By Annikki Herranen-Tabibi<\/a>, Harvard Medical School, United States<\/p>\n On a sweltering afternoon in the congested Expo City of Dubai, I entered the COP28 Visitor Center to collect my attendee swag: a metro card and a sleekly designed, insulated water bottle in a soothing forest green, with the text \u201cCOP28 UAE\u201d rendered in bold white. The bottle was emblazoned with harmonious and inspirational images of lush vegetation alongside interspecies and intergenerational encounters, interspersed with images of technological progress: solar panels, satellites, wind turbines, and soaring airplanes. This summit-sponsored gesture of branded sustainability \u2013 imagistically rendered the sleek techno-optimism that permeated the summit. More than that, this reusable vessel for life-giving hydration held in plain view the contradictions of this so-called \u201cHealth COP\u201d (Global Climate and Health Alliance 2023a). After all, the summit took place in a setting physically shaped by many of the most urgent climate-health threats: the fossil fuel industry, air pollution, extreme heat, and stark socioeconomic inequality (see e.g. Ngeh 2021)\u00a0<\/p>\n COP28 was hailed in many quarters as \u201chistoric\u201d (e.g. Health Care Without Harm, 2023) for its introduction of a thematic day devoted to health, accompanied by intensified health-related programming throughout the summit\u2019s first week. Indeed, the prominence of health on the summit\u2019s agenda saw an unprecedented attendance of the global health community and of high-level national health representatives, and a declaration<\/a> on climate and health endorsed by 148 countries (Choudhary 2023; Global Climate and Health Alliance 2023b; Global Climate and Health Alliance 2024; COP28 UAE 2023). This declaration was framed around a number of key objectives, including partnership-based, comprehensive, and multisectoral work intended to \u201cmaximize the health gains from mitigation and adaptation actions and prevent worsening health impacts from climate change\u201d in \u201cvulnerable\u201d populations, resilience and emissions reductions in the health sector, and addressing the interplay of \u201chuman, animal, environment and climate health,\u201d and the mainstreaming of health \u201cin the context of relevant Paris Agreement and UNFCCC processes\u201d (COP28 UAE 2023).\u00a0<\/p>\n As a medical anthropologist observing the proceedings as part of the American Anthropological Association delegation and the Harvard Climate and Health Cohort, I had an opportunity to peer beyond these buzzwords and into the more unruly, less celebratory elements of discussions at the climate-health nexus. These observations led me to consider the potential and limitations of anthropologists\u2019 contributions and methodological repertoires in research at the climate-health nexus. Most crucially, they reaffirmed to me the imperative for anthropological climate-health research to center equitable community partnerships and humility in order to ensure that our research reflects locally grounded understandings of histories, social structures, and relations that shape both experiences of and responses to climate change. In ruptured climate worlds, such an approach is vital in order for anthropological knowledge to be of service to those with the most at stake in the phenomena we study.<\/p>\n Medical anthropology has seen, over the past two decades, repeated calls for medical anthropologists to play a more active role in discussions of climate and health. These calls have variously cited anthropologists\u2019\u00a0 aptitude for thinking across scales, our long-term research relationships that allow for observing change in specific context, and the potential for scholars to stand in solidarity with affected communities (Trostle 2010; Singer 2014; Cartwright 2019). Indeed, as anthropologists, we are well positioned to participate in these processes in the spirit of advocacy and accompaniment, but more than that, to participate with awareness of the contradictions and areas of contestation that emerge from everyday lives at the frontlines of struggles for climate and health justice. Such contradictions were particularly evident when one stepped beyond the explicitly health-oriented programming in Expo City Dubai.<\/p>\n In S\u00e1pmi, the transborder homeland of the Indigenous S\u00e1mi people where my ethnographic work for the past decade has been situated, climate mitigation efforts have frequently taken troubling manifestations with respect to Indigenous health and well-being.