On the frontline twice: how climate change is deepening health, cultural and economic scars for Indigenous Australians - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Climate change is already harming Indigenous Australians’ health, culture and livelihoods, compounding the impacts of colonisation and systemic inequality.1 Rising heat, fires, floods and sea level rise are driving acute illness, climate distress and disruption to caring for Country.2 Damage to sacred sites, ecosystems and food and water systems threatens cultural continuity and social and emotional wellbeing.3 Structural racism, poor housing and under-resourced services increase vulnerability and limit adaptive capacity in many communities.4 Indigenous-led adaptation, including caring for Country, cultural fire management and community-controlled planning, is already strengthening resilience.5 Climate justice for Indigenous Australians means centring self-determination, cultural rights and on‑Country leadership in national climate policy.6

Across Australia Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are warning climate change is a present reality reshaping health, culture and economic security on Country.²

From remote desert homelands to Torres Strait islands and outer suburban fringes, more frequent heatwaves, fires, floods and sea level rise are colliding with the unfinished business of colonisation and entrenched disadvantage.²

Indigenous leaders describe climate change as an extension of a long colonial process that has already severed lands, languages and kinship, and now threatens to intensify poverty, ill health and cultural loss across generations.²

Evidence shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more exposed to climate hazards, more likely to live in poor housing and energy poverty, and less likely to have access to responsive health and emergency services when disaster strikes.¹

At the same time, climate damage to Country, from burnt rock art and shell middens to drying waterholes and eroding islands, is tearing at the core of identity, spirituality and social and emotional wellbeing.³

Researchers and communities report rising climate distress, grief and “homesickness while still at home” as landscapes change and cultural obligations to look after Country become harder to fulfil.⁷

Health services are already straining under new waves of heat stress, respiratory illness, food and water insecurity and infectious disease, with staff in some regions considering leaving because conditions are becoming unliveable.²

Yet Indigenous-led initiatives, from cultural fire management in Arnhem Land to climate justice advocacy and digital climate story platforms, are demonstrating powerful, place-based pathways to adaptation, resilience and emissions reduction.⁵

The policy question is whether governments will move fast enough to embed these approaches, and the rights and authority of First Peoples, at the centre of Australia’s climate response.⁶

Unequal heat, extreme weather and health risks

Climate projections show rising average temperatures across all regions of Australia, with heatwaves becoming longer and hotter, particularly in northern and inland areas where many Aboriginal communities are located.²

In Darwin, for example, the annual number of days above 35°C could reach between 52 and 265 by 2090 depending on global emissions, a shift with profound implications for remote communities, outdoor workers and people with chronic disease.²

For Indigenous Australians, existing high rates of cardiovascular and respiratory disease, overcrowded and poorly insulated housing, unreliable power and limited access to cooling make dangerous heat far harder to survive safely.¹

Researchers have warned that hotter days and nights will increase heat stress and deaths in remote areas, and that conditions of poverty and poor diet reduce people’s ability to physiologically adapt to heat over time.⁸

More intense cyclones, extreme rainfall and floods, combined with sea level rise, are threatening coastal and island communities, damaging houses, roads and clinics, and forcing traumatic evacuations such as the prolonged displacement of the Kiwirrkurra community in Western Australia after flooding.²

Black Summer bushfires and more frequent fire weather are also destroying cultural sites, worsening air pollution and contributing to respiratory and cardiovascular illness in Aboriginal communities, especially where services are already stretched.²

Physical health: heat, smoke and infectious disease

The health impacts of climate change on Indigenous Australians are already visible in rising burdens of heat-related illness, injuries in disasters, smoke-related respiratory problems and climate-sensitive infectious diseases.¹

Studies suggest that diarrhoeal disease in places such as Alice Springs could increase with even moderate temperature rises, given the relationship between hot, dry conditions, overcrowding and inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure.¹

Scoping reviews highlight growing risks from mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, Ross River and Barmah Forest virus as warmer temperatures and changed rainfall create new breeding sites, particularly in northern and coastal regions already facing health service gaps.²

Other threats include melioidosis, leptospirosis and food-borne infections linked to flooded or contaminated water systems and unsafe food storage when power fails or supply chains break during fires and floods.²

