Indigenous Climate Change Impacts Observation Network

ended

The Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts project (771056-LICCI-ERC-2017-COG) explores the potential of Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) to contribute to climate research, but only tangentially addresses the marginalized position faced by Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC) to bring their knowledge and perspectives to climate change research and policy fora. This PoC will bring IPLC knowledge and perspectives to climate change research and policy fora by 1) engage with IPLC on the co-design of a digital Indigenous Climate Change Impacts Observation Network (ICCION) and 2) engaging with the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) of the UNFCCC, which has the mandate to strengthen IPLC knowledge and efforts related to addressing and responding to climate change. ICCION holds social, political, and technological innovative potential. The creation of an Indigenous Climate Change Impacts Observation Network is an innovative response to the IPCC call for more ground level data, as it will bring expand the geographical and temporal coverage of data collection on local indicators of climate change impacts. Moreover, partnering with IPLC and international organizations constitutes an important social innovation, as these alliances might facilitate the process of establishing a continuous, iterative, and bidirectional dialogue that foster IPLC effective participation in climate change science-policy fora. Finally, ICCION innovates in developing technological solutions to address technical (i.e., low internet access) and social concerns (i.e., Indigenous data sovereignty) that are of particular relevance for IPLC, but which have often been neglected in other technological developments. The long-term establishment of the observation network proposed here will contribute to give IPLC a more relevant voice in global climate policy fora, not only by informing climate change impact research, but also making it more socially acceptable.