Climate change is erasing Indigenous languages along with biodiversity
A warming world isn’t just changing landscapes—it’s stripping away words. The Sámi people of northern Scandinavia, whose language holds an intricate vocabulary for snow and reindeer, are watching their words vanish alongside their environment.
- As the Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, reindeer herders struggle with shifting landscapes that make traditional Sámi terms obsolete. Words describing snow, grazing conditions and reindeer behaviors are disappearing as these conditions become rare.
- Scientists see a global pattern: where biodiversity declines, so do languages. Many Indigenous languages hold ecological knowledge, and when communities are forced from their land, that knowledge fades.
- UNESCO classifies all nine Sámi languages as endangered. Sweden and Finland have cut funding for language preservation, accelerating the loss.
Read more: Colonialism, the climate crisis, and the need to center Indigenous voices
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