\u00a0 For example, discussions at COP28 on climate mitigation solutions in the Arctic saw the celebration of \u201csustainable mining\u201d of rare earth elements in the Scandinavian Arctic. The celebratory remarks centered on the discovery, in the in Indigenous S\u00e1mi community of Giron (Kiruna) in Sweden, of rare earth minerals in 2023 (Frost, 2023; Reed, 2023). Proponents of mining at COP28 celebrated this discovery as essential for advancing the green transition \u2013 the move away from fossil fuel-based energy systems and economies \u2013 in the Arctic region. Indeed, the phasing out of fossil fuels and moving to \u201cclean\u201d energy sources is vital to making progress in addressing climate change\u2019s health effects across the globe (c.f. Luyter et al. 2023). And yet, Giron is already home to the world\u2019s largest underground iron ore mine, and over a century of mining there is already experienced as destabilizing for human and more-than-human health and well-being \u2013 in terms of contamination of land and waterways, in terms of mining-related subsidence creating hazards and forcing entire towns to relocate, and in terms of disruption of land-based livelihoods like reindeer husbandry by mining operations (Rankin 2023; Cockerell 2023).\u00a0<\/p>\n Similar concerns about the disruption of subsistence livelihoods and well-being surround the construction of large-scale wind farms on Indigenous S\u00e1mi land in Finland and Norway. As with mining, the wind farms are a key component of national and regional striving for the green transition, but are widely criticized locally as threats to Indigenous rights, biodiversity, subsistence livelihoods, food systems \u2013 and, thereby, physical and psychosocial health in S\u00e1pmi (Yle S\u00e1pmi 2017; Reid-Collins 2020; Retter 2021; Fjellheim 2022; Kassam and Niranjan 2023).<\/p>\n These localized contradictions of global climate measures brought me to consider the implications of two conflicting calls to knowledge that ricocheted through the sessions I attended at COP28. The first call was crystallized in recurring statements from, or vocalized on behalf of, frontline communities: \u201cthe time for research is over, the time for solutions is now.\u201d It stood in contrast with the second call, most often those from governmental and funding agencies that \u201cyou can\u2019t manage what you can\u2019t measure\u201d and \u201cwithout data, you can\u2019t finance.\u201d David Ripin, Chief Scientific Officer with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, put a finer point on these contrasts at a Resilience Hub event, \u201cBirth in a Burning World: Action for Maternal and Newborn Health & Justice,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 on December 5, 2023:<\/p>\n \u201cI am absolutely thrilled to hear how we are specifically focused on actions we can take now and what we are doing as opposed to talking about studying a problem and understanding it. And yet, I feel I have been in many meetings where donors, when presented with the enormity of the climate and health interface area, tend to start talking about studying and prioritizing.\u201d<\/p>\n Such deferral of action to studies upon studies by donors could become a way to delay climate-health action, including the scaling up of proven-to-be-effective interventions based upon existing primary health care infrastructure, for which Dr. Revati Phalkey, Global Director Health and Nutrition with Save the Children International, advocated during the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n Observing these competing claims surrounding knowledge production crystallized what I view as crucial to anthropological work at the climate-health nexus, particularly in light of the frequent invocation that \u201c[h]ealth is the human face of climate change\u201d\u00a0(Dr. Courtney Howard in Global Climate and Health Alliance 2023b; see also Duschek 2017; Feldscher 2016). Among social scientists, our long-term fieldwork grounded in participant-observation without a doubt positions anthropologists particularly well for peering into this \u201chuman face\u201d: we build intimate familiarity with specific sites and people, and can witness changes in the visage of climate change longitudinally through the long-term research relations we often establish.\u00a0 Indeed, anthropology may appear to be a privileged portal to \u201cexperience-near\u201d knowledge (sensu <\/em>Geertz 1974) by virtue of anthropologists\u2019 close observations of our interlocutors\u2019 daily lives and our own direct participation in them. And yet, if we simply elevate our own observational faculties in anthropological engagements with individual and community experiences of climate worlds, we will be missing a whole lot. Our research must not replicate the historical model of \u201cautonomous and unaccountable researchers\u201d (Gone 2023: 288) who work without regard for community needs, values, priorities, and knowledge systems \u2013 a model with long roots among social scientists in general, and anthropologists in particular. Anthropologists have seldom gone it alone, and building cultures of equitable collaboration with our interlocutors is critical for our ability to engage with the wider forces that shape how climate change and its health effects are experienced, understood, and addressed in the contexts in which we work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here, my on-site observations of COP28\u2019s unprecedented centering of health \u2013 and the conflicting calls to knowledge therein \u2013\u00a0 brought me back to the historian Joan Scott\u2019s famous critique of what scholars consider \u201cevidence of experience\u201d (Scott 1991). In her essay, Scott