Project
Cultural Heritage in Motion: Indigenous Knowledge and Mobile Livelihoods in Changing Climate (CuHeMo)
CuHeMo is a transdisciplinary research project funded under the umbrella of the Belmont Forum that examines the role of cultural heritage in climate change adaptation among indigenous pastoralist and coastal communities in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Senegal. It brings together social and climate scientists with societal stakeholders and indigenous knowledge holders in Senegal, Thailand and Ethiopia.
CuHeMo overview
The impacts of climate change can be detrimental to the livelihoods of indigenous communities residing in different places across the world. As noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, cultural losses – both tangible and intangible – threaten adaptive capacity, especially for Indigenous Peoples reliant on the environment for subsistence. At the same time, indigenous cultural heritage plays a role in adapting to climate risk and is central to rethinking human-nature relations that govern dominant approaches to addressing and understanding climate change adaptation.
In CuHeMo we aim to examine the role that cultural heritage plays in climate change adaptation, drawing from climate sciences, social sciences, and indigenous ways of knowing. We do so with a focus on indigenous groups whose livelihoods have historically been mobile, specifically pastoralists and fishery communities in Thailand, Ethiopia and Senegal.