The Impact of Climate Change on American and Canadian Indigenous Peoples and their Water Resources: A Climate Justice Perspective (original) (raw)

Across the world, indigenous communities face threats to their access to water as a consequence of climate change. Indeed, water management is one of the most fundamental climate change-related issues in North America and internationally. It involves issues of equity, and is related to significant political, social, and ecological struggles that indigenous peoples face. These characteristics are defined as both cause and symptom of the precarious life on reservations, other tribal territories, and urban areas and their relation to climate change. To date, national, state/provincial, and local governments have done little, if anything, to address the problems of access to water and the impacts of climate change on that access. Courts have also been unreceptive to these issues. These inequities have caused conflict between indigenous peoples and governmental authorities.