Global warming hits Indigenous people most
Indigenous Australians are among the most vulnerable people in the world to climate change, according to a new UN report.
But they could also hold the key to useful information on the environmental impacts of a warming planet, says a report contributor.
Many Indigenous Australians live in low-lying tropical areas that are particularly vulnerable to storm surges and floods, which expected to increase as the planet warms, says Green.
She says one such area is the Arafura Swamp, where the award-winning film Ten Canoes was filmed.
"Many of those wetland systems don't respond well to even just one saltwater inundation, they have quite a low tolerance," says Green.
She says climate change will directly affect Indigenous health, in the form of heat stress for example, and indirectly.
Damage to traditional homelands can also threaten the cultural, mental and physical wellbeing of Indigenous communities living in Australia's north, says Green.
"[Indigenous people] don't see the land as distinct from themselves in the same way as maybe society in the southeast would," says Green.
"If they feel that the ecosystem has changed it's a mental anxiety to them. They feel like they've lost control of their 'country'; they're responsible for looking after it."
And because Indigenous communities can be remote and have few resources, infrastructure and health emergency services, Green says it means such communities are likely to have little ability to adapt to this changing environment.
"If the temperatures rises and you've got a lot of money you can buy an airconditioner for your house, so your family stays cool in summer," says Green.
"If you don't have a house or if you don't live near electricity, it might be difficult to get airconditioning."
Green says the urban poor would also be vulnerable in this way.
Indigenous knowledge on climate change
Green says the new IPCC report recognises that globally, indigenous people's close connection to the environment has a positive side.
It means they have detailed knowledge of environmental changes - such as changes in cyclone frequency, bird migration, crayfish availability, and flowering times - that can feed into scientific research.
"They may not write it down and put it in a peer-reviewed journal but they have a lot of experience in their head and that traditional knowledge is very valuable," says Green.
"If the owners of the knowledge are happy to share it, it could be useful in terms of environmental or natural resource management in the future," she says.
Green says one of the most useful contributions of indigenous knowledge globally is that it can help check the accuracy of models scientists develop.
Future projections of models can be tested by looking at what's happened in the past.
"If you've got people who have lived very closely with an environment over hundreds, if not thousands, of years they tend to have an understanding of those cycles because they've got the experiential knowledge."
Green previously worked on a CSIRO project exploring Indigenous experiences with environmental and climate change.
She says Arctic indigenous communities have been exchanging information with scientists for about a decade.