Understanding climate, adapting to change: indigenous cultural values and climate change impacts in North Queensland

Abstract

Many authors have suggested that Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, yet there remains a paucity of fine-grained geographic data on the particular impacts of climate change on specific places and on local communities, especially Australian Indigenous communities. While there are some recent studies being undertaken with Australia's Torres Strait Island people, our research takes up the issues of vulnerability and resilience with two Indigenous communities from different environments on the mainland in North Queensland. They are the Aboriginal peoples of the rainforest and reef environments of the Wet Tropics and the Aboriginal people of the discontiguous rainforest, grasslands, dry forests and marine environments of Cape York. The results demonstrate variability in their understandings of climate change and in their capacities to anticipate and manage its impacts, while at the same time illustrating some common held themes about environmental and cultural values, observed environmental change, attributions of cause and effect, and of climate in general.

Keywords:

• indigenous perceptions
• climate change impacts
• aboriginal communities
• sea level rise
• resilience
• traditional knowledge

Acknowledgements

An early report of this project was presented at the Fulbright Symposium in August 2010 jointly with members of the two Aboriginal communities, Mr C.Lifu (Injinoo) and Mr T Wyles-Whelan (Girringun). While the current paper has been developed significantly from that early report, we thank them for their active participation in the project. The authors also thank the Injinoo community, the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation and Henrietta Marrie of the Christensen Fund for supporting the research. In particular, we thank workshop participants for sharing their observations and their candid contributions. Professor Steve Turton, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project. We also thank Donna Green for discussions on the Australian context and Sayo Ferro for discussions on the international context of Indigenous communities and climate change.