Adivasi Women – Engaging with Climate Change

Author/Editor(s): Govind Kelkar

Indigenous peoples worldwide lead sustainable livelihoods that contribute to the sequestration of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and cause the least amount of damage to the environment. Yet, indigenous peoples, particularly women, often are the hardest hit by the effects of climate change. Indigenous societies, for instance, struggle to save their resources from deforestation and damaging extraction of minerals, oil and gas, as well as against further expansion of mono-crop plantations. This, in part, has to do with colonial and corporate attempts to nationalize and privatize their resources.

Adivasi Women — Engaging with Climate Change aims to decipher the gendered impact of climate change in indigenous societies in Asia with a particular focus on the Adivasi ethnic and tribal group of India. It also intends to increase understanding of how these impacts are exacerbated by structural shifts in Advasi socio-economic systems resulting from their colonial history, more recent efforts at privatization and gendered roles within the Adivasi communities. In conclusion, the study offers policy recommendations to enhance women’s resiliency to these impacts.