Climate Change And Its Impact On Indigenous Communities
- IJLLR Journal
- Mar 2
- 2 min read
Shreya Ghosh, National Law University, Tripura
Chapter 1: Introduction1.1 Background of the Study
“For Indigenous peoples, climate change is not a distant threat—it is a lived reality that alters lands, waters, and ways of life that have sustained them for generations.”
Climate change is the biggest global challenge we face now. It impacts not only various life forms on Earth but human civilization itself. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns become unsettled, glaciers are melting, and natural disasters are becoming more frequent. Ecosystems are evolving, which could mean millions of lives. The hardest hit populations are more often the most vulnerable: Indigenous peoples whose lives, traditions and livelihoods depend on their environment. However, Indigenous people are usually found in far-flung regions like forests, mountains, islands, and coastal regions, where they depend heavily on nature for natural resources such as food, water, medicine, and cultural traditions. They are highly sensitive to slight climate change events, as they are an intuitive response to it in their environment. Floods or droughts, deforestation and biodiversity loss undermine their economic underpinnings and undermine their ancestral knowledge systems. In addition, climate change affects Indigenous cultures with long-standing connections through traditional knowledge sharing and usage. Some of the customs that have been threatened by climate impacts are much more than just getting impacted by the weather, and well-established routines—to make medicine with indigenous herbs or with animal products — have also suffered in response to climate change. Many Indigenous groups already find it difficult to tap clean drinking water; this is particularly true for those living in remote areas where the availability of contaminated water could result in outbreaks of disease and severe health risks, ranging from illnesses with such strains that they affect babies born there. For instance, infants who reside in Arizona's Fort Apache Reservation face record rates of hospitalization that have been associated with polluted water sources. Moreover, warmer water temperatures promote harmful algal blooms that damage the health of fish, animals and people when they swim; consume impacted fish and/or consume poisoned waters from algae proliferation. A large number of these communities are also traumatized by colonization and displaced by extreme storms, rising seas, and the development boom. This enduring struggle greatly affects the way tribes live life, sustainably live, find food and provide services.
