Climate adaptation: marginal populations in the vulnerable regions^‡

‡ This is the introduction to a virtual special issue of Climate and Development (“Climate adaptation: marginal populations in the vulnerable regions”) located at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tcld20/9/s1

Climate adaptation

Indigenous peoples living in vulnerable regions are and will be among those most affected by climate change. By addressing responses of minorities and indigenous peoples living in remote and vulnerable landscapes, the contributions in this Special Issue present respond to a call for debate and research tabled at the 2nd International Conference of the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences (ICARUS) held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, May 5–8, 2011. Brainstorm discussions emphasized that as climate change impact indigenous landscapes, marginal groups are increasingly susceptible to climate instability and continue to bear a disproportionate burden to adapt to climate change.

One of the recommendations that emerged from these discussions was to promote climate adaptation and vulnerability studies that address the vital need to recognize the adaptive capacity of the minorities and indigenous groups in the developing as well as developed countries. Building on this concern, the author took the initiative to identify papers that would contribute valuable understanding about responses of the minorities and indigenous peoples often living in the remotest and vulnerable landscapes.

Each paper applies its own theoretical framework. To capture the aggregate understanding they may provide, in this introduction, a conceptual framework of micro-politics of social diversity (Bose, 2012, 2015) is used for analysing the role of climate change policies and institutional arrangements for marginal populations. The micro-politics of social diversity framework allows understanding of the complex process that involves different actors at different scales and with diverse backgrounds (ethnicity, race, language, religion, socio-economic position, culture) ranging from individual men and women, inter household, and collective actions through institutional arrangements.

The micro-politics of social diversity framework takes three key points of departure: (1) Adaptation and adaptive capacity must not be defined as a mainstream category only; rather, they have to be understood in a local specific context and inclusive of language that accommodates minority and indigenous peoples’ identity and vulnerability to climate change, (2) traditional knowledge and practices needs recognition as they can play a crucial role in adaptation strategies and (3) marginalizations in the context of gender, class, ethnicity, age, religion take place at various scale and are some of the critical underlying causes of vulnerability.

Marginal populations in the vulnerable regions

Here, ‘indigenous peoples’ refer to the first people or original inhabitants of a territory. Historically, indigenous peoples have sets of traditional rights to land and resources, today often recognized by international and national legislations. The term ‘minority’ refers to categories of people that within the territory where they live are numerically smaller in terms of language, religion or ethnic identity.

The four papers present a diversity of populations and geographical contexts. The first paper focuses on Cree, Ojibwe and Ojicree people. These are the First Nation communities, living in two ecozones, the Boreal Shield and the Hudson Plain, of the boreal forest north of Ontario, Canada where they are politically organized in Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) (Golden, Audet, & Smith, 2015); the second paper highlights the three ethnic groups of Lao Loum, Youane and Brao populations of southern Laos (Jiao & Moinuddin, 2016); the third paper addresses the mountain communities in rural areas of northwest India and far-western, central and eastern Nepal in the Himalayas (Macchi, Gurung, & Hoermann, 2015); and the fourth paper highlights the three communes of Quang Lam, Thach Lam, Hong Ha living in the remote northern part of Vietnam (Beckman & Nguyen, 2016).

Each of the above mentioned papers provides empirical evidence to address the adaptation to climate change and adaptive climate variability issues related to marginal populations, particularly indigenous peoples, living in the vulnerable regions. It is for this reason that makes the micro-politics of social diversity framework mentioned above, is particularly suitable to explore cross-level linkages taking into perspective locally relevant practices and knowledge within the broader global framework on climate adaptation of marginal groups in vulnerable areas.

Identity of people in adaptation and vulnerability

The concepts of adaptation and vulnerability, and adaptive capacity have been extensively discussed in research studies related to climate change and climate variability (Adger, 1999; Agrawal & Perrin, 2008; Lebel et al., 2012; Levina & Tirpak, 2006, among others). The scholars and researchers might readily understand the mainstream discourse on adaptation. For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) refers climate change adaptation to ‘changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change’ (see UNFCCC website http://unfccc.int/focus/adaptation/items/6999.php). While IPCC elaborates adaptation as adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities (IPCC, 2001). According to Levina and Tirpak (2006), the variations in defining adaptation are rooted in the fundamental difference between definitions of climate change. However, the difference in understanding the concept of adaptation to climate change often results in different expectations from different key actors involved in decision making who use this concept.

