Column: Indigenous views on climate change matter

For Native Hawaiians, there is a value held sacred called malama aina, which means “to care for the land so that it will take care of you.” For more than a thousand years, Hawaiians have lived in harmony with the land and the oceans. That’s why it is so devastating for me (co-author Spies), as a Pacific Islander and a scientist, to realize that my life’s work is actually a race to document a species before it goes extinct due to climate change.

I became a zoology Ph.D. candidate to study coral reefs and to carry on a long tradition of Native Hawaiians seeking a symbiotic relationship with the Earth. Through my studies, it is clear that instead, we humans have become parasitic to the environment. Our behavior has caused rising sea levels, creating millions of climate refugees and the extinction of 150-200 species every day. As scientists, we know the evidence is airtight, the technology exists to correct course, yet because its impact is felt disproportionately, we are still “debating” whether climate change is real.

Indigenous communities are affected first and worst by climate change, but we are often excluded from the decisions that influence policy and resource management. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the bellwether that is the Marshall Islands. The Fourth National Climate Assessment concluded that rising global temperatures will exacerbate sea level rise and put our coastal communities at risk. Without extraordinary measures, climate change could render the Marshall Islands uninhabitable. They have a choice: to elevate or evacuate.

But the Marshallese have been tied to their ancestral lands through families and clans for centuries. In the 1950s, families were forced to relocate due to nuclear testing, causing a disruption of their traditional land tenure system. If climate change demands the Marshallese elevate land and consolidate the resident population of 55,000 people, ancestral land ties will be grievously disrupted, displacing more climate refugees and causing a cultural genocide.

Climate change needs to be everyone’s battle. Whether or not we are able to change our current destructive course will depend on a willingness to include ALL perspectives in the solution, especially indigenous perspectives and those of people of color, and to bridge Western science with traditional knowledge.

There is precedence for this approach. When we have included various perspectives and ways of knowing, the results are profound. For instance, in 2018, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Alaska began to officially incorporate indigenous ecological knowledge and systems of marine administration into fishery strategies. They recognized that indigenous communities could see interconnections and relationships within the ecosystem that fishery managers might miss.

Globally, aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production sector in the last decade, and the adaptation of indigenous technologies has resulted in the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices worldwide.

Another example are the indigenous contributions made to medicine through plant biology. For instance, acetylsalicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, was first discovered by indigenous people who utilized the bark of the willow tree. Western medicine often “discovers” things that our ancestors have known for centuries. Imagine the potential in solving some of humanity’s most pressing challenges if we could bridge the two.

We must be actively anti-climate change, and this means action, not words. We must elect policymakers who prioritize climate change and support a diverse STEM field; it has been strongly demonstrated that STEM diversity serves as a catalyst for innovation, often leading to game-changing advancements and breakthroughs for all humanity.

A key solution is to support and invest in talent from underrepresented populations, such as Native Hawaiians and Pacific islanders, who bring vital perspective and knowledge of the planet.

Just as our ancestors used their scientific powers of navigation to observe the stars and chart their way across our oceans, so must we listen as Earth tells us we need to change course in order to survive. But we need to act now.

Narrissa Spies is a Mellon-Hawaii Doctoral Fellow at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, Kewalo Marine Laboratory; Sonia I. Zárate, Ph.D., is a program officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and president of SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science). Both will be attending 2019 SACNAS: The National Diversity in STEM Conference in Honolulu, Oct. 31-Nov. 2.