One of those diseases is diarrhea, which health officials estimate kills about one million young children every year.

“The World Health Organization is predicting that most of the climate-related health burden is going to be due to diarrheal disease and malnutrition. And both of those are water issues. So that’s why we started studying the topic,” said Harper.

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The Uganda project is part of what’s called the Indigenous Health Adaptation to Climate Change Project. It studies the effects of rising temperatures in Uganda, Canada and Peru.

Harper said, “Health of indigenous people is generally an under-researched area. So often times, the quality of health data that we have on indigenous populations is not of as high a quality and it’s not as long-term data sets compared to non-indigenous communities in the same country.”

The Batwa people helped in the preliminary research. They were given digital cameras and taught how to use them. The Batwa then took pictures of how their environment has been affected by climate change and discussed their findings with researchers. They reported increased periods of heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures throughout the year.

One of the ideas being considered to help the Batwa is to set up a community radio station broadcasting in the local language. Topics would include health, weather conditions, etc. The Batwa have been described as “conservation refugees.” The Ugandan government relocated them from their forest homeland to make a national park to protect silverback gorillas.