Golden et al. (2015) explain that the word ‘adaptation’ does not exist in the Cree, Ojibwe, and Ojicree languages spoken in NAN territory. In their study they bring out the much-needed arguments about the deeper meaning of the word ‘adaptation’ for the First Nations. The key underlying argument is about the need for using a different lens to better understand the impacts and adaptations to climate change of indigenous peoples. The concept adaptation for the First Nations, according to Golden et al., has ‘meant struggling against assimilation policies to maintain their identity as peoples – First Nations were forced to adapt by losing theirs’. They note that in modern times, the term ‘adaptation’ requires a better understanding within political context between First Nations and the Canadian state. In other words, adaptation is more than just about ‘coping mechanism’ or motivation to adapt to climate change. It is about maintaining social identity of ‘being’ without losing one’s individual and collective (ethnic, cultural) identity. Climate change leads to situations where ways of being come under pressure. Losing socio-politico-legal identity due to climate change forces marginal populations into a new struggle where identifying with a new identity may become an issue. Using the lens of diversity, it is evident that although adaptation necessitates change, for the marginal populations there might be a greater need to maintain their individual and collective identity to land and resources.

The term vulnerability is intertwined in the adaptation to climate change and variability research studies. Likewise, the adaptive capacity is related to the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, but within a social system it is seen as actions that lead to adaptation (Levina & Tirpak, 2006). Within the micro-politics framework, vulnerability to climate change and climate variability is related to marginal populations’ ability to cope with uncertainties and risks associated with extreme climate events such as low rainfall, floods and so forth (Bose, 2015). One of the definitions of vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes (IPCC, 2001). Adger defines (1999, p. 249) vulnerability as ‘the exposure of individuals or collective groups to livelihood stress as a result of the impacts of such environmental change’.

Jiao and Moinuddin's paper (2016) explores the evidence-based assessment of vulnerability of community and rural households and their adaptive capacity to climate change in Southern Laos. The three-dimensional vulnerability cube that is used by the authors as a conceptual framework to analyse exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity allows the authors to compare households wherein the higher the exposure and sensitivity, the lower is adaptive capacity leading to increased vulnerability. One of the findings by Jiao and Moinuddin’s research is that poverty should not be the only dimension in identifying climate vulnerability, but also includes other social diversity indicators such as households highly dependent and specialized in agricultural production and thereby indirectly exposed to climate change risks.

Traditional knowledge for adaptation practices

Indigenous communities, globally, are known for their traditional knowledge of adapting to environment depending on where and how they live (Agrawal & Perrin, 2008; Nyong, Adesina, & Osman Elasha, 2007). Most of the adaptation measures have their roots in traditional knowledge. Often, the quality of life in these vulnerable rural marginal populations is highly sensitive to climate variability but their ancient cultures have developed knowledge, in particular guided by an ethic to the respect environment. The knowledge and traditional practices involve development of techniques using locally available resources allowing them to adapt to ecological systems and extreme weather conditions and mitigate risks associated with climate variability. Vidaurre de la Riva, Lindner, and Pretzsch (2013) explain that among indigenous communities in Bolivia the practice of rituals and use of climatic indicators (such as red sunset indicates humidity, yellow moon indicates a lot of rain, wind from the northeast brings the rain among other indicators) is diminishing leading to the loss of traditional knowledge.

Macchi et al. (2015) highlight that Himalayan populations living in the vulnerable mountain areas have indigenous knowledge of decades and that such knowledge can supplement scientific climate analysis. They study people’s perceptions of climate variability and change to understand existing response strategies in lieu of future climate prediction, particularly to understand how different social groups deal with their vulnerability and respond to disruptive environmental development. In doing so, the paper uses local perception to climatic changes as a way to supplement and to provide recommendations to the scientific weather data critical for researchers and policymakers. The paper reflects that marginal populations’ perceptions of change were highly consistent with the recorded climate data in the Himalayan regions.

