Abstract
Citizens receive information on global climate change through both observation of local impacts and reception of climate science. This article presents a quantitative analysis of the interplay of these two sources of information in an indigenous population: residents of Majuro, the capital city of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. While Majuro residents’ reports of local environmental change are partly the result of firsthand observation of changing conditions, survey data robustly demonstrates that environmental change reports are also strongly influenced by awareness of climate science; scientific awareness is a better predictor of environmental change reports than exposure to the environment. This provides a rare quantitative demonstration of the openness of ‘local’ knowledge to foreign scientific information; challenges research methodologies for the study of indigenous climate change perceptions that exclude the role of scientific communication; and suggests a novel, and overlooked, rationale for the dissemination of climate science to frontline communities.
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Notes
92.1 % of the country’s citizens have entirely Marshallese (indigenous) ancestry, while 5.9 % have mixed Marshallese and non-Marshallese ancestry (CIA World Factbook 2013).
97 individuals answered this question, with 130 total mentions of information sources.
Names have been changed.
An alternate explanation is that elders report more environmental change not because they have observed more change but because they are more preoccupied, for other reasons, with societal change. But interview and ethnographic evidence, which I do not have the space to review here, would seem to refute this, as young and old are equally convinced of pervasive change. Moreover, if older people were reporting environmental change merely out of a prior conviction in change, one would expect their reports to be resolute, yet scattered and inconsistent; instead, we find that people’s reports are remarkably consistent.
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Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges Josepha Maddison and Iroij Mike Kabua for granting fieldwork permission; the many Marshall Islanders who agreed to participate; and Vahid Ravaghi and Nassim Mojaverian for assistance with quantitative analysis. Various phases of research were supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Dr. Alun Hughes; Oxford University; All Souls College, Oxford; St. Hugh’s College, Oxford; Jesus College, Oxford; and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford.
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Rudiak-Gould, P. The Influence of Science Communication on Indigenous Climate Change Perception: Theoretical and Practical Implications. Hum Ecol 42, 75–86 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-013-9605-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-013-9605-9