Peoples worldwide remain steadfast as the stewards of the Earth’s most ecologically vital regions. Their knowledge systems, sciences, and philosophies have sustained human and non-human relations with nature for millennia, offering profound insights into resilience and adaptation. Recognizing this, establishing a Global Indigenous Centre for Climate Change Resilience would be a monumental step toward leveraging Indigenous expertise in shaping a sustainable future.

This imagined Indigenous-led institution would provide a global platform for Indigenous Nations to unify their voices and influence climate policy, adaptation strategies, and resource management. Free from political interference, this Centre would operate on co-definition, co-design, and co-development principles—ensuring the perspectives of Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and non-human relations are equally represented in shaping the planet’s future.

Serving as a hub of innovation and action, where Indigenous leaders, scientists, policymakers, educators, and knowledge keepers collaborate on meaningful solutions. The Centre would focus on preserving Indigenous ways of knowing and integrating them into cutting-edge climate science, policy development, and implementation strategies.

Four Critical Pillars of Climate Action

To address the pressing issues of climate change, the Centre would focus on four fundamental pillars universally recognized within climate action frameworks:

  1. Climate Change Adaptation

Adaptation is the process of adjusting to current and expected climate conditions. Indigenous knowledge systems have long mastered adaptation, developing ways to work harmoniously with natural cycles. The Centre would facilitate:

  • Knowledge-sharing hubs that connect Indigenous Nations and researchers across different regions, ensuring that adaptation strategies are customized to diverse environments, from the Arctic to the Amazon.
  • Community-driven initiatives focus on reviving traditional ecological knowledge, such as sustainable water management, climate-resilient agriculture, and nature-based solutions to prevent soil erosion, flooding, and habitat loss.
  • Education and training programs tailored for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to implement adaptation solutions that honour the land, promoting resilient food systems, wildfire mitigation, and habitat restoration.
  • Developing climate-resilient infrastructure using Indigenous construction methods that have been perfected over generations, such as passive heating and cooling techniques, eco-friendly building materials, and sustainable urban planning.
  1. Climate Change Mitigation

 Mitigation focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing natural carbon sinks. Indigenous Nations have maintained balanced ecosystems for centuries, making them essential leaders in climate mitigation. The Centre would:

  • Advocate for sustainable land management practices, such as rotational grazing, agroforestry, and controlled burns, which have been scientifically proven to increase biodiversity and carbon sequestration.
  • Support Indigenous-led renewable energy projects, including off-grid solar, wind, and hydroelectric initiatives that provide clean energy while respecting the land and natural cycles.
  • Develop policies promoting circular economies, reducing dependency on extractive industries, and fostering regenerative economic practices that emphasize environmental harmony over mass consumption.
  • Enhance forest and ocean conservation efforts by expanding Indigenous land tenure rights and supporting Indigenous-led initiatives that protect rainforests, mangroves, and marine ecosystems—some of the planet’s most significant carbon sinks.
  1. Resilience and Restoration

 Resilience is about building stronger ecosystems and communities in response to climate disruptions. Indigenous approaches recognize that nature itself is a regenerator, and human intervention should focus on supporting these natural cycles. The Centre would:

  • Implement land and water healing initiatives, applying Indigenous ecological restoration practices such as wetland renewal, seed banking, and permaculture to revitalize degraded ecosystems.
  • Promote Indigenous architecture and urban planning models, ensuring that future city and community development aligns with land-based principles rather than extractive, unsustainable infrastructure.
  • Establish cooperative agreements with global institutions, ensuring Indigenous ecological governance is fully integrated into international resilience strategies, from the UN to grassroots environmental organizations.
  • Develop Indigenous-led disaster response frameworks, incorporating traditional knowledge in disaster mitigation, early warning systems, and emergency response planning.
  1. Policy and Governance

 Effective climate action requires policy reform grounded in Indigenous worldviews. This Centre would advocate for Indigenous-led policies at the global level and work towards embedding Indigenous governance in national and international climate strategies. This includes:

  • Creating an Indigenous Climate Policy Advisory Council that influences global climate agreements, ensuring that Indigenous perspectives are represented at climate negotiations such as COP summits.
  • Establishing legal protections for Indigenous lands, advocating for international recognition of Indigenous land rights as essential to climate mitigation and biodiversity protection.
  • Partnering with governments, academic institutions, and NGOs to promote co-managed conservation areas where Indigenous governance and traditional ecological knowledge inform land-use policies.
  • Leading policy reform efforts to ensure Indigenous values—such as the Seven Generations Model—are incorporated into long-term climate planning, shifting away from short-term profit-driven models.

