CLIMATE CHANGE, RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL DEGREDATION AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

CLIMATE CHANGE, RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Stephen M. Sachs
Professor Emeritus UPUI
ssachs@earthlink.net

Published in Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, Fall 2007
(Links and additional references beyond footnotes are found at www.indigenouspolicy.org)

CLIMATE CHANGE, RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Stephen M. Sachs

Climate change, from largely human induced global warming, and other environmental degradation from pollution and over use of resources, effects everyone on the earth, but in many instances is particularly impacting poor, and especially indigenous people. In the past, when faced with changing natural conditions, indigenous people could adapt. But that is much harder to do now. Using their traditional knowledge, indigenous people on Islands of Indonesia had foreknowledge of the tsunami that wreaked great havoc in the region, to escape inland before the great wave struck, and suffered no deaths or injuries. This is becoming more difficult to achieve, for two reasons. First, as climates and related conditions change, traditional knowledge is less applicable to the developing physical circumstances. Second, and more important, Indigenous people are more and more constrained in moving, as they are limited to reservations, often shrinking traditional areas, or own land privately that they may not be able to replace, if forced to move. Thus, as the combination of rising ocean, more intense storms, and the washing away of costal wetlands because of the dyking of the Mississippi River cause costal lands in Louisiana to be lost to the Gulf of Mexico, the tribes that live on that coast line have no where to retreat to.1 The United Houma Nation, the Chitimacha, the Pointe au Chien, the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muscogee, the Jena Band of Choctaw and the Chanta, who were the backbone of the Louisiana seafood, crabbing, oystering, shrimping, hunting, alligator and fur processing industries, not only endured serious losses of homes, boats and other property from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but suffered significant land loss, leaving them more threatened for the next major storm, which may completely obliterate their remaining land bases.

The impact of severe weather on indigenous people was evident, in August (as reported above), when the worst storm in memory crashed through Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, not only destroying houses, but felling thousands of fruit trees that are the livelihood of Mayan people. But that is only one effect on weather from global warming. Tribes, and other farming and herding people in Africa are losing irreplaceable arable and grazing land from the spread of deserts, while the warming weather is melting the glacier and snow pack on top of Mount Kilimanjaro, seriously reducing the water supply for an entire ecosystem. The same is a major threat elsewhere, including for indigenous people in several places in South America.

Drying weather, is presenting other problems as well. Across the United States west, fire seasons have become longer and more severe. Several tribes in Southern California received extensive damage from wild fire in the fall of 2003, including at San Pasqual, where the entire reservation burned, destroying 67 of 68 houses and killing at least two people,2 while the White Mountain Apache nation lost half of the timber, which is their largest source of income, in a fire, that burned 469,000 acres, in the summer of 2002, causing 70 sawmill and forestry workers to lose their jobs.3 In addition, the fire destroyed lands in which non-Indians pay a considerable amount to hunt. Reduced rainfall, combined with increasing overuse and pollution of existing water, threatens agriculture in much of the western, and parts of the mid-western U.S. This summer, for the first time in history, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa were forced to cancel their entire wild rice crop, because of low water (as is discussed above). At this writing, on October 24, a series of fires is burning across seven counties in Southern California, burning thousands houses. threatening several major towns, forcing the evacuation of more than half a million people. More than 26000 acres of land were scorched on the Yuina, Rincon, La Jolla, San Pasqual, Pala, Capitan Grande, Mesa Grande, Santa Ysabel, Barona, Jamul and Inaja-Cosmit reservations, destroying over 100 homes and much infrastructure, while other lands, structures and people remain threatened.4

