Climate change and language endangerment: a systematic review in tropical context

As aggressive efforts are ongoing to globally enhance climate resilience for tropical climate countries, it is crucial for coastal communities (like fishermen), local authorities, and policymakers to understand the effects of climate change on the evolution, survival, and the endangerment of languages. The study sought to evaluate the existing knowledge on how climate change affects language development, survival, and the risk of endangerment. Adhering to ROSES guidelines, we conducted a systematic literature review of 37 articles after excluding several others. Seven themes were identified based on the thematic analysis: (i) indigenous language, dialects & cultures; (ii) migration; (iii) terminology & framing; (iv) linguistic barriers to climate info; (v) language discrimination; (vi) language resilience & adaptation; and (vii) language-related medical conditions. Results revealed that Indigenous languages carry generations of environmental knowledge, guiding sustainable land use, biodiversity conservation, and disaster preparedness. This challenges dominant climate research paradigms by emphasizing that ecological knowledge is embedded in language. Extreme heat conditions, poorer air quality, etc., can result in medical conditions in humans that eventually will lead to developmental speech & language disorders. We argue on the terms that climate change is anthropogenic and the impacts that it brings towards indigenous languages, dialects, and cultures have been long foreseen before it happened.