A recent study is shining a light on the disparities in which communities in Canada will be hardest hit by climate change.
The study, published last month in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science and led by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, found that Indigenous communities are at a higher risk of climate change-induced flooding because of pre-existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities.
Factors influencing said vulnerabilities, as listed by the researchers, include the legacy of colonization, race and ethnicity, income, built environment, elderly populations, education, occupations, family structures and access to resources.
Researchers conducted an analysis of flood hazard data, including rates of exposure to flooding in residential areas and socioeconomic data for the assessment of flood risk for Indigenous communities living on 985 reserve lands across more than 3000 census subdivisions.
The data provided critical information to support risk-management planning for Indigenous communities, “especially under accelerating climate change,” according to a news release.
The study found that 81 per cent of the 985 Indigenous land reserves have some flooding exposure that impacted either the population or residential properties, and that 98.3 per cent of the 809 populated Indigenous reserve areas identified by the census were exposed to some form of flood hazard.
The flooding risk was separated into three categories: “fluvial,” which refers to rivers and ice jams, “pluvial,” which refers to intense rain which causes flooding, or “coastal,” which refers to storm surge, as determined by risk management and flood modelling firm JBA Risk Management.
The flood maps created by the firm are widely used in the Canadian insurance market and are national in scope, giving the study a fuller data pool.
And while the analysis found that residential property-level flood exposure is similar between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, the “socioeconomic vulnerability is higher on reserve lands,” which researchers say confirms that the overall risk facing Indigenous communities is higher.
At the provincial level, the study found that Indigenous Peoples in Prince Edward Island had the highest flood exposure, while Manitoba had the highest percentage of total population exposed to 100-year flood hazards at 49.8 per cent, with B.C. second.
More than 80 per cent of on-reserve residential properties in Alberta are exposed to flooding, the highest proportion out of all provinces and territories.
“This is a first attempt in Canada to assess place-based social vulnerability and flood exposure for Indigenous populations at a national level,” said lead study author Liton Chakraborty in the release. “The study contributes to knowledge about socioeconomic factors that contribute to flood risk among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples living on reserve.”
The researchers said that in their analysis there were considerable gaps in available data that limited flood risk assessment in Canada, such as geography, topography and local data on flood risk, and that the federal government should prioritize resources for identifying flood exposure in Indigenous communities.
