Climate change

Climate change is affecting all aspects of our environment and is disproportionately affecting Indigenous people (see the Climate chapter).

Traditional Owners at the National First Peoples Gathering on Climate Change in 2021 made a strong statement about climate change, strengthening their calls for action made at an earlier national dialogue (Morgan-Bulled et al. 2021:2):

Building on the 2018 statement from First Peoples on Yorta Yorta land, we as First Nation Peoples of Australia recognise that overwhelmingly scientific and traditional knowledge is demanding immediate action against the threats of climate change. When Country is healthy, we are healthy. Our knowledge systems are interconnected with our environment and it relies on the health of Country. This knowledge is held by our Elders and passed on to the next generation. Solutions to climate change can be found in the landscapes and within our knowledge systems. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the tools, knowledge, and practices to effectively contribute to the fight against climate change.

Changes to Country due to climate change apply multiple pressures to Indigenous people. The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation’s recent submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Australian Government’s response to the drought (NACCHO 2020a), and the appropriateness of policies and measures to support farmers, regional communities and the Australian economy, highlights the many disproportionate effects that climate change poses for Indigenous communities (see the Urban chapter).

The media has highlighted climate refugees in Australia due to rising temperatures and drought in the desert regions (Allam & Evershed 2019). There are concerns that unbearable living conditions due to heat, and poor water quality and supply, will force Indigenous people to leave their Country, harming people’s connection to their homelands and their culture. Climate change is also a pressing issue for communities in the Torres Strait Islands who face rising sea levels, increasing air and sea temperatures, and changes to ocean acidity (TSRA 2021).

Changes to seasons, flora and fauna

In the consultation for this chapter, all Indigenous community participants gave plentiful examples of identifiable changes to seasons, coastlines and waterways, and to flora and fauna. Many of these centred on changes to key indicator species – plants such as wattle flowering randomly and not following any defined seasonal patterns, and the ironbark orchid now rarely flowering at all. In the Northern Territory, changes in seasonal patterns were linked to changes in insect behaviours – for example, dragonflies not knowing when to arrive during migration, flying ants hatching too prematurely and fewer insects being observed more generally. Indigenous people are also concerned that these are signals of changes to things that cannot be directly observed, such as to microorganisms. This in turn affects the health of soil, plants and animals. Changes to the seasonal timing of specific events (e.g. the timing in the fruiting or flowering of specific ‘calendar’ plants) can lead to a disconnect with the lifecycle stage of its culturally paired species. This leads to concerning disruptions to local Indigenous seasonal understanding of optimal times to hunt, fish and gather resources throughout the year.

The changes to seasons also reflect changes to tides, sea levels and saltwater intrusion into freshwater Country. Freshwater and saltwater quality have both been affected, as has vegetation, including a decrease in growth. This leads to a decrease in wildlife that, particularly for rural and remote communities, has impacts on lifestyle and food.

Our seasons have never been Euro-centric but fluid and constantly changing. But climate change is making things change faster than ever before. SoE Indigenous workshop participant, Australian Capital Territory (Murawin 2021c)

Indigenous people have reported negative impacts of climate change on native animals across the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Victoria (Murawin 2021a, Murawin 2021c, Murawin 2021b). Examples are broad, such as a general loss of animals on Country, and specific, such as kangaroos dying of thirst in the northern New South Wales and Queensland border region.

The spread of invasive species such as cane toads has led to a corresponding decrease in land goannas, blue-tongue lizards and venomous snakes in and around Darwin. In central Northern Territory, there is considerable anecdotal concern about the level of mulga woodlands die-off due to increased heat and drought. Die-off has never been seen to this extent before and this is impacting the other plant and animal life connected to these woodlands.

Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) is taking over large areas of the Northern Territory. Pastoralists tend to see it as beneficial, but many Indigenous people and environmentalists see it as an invasive weed, impacting cultural practices (including fire practice) and sites. Its presence makes it harder to access traditional foods, provides increased hiding places for snakes and makes it more difficult to manage traditional burning regimes. The grass burns hotter than native grasses and has a big impact on other native fauna and flora. Indigenous respondents conveyed that governments appear disinterested in doing anything about it. At the Alice Springs consultation, respondents raised the need for funding towards managing the grass spread before the situation spirals out of control (Murawin 2021b).

