Guardians Help Respond to Climate Change
By: Frank Brown
February 18, 2021
A member of the Heiltsuk Nation Guardians program near Bella Bella, BC. Photo: ‘Qatuwas Brown.
Dungeness crab and clams are usually a reliable food source. We have lived in our coastal homeland in relationship with these natural resources for millennia. But in recent years, we have seen a sharp decline in Dungeness populations. Overfishing has taken a toll, but so has climate change. From big blobs causing warmer temperatures to higher levels of carbon in the oceans that make the water more acidic, we are seeing thinner Dungeness crab shells, stunted growth, and premature death.
Heiltsuk Guardians track these changes and draw from knowledge keepers about Dungeness crab that has developed over generations. Their research is shaping the Heiltsuk Nation’s decisions about how many crabs can be taken from the water and which areas must be protected to help them recover.
The same pattern is unfolding across the country. Indigenous Guardians are the eyes and the ears out on the land and the water, and they are helping their Nations respond to climate change. They monitor shifts in when migratory birds arrive, where caribou find food in winter, when rivers melt in spring, salmon survival, how drought impacts red cedar, and why wildfires are growing more intense.
As Indigenous place-based peoples, we have a sacred responsibility to look after the lands and waters and resources. To achieve our vision of sustainability requires a convergence of local and traditional knowledge, ancestral laws, and the best of what western science has to offer.
Local and traditional knowledge teaches us about long-standing natural systems and processes that have been similar for generations. Climate change disrupts these patterns with erratic shifts in snowpack, ocean chemistry, and timing of seasons.
One of the premises of western research is to establish a baseline. Western science has between 20 to 50 years’ worth of data for Northern landscapes. But local Indigenous knowledge is thousands of years old. It’s imperative these two knowledge systems work together to address the climate crisis.
Guardians programs reflect this powerful combination. They join place-based expertise with western tools for measuring water temperature, salinity, permafrost, and other data.
In many locations, Guardians are the only ones on the land tracking climate change. Crown governments simply don’t have the financial resources to put field stations in remote areas to do this work across the North, but Guardians are already on the ground working in traditional territories. Partnering with Indigenous Nations is a fiscally sound approach to helping mitigate climate impacts.
The Heiltsuk Nation Guardians monitoring the Dungeness crab fishery. Photo: ‘Qatuwas Brown.
We need the Guardians’ knowledge to inform climate-related policies and decisions, whether it’s setting limits on Dungeness crab harvests or reducing development in carbon-rich lands. Several Indigenous Nations, for instance, have proposed creating Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas in the Boreal Forest, and taken together, these proposals would permanently protect well over 20 billion tonnes of carbon—equivalent to almost 100 years of Canada’s annual industrial GHG emissions.
The work of Guardians benefits not only Indigenous communities, but all of humanity. Guardians draw on thousands of years of relationship with the land to ensure resources that we all depend on—from crab to caribou, clean waters to carbon storehouses—are sustained into the future. As the climate crisis intensifies, it’s time for Canada to support this work. Providing long-term investment in Guardians programs will help Canada honour its climate and conservation commitments and help all of us navigate our changing world.
Want more Guardians on the land? Join us by adding your name. When you do, you’re helping us show the government of Canada that people support Indigenous-led conservation and want more Guardians on the ground protecting lands and waters.