Search

The effects and severity of anthropogenic climate change are being increasingly realized, with international efforts through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aimed at mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to current and future changes. Many of these adaptation measures focus on helping communities in developing nations, grounded in an inter-national framework that notes national disparities in responsibility and impact. While consideration of international inequality is an important and salient framework, it can have the unintentional effect of masking intra-national inequality, and eclipsing the role that factors such as race, class, and gender also play in shaping individual and community vulnerability to climate change. To highlight the role of such social factors in vulnerability, this paper looks at the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, an Inupiat community that must relocate due to climate change. It will be argued that while Kivalina shares many similarities with other global communities heavily impacted by climate change, due to common historic injustices, Kivalina also faces unique challenges by being located in the US, including longstanding resistance by US government and corporate interests to recognizing and acting on climate change, lack of adaptation measures, and cuts to federal disaster management. These challenges raise questions about how governments in "developed" countries can be held accountable when they do not adequately assist their people in danger from climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]