Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

For decades, Cristo Ado­nis has been us­ing in­dige­nous plants to make med­i­cine. Peo­ple in T&T call it bush med­i­cine, and some old­er folks would ar­gue it is bet­ter than con­ven­tion­al med­i­cines.

Re­cent­ly, Ado­nis found him­self fight­ing to keep some of these in­dige­nous plants from be­com­ing ex­tinct.

Ado­nis is a cen­tral fig­ure in the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples Com­mu­ni­ty, a shaman, a parang singer, a builder of Amerindi­an huts, a gar­den­er, and a hunter. Some of his most promi­nent work in­cludes the his­to­ry of the Amerindi­an way of life and the chal­lenges of recog­ni­tion and sur­vival for the in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing to sev­er­al In­dige­nous peo­ple over the last few weeks, they told us oth­er is­sues in­clude ris­ing sea lev­els, which are erod­ing coastal com­mu­ni­ties. It’s es­pe­cial­ly im­pact­ful be­cause First Peo­ples tend to set­tle near rivers and bod­ies of wa­ter.

These ef­fects are di­rect­ly known to To­ba­go’s in­dige­nous Kali­na­go com­mu­ni­ties who live in coastal ar­eas.

Cou­pled with in­dis­crim­i­nate de­for­esta­tion, quar­ry­ing and weed­ing from hu­mans, cli­mate change is al­so pos­ing its chal­lenges to T&T’s First Peo­ples.

Agri­cul­ture is a ma­jor part of in­dige­nous life, and Ri­car­do Bharath-Her­nan­dez, Chief of the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples Com­mu­ni­ty, told the Sun­day Guardian the chang­ing weath­er pat­terns are mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for First Peo­ples farm­ers to stick to sea­sons. In­creas­ing tem­per­a­tures are af­fect­ing their agri­cul­tur­al habits, with droughts stunt­ing growth and floods rav­aging their crops.

Jinel­la De Ramos, whose an­ces­try is Amerindi­an, warned that, “In­dige­nous peo­ple have al­ways been cus­to­di­ans and pro­tec­tors of the rivers, forests, and wildlife. The vol­ume of wa­ter we had long ago is not the same due to cli­mate change, and the in­dige­nous peo­ple have al­ways thrived near river­banks. There is lim­it­ed ac­cess to wa­ter and clean wa­ter in var­i­ous ar­eas where it was once in abun­dance.”

It’s a point Ado­nis backed up. An ex­pert in in­dige­nous plants, he fears for their ex­tinc­tion. “If you take a plant like the Lozei Bwa, which thrives in more damp and cool places, and some of the ar­eas where that plant would blos­som are get­ting dry now. I’m al­ready see­ing the ef­fects of what this dry sea­son will do.”

Re­cent­ly, when con­sumers vis­it Ado­nis for bush med­i­cine, he said he would have to ven­ture to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to get the plants, as cli­mate change is hav­ing a greater im­pact on some ar­eas than oth­ers. He has been try­ing to re­plant the herbs he feels are en­dan­gered of ex­tinc­tion.

Be­yond dis­place­ment and agri­cul­ture, both De Ramos and Ado­nis voiced con­cerns about se­ri­ous health im­pli­ca­tions for the First Peo­ples with heat stress and vec­tor-borne dis­eases.

Bharath-Her­nan­dez point­ed to the loss of tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge and cul­tur­al her­itage, which he said will not be passed down to the next gen­er­a­tion as was once passed down to them.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly cli­mate change is go­ing to have some im­pact on In­dige­nous peo­ple; what­ev­er gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy or what­ev­er they plan to do should in­volve us be­cause, as you know, In­dige­nous peo­ple de­pend a lot on na­ture, which the cli­mate will af­fect in more ways than one. Con­sul­ta­tion is im­por­tant,” he ex­plained.

De Ramos went fur­ther in say­ing that the per­cep­tion of in­dige­nous peo­ple has not al­ways been a good one. She ex­plained, “The phi­los­o­phy of the in­dige­nous peo­ples has not been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion very se­ri­ous­ly in many in­stances. Their ideas and con­tri­bu­tions can some­times be viewed as ir­rel­e­vant be­cause of their hum­ble lifestyle and the per­cep­tion that they are not fit to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. Their knowl­edge of our ecosys­tems, sus­tain­able prac­tices, and healthy life choic­es can con­tribute to a bet­ter way of car­ing for our en­vi­ron­ment since us hu­mans are part of it and af­fect­ed by it.”

How­ev­er, Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, who heads the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, told the Sun­day Guardian that ad­dress­ing cli­mate change at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, in­clud­ing In­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, re­quires the in­te­gra­tion of cli­mate risks in­to the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and plan­ning process at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el in or­der to build cli­mate re­silience.

“This will re­quire as­sess­ment of cli­mate risks and im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to min­imise or elim­i­nate these risks,” he said.

‘Build­ing cli­mate re­silience at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el’

For In­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, Ku­mars­ingh said this and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties across T&T, it is im­por­tant to in­te­grate tra­di­tion­al and anec­do­tal eco­log­i­cal knowl­edge with mod­ern sci­ence and cli­mate mod­el­ling.

“Build­ing cli­mate re­silience at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el has been the fo­cus of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment through the de­vel­op­ment of projects and pol­i­cy util­is­ing an ‘em­pow­er­ment through own­er­ship’ ap­proach,” he added.

Ku­mars­ingh point­ed to the South Oropouche Riv­er Basin study cur­rent­ly un­der­way, which in­volves en­gag­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies in for­mu­lat­ing ap­proach­es to cli­mate change, “so that com­mu­ni­ties can share their knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in re­la­tion to their her­itage and liveli­hoods and how these can be pre­served in light of cli­mate change risks.”

While not specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned, In­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties in T&T are sub­sumed in the Na­tion­al Adap­ta­tion Plan, which out­lines strate­gies to ad­dress cli­mate change im­pacts across var­i­ous sec­tors, in­clud­ing coastal re­sources, agri­cul­ture, wa­ter, and health. Ku­mars­ingh says pro­vi­sions such as Bio­di­ver­si­ty Con­ser­va­tion and Ecosys­tem-Based Adap­ta­tion, Sus­tain­able Agri­cul­ture and Food Se­cu­ri­ty, and Wa­ter Re­source Man­age­ment will all re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

As cli­mate change ex­ac­er­bates the is­sues fac­ing in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, Bharath-Her­nan­dez said the Gov­ern­ment must in­clude First Peo­ples in the use of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to agri­cul­ture.

The in­te­gra­tion is a point he backed up, say­ing, “We see the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at more mod­ernised forms of agri­cul­ture, and I think in the process the In­dige­nous peo­ple should be in­clud­ed be­cause they know the tra­di­tion­al ways. Be­cause of the chang­ing cli­mate, In­dige­nous peo­ple have to fall in­to what is hap­pen­ing now.”

As the ef­fects of cli­mate change grip com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, even the in­dige­nous peo­ple must now adapt as they face a fight for sur­vival.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of the Caribbean Cli­mate Jus­tice Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, which is a joint ven­ture of Cli­mate Track­er and Open So­ci­ety Foun­da­tions.