A viable climate change policy strategy requires acknowledging the local and indigenous knowledge by developing appropriate adaptation strategies that are based on people’s knowledge. Moreover, the absence of indigenous knowledge in the climate change discourse and policy decisions, as Golden et al. (2015) points out, may reinforce the dominant western approach to climate change adaptation. The 32nd Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2010 identified that ‘indigenous or traditional knowledge may prove useful for understanding the potential of certain adaptation strategies that are cost-effective, participatory and sustainable’. This is further collaborated in studies (see van Dijk & Bose, 2016; Jegede, 2014; Raygorodetsky, 2011) showing that there is an increasing demand to include indigenous and marginal populations’ observations, perceptions and interpretations in climate science. Often government intervention on climate change adaptation strategies indirectly expects marginal populations to adapt their identity through changing traditional livelihoods and restricting uses of traditional knowledge and values through counterproductive policies in the vulnerable areas. Schipper (2007) argues that reducing the vulnerability needs to be addressed first through ‘climate proof’ development as an enabling condition for an adaptation to happen.

Marginalization of marginal populations

One of the key arguments is that populations will be differentially vulnerable to climate change and variability impacts in different landscapes at global and local levels. Macchi et al. (2015) explain that entitlements are determined by broad categories of inequality such as gender, caste, economic status, social status and ethnicity that in turn determine adaptive capacity. One of the papers of this special issue touches upon the issue of increasing livelihood vulnerability among ethnic minorities in Vietnam (Beckman & Nguyen, 2016).

Beckman looks at how upland ethnic minorities in the Mekong region, Vietnam are affected by climate-related hazards and stresses, and how the constraints in their access to natural resources affect their adaptive capacity. The study highlights that the government approach in the Mekong region restricts upland people’s access to the forests and promotes intensified agricultural production close to rivers, which often excluded and marginalized the people, particularly ethnic minorities living in and around the forest. Such regulations that limit the flexibility for an integrated management and local practices of food security play a hindering role to facilitate adaptation of ethnic minorities to climate change.

In micro-politics, as is emphasized in this special issue, the factors identified in marginalization of marginal populations show the need to think why coordination across scales and levels is critical for any policy approach. Failure to address the marginalization happening at the different scale and cross-scale dynamics of human and ecological systems might increase the chances of misguided policies and management systems for climate change and variability policies. Marginalization is often an outcome of exclusion/inclusion of certain groups in developmental activities. Rarely the climate change debate identifies vulnerability-reduction measures other than variables such as poverty or lack of capacity (Adger, 2010; Ribot, 2009).

Summary of climate adaptation and marginal populations in vulnerable regions

This special issue about climate adaptation shows that the marginal populations are equally affected in vulnerable areas of developed and developing countries alike. In climate adaptation discourse fundamental issues of marginal populations related to their ability (access and power) to maintain ethnic identity and traditional practices or claim access and land tenure rights equally matters for the way they adapt to climate change vulnerabilities. Recognition by including local diversity of interests among different marginal populations and their adaptive capacity is a step towards adaptation and vulnerability-related development strategy. Overall, further research is needed to understand the ground-level complexities of social diversity and looking at cross-level linkages with climate change and variability issues to address the adaptive capacity and livelihood vulnerability of the marginal groups.

Acknowledgements

Idea of this Special Issue (SI) publication was possible due ICARUS II Conference team, including Arun Agrawal and Jesse Ribot. The author is grateful for the support received to work on this SI as a Gender Social Scientist, year 2012–2015, of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (FTA-Gender, CIAT), Colombia. Thanks to FTA-Gender’s visiting researcher travel grant, the author invited Han van Dijk (Africa Studies Center, Leiden) to Cali to assist in reviewing preliminary papers received for SI. Thanks to Bernd van der Meulen, Prof. of Food Law at Wageningen University, for providing valuable comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Last but not least sincere thanks to Climate and Development team including Tom Gill, Richard Klein, Ekaterina, Bessonova, and a very special thanks to Lisa Schipper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

‡ This is the introduction to a virtual special issue of Climate and Development (“Climate adaptation: marginal populations in the vulnerable regions”) located at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tcld20/9/s1