Download Draft Framework

Planning Meeting for the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment
8-9 September 2008
Sheraton Palo Alto Hotel
Palo Alto, California, USA
Possible Elements of a Draft Framework for an Indigenous Peoples’ Climate
Change Assessment
1.
Purpose
The purpose of the draft framework is to provide the underlying conceptual basis for an
Indigenous peoples’ climate change assessment. The framework will also serve as the
basis for designing methodologies to be used in the assessment. An important
consideration in developing the framework is that the assessment will differ from major
international assessments in that it will rely on a “bottom up” approach that is rooted in
traditional cultural practices of indigenous and local communities, with the aim to
enhance community resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The present paper will consider elements that might be incorporated into the framework,
and it is hoped that the suggestions contained in it will serve as a basis for further
discussion.
2.
Definitions
It is important that the definitions for the key terms used in the assessment are consistent
with agreed-upon international definitions. It is proposed that the assessment adopt
definitions used by the IPCC as outlined in Box 1.
Box 1: Definitions
These definitions originate from the glossary of the IPPC 4th Assessment Report (AR4).
Note that there exist two definitions for “vulnerability”, sometimes referred to as
biophysical and social vulnerability. Both types of vulnerability would need to be
addressed by the assessment.
Vulnerability: The degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with,
adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes.
Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and
variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.
[Sometimes referred to as biophysical vulnerability – for example the degree a system is
susceptible to rising temperatures]
Vulnerability: Degree to which a system is susceptible to injury, damage, or harm (one
part - the problematic or detrimental part - of sensitivity) (IPCC Def. 2). [Sometimes
referred to as social vulnerability – for example the availability of assets for the
community to face a situation of biophysical impact]
Exposure: The nature and degree to which a system is exposed to significant climatic
variations.
Sensitivity: The degree to which a system is affected, either adversely or beneficially, by
climate variability or change. The effect may be direct (e.g., a change in crop yield in
response to a change in the mean, range or variability of temperature) or indirect (e.g.,
damages caused by an increase in the frequency of coastal flooding due to sea-level rise).
Adaptive capacity: The 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 the consequences.
Resilience: The ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while
retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for selforganisation, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.
3.
Questions
As described in the background document, most international and regional assessments,
including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment are based on and guided by several key questions. It might be fruitful to
begin the construction of the framework by considering the types of question that the
Indigenous peoples’ climate change assessment would like to ask. For example, the
following examples might be considered as a starting point for discussion:
 What changes in climate and environment have been observed by the community?
 What traditional indicators are used by the community to forecast changes?
 What traditional response/adaptation measures have been historically used by the
community in the face of environmental change?
 To what stresses and combinations of stresses is the community most vulnerable?
 What are the likely impacts of climate change on local ecological and cultural values?
 To what degree can traditional adaptation measures build resilience to these stresses?
4.
Possible Elements for the Framework
It is likely that the Indigenous peoples’ climate change assessment would require a
consideration of the ways a community is both vulnerable and resilient to the impacts of
climate change. In this regard, the framework conceived by Turner et al 2003 and used in
the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) may provide some guidance. However,
unlike the ACIA, the present assessment will be undertaken entirely at the local level.
Because of this, the construction of a draft framework for the assessment might start by
considering the community in question, and the interlinked relationships between
environment, culture and socio-economics that are unique to it. This relationship might
be demonstrated through a diagram such as the one found below.
Socio-economic systems:
- Social systems (social
networks, equity, health, land
tenure)
- Economic systems (Diversity
of livelihoods, poverty)
Traditional cultural and
spiritual systems
- Intactness of traditional
systems
Environmental
systems:
Availability of natural
resources to meet human
needs (provisioning,
regulating, cultural,
supporting)
The interlinked socio-economic, cultural and environmental systems affect the
vulnerability of a particular community to the impacts to climate change. In addition, the
community’s location (or place) in the physical world (e.g. arctic tundra, coastal small
island, desert environment) will also have a bearing on its sensitivity to climate change
impacts. Thus the nature and location of the settlement would need to be considered in
the framework.
Even though the assessment takes place at the local community level, it would be
difficult to undertake without recognizing the larger (global and regional) context in
which the community is situated. The community is connected to this larger system in
various ways and at different spatiotemporal scales, and an example of a diagram
illustrating this context can be found below.
Globe
Region
Place
Community
Traditional
cultural and
spiritual
systems
Socioeconomic
systems
Environmental
systems
Diagrams such as these can be used to demonstrate the cultural, socio-economic and
environmental characteristics of each community, as well as the place of that community
in a regional and global context. Together, these factors will influence how sensitive a
community may be to the impacts of climate change.
In addition, the assessment would need to consider the type of climate change impacts
and stressors that the community is exposed to, in order to understand as fully as possible
its vulnerability to climate change. This understanding is a fundamental requirement for
enhancing community resilience. This component would need to rely on local
observations of impacts (e.g decrease in sea ice cover, increased droughts) and the
frequency, magnitude and duration of the impact.
The ultimate focus of the assessment is likely to be on strategies to support and enhance
community resilience. This focus on is particularly pertinent because the magnitude of
climate change impacts on indigenous and traditional peoples is likely to be very high,
especially in some regions of the world. The assessment framework would therefore also
need to incorporate the adaptive capacity of the community through traditional response
mechanisms, which may ultimately result in increased resilience to the specific stresses
observed.
Addition of these components would result in a framework that would incorporate the
community at its center. The community is sensitive to the impacts of climate change to
varying degrees depending on specific local circumstances (nature and location of
settlement; social and cultural systems; the ability of natural resources to meet human
needs). The community is exposed to perturbations and stressors driven by global climate
change and variability in ways that are unique to each location, and these stresses may
interact and be additional to other environmental stresses, either local or global. The
framework would also include linkages to the broader human and biophysical
(environmental) conditions and processes operating on global and regional scales. The
framework might also want to provide linkages to global and regional decision-making
processes, where policies for climate change adaptation need to integrate the results of
community-based assessments.
There are many ways to sketch this type of framework. One suggestion for further
discussion is provided in the diagram below.
Globe
Region
Community
Exposure:
- Type of
impact observed
- Frequency,
magnitude and
duration of the
impact
Traditional
cultural and
spiritual
systems
Socioeconomic
systems
Environmental
systems
Resilience:
- Traditional
adaptation
strategies
- Traditional
indicators for
monitoring
and
forecasting
It is hoped that this discussion of possible elements of the draft assessment framework
provides useful input to the eventual development of the framework. It should be stressed
that there are many alternative ways to create a diagram of the interlinkages between
communities, the climate change impacts they face, and the ways in which they can
enhance their resilience. The diagram above presents but one such option, and others may
be developed during the workshop.
Global/regional responses
Place