Learning from the experts: A case study of adaptation to change in the context of Mapuche People

The effects of climate change can result in changes to livelihoods, human settlements, land use patterns and tenure systems. These changes and variations will demand greater resilience and adaptive capacity from local resource users. Moreover, climate change impacts coupled with current stresses on the environment from past human land use, development, and pollution threaten the survival and recovery of some ecosystems. Particularly in Chile, where land tenure and governance are unclear and conflicts remain active across the ancestral territories of Indigenous communities, a change in policy is definitely necessary from a climate change development point of view. So, in this context, this study is collaborating with Mapuche communities to understand how people with a livelihood affected by the constant conflict with forest companies, and other private landholders, adapt to the impacts of a changing climate in a way to secure their survival and their culture.