The fastest warming and greatest shift in climate is in the arctic regions, with significant impacts on Indigenous peoples. In Alaska,5 rising sea levels and melting sea ice, glaciers and tundra have greatly increased flooding, to the extent that a 2003 Government Accounting Office Report found that more than 86% of the 213 Alaska Native Villages had experienced recent flooding, The flooding is worsening, and many of these villages will have to move or be abandoned. At the same time, the subsistence living carried out by many Native Alaskans is becoming increasingly more difficult, and is threatened. Warming climate is destroying the habitat for some plants and animals, while providing opportunities for others to move north, often further impacting habitats, occasionally in ways that are helpful to Indigenous people, but mostly which make Native life more difficult. A number of major mammalian species are seriously declining and may become virtually extinct, including walrus, some species of seals and polar bears. Migration routes and ranges of some animals are being afected. In Northwest Alaska, for instance, westward movement of Western Arctic Caribou has been crowding out reindeer from their usual territory. As a result, by 2001, eight of the 15 Native reindeer herders on the Seward Peninsula had been driven out of business. In addition, travel, including in the process of hunting and gathering, is becoming more dangerous, as exemplified by declining sea ice making the violent impact of storms more imminent, while thinning costal ice is becoming more hazardous, or simply less available for hunting, fishing and travel. This not only increases risk, but also the time and cost of food accumulating activities, whether for consumption or sale.

As climates and habitats change, the loss of ways of living, and of long important species not only has direct survival and wellbeing effects, it also undermines important aspects of traditional cultures. For Hopi and other Pueblo Indians in the Southwest, farming, and the cycles of seasons and crops have been at the center of their ceremonies, spirituality and way of being since the most ancient times.6 When drought made their homes in such places as Chaco canyon and Mesa Verde unlivable, between 1100 and 1400, they moved to more favorable locations, including to a number of places where Pueblos are now located along the Rio Grande, where traditional life and culture could continue with some adaptation. Today such a migration would not be possible, so that loss of traditional livelihood would cause a major increase in the movement of pueblo people from their homes for jobs at more distant places, while a few might remain at home making a living in non-traditional ways – assuming that climate change does not become so severe as to create a catastrophe well beyond this scenario.

A similar situation is developing in the Pacific North West, where salmon have been central to the livelihood and culture of a number of Indian peoples.7 Several aspects of climate change have been exasperating a serious decline in salmon from a variety of causes, including damming of rivers, pollution, urban development and over fishing. First, reduced snow pack and earlier spring melting, contributing to higher winter and lower summer stream flows have changed the hydrologic cycle, negatively impacting salmon reproduction. At the same time, the rising ocean has increased shore erosion, damaging costal habitat, while the timing and extent of fresh water mixing with ocean water in estuaries and along the cost also is degrading salmon costal habitat, even as rising temperatures bring new predators of salmon to the area, and there is the possibility that with warmer temperatures, the salmon may move away, to more northern areas.

The overuse of resources, often exacerbated by, and sometimes causing activity exacerbating, climate change, is also impacting Indigenous people. This has already been referred to, briefly, concerning using up (and polluting) of increasingly scarce usable water, which is a world wide problem, and of over fishing of salmon, contributing to their decline and endangerment – a serious problem around the planet concerning many species, being worsened by global warming. The most serious problem is the increasing world wide demand for energy, and the consuming of declining petroleum reserves, with oil more difficult and expensive to find, extract and transport.

The expanding use of oil and other fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming. The peaking of readily available oil (and to a lesser extent, natural gas) is having a secondary effect that is negatively impacting many peoples, but especially the indigenous. One aspect of this problem (reported in the last two issues of IPJ) has been a huge movement, particularly in the Americas, to produce biofuel, most often ethanol from corn, as a substitute (usually as an additive) for gasoline. First, this has raised the price of food, and particularly corn, an economic hardship on low income people, often including Native people. In Mexico this has manifested in the unprecedented rise in the price of the tortilla, a staple for those less well off, including most tribal people (though it has brought more income to many Indigenous and other small farmers, who had difficulty selling their corn in the face of subsidized competition from the U.S. after the institution of NAFTA). Second, particularly in Columbia, the rush to grow biofuel crops has brought about huge land grabs by wealthy interests, forcing many people off their lands, most notably persons of African descent, but increasingly Indigenous people as well. In addition, as the quest for more farm land to produce energy brings deforestation, so it increases climate change, as carbon dioxide absorbing trees are cut down, while the burning of ethanol and similar biofuels adds to the production of green house gasses. The one climate change mitigating result of the growing world energy crises, is that it is encouraging the development of non-greenhouse gas emitting, alternative energy, in which tribal people are involved.

