Systematic literature review on adaptation towards climate change impacts among indigenous people in the Asia Pacific regions

Abstract

The indigenous people uphold their cultural and social uniqueness, and social, economic, cultural, and political institutions, by detaching from the main or bigger society or culture. Similar to other groups, indigenous people are facing the formidable impacts of climate change due to their high reliance on nature stability. However there were still insufficient studies that systematically review the existing literature on the indigenous people in the Asia pacific region. Hence the present article conducted a systematic literature review on the adaptation strategies towards climate change impacts among the indigenous people in Asia Pacific regions. The present study integrated multiple research designs and the review was based on the publication standard, namely ROSES (RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses). This study selected articles using two leading databases namely Scopus and Web of Science and one supporting database namely Google Scholar. Based on the thematic analysis, this review has seven main themes namely 1) technology assisted; 2) traditional and local knowledge; 3) livelihood diversity; 4) government and organizations support; 5) food and water securities; 6) social related activities and 7) physical infrastructure. The seven main themes have further produced 20 sub-themes. The study offered several significant contributions for practical purposes and the body of knowledge. The findings explained the importance of integrating indigenous knowledge into adaptation strategies, as follow: 1) to encourage respect for traditional knowledge and the role of indigenous peoples in policy development; 2) to strategise adaptation plan that is in line with the needs, abilities and interests of the indigenous people; and 3) to inform on the specific areas and content of researches that should be the focus of the future studies.