The impact of climate change on the health of Indigenous peoples
11 Aug 2025
One expert is speaking out about the need to embed Indigenous knowledges to mitigate and adapt to climate change and protect health and wellbeing.
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The impact of climate change on the health of Indigenous peoples
One expert is speaking out about the need to embed Indigenous knowledges to mitigate and adapt to climate change and protect health and wellbeing.
‘For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Country is not just land, it’s a living system that holds our ancestors, our stories, our identity.’
That is according to Francis Nona, a proud Torres Strait Islander man and a lecturer and researcher at the Queensland University of Technology.
He is currently undertaking a PhD examining climate health and how to embed Indigenous knowledge into mitigation and adaptation in a changing climate – and he is calling for change.
‘First Nations people aren’t being heard or listened to,’ Mr Nona told newsGP.
‘We can draw off inherited Indigenous knowledge that goes back 60,000 years, why isn’t this deemed as gold standard evidence?
‘We should be making those correlations, standing in allyship, advocating for Indigenous communities as we see that they’re taking the brunt of climate change that’s impacting health outcomes.’
Mr Nona’s calls come in the midst of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which is observed on 9 August each year to recognise the 476 million Indigenous peoples living across 90 countries.
The United Nations estimates these peoples speak up to 7000 languages, representing 5000 different cultures.
However, according to The State of the world’s Indigenous peoples report, Indigenous peoples are being ‘sidelined in the global climate fight’.
It found that while Indigenous peoples make up 6% of the global population, they safeguard 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity but receive less than 1% of international climate funding.
For Mr Nona, the idea to study the impact of climate change on health came from growing up in the Torres Strait and witnessing changes firsthand.
‘Growing up as a young boy and seeing what is deemed as normalised through poor health and changes in the environment, I just wanted to try and look at and show evidence of how a changing climate, which is well-documented, is having poor health outcomes for Indigenous people,’ he said.
‘We must think of things like the burden of heat stress, vascular and respiratory illness, food insecurity, water security due to ecological shifts, rising incidence of vector-borne diseases in some regions, mental health distress from loss of land and displacement.
The fourth edition of the NACCHO-RACGP National guide to preventive healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, released last year, includes a chapter on the health impacts of climate change.
It provides recommendations for primary healthcare teams on identifying patients at risk of climate change effects and supporting them to understand and reduce these effects where possible. It also provides recommendations to support disaster plans and how GPs can advocate for their patients.
‘In the current climate emergency, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental degradation, rising seas and extreme weather, unjustly compounding existing health and wellbeing inequities,’ it says.
‘Best practice clinical care that holistically promotes physical, social and emotional wellbeing, and includes activities that facilitate connection to and caring for Country, will support the health of patients, communities and the planet for future generations.’
And Mr Nona says GPs can play a key role in creating change.
‘The workforce of GPs, they are a trusted workforce if we look at how they are deemed in the community,’ he said.
‘Collectively, GPs need to stand alongside each other.
‘We’ve got to advocate. That is how we inform policy – I need policy to recognise these Indigenous worldviews and the importance of connection to place, connection to Country.’