Over all, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, summed up the situation in reporting to the UN Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), October 22, that global warming and increasing exploitation of natural resources, continue to bring about the dispossessing of Indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands, to the point that some small isolated communities are at risk of physically disappearing, in spite of recent progress in recognizing the rights of Indigenous people. Stavenhagen said that "Extractive activities, large commercial plantations and non-sustainable consumption patterns have led to widespread pollution and environmental degradation." The end result, he said, was that indigenous peoples, whose lives were closely linked to their lands, were dramatically affected by such trends, which had in turn led to their forced displacements. The Special Rapporteur stated that the shrinking of Indigenous territory has been intensified by the dynamics of the globalized economy and its attendant increase in water and energy exploitation.8

One of the major responses to global warming and the increasing energy crunch by tribes in the United States has been developing wind, photovoltaic and other forms of energy that do not contribute to global warming. The Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, an organization composed of federally recognized Indian tribes in the northern Great Plains, has been among those organizations supporting the growth of wind powered electric generation that has been developing among a number of Great Plains Tribes over the last few years.9 The Council was recognized at the Faktor 4-Festival in Basel, Switzerland, June 15 with a Special Award for its work assisting the establishment of the first commercial wind power generation on any reservation, with the 750-kilowatt turbine on the Rosebud Reservation, in South Dakota. The Three Affiliated Tribes, of Montana, began operating their first wind turbine on the Fort Berthold Reservation in the spring of 2006. The Morongo Band of Mission Indians are constructing a wind generation station to meet their own and surrounding community power needs,10 The Navajo Nation has included wind power in its energy development program, though there is controversy over its plan to also build a new coal fired electric generation plant, even though it will be much less polluting of the air (but not in terms of carbon dioxide production) than older coal generating facilities (see On Going Activities Above). The Hopi Nation is going ahead with both wind and photovoltaic electric power generation. Honor the Earth, in coordination with Solar Energy International, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, American Spirit Productions and the Battle Mountain Band of Te-Moak Western Shoshone provided free training and installation of a solar photovoltaic system in Western Shoshone territory near Elko, Nevada in April, 2005.11 Laguna Pueblo designer Dave Melton and Sacred Power Corporation of Albuquerque, of which he is co-owner, had brought electricity to 30 isolated homes on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, using wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, as of June 2005.12

Some tribes have been working to capture methane (a potent greenhouse gas, if allowed to escape into the air) from land fills, to use as fuel. A number of U.S. tribes are taking advantage of carbon credits, the planting of trees which absorb carbon dioxide, to offset the production of the greenhouse gas in power production and industry.13 The first to do so was the Confederated Tribes of the Coleville Reservation in Washington, 1990, who were paid by area power companies reforest some of their land, Others include the Nez Perce Nation of Idaho, who reforested land cleared for farming in the Nineteenth Century, that was no longer used for agriculture, and the Lummi Tribe in Washington, who bought 1700 acres of logged land to replant with trees, selling the carbon credits to a power company.

A number of Indigenous nations are undertaking research on how best to act in the face of climate change. For example, Ealat, the Reindeer Herders’ Vulnerability Network of Indigenous people in Norway, in collaboration with the Association of World Reindeer Herders, is undertaking a Study, Reindeer Pastoralism in a Changing Climate, to determine the ability of this ancient herding way of living to adapt to climate change, and to propose policy to government and the private sector that will increase the viability of Reindeer herding in the face of climate change.14 The Arctic Council is a high-level forum for cooperation, coordination and interaction between Arctic states, indigenous communities and other Arctic residents, focusing on some of the key challenges facing the Arctic region, particularly the need for integrated resource management to meet climate change.15 This includes abroad spectrum of research and policy proposal undertakings. Tribal colleges in the United States have also been engagedin research into how their nations can respond to climate change, in some cases in a partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey created organization, Native View, while including study of the changing environment in their curricula – integrating traditional and western scientific knowledge – and doing what they can, with limited budgets, to make their campuses green, from recycling, to improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.16 Meanwhile (as reported above), Northwest Indian College now offers a Bachelor of Science in Native Environmental Science.

