Currently, determining global vulnerability to impacts of climate change is in the hands of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is the international body for assessing the science related to climate change, set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. In assessing impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation to climate change, a large array of methods and tools pertain to specific sectors, scales of analysis, and environmental and socioeconomic contexts are used but little or no attention has been given to how culture defines vulnerability (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). Instead, physical and biological indicators are used like size, extent, and position of margins of various elements of the cryosphere (sea ice, river and lake ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice cores, permafrost) is used as indicators of current climate change and Physiological and ecological indicators of species distributions (i.e., where species can survive and reproduce) and the timing of their life cycles. The vulnerability index to climate change generated in this study will identify which ethnic group is the most
vulnerable to climate change and what cultural characteristics plays a major role of their vulnerability. Further, the

results will provide input to policy makers in the implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies.