Mobile indigenous peoples
Dawn Chatty , Troy Sternberg
In 2008 the theme of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (unPFII1) was ‘Climate Change, Bio-cultural Diversity and Livelihoods: the stewardship role of indigenous peoples and new challenges’. Although climate change and the related issue of bio-cultural diversity have been major concerns in the developed and industrialised world, it is only with events like the UNPFII that the threats which climate change pose to the survival of peoples of the developing world are brought to light. Nomadic (mobile) peoples are already deriving their livelihoods from marginal and extreme landscapes; changes in physical and biological resources – and the impacts of increasingly severe weather and climate change – are therefore of particular concern to them.