STOCKHOLM, 2 June 2022 - Together with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, UNIDO Director General Gerd Müller met Anders Oskal and Inger Anita Smuk, respectively Secretary General and Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, on the margins of the Stockholm+50 event.

The Association of World Reindeer Herders represents over 20 indigenous reindeer peoples and about 100,000 reindeer herders in nine different national states.

The Arctic, where most reindeer herders live, is warming not twice as quickly as the rest of the world, as previously believed, but four times as fast, according to a recent paper published in Science. Warmer than average temperatures mean the snow turns to rain, which in turn freezes on the ground, trapping lichen under the ice, so the reindeer cannot reach it. Thick snowfall, which also happens more often, adds to the problems by making it impossible for the animals to find the lichen by smell. These freeze-thaw and rain-on-snow events happen naturally in the Arctic, but they are now happening more often and on a larger scale.

Indigenous population groups worldwide are hit particularly hard by climate change.