DMUU: Developing Approaches to Climate Change and Native Communities

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

Decision making regarding climate and the environment on Alaska Native and Native American lands is complicated by a variety of unique social-cultural, legal, and other factors, such as limited information technology infrastructures. Moreover, mainstream climate and environmental sciences have a growing interest in the traditional knowledge and traditional environmental management approaches of Native groups. There are some obstacles to researching traditional knowledge, however, as well as some barriers to effectively integrating it with mainstream environmental science. Relative to Native lands and Native communities, there are unique climate-decision research topics that require investigation. No systematic agenda of priorities and plans for climate-decision research and application in Native lands currently exists. This award supports a workshop and related activities that will bring together Native and non-Native environmental and social scientists to examine goals, needs, and approaches for such research, and ultimately to develop a list of priorities and recommendations for advancing the science of Native-lands climate decision-making. In addition, the plan will detail an approach to researching the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with mainstream climate and environmental science. Alaska Native and Native American lands are varied and sizable. Natural and human forces that do not respect boundaries on a map affect the environments and climates of Native lands. Those forces often either come from or extend to related non-Native lands. Native environmental decision making therefore has important implications for non-Native communities, and vice versa. Native environmental decision making is poorly understood, though, as are strategies for effectively integrating Native and non-Native environmental decision making. This project will help to advance understanding of both issues. In addition, mainstream environmental science has a growing interest in traditional Native knowledge of the environment and traditional Native approaches to managing it. Native people are interested in systematizing such traditional knowledge and using it to help revitalize their cultures, but they are also often suspicious of the motives of mainstream researchers. This project will yield a set of priorities for research on traditional environmental knowledge and management, as well as recommendations of strategies for overcoming potential Native resistance to that research. This developmental award was supported as part of the Fiscal Year 2003 Human and Social Dynamics priority area special competition on Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU).