Abstract:
In the present day there are two main ethnic groups of Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal people from the Australian continent and nearby offshore islands, and Torres Strait Islanders. This chapter proposes two key challenges for the task of adapting to climate change for Indigenous communities. The first is to move beyond current conceptualisation of Indigenous as ‘traditional’ and consider the diversity of Indigenous communities. The second key challenge relates to future planning and the need to consider how adaptation relates to social justice and Indigenous rights. Emilie Cameron argues, in the context of the Canadian Arctic, that the vast majority of Indigenous-focused climate change adaptation research overlooks how historic and contemporary experiences of colonisation continue to shape Indigenous societies. There are unavoidable justice dimensions associated with adaptation, which determines the winners and losers of decisions about how, when and where to adapt.