raised concern that historical and humanistic renderings of social experience, particularly the experiences of marginalized groups, was often \u201cun-problematized\u201d (Scott 1991: 780) \u2013 that is, it was treated as if one could grasp that experience simply by witnessing it in the flesh or in text. Such renderings, Scott, argued, not only effaced the scholar\u2019s interpretive choices, but crucially were also devoid of attention to histories, structures, and relations, and forms of contestation that create both experience and interpretations thereof. As Scott argued:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMaking visible the experience of a different group exposes the existence of repressive mechanisms, but not their inner workings or logics; we know that difference exists, but we don\u2019t understand it as relationally constituted\u201d (Scott 1991: 779).<\/p>\n Considering Scott\u2019s critique alongside recent years\u2019 elevation of\u00a0 health as \u201cthe human face of climate change\u201d\u00a0 thus reaffirmed for me the importance of ensuring that those who have the most at stake in the phenomena we study have not just a voice but an appropriately resourced and recognized role in leading and shaping work on experiences of climate change, from research design to interpretation. Accordingly, while anthropological scholarship on climate change and, more specifically, on the climate-health nexus, appropriately assumes a multitude of methodological forms, it is vital for the discipline to prioritize training and research oriented toward collaborative research grounded in equitable research partnerships with the communities with which we work (see Gone, 2023).\u00a0 My approach to this topic is informed by the proliferating calls across the Circumpolar Arctic to hold Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous peoples in an equal position with scientific knowledge and scientists in the design, conduct, and funding of research (Bahnke et al 2020; Bronen and Cochran 2021; Inuit Circumpolar Council 2021; Herrmann et al 2023; Valtioneuvosto 2023). Indeed, in my encounters as an observer at COP28, these regionally situated demands found resonance with calls for greater investment in community-based studies at the climate-health nexus. Thus, during the aforementioned \u201cBirth in a Burning World\u201d event, Dr. Phalkey advocated for \u201clocally led adaptation\u201d that goes beyond \u201ctokenistic inclusion of vulnerable groups such as women, children, Indigenous groups.\u201d Such tokenistic inclusion has remained commonplace even as the language of partnership and collaboration has proliferated across research fields and funding mechanisms (Bahnke et al 2020) \u2013 a reality that has led to trenchant calls to, in Robin Bronen and Patricia Cochran\u2019s (2021) terms, \u201cdecolonize climate adaptation research.\u201d As anthropologists continue to observe at COPs to come, what kinds of research cultures do we represent, cultivate, and undo?<\/p>\n In sum, then, the unprecedented elevation of health on COP28\u2019s agenda was accompanied by calls to action and to knowledge production. Considering the potential and limitations of anthropological contributions to knowledge at the climate-health nexus, I suggest that it is vital to advance cultures of anthropological research training and practice centered on equitable and appropriately resourced partnerships with frontline communities. This is of specific importance in order for anthropological knowledge to be of service in understanding and addressing the cascading health impacts of climate change, and in seeking progress toward the global climate-health objectives emerging from COP28.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Bahnke, M., V. Korthuis, A. Philemonoff, M. Johnson. 2020. Letter from the Kawerak Social Science Program, Association of Village Council Presidents, Bering Sea Elders Group, and Aleut Community of St. Paul Tribal Government to the National Science Foundation\u2019s Navigating the New Arctic Program.\u00a0At URL: https:\/\/kawerak.org\/download\/navigating-the-new-arctic-program-comment-letter<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Bronen, R. and Cochran, P. 2021. \u201cDecolonize climate adaptation research.\u201d<\/a> Science 372 (6548), June 18, 2021, p.\u00a01245.<\/p>\n Cartwright, E.. 2019. \u201cThe Medical Anthropology of Climate Change: Eco-Risks and the Body Environmental.\u201d Medical Anthropology, 38:5.<\/p>\n Choudhary, S. 2023. \u201cClimate Change is a Health Crisis, Declare 123 Countries in a First at COP28.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.news18.com\/world\/climate-change-is-a-health-crisis-declare-123-countries-in-a-first-at-cop28-8688580.html<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Cockerell, I. 2023. \u201cIn the Swedish Arctic, a battle for the climate rages.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.codastory.com\/waronscience\/sweden-climate-change-colonialism\/<\/a><\/p>\n COP28 UAE. 2023. At URL: https:\/\/cdn.who.int\/media\/docs\/default-source\/climate-change\/cop28\/cop28-uae-climate-and-health-declaration.pdf?sfvrsn=2c6eed5a_3&download=true<\/a><\/p>\n Dusheck, Jennie. 