Climate change impacts on Indigenous Peoples and local communities
Event Start Date: April 30, 2025 4:00 PM
Event End Date: April 30, 2025 5:15 PM
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Climate change impacts on Indigenous Peoples and local communities: A global perspective through local studies
talk by UF Distinguished Alumna Victoria Reyes-García
Wednesday, April 30 | 4:00 pm | Keene Faculty Center
Climate change impacts on Indigenous Peoples and local communities: A global perspective through local studies
Indigenous Peoples and communities, whose livelihoods are closely tied to nature, are disproportionately impacted by climate change, yet their knowledge and needs are often overlooked in research and policy. I will present three key findings of a collaborative research consortium arising from the Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts project. First, reports of climate change impact by these communities offer holistic, place-based understandings of environmental change that reflect both climate impacts and long-standing marginalization. Second, drawing on generations of knowledge, these communities respond to change through local strategies, though these responses can carry significant social and economic costs. Finally, recognizing and engaging with their distinct ways of understanding change can offer vital insights for more inclusive and effective climate research and policy.
About the speaker
Victoria Reyes-García is ICREA Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain and Director of the Local Indicators of Climate Change Consortium (LICCI). She received her PhD in UF’s Anthropology Department in 2001 and was active in the interdisciplinary Tropical Conservation and Development Program in UF’s Center for Latin American Studies. Her research focuses on Indigenous and local knowledge, particularly on the contribution of these knowledge systems to help address the contemporary environmental challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change. She has contributed to the IPBES Global and Transformative Change Assessments and the IPBES-IPCC report. In 2021, she was elected International Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.