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Bubna-Litic, Karen --- "Climate Change Impacts on the Poor – a Case-study of Australia’s Indigenous Population and the Impact of Australia’s Response on this Population" [2012] ELECD 648; in Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan (eds), "Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Law

Editor(s): Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cohen, Alfie Miriam; Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Jose; Mumma, Albert; Smith, Susan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781003282

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Climate Change Impacts on the Poor – a Case-study of Australia’s Indigenous Population and the Impact of Australia’s Response on this Population

Author(s): Bubna-Litic, Karen

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

4. Climate change impacts on the
poor ­ a case-study of Australia's
indigenous population and the impact
of Australia's response on this
population
Karen Bubna-Litic

4.1 INTRODUCTION

Climate change is likely to affect indigenous communities significantly, as
they often lack the economic and technical resources available to non-indige-
nous communities to respond to the social and environmental challenges of
climate change. These challenges include the increased costs resulting from
climate change policy, decreased availability of water and food, decreased
security and availability of housing, and adverse health effects. These chal-
lenges will be more difficult for indigenous communities to meet because they
generally already experience a lower economic standard of living and have
less education and training.1 Furthermore, climate change policies, unless
carefully designed with attention to their impact on indigenous communities,
are likely to disproportionately affect indigenous communities because those
communities are generally located in physically isolated, fragile and harsh
environments.
This chapter presents a case study of the impact of climate change and
climate change policy on indigenous Australians. It attempts to answer two
questions. The first question is whether climate change will disproportionately
impact indigenous Australians? The second question is whether Australia's
response to climate change, by putting a price on carbon, will disproportion-
ately burden indigenous Australians?
The chapter concludes that the answer to both questions is `yes'. Given that
fact, the Australian government needs to pay particular attention to indigenous
Australians, who may be disproportionately burdened because they ...