We have had an unusual increase in droughts which has resulted in greater loss to livestock and increased poverty and starvation in our community. David Pulkol, Ugandan Karamajong community

Minority and indigenous groups across the world are among the hardest hit by climate change and often disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters but their plight has yet to be recognised by the international community, a new report says.

A study of several recent environmental disasters across the world shows that it is minority and indigenous groups that have been worst affected by changing weather patterns but in most cases when a disaster strikes help and relief reach them last, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in their annual State of the Worlds Minorities Report. This year’s report, themed around minorities and climate change, argues that unless policy-makers pay urgent attention to the effects of climate change on disadvantaged minorities, then, in some cases, the very survival of these fragile communities is at stake.

Commenting on the report, Ishbel Matheson, MRG’s Head of Policy and Communications said: “Climate change has finally made it to the top of the international agenda but at every level, be it inter-governmental, national or local level, recognition of the acute difficulties that minorities face, is often missing. From the immediate aftermath of a disaster to the point of designing policy on climate change - the unique situation of minority and indigenous groups are rarely considered.” The report cites cases from across the world of how minorities and indigenous groups were most affected in climate-related disasters because they live in the poorest, most marginalized neighbourhoods. When Dalits (or ‘untouchables’) in Bihar, India, were disproportionately affected during the 2007 floods, relief took long to reach them and they were subject to blatant discrimination in the aid distribution process.

The close relationship of many indigenous peoples and some minorities to their environment makes them especially sensitive to the impact of climate change. Indigenous people have extraordinarily intimate knowledge of weather and its effects on plants and animals, but climate change is now affecting their way of life. “In our community the elders interpret certain signs from nature to know when to plant their crops or when to start the hunting season. But with climate change it is becoming impossible for them to make such predictions anymore. We have had an unusual increase in droughts which has resulted in greater loss to livestock and increased poverty and starvation in our community,” David Pulkol from the Ugandan Karamajong community said.

Indigenous and minority communities across the world are also hurt by the planting of biofuel crops championed as a solution to climate change. Biofuels, from plant matter such as corn or oil palms, are seen as the greener option because they produce lower emissions of carbon dioxide. But communities face forceful eviction and destruction to their livelihoods and culture for biofuel crops to be planted. In South American countries such as Colombia, Brazil and Argentina indigenous and minority communities have been forced off their lands, in some cases with the use of violence, to make way for biofuel plantations.

Matheson from MRG said: “Not only are minorities and indigenous groups disproportionately suffering as a result of climate change but they are affected by what the world sees as solutions to climate change. There is now a greater urgency to make these voices heard in the climate change debate.”