ABSTRACT

This chapter updates my previous contribution to this book on the ability of Indigenous Australians, living in rural and remote Australia, to adapt to climate change. The earlier work outlined how the issue had first been identified just under a decade ago, in about 2006, in joint discussions with Indigenous leaders and climate scientists, at a workshop held in Darwin, Northern Australia. The outcome of this workshop was clearly identified needs to involve Traditional Owners in research on their country and to work with them to understand what adaptation strategies would be most useful for them. (Traditional owners are people who have social, economic, and spiritual affiliations with, and responsibilities for, a specific region of land and or sea.) The workshop also identified the need to focus on the Torres Strait as quickly as possible because of the very alarming effects of sea-level rise already occurring there. This chapter provides an update about these issues by summarizing my previous work and discussing the research developments that have occurred in the last decade.