Water insecurity is emerging as a critical pressure point, with some communities already reporting drying waterholes, concerns about aquifer recharge, and reliance on costly desalination in parts of the Torres Strait, all of which undermine safe drinking water and hygiene.²

Without rapid investment in safe housing, reliable energy, clean water and culturally safe primary care, these physical health impacts are likely to widen already unacceptable life expectancy gaps.⁴

Mental health, climate distress and social and emotional wellbeing

For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, health is understood holistically, encompassing body, mind, spirit, family, community and Country, so climate disruption resonates across multiple dimensions of social and emotional wellbeing.¹

First Nations psychologists and researchers describe climate change as part of a continuum of colonisation, contributing to intergenerational trauma alongside dispossession, racism and the ongoing loss of language and culture.⁹

International reviews of First Nations experiences point to heightened risks of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, suicide and emerging forms of “eco-grief” as people witness damage to cherished places, food systems and cultural practices.⁷

Aboriginal authors in fire- and flood‑affected regions have written about solastalgia, a sense of homesickness while still at home, as Country becomes unrecognisable due to repeated disasters and slow‑onset changes like prolonged drought.¹⁰

At the same time, research shows that caring for Country activities, including ranger programs and cultural land management, are linked with better mental health, lower levels of psychological distress and high life satisfaction, underscoring the protective power of cultural connections in a destabilising climate.⁵

Despite this, most mental health systems still rely on Western diagnostic frames that often fail to capture holistic social and emotional wellbeing, making it harder to design responses that reflect Indigenous worldviews of climate impacts.⁹

Country, culture and intergenerational knowledge

Country, encompassing land, waters, skies and more‑than‑human relatives, is central to identity, law, language and culture for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and its “health” is inseparable from human health.¹

When ecosystems are degraded by drought, fire, erosion or coral bleaching, or when people are prevented from visiting or managing sacred places, many describe feeling that Country is “sick” and that this sickness is mirrored in their own wellbeing.¹

In New South Wales, the 2019–20 fires scorched vast areas of Aboriginal cultural value, including rock art sites, while coastal erosion is threatening shell middens and burial grounds, undermining cultural responsibilities and connections to ancestors.³

Sea level rise and storm surges in the Torres Strait are already inundating graveyards and cultural sites and prompting fears of future relocation, raising profound questions about how to maintain cultural continuity when Country itself is reshaped or submerged.²

Disruption to seasonal cycles, species distribution and access to traditional foods also threatens the transmission of intergenerational knowledge, from hunting, fishing and burning practices to ceremony and language tied to specific places and ecologies.²

These emerging and intergenerational impacts mean that children and young people are inheriting not only a hotter, more volatile climate, but also a landscape of damaged Country that complicates their ability to learn, practise and evolve culture on their own terms.⁹

Food, water, livelihoods and inequality

Climate‑driven changes in rainfall, temperature and extreme events are destabilising food and water security for many Indigenous communities, both through direct ecological impacts and through disrupted supply chains.²

In arid regions, more severe drought and dust storms degrade country used for hunting and gathering, while in northern and coastal areas, cyclones and floods can wipe out crops, contaminate water and interrupt deliveries of affordable, healthy food for months.²

As local food sources become less reliable, communities are pushed towards store‑bought foods that are often expensive and of poorer nutritional quality, worsening diet‑related disease and increasing dependence on fragile logistics systems.²

Housing that is poorly designed for extreme heat, combined with high power costs and pre‑payment meters, has created “power poverty” in some remote areas, where families must choose between electricity, food and medicines, with serious health consequences.²

At the same time, climate threats to industries such as tourism, fishing, art and land management jeopardise livelihoods and local economies, while opportunities from renewable energy projects risk bypassing communities unless governance and benefit‑sharing arrangements are designed to uphold rights and self‑determination.²

Without structural change, climate change is likely to deepen existing gaps in income, employment, housing and health outcomes between Indigenous and non‑Indigenous Australians, turning a hazard into a driver of long‑term inequality.⁴

Systems, structures and the limits of adaptation

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ vulnerability to climate change is not rooted in culture, it is produced by structural and systemic inequities embedded in housing, health, emergency management, energy and land governance systems.⁴

