Crafting Climate Solutions for Nature-Dependent Subsistence Communities: A Dignity-Centric View

Globally, more than 1.2 billion people depend directly on nature for their basic needs. These nature-dependent subsistence communities (NDSCs) bear the brunt of environmental disruptions caused by climate change. Prevailing climate solutions crafted by external “experts” often pursue narrow technocratic objectives that erode the dignity of NDSCs. In this paper, we conduct ethnographic research in a subsistence fishing community to develop a dignity-centric framework for crafting climate solutions for subsistence communities. We center the voices of community members in deriving our framework, which is a departure from prior approaches rooted in normative ethical frameworks. A unique feature of our framework is the dual focus on deontological (process-based) and teleological (outcome-based) dignity considerations. Furthermore, taking a dialectical approach to dignity outcomes, our framework reveals that climate solutions must account for three important dialectical tensions playing out within communities: cultural continuity versus cultural adaptation, place rootedness versus spatial mobility, and consumption adequacy versus aspirational consumption.