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Cities, Indigenous Knowledge, and Climate Change: Notes from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and UNDP Report on Climate-Smart Cities

The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (herein referred to as 2021 IPCC report), released on August 9, 2021, confirmed that urban growth, urbanization, and cities, intensify “human induced climate change.” In addition, the UNDP report Catalyzing Private Sector Investment in Climate-Smart Cities released in 2020, addressed the importance of catalyzing private investment for projects that enable the development of climate-smart cities. While both reports point to the role of cities in simultaneously accelerating and combatting climate change, they vary on their recognition for Indigenous knowledge in facilitating and expanding solutions for climate adaptation.

Section A.6.5 in the 2021 IPCC report projects that urban expansion will “lead to conversion of cropland” and result in “losses in food production.” It recommends that strategies be put into place that enhance food production in peri-urban regions, better manage urban growth, and facilitate urban green infrastructure. Furthermore, Section C.2.6 of the report notes that, “[c]ities intensify human-induced warming locally, and further urbanization together with more frequent hot extremes will increase the severity of heatwaves … Urbanization also increases mean and heavy precipitation over and/or downwind of cities…”

The 2021 IPCC report makes references to how the combination of Indigenous Knowledge and contemporary scientific research are crucial to understanding and combatting climate change effects. The report further notes that, Indigenous and local knowledge should be considered in situations where no scientific knowledge is evident and that “effective partnerships recognize and respond to the diversity of all parties involved (including their values, beliefs and interests), especially when they involve culturally diverse communities their indigenous and local knowledge of weather, climate and their society.” (See chapter 10, p. 120).

By contrast, the UNDP report highlights opportunities and challenges for catalyzing private sector investment in projects that facilitate and sustain climate-smart cities. According to the report, “climate-smart cities are energy efficient; reduce reliance on nonrenewable energy sources; actively encourage waste reduction; and promote the circular economy, resilient low-carbon infrastructure, low-carbon transport, water management, green spaces, and nature-based solutions” (p. 12). The climate-smart city focuses on development that upholds the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 – “making cities more resilient, sustainable, inclusive and safe.” However, it is disappointing that the UNDP report does not also consider how private investments in Indigenous innovation and a promotion of Indigenous procurement practices could also bolster projects for climate-smart cities and regions.

Both the IPCC and UNDP reports provide insights into how cities play an integral role in developing solutions for climate change adaptation. Cities are located on Indigenous lands and in Canada, approximately “45% of Registered Indians, 76% of Non-Status Indians, 50% of Inuit, and 70% of Métis live in urban areas,” as reported in the 2020 Report to Parliament delivered by the Minister of Indigenous Services and based on the 2016 Census. Consequently, any investment in climate change adaptation solutions for the climate-smart city must include Indigenous-led solutions.

 

By Leela Viswanathan

 

(Image Credit: Chuttersnap, Unsplash)

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Adaptive Capacity and Adaptation of Indigenous Peoples to Environmental Change

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Adaptive capacity and adaptation are both crucial to addressing the impact of environmental change and degradation on the health and well-being of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. After all, nurturing a connection with Mother Earth is fundamental to the well-being of humankind.

Indigenous peoples have tremendous adaptive capacity to health risks associated with climate and environmental changes. However, social and economic stressors such as “poverty, land dispossession and globalization” are proving to be major obstacles to the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines adaptive capacity as “[t]he ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with consequences”. Adaptation involves an “adjustment in natural or human systems” as they respond to climate change, and then either manage the harm that is caused by the change, or exploit the benefits of the change.

Understanding how communities make decisions can enable more effective community responses to the health consequences of climate change, and potentially reduce risks for, as well as protect against, disease, injury, disability poor nutrition, and death, which are all possible health impacts of extreme weather events (e.g., floods, hurricanes, landslides, etc.). Therefore, to reduce health impacts and vulnerability of Indigenous communities to climate change, different strategies must consider socio-economic factors as well as environmental factors that ultimately influence a community’s ability and capacity to adapt.

 

By Leela Viswanathan

 

(Photo Credit: Zdenek Machacek, Unsplash)

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Indigenous Local Knowledge (ILK): Vital to climate change adaptation and globally under threat

Indigenous Local Knowledge (ILK) is a combined term that reflects Indigenous knowledge, based on cultural practices, and local knowledge, rooted in local contexts and experiences. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of the United Nations responsible for evaluating the “science of climate change,” has noted that ILK is crucial to enabling communities to adapt to climate change, and that ILK is also under threat worldwide.

As a vital resource for responding to climate change, ILK is threatened by:

  1. the speed of climate change impacts outpacing the incremental application of ILK.
  2. a combination of processes, including rapid urbanization, the expansion of formalized education, economic diversification, and the adoption of new technologies which shift the focus away from agriculture, and may ‘disrupt’ how ILK is traditionally passed from one generation to the next.
  3. how the acquisition of land at a large scale, to promote mass food production, can minimize local and small scale economies in favour of the global economy.

Embedding ILK practices into local institutions can help policy decision makers to understand climate change effects on Indigenous communities in diverse locations across the world, especially where there is no formal scientific data being collected. According to the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C (SR15), climate change experts have found that ILK can provide accurate baselines for environmental processes, such as global warming, changes to weather, water quality, and landscape degradation.

By Leela Viswanathan

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