From the Batak people of Indonesia to the Karamojong in Africa, those who are least responsible for climate change are amongst the worst affected by it. They are often referred to in generic terms such as ‘the world’s poor’ or ‘vulnerable groups’ by international organizations, the media and the United Nations (UN). But these descriptions disguise the fact that specific communities – often indigenous and minority peoples – are more vulnerable than others. The impact of climate change for them is not at some undefined point in the future. It is already being felt to devastating effect. Lives have already been lost and communities are under threat: their unique linguistic and cultural traditions are at risk of disappearing off the face of the earth. In a statement to mark World Indigenous Day in August 2008, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, commented on the threat to indigenous languages, saying, ‘The loss of these languages would weaken not only the world’s cultural diversity but also our collective knowledge as a human race.’ But all too often the impacts of global warming on human diversity are overlooked. More column inches have been devoted to the polar bear’s plight than to the Inuit, the Arctic people who live in harmony with the wilderness. This briefing paper addresses this gap and brings together a rare collection of interviews with members of minority and indigenous groups from across the world. The people presented here include communities from the El Molo on the shores of Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya, to Sami reindeer herders in Finland, that live in remote regions of the world, who have very limited access to the media or to international organizations, and whose voices are rarely heard. These stories are being told in critical times when major international decisions on climate change are being taken. UN member states are currently negotiating a climate change deal that will set carbon emission and other targets for countries to achieve beyond 2012. This deal is expected to be reached at a state-level meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. The penultimate state-level negotiations on this issue will take place in Poznan´, Poland, in December 2008. Yet these vital discussions will take place with little or no input from the communities most affected. As indigenous and minority communities are often politically and socially marginalized in their own countries, and in some cases discriminated against, they are unlikely to be consulted on any national or international level climate change strategies. But the message from the interviews presented here is clear: these communities want their voices heard. They want to be part of the climate change negotiations at the highest level. This briefing paper starts by outlining the key issues – including how communities are affected by climate change and their role at international level discussions. It presents the testimonies, and in conclusion, it considers the way forward for these communities and makes a series of recommendations on how governments and the UN can harness their distinct knowledge.

** LONGLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE LONGLIST 2022 ** 'Really packs a punch' Aja Barber, author of Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism 'Will open the minds of even the most ardent denier of climate change and/or systemic racism. If there's one book that will help you to be an effective activist for climate justice, it's this one.' Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, author of This is Why I Resist 'Accessible. Poignant. Challenging.' Nnimmo Bassey, environmentalist and author of To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa When we talk about racism, we often mean personal prejudice or institutional biases. Climate change doesn't work that way. It is structurally racist, disproportionately caused by majority White people in majority White countries, with the damage unleashed overwhelmingly on people of colour. The climate crisis reflects and reinforces racial injustices. In this eye-opening book, writer and environmental activist Jeremy Williams takes us on a short, urgent journey across the globe - from Kenya to India, the USA to Australia - to understand how White privilege and climate change overlap. We'll look at the environmental facts, hear the experiences of the people most affected on our planet and learn from the activists leading the change. It's time for each of us to find our place in the global struggle for justice.

​This book provides a new interpretation of international law specifically dedicated to Indigenous peoples in the context of a climate justice approach. The book presents a critical analysis of past and current developments at the intersection of human rights and international environmental law and governance. The book suggests new ways forward and demonstrates the need for a paradigmatic shift that would enhance the meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples as fundamental actors in the conservation of biodiversity and in the fight against climate change. The book offers guidance on a number of critical intersecting and interdependent issues at the forefront of climate change law and policy – inside and outside of the UN climate change regime. The author suggests that the adoption of a critical perspective on international law is needed in order to highlight inherent structural and systemic issues of the international law regime which are all issues that ultimately impede the pursue of climate justice for Indigenous peoples.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Freedom of religion and belief is crucial to any sustainable development process, yet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pay little attention to religious inequalities. This book offers a comprehensive overview of how efforts to achieve SDGs can be enhanced by paying greater attention to freedom of religion and belief. In particular, it illustrates how poverty is often a direct result of religious prejudice and how religious identity can shape a person's job prospects, their children's education and the quality of public services they receive. Drawing on evidence from Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, the book foregrounds the lived experiences of marginalized communities as well as researchers and action organizations.