Collectively, Indigenous people are beginning to take action on climate change and other environmental issues. As reported above, The United League of Indigenous Nations was formed at the July 31 - August 2 Indigenous Treaty Gathering at Lummi Nation in Washington state to deal with the environment and other issues. Lummi Nation Chief Jaret Cardinal, proposing approving the treaty, commented The time is right for the indigenous tribes to stand together to help combat the problems of global warming. The significance of this treaty is that we are being given the opportunity to do something. [...] Time is something we have little of if we are going to address the environment. If we are to truly have a strong voice, then we need to have global economies where international trade is required.''

A number of other Indigenous nations in the U.S. and elsewhere are taking similar steps to lesson climate change. However, as the vast proportion of actions causing global warming and other environmental degradation is being caused by non-indigenous governments, their policies and private corporations, there is only a very small amount that Native peoples, governments and organizations can do directly to slow and limit climate change and other environmental damage. Perhaps the most important contribution that native people can make is by sharing Indigenous ways of thinking, so that well meaning actions do not end up making the situation worse, or creating new difficulties.

All traditional Indigenous people consider themselves to be part of nature, with a responsibility to keep it in balance, both for their own good, and that of all other beings. From experience they understand the necessity of taking into account the short and long term effects of actions, being aware of the full set of relationships that are involved in all human activity. If the world’s leading public and private policy makers of the last two centuries had been Indigenous thinkers, climate change would not be a major world crises, today.

The key learnings from Indigenous thinking for the world in dealing with climate change are that everything is connected, but each location is unique.17 Actions and events have developing consequences over time, so that in making decisions, it is necessary to take into account the full range of relationships that are involved, considering how they will be affected over an unfolding, and lengthy, period of time. Western science has long focused on taking things apart, and reducing consideration of phenomena to focus on a limited number of factors, in order to isolate essential forces or rules. This approach has great power, but its reductionism tends to miss the interconnections that contemporary ecology, the cutting edge of physics, and developing chaos or complexity theory are beginning to demonstrate to the West, are the true nature of the world. It is an exceedingly complex, interactive system. Climate change and other ecological issues are essentially issues of how we use resources (broadly defined to include energy and matter, that which is animate and inanimate), including the chains of direct and indirect effects of finding, acquiring, transporting, processing, and applying those resources and disposing of (or allowing to disperse) the byproducts of that use. This requires analyzing holistically, in terms of complex systems with interacting subsystems, so that decisions are made in the course of examining the full range of relationships and interactions involved, over time. It involves understanding that every action has a wide range of effects that need to be taken into account. This means not only examining all of the physical aspects of an ecological problem over time, but the full range of human concerns as well: social, cultural, economic, political,.., in order to develop an appropriate balanced set of actions across time.

Another tendency of traditional western science and thought has been to develop general conclusions, and to apply them universally, often without thinking through how they properly apply in different circumstances. This has caused untold problems.18 For example business or technical consultants often take a program that worked well in one place, or a set of similar sites, and “can it”, simply presenting the program in other locales without first assessing the conditions and needs of that location. When those conditions and needs are different from what the presenter assumed, the program does not work. This is an especially serious problem in making cross-cultural transfers. For example, several years ago agricultural scientists developed a new variety of cotton that was more hardy and produced more cotton per plant than traditional varieties. They took it to villagers in one location in India, without asking what the local people used the cotton plants for. Most of the villagers decided to try the new cotton. But when the scientists returned five years later, they found only a small amount of the cotton being grown was the new variety. The reason was that the villagers used the plant both to produce cotton, and for fuel by burning the stalks. The stalks of the new cotton plants did not burn nearly as well as those of the old plants. In dealing with environmental issues, it is important to realize that what works in one place may not work, and may have negative results, in another. General principals – when correct – may generally apply everywhere, but to apply properly, they have to be adapted to the differing conditions of each particular place, including taking into account (so far as possible) how those conditions will change over time. If the world’s decision makers can take an Indigenous perspective on what needs to be done, there is still a good possibility that the worst potential effects of global warming and environmental destruction can be avoided, and much of the already occurring damage can be reversed or ameliorated.19

FOOTNOTES

Note: This paper was published in Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, Fall 2007, At: www.indigenouspolicy.org. References in the text to earlier “in this issue”, or “these pages,” refer to that issue of Indigenous policy, and the one note that says the last two issues refers to that issue and Spring 2007.

