Aboriginal Practices Play a Role in Reducing Global Warming

Each year, an area of Australia larger than Great Britain goes up in smoke as a result of wildfires. The flames are destructive, of course, but it turns out that the fires’ smoke may be even more problematic, as each year it adds some 3 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, significantly contributing to global warming.

The extent and intensity of modern fires is largely the result of Aboriginal communities being removed from the land during colonization. Traditionally, Aboriginal communities set intentional blazes for hunting and ceremonial purposes. These fires prevented a buildup of fuel on the ground and created effective firebreaks, so that natural wildfires were smaller and shorter-lived. Now, in a new scheme set up by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the Aboriginal Northern Land Council, Aborigines are returning to the land and reestablishing their old fire regimes. The scheme, called the Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Project, is aimed not only at reducing the severity of wildfires, but also at providing a substantial stream of income for Aborigines through international carbon-emissions trading programs. The carbon-trading programs work by allowing major companies, which produce large amounts of carbon through their industrial operations, to offset their carbon production (and thus avoid fines and penalties) by buying carbon credits from operations that reduce the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere—operations like the Arnhem Land project. Based on the current value of carbon credits, the project’s managers estimate that it could earn Aboriginal communities nearly $10 million a year.

Dr. Garry Cook, the CSRIO project director, said that in addition to the climate benefits, the project would help put a value on traditional knowledge and give younger generations a reason to learn it and preserve it. Aboriginal land-management methods would also have major benefits for threatened wildlife, Cook said.

Early results are encouraging: In the program’s first year, with Aboriginal fire breaks in place, only 16 percent of Western Arnhem Land burned, where the average over the preceding five years was 37 percent.

Pacific Islanders Displaced by Rising Sea Level

In December, the United Nations Environment Program announced that the people of Tegua, in the Pacific island chain of Vanuatu, had become the world’s first climate-change refugees, as rising sea levels forced them to abandon their coastal homes. “We are seeing king tides across the region,” said Taito Nakalevu, climate-change adaptation officer with the Pacific Regional Environment Program, which helped move more than 100 villagers in the Lateu settlement to higher ground farther inland. “These are normal events, but it is the frequency that is abnormal and a threat to livelihoods. People are being forced to build sea walls and other defenses not just to defend their homes, but to defend agricultural land.” Erosion from flooding in recent years averaged two to four meters a year, and the standing water left by the floods led to increased mosquito populations and higher levels of malaria and skin diseases in village children.

One of the challenges in the relocation was the absence of fresh water at the new village, which is called Lirak. The villagers had relied on fresh-water springs that only occur at low tide along the coast. In Lirak they will get their water from six 6,000-liter water tanks that will hold rainfall collected by the roofs of the houses.

Inuit Petition Human Rights Commission to Oppose U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

During the United Nations’ climate-change conference in Montreal in December, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuk woman and chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking relief from Inuits’ human rights violations caused by United States greenhouse gas emissions. The 163-page petition, which documents global warming’s effect on the Arctic environment and the Inuits’ hunting-based economy, included testimony from 63 Inuit from northern Canada and Alaska and was prepared by more than 300 scientists and six indigenous-peoples organizations. It focuses on the United States because the U.S. is the largest producer of greenhouse gases, and because the Bush administration has refused to join international efforts to reduce emissions.

The damage cited in the petition is in line with scientists’ projections, which suggest that global warming will occur earliest and be most pronounced at the poles. “Our region is the globe’s climate-change barometer,” Watt-Cloutier said. “If you want to protect the planet, look to the Arctic and listen to what Inuit are saying.”

The petition asks the Human Rights Commission, which was established by the Organization of American States, to recommend that the U.S. adopt mandatory greenhouse-gas emission limits and cooperate with other nations. The petition also asks the commission to declare that the U.S. has an obligation to help Inuit adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change, and that it should take into account the impact of its emissions on the Arctic and Inuit before approving all major government actions.

“This petition is not about money,” Watt-Cloutier said. “It is about encouraging the United States of America to join the world community, to agree to deep cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions needed to protect the Arctic environment and Inuit culture. Climate change is destroying our environment and eroding our culture. But we refuse to disappear. We will not become a footnote to globalization.”