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Aboriginal Australia and Torres Strait Islands
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders are among the world’s most vulnerable people to climate change.
More than 100,000 Aboriginal Australians live in remote areas of Australia, most in settlements in the north of the country. In the Torres Strait there are more than 8,000 people living on the 14 permanently inhabited islands.
Already faced with the challenges of inadequate water, sanitation and power supplies, poor housing, few employment opportunities and insufficient health services, many of these communities are in low-lying or coastal tropical areas that are particularly vulnerable to storm surges and floods which will increase as the planet warms.
Indigenous people's health will be affected directly by climate change in the form of heat stress and the spread of mosquito borne disease; and indirectly as damage to traditional lands threaten the cultural, mental and physical wellbeing of Aboriginal communities.
In the Torres Strait communities are often situated only metres from the beach. Parts of the interior of some of the low-lying islands are actually below sea level. In 2006 high tides, strong winds and heavy rain caused severe damage to half the region’s inhabited islands. Houses and other buildings were damaged and belongings destroyed, sewerage systems were flooded and rubbish was strewn throughout residential areas and into the sea.
These are not isolated events. They are increasingly occurring every year during the wet season and, according to the residents are occurring with increasing severity.
The Yorke Island chairperson, Mr Donald Mosby, is in no doubt that global warming is to blame. "You don’t have to be a scientist," he said, "not when you see metres of beach disappearing every week."