6. Adapting to Climate Change in Jean Marie River

For our community, adapting to climate change is viewed in a similar perspective as our approach to many of our community initiatives – to build and create a sustainable and healthy community. Sustainability is essential for our community to survive and thrive in the current cultural, social, economical, and political contexts our community is a part of. The impacts being caused by climate change now, and possible impacts in the future, pose some new challenges, along with compounding existing ones, to achieve our objective of a sustainable community; however, our people have a history of resiliency when it comes to adapting to climatic, environmental and socio-cultural changes.

As a first step to address the current and potential vulnerabilities of JMR to climate change, a community workshop was conducted where members of the community were presented the vulnerability assessment of JMR to climate change as influence diagrams (see Appendix 6). Community members discussed possible adaptation strategies that the community could explore to minimize and/or prevent health related risks linked with climate change, and strategies to take advantage of potential opportunities afforded by climate change.

6. Adapting to Climate Change in Jean Marie River