Decades of under‑investment in basic services, combined with discriminatory policies and limited recognition of cultural authority, mean many communities enter the climate crisis with fewer resources, weaker infrastructure and less influence over decisions that affect their lives.⁴

Emergency management has often been done to, rather than with, Aboriginal communities, resulting in evacuation plans that ignore cultural obligations, language needs and the historical trauma of forced removals, and in some cases leaving communities without adequate preparedness at all.²

Health systems in remote regions face chronic staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure and growing climate‑related disruptions to power, water, transport and supply chains, with surveys suggesting some clinicians already view parts of the Northern Territory as becoming uninhabitable.²

Climate policy and risk assessments have historically sidelined Indigenous knowledge and data, with major scientific processes acknowledging that they struggle to integrate Indigenous and local knowledge into their findings, despite its centrality to understanding impacts on Country.²

These systemic patterns mean that adaptation is not only a technical challenge of better levees or clinics, but a political challenge of shifting power, recognising rights and addressing racism so that First Peoples can lead climate responses for their own communities.

Indigenous-led solutions and climate justice

Across the continent, Indigenous organisations, ranger groups and community‑controlled health and legal services are advancing climate solutions grounded in Country, culture and self‑determination.⁵

Programs such as Arnhem Land Fire Abatement use cultural burning to reduce late‑season wildfires and greenhouse gas emissions, generating income through carbon markets while protecting biodiversity and cultural sites, and strengthening local governance and employment.⁵

Indigenous‑led initiatives like the Lowitja Institute’s climate and health roundtable and the National First Peoples’ Gathering on Climate bring together Elders, youth and researchers to frame climate change as both a health emergency and an opportunity for redress and empowerment.²

New projects, including Indigenous‑led digital climate story platforms and co‑designed research under the National First Peoples Platform on Climate Change, are building Indigenous data sovereignty, documenting lived experience and shaping national and international climate processes.¹¹

Climate justice advocates insist there can be no climate justice without First Nations justice, arguing that restoring rights to land and water, investing in adequate housing and energy, and embedding Indigenous decision‑making in climate governance are prerequisites for fair adaptation.²

For policymakers, that means aligning the National Adaptation Plan and risk assessments with Indigenous‑led research, funding community‑controlled climate and health programs, and supporting Indigenous‑led litigation and rights‑based strategies that hold governments and corporations to account for climate harm.¹²

Immediate, emerging and intergenerational stakes

In the short term, the most visible impacts for Indigenous Australians are escalating heatwaves, smoke and disasters that strain physical and mental health, disrupt housing and livelihoods, and damage cultural sites and infrastructure.¹

Over the medium term, compounding shocks to water, food systems, labour markets and service delivery are likely to deepen health inequities, drive internal displacement and intensify climate distress as people navigate more frequent crises and slow‑onset losses.²

Looking across generations, permanent landscape changes, sea level rise and ecosystem collapse threaten to erode languages, ceremonies and knowledge tied to specific places, unless there is sustained support for cultural adaptation, repatriation of authority and on‑Country education led by Elders and communities.³

Indigenous‑led research emphasises that climate action which centres First Peoples’ rights, knowledges and leadership can simultaneously reduce emissions, strengthen resilience and heal some of the harms of colonisation, but that delay risks locking in avoidable suffering and loss.²

The choice now facing governments is whether to continue treating Indigenous communities as vulnerable recipients of emergency response, or to recognise them as rights holders and partners whose leadership is essential to any credible national climate strategy.⁶

References

1. Disproportionate burdens: the multidimensional impacts of climate change on the health of Indigenous Australians
2. Climate Change and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health: Discussion Paper (Lowitja Institute)
3. Climate change impacts on our cultural values (AdaptNSW)
4. Climate change, structural inequity and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
5. Caring for Country and health: Aboriginal land management for health and wellbeing
6. Climate justice and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
7. Indigenous mental health and climate change
8. Consequences for Indigenous Physical and Mental Health of climate change
9. Climate change, social and emotional wellbeing, and mental health for First Nations people
10. The impact of climate change on Country and community: an Aboriginal perspective on solastalgia and wellbeing
11. Indigenous-led Digital Climate Stories Platform (CSIRO)
12. Indigenous-led rights‑based approaches to climate litigation

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