Extreme events

Extreme events that are a result of human-induced climate change are having many impacts (see the Extreme events chapter). Sea level rise is eroding and inundating coastal sites and island homes (Tamu 2019). Rising temperatures are making central Australia too hot for rangers to work outside (Hill et al. 2020) and are bringing new infectious diseases to the Torres Strait and northern Australia (Hall et al. 2021). Extreme bushfires are occurring in many places, particularly where Indigenous cultural burning is not in place (Steffensen 2020). Severe droughts have resulted in rivers with almost no flow, which is leading to high salt levels and acidic conditions in soils. This damages culturally significant places, plants and animals, including sudden fish deaths never experienced before (Hemming et al. 2019).

Extreme events can often exacerbate existing socio-economic disadvantage. During and after the 2011 floods in northern New South Wales, Indigenous people reported similar rates of flooding and displacement from their home as those on income support. However, Indigenous people were 4 times as likely to report flooding and displacement from the home of a significant other (Matthews et al. 2019). In addition, Indigenous people were significantly more likely to report mental health distress, anxiety and depression because of the floods than any other group (Matthews et al. 2019).

The responses to extreme events also frequently disproportionately neglect Indigenous people and further exacerbate disadvantage (Weir et al. 2021). In the extreme fire events of 2019–20, for example, an Indigenous-led study found that Indigenous people were among those most affected in south-eastern Australia (Williamson et al. 2020). Bhiamie Eckford-Williamson, an Euahlayi man and academic from the Australian National University, told the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements that 96,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including 35,000 children, were affected by the fires (Williamson 2020).

However, aside from renewed public interest in cultural burning practices, Indigenous people have received little attention in the post-bushfire response. This silencing speaks to failures to ensure Indigenous representation on relevant government committees involved in decision-making, planning and implementation of disaster risk management, and to emphasise Indigenous people’s voices across the bushfire planning, preparation, recovery and response spectrum. Given that extreme events are likely to become more regular as a result of climate change, the absence of, and calls for, the inclusion of Indigenous people in disaster planning and recovery are notable (Williamson et al. 2020):

The neglect of Aboriginal people in bushfire responses impoverishes the capacity of governments, agencies and communities to successfully carry out their work. Indeed, their continued marginalisation diminishes all of us – in terms of our values in living within a just society, as well as the possibilities offered by new and old ideas of how to live with fire-prone landscapes. As diverse peoples accustomed to living with trauma and the disruption of ongoing colonisation, there is much to be learned about the resilience and inherent strengths Aboriginal communities possess. It was never acceptable to silence Aboriginal peoples in the responses to major disasters, and it is incumbent upon us all to ensure that these colonial practices of erasure are relegated to the past.

The need to meaningfully include Indigenous communities in preparedness and response is also echoed in many current dialogues regarding the heightened vulnerability of marginalised communities in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and there are many parallels between COVID-19 and climate change (Ebi et al. 2021). We can learn from this and adapt, to ensure that these unacceptable situations do not happen in the future. But we can only do so when we accept that this situation was entirely preventable, with structural inequity as the root cause.

The desperate situation that has unfolded in western New South Wales in the second half of 2021 is testament to the structural inequity that Indigenous communities face, further exposed through COVID-19. In the town of Wilcannia for example, the Indigenous community were left highly vulnerable to the rapid spread of COVID-19 due to various pressures in housing and infrastructure within their community and a lack of foresight, proactive planning, care, provision of services and resourcing from government authorities. Community members went hungry when the local shop was closed, families were infected through overcrowding in housing, existing health facilities were unable to rapidly respond to meet needs and were not adequately resourced or staffed, responses from government were slow, ineffectual and culturally insensitive, with added pressures such as a heightened incidence of chronic disease within community and a low vaccine uptake compounding an already dire situation. (Green 2021)

A recent academic study concluded that (Thurber et al. 2021):

The portrayal of communities as biologically destined to be sick and permanently ‘disorganised’ and dependent can be used to justify paternalistic policies and dismiss calls for self-determination. Further, it can lead to policy responses that ignore the root cause of inequities, creating missed opportunities for prevention and limiting the effectiveness of interventions.