**5. Conclusions**

Blaming 'climate change', which is an abstract notion without easily identifiable actors, often is a politically more convenient and less dangerous strategy than looking more closely at the impacts of specific forms of unsustainable resource use and the people or official agencies who are responsible for them. Through the public campaigns to increase awareness about climate change, the wide media attention for this topic, and the attention that many NGOs are paying to it, climate change has become an often used theme in the discourse and rhetoric about environmental changes that is nowadays also often used by indigenous peoples in the context of Southeast Asia [12].

However, as we have seen above, the way climate change manifests itself is not the same across the region. Some areas experience less rainfall, while other areas experience more rainfall. Variation in temperature also varies. Also on top of that, in some cases, as we have seen in the case of Mentawai, geological phenomena like subsidence, or in other cases earthquakes or tsunamis, have equally had a large impact on the environmental conditions in which these indigenous peoples have survived so far and that they intend to continue to live in for the future.

Most importantly, based on our experiences among these communities, we argue that the main causes of current and past environmental change and its serious impacts on livelihoods and wellbeing, should be attributed to the processes of deforestation and land conversion that we have described in the case studies. Interventions that will address these pressing issues will go a long way in making forest-dwelling indigenous communities more resilient towards present and future impacts of climate change. An awareness and appreciation of the wealth of their ecological knowledge, while including their practical skills, can be of great value in the design and the implementation of such interventions.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization G.A.P. and T.M., methodology, G.A.P. and T.M., formal analysis, G.A.P. and T.M., resources, G.A.P. and T.M., writing G.A.P. and T.M., visualization, G.A.P. and T.M. Both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The research on which this article is based was funded by various research projects mainly through Leiden University. In addition, research activities took place within the context of a number of conservation and development projects. These include The Siberut Project of Survival International and the Junior Expert Program (JEP) both funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Indonesia Biodiversity Project funded by the Asian Development Bank, the Sebangau Project funded by WWF Netherlands, and the Indigenous Participation in Protected Area Management Project funded by the Netherlands Committee of Indigenous Peoples (NCIV).

**Acknowledgments:** This paper is based on fieldwork by both authors in various periods and in the context of a number of research or conservation projects, mainly through Leiden University. The authors would like to thank three of their students, all financed by the Louwes Fund for Research on Water and Food through Leiden University, who have conducted fieldwork among the communities mentioned. Mayo Buenafe–Ze has worked among the Agta in the Philippines, Wardani Ekoningtyas did fieldwork among the Orang Rimba, while Darmanto studied the Mentawaians of Siberut.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