The Professions Needed for Success

To operate effectively, the Centre would require a diverse range of Indigenous professionals, including:

  • Climate Scientists & Environmental Researchers – Experts in Indigenous earth sciences, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration.
  • Traditional Knowledge Keepers & Elders – To ensure teachings and methodologies are rooted in cultural wisdom and land-based traditions.
  • Community Planners & Architects – Specialists in sustainable Indigenous urban design and eco-friendly infrastructure.
  • Legal Experts & Policy Advocates – Champions for Indigenous rights in climate governance and policy frameworks.
  • Agricultural and Forestry Specialists – Practitioners of regenerative farming and forest management.
  • Water and Marine Experts – Leaders in protecting freshwater and oceanic ecosystems.
  • Data Analysts & AI Specialists – To integrate Indigenous knowledge with emerging technologies for climate modelling.

How This Centre Benefits the World

The proposed Global Indigenous Centre for Climate Change Resilience would benefit Indigenous communities and serve as a transformative model for non-Indigenous Nations. By demonstrating effective climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, the Centre would inspire global partnerships that prioritize ecosystem health over profit-driven agendas.

Examples of its impact include:

  • Guiding governments in climate-resilient land management through Indigenous stewardship models.
  • Assisting corporations in transitioning to sustainable business practices, ensuring economic growth aligns with ecological responsibility.
  • Providing training for urban and regional planners to integrate Indigenous land-use principles into modern cities, fostering more resilient communities.
  • Enhancing conservation efforts by implementing Indigenous-led biodiversity protection initiatives, ensuring that conservation efforts do not displace Indigenous communities but rather empower them as stewards of the land.

A Call to Action

Indigenous Peoples are not passive observers in the climate discourse; they are the solution-bearers. It is time for the world to listen, learn, and act—for the benefit of all life on Mother Earth. By establishing a Global Indigenous Centre for Climate Change Resilience, we take a monumental step toward securing a future that honours the land, respects ancestral knowledge, and provides a sustainable path forward for all.

 

(Disclaimer: The proposed Global Indigenous Centre for Climate Change Resilience is not a project in progress by the author—it provides information and inspiration for consideration by academics, NGOs, and climate leaders. All ideas presented are open-source, and organizations and individuals are welcome to use the information to benefit climate change initiatives and projects.)

 

– By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

 

(Image Credit: ChatGPT AI-Generated Image)

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Appreciating ‘Place’ in Relation to Climate Change and Indigenous Health

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An appreciation of place is crucial to understanding the impact of climate change on the health of Indigenous peoples. A place-based understanding of climate change can help to recognize how changes in the environment effect physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual facets of both individual and community health and well-being.

The terms ‘place-focused’ and ‘place-based’ are used primarily by non-Indigenous governments, academics, and planning and design professionals. For example, the Government of Victoria, Australia has offered explanations for how they use both place-focused and place-based approaches in their work. Place-focused approaches involve highlighting a particular place to ensure that government-driven or other service-related plans cater to the characteristics and experiences of people living in a specific geographic area. By contrast, place-based approaches engage with people from a particular geographic area to bring meaning from their cultural and environmental contexts, histories, and practices, to develop solutions to problems, using a process of shared-decision making.

While land dispossession and other impacts of colonialism, and climate change effects continue to disrupt the attachment to place for many Indigenous communities, not all place attachments have been lost. Increasingly, Indigenous communities are engaging in their own community planning processes that could be considered by non-Indigenous planners as “place-based.” Examples of Indigenous-led community plans in Canada, that incorporate elements of culture, health, and well-being, include the Six Nations Community Plan and M’Chigeeng First Nation Comprehensive Community Plan, among others. By comparison, Canadian municipal official plans often exclude direct references to cultural and health factors; these become the content of supplementary plans and policy reports. However, place-based approaches to community planning and official plan processes are becoming more popular among local governments for reasons that often include climate change resilience.

The emotional and psychological health effects of climate change among Indigenous peoples around the world are largely understudied, however, the existing literature attributes these effects to “changes in place attachment, disrupted cultural continuity, altered food security and systems,” and other factors. For example, in the community of Nain, located in Northern Labrador, Canada, an “appreciation of place” is crucial to understanding how sea ice, and its uses by the Inuit, have a positive impact on Inuit mental health, even with the increase in physical injuries, and reduced access to their traditional environments, brought upon by climate change.

Focusing on the ongoing impact of the current combined pandemics of climate change and COVID-19, the Indigenous Health Adaptation to Climate Change (IHACC) program highlights a connection between the protection of key places for Indigenous foods and medicines in remote Indigenous communities in Uganda, the Peruvian Amazon and the Arctic ecosystem, and the protection of Indigenous knowledge, practices, and rights of Indigenous peoples to access their lands.

Place, climate change, and Indigenous health are connected. Together they reveal how different threats to Indigenous traditional environments negatively impact overall Indigenous health. Subsequently, the contributions made by Indigenous-led community plans to reduce climate health effects on Indigenous communities are also worth further exploration.

By Leela Viswanathan

 

(Photo Credit: Erik McLean, Unsplash)

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