Climate change is under way in full extent, adversely affecting more and more facets in nature, society and economy. The observations and the projections of these changes are increasingly important to consider in long-term planning, given the need to adapt to the multi-sectoral climate impacts that can be anticipated. In most cases, it is the information on the local scale in a user-oriented way that is most relevant in this context. Over recent years, many countries and organisations have set up climate services such as factsheets, brochures, web-tools, data to enable downstream applications and to form a decision support basis for climate action planning (e.g., KNMI14 in the Netherlands, UKCP18 in the UK, CH2018 in Switzerland, ‘Climate Change in Australia’, NCA4 in the US, Copernicus Climate Data Store / C3S).

The unique cultures of minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide – spanning a wide variety of customs and practices – are under threat. This year’s edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of their identity, including language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality. But while the effects of this attrition can be devastating, minority and indigenous cultures have also been critical in strengthening communities and providing activists with a platform to fight for their rights. As this volume illustrates, ensuring that the cultural freedoms of minorities and indigenous peoples are protected is essential if their other rights are also to be respected.

Climate change poses fundamental and varied challenges to all communities across the globe. The adaptation and mitigation strategies proposed by governments and non-governmental organisations are likely to require radical and fundamental shifts in socio-political structures, technological and economic systems, organisational forms, and modes of regulation. The sheer volume of law and policy emanating from the international level makes it uncertain which type of regulatory or policy framework is likely to have a positive impact. The success or failure of proposed measures will depend on their acceptability within the local constituencies within which they are sought to be applied. Therefore there is an urgent need to better comprehend and theorise the role of cultural legitimacy in the choice and effectiveness of international legal and policy interventions aimed at tackling the impact of climate change. The book brings together experts to present perspectives from different disciplines on the issue of international climate change law and policy. Beginning from the premise that legitimacy critiques of international climate change regulation have the capacity to positively influence policy trends and legal choices, the book showcases innovative ideas from across the disciplines and investigate the link between the efficacy of international legal and policy mechanisms on climate change and cultural legitimacy. The book includes chapters on with a theoretical basis as well as specific case-studies from around the globe. The topics covered include: land use planning as a tool of enhancing cultural legitimacy, indigenous peoples in international environmental negotiations, transnational advocacy networks, community-based forestry management and culture and voluntary social movements.

Participatory Archaeology and Heritage Studies: Perspectives from Africa provides new ways to look at and think about the practice of community archaeology and heritage studies across the globe. Long hidden from view, African experiences and experiments with participatory archaeology and heritage studies have poignant lessons to convey about local initiatives, local needs, and local perspectives among communities as diverse as an Islamic community on the edge of an ancient city in Sudan to multi-ethnic rural villages near rock art sites in South Africa. Straddling both heritage studies and archaeological practice, this volume incorporates a range of settings, from practical experiments with sustainable pottery kilns in Kenya, to an elite palace and its hidden traditional heritage in Northwestern Tanzania, to ancestral knowledge about heritage landscapes in rural Ethiopia. The genesis of participatory practices in Africa are traced back to the 1950s, with examples of how this legacy has played out over six decades—setting the scene for a deeply rooted practice now gaining widespread acceptance. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage.

The Lives of Stone Tools gives voice to the Indigenous Gamo lithic practitioners of southern Ethiopia. For the Gamo, their stone tools are alive, and their work in flintknapping is interwoven with status, skill, and the life histories of their stone tools. Anthropologist Kathryn Weedman Arthur offers insights from her more than twenty years working with the Gamo. She deftly addresses historical and present-day experiences and practices, privileging the Gamo’s perspectives. Providing a rich, detailed look into the world of lithic technology, Arthur urges us to follow her into a world that recognizes Indigenous theories of material culture as valid alternatives to academic theories. In so doing, she subverts long-held Western perspectives concerning gender, skill, and lifeless status of inorganic matter. The book offers the perspectives that, contrary to long-held Western views, stone tools are living beings with a life course, and lithic technology is a reproductive process that should ideally include both male and female participation. Only individuals of particular lineages knowledgeable in the lives of stones may work with stone technology. Knappers acquire skill and status through incremental guided instruction corresponding to their own phases of maturation. The tools’ lives parallel those of their knappers from birth (procurement), circumcision (knapping), maturation (use), seclusion (storage), and death (discardment). Given current expectations that the Gamo’s lithic technology may disappear with the next generation, The Lives of Stone Tools is a work of vital importance and possibly one of the last contemporaneous books about a population that engages with the craft daily.

This unique transdisciplinary publication is the result of collaboration between UNESCO's Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) programme, the United Nations University's Traditional Knowledge Initiative, the IPCC, and other organisations