Indigenous/Endogenous Sea Peoples: Climate Change Adaptation and Environmental Regeneration Prospects

Indigenous and Endogenous subsistence Sea Peoples are suffering deeply from expropriation and decline of traditional coastal resources they have relied on throughout their cultural memory. In the past, local over-exploitation was the main threat, but now the decline is largely due to industrial fishing, global climate change, and pollution, which they did not cause, caused by local and global over-exploitation of common resources by outsiders. All coastal communities urgently need to develop management strategies to regenerate coastal resources before they lose them. Global climate change impacts on local community marine resources of more than 27 different coastal fishing cultures around the world are evaluated in terms of the range of their historical responses to past and new environmental challenges to their survival, local marine ecosystem regeneration needs of each group, and possibilities of locally managed Biorock technology solutions to resolve them. These are based on the author’s personal long-term work at almost all sites. All can benefit from Biorock technology as the most cost-effective solution for regenerating imperilled coastal zone ecosystems once adapted to local problems. Most communities have four basic alternatives: extinction, forced migration, assimilation and marginalization, or ecosystem regeneration using state-of-the-art methods. Of these options, ecosystem regeneration with Biorock can help preserve their marine cultures, biodiversity, biomass, and ecosystem services and contribute disproportionately to reversing global climate change. Each group faces declining natural resources for different reasons that lie outside their historical experience and knowledge. However, each can learn new methods to regenerate their own marine ecosystems and adapt to climate change only if the will, funding, and training are found in time to avert severe degradation or total collapse.