Indigenous peoples and local community reports of climate change impacts on biodiversity

Abstract

Climate change impacts on biodiversity have been primarily studied through ecological research methods, largely ignoring other knowledge systems. Indigenous and local knowledge systems include rich observations of changes in biodiversity that can inform climate change adaptation planning and environmental stewardship. We reviewed literature documenting local observations of climate change impacts on biodiversity reported by Indigenous peoples and local communities. We examined whether reported impacts varied across taxa, geographic regions, and people's main livelihood activities and assessed whether local reports followed geographic and taxonomic patterns found in the natural sciences literature. We also compared taxa reportedly affected by climate change by Indigenous peoples and local communities and by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Our analyses included 2452 observations of climate change impacts on 1715 taxa from 203 documents describing 291 case studies. Changes in taxon abundance, phenotype, phenology, and distribution were widely reported, and most climate change impacts were reported for plants, fishes, and mammals. Reported impacts differed by geographic region and by livelihood, and most species reported as affected by climate change by Indigenous peoples and local communities were not considered threatened by climate change by the IUCN. Our results showed that Indigenous and local knowledge systems can contribute to a more complete understanding of climate change impacts on biodiversity.