Diversifying Indigenous Vulnerability and Adaptation: An Intersectional Reading of Māori Women’s Experiences of Health, Wellbeing, and Climate Change

Danielle Emma Johnson, Karen Fisher and Meg Parsons
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Danielle Emma Johnson: Te Kura Mātai Taiao—School of Environment, Waipapa Taumata Rau—The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Karen Fisher: Te Kura Mātai Taiao—School of Environment, Waipapa Taumata Rau—The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Meg Parsons: Te Kura Mātai Taiao—School of Environment, Waipapa Taumata Rau—The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-40

Abstract: Despite evidence that Indigenous peoples’ multiple subjectivities engender diverse lived experiences both between and within Indigenous groups, the influence of multiple subjectivities on Indigenous peoples’ vulnerability and adaptation to climate change is largely un-explored. Drawing on ethnographic research with Indigenous Māori women in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper provides empirical evidence that subjectivity-mediated power dynamics operating within Indigenous societies (at the individual and household scale) are important determinants of vulnerability and adaptation which should be considered in both scholarship and policy. Using an intersectional framework, I demonstrate how different Māori women and their whānau (families) live, cope with, and adapt to the embodied physical and emotional health effects of climate change in radically different ways because of their subject positionings, even though they belong to the same community, hapū (sub-tribe), or iwi (tribe). In underlining these heterogenous experiences, I provide an avenue for reconsidering how climate adaptation scholarship, policies, and practices might better engage with the complex, amorphous realities within Māori and other Indigenous communities. I argue it is possible to develop more inclusive, tailored, and sustainable adaptation that considers divergent vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities within Indigenous communities, groups, and societies and supports customised vulnerability-reduction strategies.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples; Māori; climate adaptation; vulnerability; maladaptation; intersectionality; multiple subjectivities; health; wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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