2017. \u201cReport details how to reduce impact of climate change on human health.\u201dAt URL: https:\/\/med.stanford.edu\/news\/all-news\/2017\/05\/how-to-reduce-impact-of-climate-change-on-human-health.html<\/a><\/p>\n Feldscher, Karen. 2016. \u201cPutting a human face on climate change.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/news\/features\/climate-change-symposium\/<\/a><\/p>\n Fjellheim, E. M. 2022. \u201cGreen colonialism, wind energy and climate justice in S\u00e1pmi.\u201d International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs: Debates Ind\u00edgenas. 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Cooper, M. N. Coutanche, L. M. McMullen, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, & K. J. Sher (Eds.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology: Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological<\/em> (2nd ed., pp. 285\u2013304). American Psychological Association.<\/p>\n Health Care Without Harm. 2023.\u201dHealth Care Without Harm at COP28.\u201c At URL: https:\/\/healthcareclimateaction.org\/cop28<\/a><\/p>\n Herrmann, T.M., Brunner Alfani, F., Chahine, A., Doering, N., Dudeck, S., Elster, J., Fjellheim, E., Henriksen, J.E., Hermansen, N., Holmberg, A., Kramvig, B., Keskitalo, A.M.N., Omma, E.M., Saxinger, G., Scheepstra, A., van der Schot, J. (2023). Comprehensive Policy-Brief to the EU Commission: Roadmap to Decolonial Arctic Research. University of Oulu, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research- UFZ, The Indigenous Voices (IVO) research group \u2013 \u00c1lgo\u00e1lbmogii jienat, Arctic University of Norway UiT, Saami Council. \u00c1lt\u00e1 \u2013 K\u00e1r\u00e1\u0161johka \u2013 Leipzig \u2013 Oulu.\u00a0 At URL: https:\/\/phaidra.univie.ac.at\/o:1653557<\/a><\/p>\n Inuit Circumpolar Council. 2021. \u201cEthical and Equitable Engagement Synthesis Report: A collection of Inuit rules, guidelines, protocols, and values for the engagement of Inuit Communities and Indigenous Knowledge from Across Inuit Nunaat.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/project\/icc-ethical-and-equitable-engagement-synthesis-report\/<\/a><\/p>\n Kassam, A. and Niranjan, A. 2023. \u201cDemonstration in Oslo seeks removal of windfarms in Indigenous region.\u201d The Guardian, 10\/11\/2023. At URL: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/oct\/11\/demonstration-in-oslo-seeks-removal-of-windfarms-in-indigenous-region <\/a>;<\/p>\n Luyten, A., Winkler, M.S., Ammann, P. and Dietler, D., 2023. Health impact studies of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures\u2013A scoping review. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 9, p.100186.<\/p>\n Ngeh, J. 2021. \u201cLiving in the shadows of\u00a0Dubai.\u201d URL: https:\/\/developingeconomics.org\/2021\/11\/29\/living-in-the-shadows-of-dubai\/<\/a><\/p>\n Rankin, J. 2023. \u201cWhy a Swedish town is on the move \u2013 one building at a time.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/05\/why-a-swedish-town-is-on-the-move-one-building-at-a-time-kirkuna-arctic-circle<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Reed, S. 2023. \u201cSweden Says It Has Uncovered a Rare Earth Bonanza.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/13\/business\/sweden-rare-earth-minerals.html<\/a><\/p>\n Reid-Collins, S. 2020. \u201cArctic Turbulence: Why Indigenous Communities Are Fighting Wind Farms.\u201d Novara Media<\/em>, November 30, 2020. At URL: https:\/\/novaramedia.com\/2020\/11\/30\/arctic-turbulence-why-indigenous-communities-are-fighting-wind-farms\/<\/a><\/p>\n Retter, Gunn-Britt. 2021. \u201cIndigenous cultures must not be forced to bear the brunt of global climate adaptation.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.arctictoday.com\/indigenous-cultures-must-not-be-forced-to-bear-the-brunt-of-global-climate-adaptation\/ <\/a>;<\/p>\n Resilience Hub. 2023.\u00a0 \u201cBirth in a Burning World: Action for Maternal and Newborn Health & Justice.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=E7gjel7AFsc\u00a0 <\/a>;<\/p>\n Singer, M. 2014. \u201cTranscending \u2018Ordinary Times Rules\u2019 in Environmental Health: The Critical Challenge for Medical Anthropology.\u201d Medical Anthropology, 33:5.<\/p>\n Trostle, J. 2010. \u201cAnthropology Is Missing: On the World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change.\u201d Medical Anthropology, 29:3, 217-225,<\/p>\n Valtioneuvosto. 2023. \u201dValtioneuvosto asetti saamelaisen ilmastoneuvoston.\u201d At URL: https:\/\/valtioneuvosto.fi\/-\/1410903\/valtioneuvosto-asetti-saamelaisen-ilmastoneuvoston<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Yle S\u00e1pmi, 2017. \u201cOhcejohkala\u010d\u010dat vuost\u00e1lastet Davvi-bieggamillop\u00e1rkka.\u201d O\u0111\u0111asat, 11\/10\/2017. Available at: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=1942169755800733<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aesengagement.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/unnamed.jpg?w=758\")
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