1. William G. Archambeault, "Louisiana Indians: Survivors in a Post Katrina and Rita Environment," IPJ, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Fall 2006, pp. 41-44.

2. See the “Tribal Developments Section,” of IPJ, Vol. XIV, No. 2, fall 2003.

3. See the “Tribal Developments Section,” of IPJ, Vol. XIII, No. 2, fall 2002. Similarly, The Blackfeet Indian Tribe of Montana in the spring of 2007, was hoping to make $3 million to $4 million from salvage logging on 6,000 acres of land burned by recent forest fires, but its annual income from logging operations will fall from $90,000 a year to about $60,000 because of the lost timber. (See “Economic Developments”, in the last issue of IPJ). Another wild fire hit the reservation this summer.

4. Shadi Rahimi, “Raging wildfires burning up southern California reservations,” Indian Country Today, October 25, 2007, at: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415977; and Kirk Johnson and Jennifer Steinhauer. “Firefighters Get Control In Area As Questions Rise,” The New York Times, October 25, 2007, pp. 1 and 20.

5. Jonathan M. Hanna, Native Communities and Climate Change: Protecting Tribal Resources as Part of National Climate Policy (Boulder, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado, 2007, Report pending final review), Ch. 2. Similar problems are occurring for Indigenous people in the Canadian Arctic. See, Tenulle Bonoguore, “Inuit feel the effects of global warming,” Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press, October 11, 2006.

6. Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit: the 20,000 Year History of American Indians (New York: Free Press, 2003), pp. 78 – 89; and Frank Waters, Masked Gods: Navajo and Pueblo Ceremonialism (New York: Ballantine Books, 1950), Part I, Ch. 1.

7. Hanna, Native Communities and Climate Change, Ch. 2.

8. The full article is at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/gashc3891.doc.htm.

9. Sarah Moses, “Seeking solutions for global warming,” Indian Country Today, http://www.indiancountry.com/index, Posted: December 8, 2006.

10. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development", IPJ, Vol. XIV, No. 2. Fall 2003, developed from a statement by Morongo Band of Mission Indians of California Tribal Chairman Maurice Lyons reported in the E-mail Digest of Indigenous News (from Andre Cramblit: andrekar@ncidc.org).

11. As reported in “Economic Developments,” IPJ, Vol. XVI, No. I, spring 2005.

12. Ibid.

13. Jim Robbins, “Sale of Carbon Credits Helping Land-Rich, But cash Poor, Tribes,” The New York Times, May 8, 2007, p. D3.

14.For more information on Ealat and the reindeer vulnerability research, contact Ealat Outreach, c/o the International Center fro Reindeer Husbandry, Boaranjarga 1, 9520 Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway, ealat@ealat.org, phone: Anders Oskal: +47 99 45 00 10. Swein Mathiesen: +47 90 52 41 16m www.ealat,org.

15. Visit: http://www.arctic-council.org/.

16. David Melmer, “Tribal colleges can play a role in fighting climate change,” Indian Country Today, posted: October 17, 2007, at: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415913; and . David Melmer, “ U.S. Geological Survey, tribal colleges partner for climate change research,” Indian Country Today, Posted: September 17, 2007, at: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415746.

17. For a discussion of the relevance of traditional Native thought to western science, and growing convergence of the two, see, Stephen M. Sachs, “The Cutting Edge of Physics: Western Science Is Finally Catching Up with American Indian Tradition,” IPJ, Vol. XVIII, No. 2.

18. Stephen M. Sachs and Deborah Escobel Hunt, "Appropriate Consulting with Indian Nations: Facilitating Returning to the Wisdom of the People," Proceedings of the 2000 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2000).

19. For a short overview of appropriate ways to deal with global warming and other environmental degradations see Stephen M. Sachs, “Global Warming and What Can Be Done About It,” in Nonviolent Change, Spring 2007. NCJ regularly reports on major climate change and other environmental developments. A good ongoing source for environmental information is the World Watch Institute: http://www.worldwatch.org/.