We're the same as the Inuit!: Exploring Australian Aboriginal perceptions of climate change in a multidisciplinary mixed methods study

Abstract

Significant research attention has been given to understanding the entanglements of culture and climate change in Indigenous communities for global and Australian contexts. Although there is a growing body of knowledge on the threats and vulnerabilities posed by climate change to Indigenous peoples and cultures, there is only modest substantive research on the ways that Australian Aboriginal people in remote, arid-zone communities observe, understand, experience, and act upon the changing climate. This paper emphasises the importance of place-based research methods for understanding local social and cultural processes in a research project which investigated Aboriginal understandings and responses to climate change in the interior, arid Upper Georgina River Basin (UGRB) in North West Queensland, Australia. The study used a multidisciplinary and mixed-method approach, including a modified national climate change survey. Based on this survey methodology, a distinctive geographic and Indigenous focus shaped the study on public risk perceptions, understandings, and responses to climate change. This study recognises the crucial importance of identifying, measuring and documenting important changes and impacts taking place in the human landscape as only this kind of attention will insure that remote regional communities are coping with the environmental stressors and challenges of the Anthropocene.