Science, policy, and justice in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies: An argument for indigenous and local knowledge contributions

Background/Question/Methods

A significant number of national and international policies on climate change recognize the importance of indigenous and local knowledge in facing the challenges posed by climate change.  However, the position almost entirely emphasizes contributions in adaptation strategies.  Mitigation strategies are reserved for non-indigenous scientific assessments.  National and international policies on climate change choose to similarly emphasize mitigation under the rubric of scientific contribution and the indigenous and local knowledge contributions shift back into adaptation strategies.  This distinction has implications for the goals and benchmarks to address and mitigate climate change, which then get driven by national/international agencies leaving indigenous and local communities behind in the decision making process for mitigation.  The backgrounding for this presentation will provide evidence that this emphasis on adaptation over mitigation exists and the primary argument will be that this has implications for how climate science, climate policy, and climate justice ultimately diminishes indigenous and local contributions to the science, policy, and decisions surrounding climate change.  The framework for this argument will be under an environmental justice rubric, which emphasizes both cultural recognition and distributive forms of justice in climate science and policy.

 Results/Conclusions

Arguing that contributions of adaptation, but not mitigation, strategies are emphasized for the indigenous and local knowledge participants in the climate change discourses, implications for full political inclusion and scientific contribution from indigenous and local communities diminish our range of options for both climage science and environmental justice.  The responding argument provided in the results and conclusions section of the presentation emphasizes better scientific and policy practices by including indigenous and local groups in the mitigation discourse, scientific questions, and policy advances.  Further conclusions allow for the argument that science and policy have obligations under environmental justice considerations that emphasize equanimity in the contributions and inclusion of indigenous and local knowlege in both adaptative and mitigation strategies for addressing climate change.