Global Climate Change on Island Communities
We live in an ever-changing world. We build new technologies. We create new works of art. We contemplate bigger ideas. While these are all important, something else we must consider is that the geography of the Earth is changing as well. Anthropological attention to climate change was prompted more than three decades ago by Margaret Mead (1980) when she convened on the topic:
We are facing a period when society must make decisions on a planetary scale.... Today’s natural catastrophes and environmental interventions affect the whole of human society—interconnected as it is in reality though not yet politically capable of acting in concert.... [W]e have a long way to go before we can demonstrate that we are willing to act vigorously when nameless throngs are endangered. (pp. xvii–xxii)
Climate change has started to affect people’s livelihoods and culture worldwide in the last decades (Crate and Nuttall, 2009). Our global climate change has started to become a major issue for many communities, particularly those living in communities next to or in the oceans or seas. This makes sense with rising water levels being a noticeable effect of climate change. Because of this, island communities are being forced to adapt to the new challenges of rising water levels and more unpredictable weather.
Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary Climate Change is a review written by Susan A. Crate. This review provides an overview of foundational climate and culture studies in anthropology. In it, Crate (2011) states that although early climate and culture studies were mainly founded in archaeology and environmental anthropology, with the arrival of climate change and its effects on communities worldwide, anthropology’s roles have expanded to engage local to global contexts. She goes on to say that considering both the unprecedented urgency and the new level of reflexivity that climate change ushers in, anthropologists need to adopt cross-scale, multi-stakeholder, and interdisciplinary approaches in research and practice (Crate 2011). Toward the end of her review she makes the statement “The environmental and the social complexity of global climate change is daunting for most, if not all, of earth’s human population” (Crate 2011) which I think is important to understand when looking at the idea of anthropology and climate change. It reminds us that this is not, as with all topics in anthropology, some simple problem. It will require many great minds and years of study and research to understand.
Crate’s (2011) review is a good introduction to a review published by Heather Lazrus (2012) called Sea Change: Island Communities and Climate Change that states that islands stand to be among the first and most adversely affected by climate change impacts, including extreme events. She goes on to say that rising water levels, changing precipitation and storm patterns, and increasing air and water surface temperatures stress already limited island resources while climate change policies restrict local decision making (Lazrus 2012). She then makes the point of rather than small, isolated, and dependent entities, island communities are deeply connected in ways that both facilitate and constrain islanders’ abilities to respond in their own terms to climate change’s challenges (Lazrus 2012). Another point Lazrus brings up in her review is that the agency of islanders is evident in traditional environmental knowledge, which is described as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment” (Berkes 1999, p. 8)., and alternative ways of knowing about and perceiving risk and vulnerability, local adaptation strategies, and resilience demonstrated at household, community, regional, and national levels (Lazrus 2012). Issues of justice, equity, and power are central to the challenges of climate change in island communities (Lazrus 2012). It comes down to people with power and the ability to change policies sitting around and not doing as much as they can to help. Lazrus’ last point in the article talks about how responding to climate change in island communities necessitates a change in research and policy methodologies that are based on coproduction of knowledge and supporting island communities to retain control over their futures (Lazrus 2012).
All of this research was done for a reason. Environmental anthropology is an important topic in today's world. We have a lot of big environmental problems that need to addressed. I hope to figure out solutions to these problems throughout this semester.
Berkes, Fikret. 1999. Sacred ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management Taylor & Francis.
Crate, Susan A. 2011. Climate and culture: Anthropology in the era of contemporary climate change. Annual Review of Anthropology 40 : 175-94.
Crate, Susan A., and Mark Nuttall. 2009. Introduction: Anthropology and climate change. Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions: 9-36.
Kellogg, William Welch, and Margaret Mead. 1980. The atmosphere: Endangered and endangering Castle House Publications.
Lazrus, Heather. 2012. Sea change: Island communities and climate change*.
Nicholls, Robert J. 2011. Planning for the impacts of sea level rise. Oceanography-Oceanography Society 24 (2): 144.
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