While eyes are often fixed on high-profile international negotiations and national policy levers, a community-based research initiative reminds us that the climate crisis demands actions large and small, near and far.
The Armidale Climate and Health Project (ACHP) encourages people to view climate change through a uniquely socio-cultural lens. It sees local climate action as vitally important to meeting global challenges but also as a means of building real community resilience, improving public health and supporting Indigenous people by redressing colonial harms.
“International commitments to rapidly reduce emissions are imperative if we are to protect our communities and ensure a liveable future,
“International commitments to rapidly reduce emissions are imperative if we are to protect our communities and ensure a liveable future,” says ACHP co-facilitator Dr Jennifer Hamilton, a lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England. “However, action at the local level can also build more equitable community health, and reimagine the way we relate to one another and to our environment.”
This community action research project allows researchers to explore the question of what local responses might look like in theory and practice.
The project was an initiative of the Community Weathering Station (CoWS) incubator. CoWS has been inviting people of the New England to engage with these ideas in relation to climate change-related disasters: first the drought, then the bushfires and now the holistic challenge of personal and planetary health.
Supported by an Adapt NSW grant and collaboration between Jennifer and Dr Sujata Allan (a local GP and lecturer in UNE’s Faculty of Medicine and Health), the ACHP sought to seed a range of community initiatives that mitigate the health impacts of climate change on people and engage in healing the environment.
Addressing the damage is not straightforward and requires new thinking and new alliances. Last November, the ACHP organised a slow walk along Dumaresq Creek, through the heart of Armidale. It coincided with a “sister walk” on the other side of the world, when people similarly walked along the Thames in old England. Participants in the UK and Armidale were encouraged to listen to Anaiwan and Gumbaynggirr artist Gabi Briggs reflecting on climate change and colonisation in Armidale and to think about how to incorporate support for Indigenous land and water rights into our attempts to mitigate climate change.
Gabi says addressing Indigenous dispossession – by healing people and country and improving land access – should be at the heart of our nation’s response to climate change. “I’m driven by a desire to heal myself, my community and my Country from colonial harm,” she says. “Measures that centre Indigenous sovereignty all lead back to care and respect for Country.”
The ACHP draws parallels between the development of fossil fuel technologies and the exploitation of land and water with the health impacts that are being felt today. These are all, according to Jennifer, products of the same historical processes that saw the violent taking of Indigenous land and lives around the world.
We are eager to explore what climate action might look like if we were to respect, value and centre Indigenous knowledge; how we might heal the planet by working to acknowledge that violence,”
“We are eager to explore what climate action might look like if we were to respect, value and centre Indigenous knowledge; how we might heal the planet by working to acknowledge that violence,” Jennifer says. “The walk combined all this and sought to amplify the situation in the New England; it invited people to think about the ways that colonisation and its powerful economic and political interests has contributed to the degradation of Australia and helped to fuel this planetary crisis.
“Beyond solar power and organic farming, it’s a collective step towards seeding new conversations and respectful solidarity. We have, in our midst, the Indigenous knowledge and practices for how to relate respectfully to our ecosystems and each other. The community of Armidale can take a different stance, and model the change we want to see elsewhere.”
Download audio interviews with Gabi and Anaiwan elder Uncle Steve Widders at https://soundcloud.com/weatheringstation to learn ways that Aboriginal people have lived sustainably for thousands of years and “always thought generations ahead”.
For more information on the ACHP, go to www.armidaleclimateandhealth.com.au
