Indigenous Health & Impacts 

This scoping study presents an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on Indigenous settlements and communities across tropical northern Australia, including the Torres Strait Islands and the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The study region is home to about 87,000 Indigenous people, around a quarter of the total population of 355,000. The region includes 665 settlements varying from less than 50, to 3,500 people. Approximately 50 per cent of this Indigenous population lives within 20 kilometres of the coast or on off shore islands.

Indigenous people in northern Australia face many existing challenges. These include: remoteness, poor health, inadequate infrastructure, lack of educational and employment opportunities, and low incomes. Climate change will exacerbate many of these pre-existing challenges. However, new opportunities also exist for some of these communities from climate change. Many of these opportunities will stem from existing roles that community members play in managing natural and cultural resources in remote areas on behalf of the nation. 

 

Publications

Featured
Climate Change and Health: Impacts on Remote Indigenous Communities in Northern Australia
How Might Climate Change Affect Island Culture in the in the Torres Strait?
Culture and Climate Change: Impacts for Indigenous Australians
Climate change impacts in the Torres Strait, Australia
Could litigation help Torres Strait Islanders deal with climate impacts?
Disproportionate burdens: The multidimensional impacts of climate change on the health of Indigenous Australians
An assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation for the Torres Strait Islands, Australia
Indigenous Australians’ knowledge of weather and climate
Indigenous knowledge of a changing climate
What legal recourse do non-state Islands have to obtain resources to adapt to climate change?.
Bridging the gap between theory and practice in climate change vulnerability assessments for remote Indigenous communities in northern Australia
How to make climate change research relevant for Indigenous communities in Torres Strait, Australia
The co-benefits of carbon management on country
Living on climate-changed country: Indigenous health, well-being and climate change in remote Australian communities
Effect of ambient temperature on Australian northern territory public hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease among indigenous and non-indigenous populations
Australia's first national level quantitative environmental justice assessment of industrial air pollution
Australians are not equally protected from industrial air pollution
Differential Effects of Temperature Extremes on Hospital Admission Rates for Respiratory Disease between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory.
Opal Waters, Rising Seas: How Sociocultural Inequality Reduces Resilience to Climate Change among Indigenous Australians
Climate Change, Health and Well-being in Indigenous Australia
Is it too late to do something about climate change in the Torres Strait?
Environmental injustice in resource- rich Aboriginal Australia.
Maintaining the healthy country–healthy people nexus through sociocultural and environmental transformations: challenges for the Wik Aboriginal people of Aurukun, Australia