Climate Change Impacts on Indigenous People Research Paper

Climate Change Impacts on Indigenous People - Research Paper Example According to archaeologists, food storage is widespread and sharing or reciprocity is integral to survival during climate change and catastrophes (Cherrington 18). Nevertheless, a great deal of what populations have created in reaction to catastrophe has also been quite unsound. Social and environmental pressures lead to a huge number of deaths and conflicts. Destruction of ancient civilizations is more widespread than survival. These are vicious and potent lessons to reflect on as individuals and/or groups try to learn from indigenous communities about climate change. Across the globe, agriculture was cultivated at the conclusion of the final ice age, at the advent of the Holocene roughly 11,500 years ago (Geoffrey 18). There have been significant alterations in hydrological processes and in intense weather episodes as well, and changes in temperature throughout the Holocene. The ‘Anthropocene’ theory states that human activities, mostly agriculture and deforestation, l ed to rise in carbon dioxide over the last eight thousand years and rise in methane gas over the last five thousand years (Geoffrey 18). If this hypothesis is true, there are significant repercussions for human-made climate change. Measurements of climate change have coherently revealed and verified that the Earth’s climate is shifting. As reported in the latest statements of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is clear and indisputable proof that the climate of the world is warming and that this is almost certainly caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) provoked by human beings (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 95). Human activity has weakened the environmental strength of the planet by exploiting the atmosphere as a cesspool for GHGs. Climate change is an adverse reaction presently felt in the world as an outcome of the increase in greenhouse gas production and discharges as a result of burning of fossil fue ls, mostly for transportation and industrial operations. Due to this ‘smoke’ emitted from machines and automobiles, carbon dioxide gas is accumulated in the atmosphere and raises the intensity of heat in the planet (Chavez & Tauli-Corpuz 39-42). This occurrence is known as the ‘greenhouse effect’. Since the 19th century, global temperatures have risen by roughly 0.74%. A further increase in temperature is expected and indigenous peoples will be more seriously affected than other populations. The effect of climate change involves (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 95): diminishing polar sea ice and rising of sea levels, threatening low-lying coastal areas, notably many small islands in the Pacific; greater exposure to natural disasters, such as floods, and to frequent and intense extreme weather events; degradation of wetlands due to changing freeze-thaw cycles; glacial melts in high-altitude regions and subsequent inundations of valleys and hill areas; increased fires in tropical rainforests; changes in precipitation and desertification. Even though climate change is an occurrence that affects the entire world, affecting all peoples and places, different environments and areas are affected quite differently. Indigenous peoples are by now coping with effects of climate change in their everyday lives. Changes due to climate change, such as weakening of