Plain Language Summary
Adaptation and mitigation are related components of anticipatory capacity which informs a community’s action to secure its livelihood and food systems. Anticipatory capacity to anthropogenic climate change needs to be grounded in the local ecological and sociocultural context to be effective. It relies on diversity of knowledge systems, that consider the complex connectivity of relations between humans and their habitat within a specific context. In this reflective essay, we make a strong case for Indigenous knowledge systems as providing a foundational base for strategic action to the climate crisis while also engaging complementary knowledge sources from the biophysical and social sciences. This grounded and “thick” understanding can be brought to bear on actions that simultaneously mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change. We have argued that ecological calendars are an important sociocultural and ecological mechanism to anticipate this change. In an upcoming special issue of GeoEarth , we will be presenting international research that will explore the role of ecological calendars in diverse international Indigenous contexts.
1 Issue: Adaptation-Mitigation Binary
In scientific literature, actions addressing the global climate crisis generally have been categorized as either adaptation or mitigation. Currently, IPCC working groups for the 2022 Sixth Assessment Cycle continue to be divided in this manner (IPCC, 2021). Adaptation measures are taken in response to changing circumstances. Rather than pursuing to solve a problem, the adaptation framework adjusts to the new normal. Alternatively, mitigation is the flip side of this coin as actions proactively work to prevent the causes of climate change, minimizing its effects. Similarly, to adaptation, the mitigation response is striving to reduce the impact (IPCC, 2014). While conceptually useful, this binary does not convey the complexity of considerations, subtlety, and nuance related to human responses to environmental change. Therefore, like all notions constructed by humans to help their understanding, they need re-examination to see if their relevance has waned.
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how anticipatory capacity considers aspects of both adaptation and mitigation. Section II highlights the inspiration stemming from Indigenous pluralistic ontology, a way of being, while Section III considers the respective role of ecological calendars. Examples are drawn from two Indigenous communities in the Bartang Valley of GornoBadakhshan Autonomous Oblast, Tajikistan, illustrating the communities’ generational use of ecological calendars and the method in which they build anticipatory capacity. In light of this analysis, Section IV concludes with a brief discussion of future directions for addressing actions related to the climate crisis.
2 Insights from Indigenous Pluralistic Ontology
Most Indigenous and rural communities do not view their climate as in need of strictly either adaptation or mitigation approaches because their perspective towards the planet and its “gifts” (resources) is not based on human dominance but action that is in tandem with rhythms of the earth (Kassam, 2021; Kimmerer, 2013). As a matter of practice, Indigenous communities are constantly responding and adjusting to their fluctuating environment (Norton-Smith et al., 2016; Whyte, 2017). The seasonal variations are not only an integral foundation to food and livelihood systems but extend to all cultural aspects embedded in the local ecology. Therefore, they influence human behavior in a quantum connectivity with their habitat illustrating that humans exist within their ecosystem, not outside it (Kassam, 2021). Transdisciplinary scholarship engaging Indigenous ways of knowing is questioning, not ignoring, modern climate science by presenting an emerging conceptualization that builds upon and embraces both aspects of adaptation and mitigation as part of an ontologically pluralistic pathway for effective climate action.
Imagine a connected range of actions rather than two distinct approaches. As adaptation requires an element of mitigation and vice versa, this can be visualized as a two-dimensional system containing counterbalances on either end of the extremes (Figure 1). Most Indigenous and rural societies do not undertake actions addressing climate change in a sterile binary. Their perspectives reveal new, intellectually complex, vistas from which to imagine potential actions and solutions. This is precisely where one can simultaneously be mitigating a crisis while building adaptive capacity.