How Climate Change is Impacting Indigenous African & Alaskan Communities
The experiences of the East African Maasai & Western Alaskan Yup’ik
Indigenous Peoples — communities with pre-colonial connections to land who consider themselves distinct from contemporary society — have survived genocides, epidemics, forced migration, and marginalisation across all corners of the globe.
Their resilience is often attributed to unique wisdom traditions, centred around harmonious relationships with nature. Despite representing <5% of the global population, Indigenous territories guard 80% of the world’s biodiversity and contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions.
However, this same reliance on nature has left Indigenous Peoples some of the most vulnerable to anthropogenic* climate change (meaning climate change caused by human activity), with severe climate impacts already affecting Indigenous lives and livelihoods worldwide.
In this blog, we will explore how the climate crisis is impacting two Indigenous communities — the Maasai of East Africa, and the Yup’ik of Western Alaska. Despite vastly differing local geographies, both communities already report devastating and irreversible losses from climate change.
After examining the direct and indirect impacts facing these communities, we’ll discuss whose voice matters in reporting climate impacts, a proposed feedback loop of marginalisation, and how our perception of Indigenous Peoples may be exacerbating climate injustice.
Maasai
Often misspelled “Masai”, these nomadic pastoralists settled in arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya and Tanzania in the early 20th century. The Maasai consider themselves “cattle guardians” by divine appointment and rely on a livestock market economy for their food and livelihoods.
In Kenya, arid regions are the most vulnerable to climate change. Rainfall is increasingly erratic and droughts which used to occur once in ten years now occur every other year — killing off livestock and reducing the productivity of those that survive. This threatens the food security and sovereignty (the ability to provide oneself with nutritious and culturally-appropriate food) of the Maasai, whose native diet consists almost entirely of meat, milk, and blood.
Diminished livestock populations also threaten the foundations of Maasai tradition — lifecycle rituals centre around cattle, from bull sacrifices for age-related initiations to the use of dairy products for fertility, birthing, and clairvoyance rituals. In the face of starvation, such practices are reformed or removed entirely.
Low levels of formal education diminish the adaptive capacity of the Maasai; today, increasing numbers of Maasai children attend contemporary schools to bring new skills and sources of income home to their families. The growing role of formal education can be considered an overwhelmingly positive adaptation, though some elders fear that Western education may cause the next generation to abandon their culture.
Yup’ik
In 2008, the Yup’ik were named the “world’s first climate-change refugees” after melting permafrost caused entire villages to destabilise and sink, resulting in some towns voting to leave their native lands altogether.
Polar regions like Alaska have experienced the world’s most extreme temperature increases over the past century, with some towns warming by 7°C over the last 50 years and ice-free Arctic summers predicted by 2050.
Drastic temperature increases cause sea ice to melt, leaving villages more vulnerable to storms and increasing coastal erosion at an alarming rate. Melting sea ice also impacts the hunting capacity of the Yup’ik; food sources like walruses and seals need sea ice to raise their cubs, and are otherwise forced to give birth on land and face death caused by overcrowding— diminishing a primary food source for the Yup’ik. Dwindling sea ice also means that Yup’ik hunters have to travel further into hazardously freezing Arctic waters to hunt.
Traditional Yup’ik food preservation techniques centre around freezing, and are also threatened by melting permafrost. This poses a health risk to the Yup’ik, alongside the predicted introduction of new bacteria caused by rising temperatures.
Culturally, Yup’ik language is deeply rooted in its polar landscape, but as temperatures rise, terms for different variations of sea ice are going ‘extinct’ along with the forms of ice themselves.
Information, marginalisation, and perception
But how do we know what we know about climate impacts on Indigenous Peoples? Researchers gather information through interviews with community leaders — typically older men. This introduces the risk that the impacts we are aware of may exclude the experiences of vulnerable members of the community, such as women, or the disabled.
Climate impacts may also introduce a feedback loop of marginalisation — already marginalised Indigenous communities are destabilised, decreasing their sovereignty and independence and increasing reliance on systematically oppressive institutions.
However, the world has a lot to lose if it only views Indigenous Peoples as victims of the climate crisis. Though they are the most vulnerable, Indigenous communities have been recognised to hold some of the most effective climate solutions. Many Indigenous representatives have been trying to contribute to international adaptation planning since the Kyoto Protocol, but have been continually rebuffed and belittled — perceived only as victims instead of agents and partners to cooperate with.
Recognising, honouring, and welcoming Indigenous voices to international climate cooperation will not only alleviate the burden of climate impacts on Indigenous communities, but on the whole world.
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