<div>Anna L. Ullmann<sup>1</sup> and
Karim-Aly S.
Kassam<sup>2*</sup></div><div><sup>1</sup>Technische Universität München, School of Life
Sciences, Freising, Germany.</div><div><sup>2</sup>Department of Natural Resources and the Environment
and American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York, USA.</div><div><sup>*</sup>Corresponding author: Karim-Aly S. Kassam
(ksk28@cornell.edu)</div><div>ORCID</div><div>Karim-Aly S. Kassam: 0000-0002-4495-8574</div><div>Anna L. Ullmann: 0000-0001-5059-5020</div><div>Key Points:</div><ul><li>The adaptation-mitigation binary, while conceptually useful, is
limiting because it does not reflect how human societies make
decisions about climate change.</li><li>Anticipatory capacity, the ability to envision possible futures,
includes elements of adaptation and mitigation to describe human
responses more accurately.</li><li>For generations, Indigenous communities have utilized ecological
calendars as a form of anticipatory capacity for climatic variation.</li></ul><div>Abstract</div><div>Actions addressing anthropogenic climate change are paramount to
survival; however, there are limitations to the current binary approach
which considers adaptation and mitigation as separate actions. Insights
from Indigenous pluralistic ontology reveals anticipatory capacity to
include components of adaptation as well as mitigation. Drawing from our
research in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan, ecological calendars
build anticipatory capacity for climate change. Anticipatory capacity,
having the ability to envision possible and sustainable futures, occurs
in response to the changes in the environment. It includes elements of
foresight as these actions are simultaneously in preparation for
upcoming uncertainty. These two aspects are elements of the
adaptation-mitigation binary respectively. As illustrated by the
ecological calendars in the Bartang Valley of Tajikistan, this approach
has been carried out for many generations and is founded upon context
specificity, intellectual pluralism, and relations between the
agropastoralists and transformations in their habitat. Reconceptualizing
the adaptation-mitigation binary is not bound to the boarders of the
Pamir Mountains, rather it is a practice that is relevant globally.</div>