Integrating indigenous knowledge in Climate Risk Management in support of Community Based Adaptation

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Integrating indigenous knowledge in Climate Risk
Management in support of Community Based
Adaptation

• Maria Onyango Gilbert O Ouma

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Background

• Climate is closely linked to sustainability of
  community livelihoods and lives
• Extreme climate variabilities such as floods and
  droughts often have far reaching environmental,
  health and socio-economic impacts in many
  developing countries

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• To counter this trend, there is need to have in
  place efficient and realistic climate risk
  reduction strategies, including availability of
  effective early warning systems to enhance the
  planning efforts to
• Reduce the negative impacts
• Take full advantage of positive impacts
• Help in adaptation to climate change

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• Reducing this vulnerability calls for
  community-based adaptation through empowering
  local communities to take action on their
  vulnerability to climate variability and change

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• From a development point of view, wider access to
  knowledge and information will help reduce
  climate risks and inequalities within a community
  by
• Opening up opportunities for vulnerable members
  (women and youth) to benefit from integrated
  climate knowledge and strategies for sustainable
  use, management and conservation of biodiversity

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Indigenous Knowledge

• Indigenous knowledge (IK) may be defined as an
  ancient, communal, holistic and spiritual
  knowledge that encompasses every aspect of human
  existence (Brascoupé and Mann, 2001)
• Local communities through accumulated IK gained
  from generation to generation, knew
• Patterns of weather
• How and when local natural disasters occur
• When they were likely to recur
• How to plan to cope with their impacts on the
  natural environment, livelihoods, and lives

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• In Africa, many communities have used IK as a
  critical knowledge base and survival tool for
  adapting to extreme climate events and other
  natural hazards
• They have developed techniques and strategies for
  forecasting, and managing climate variability
  including coping mechanisms to respond to both
  normal and harsh conditions of their local
  environments
• This forecasting depends on observation of the
  natural environment including
• Flora
• Fauna
• Stars

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Western Climate Science

• Western climate science, on the other hand, uses
  the knowledge of the physics of the atmosphere to
  predict the most probable future weather/climate
  scenario
• The two knowledge bases (IK and Western climate
  Science) are very different but both try to solve
  the same problems

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Differences
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Observations
Laboratories
FORECAST
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Products

• The western science and technology have advanced
  at fast pace and the western climate science
  community also continues to improve on climate
  tools for climate
• Observation
• Monitoring
• Prediction
• To date the climate community can, for example be
  able to provide El-Niño and related forecasts
  sometimes with lead times of over three months
• However, there have been complaints from the
  users
• language - interpretation of the products
• hampering usefulness of the products

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• Most of the societies are still faithful to IK
  for climate risks management even when most of
  them agree that the patterns of the local climate
  seem to be changing
• There is therefore urgent need to integrate
  indigenous climate risk reduction strategies with
  western climate information, in order to provide
  the local communities with new tools for coping
  with the current climate extremes. be able to
  adapt to future climate changes, and for greater
  impacts

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The Project

• There is still a gap in reducing vulnerability in
  communities despite availability of good western
  science and IK forecasts
• There is a realization that merging the two
  sources of information may lead to better climate
  risk management and hence promote poverty
  reduction and sustainable development

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• Led to the formulation of the project
  Integrating indigenous knowledge in Climate Risk
  Management in support of Community Based
  Adaptation
• Due to the multidisciplinary nature of climate
  change, the project team is also multidisciplinary

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• NGANYI community
• ICPAC
• KMD
• KIPI
• NMK (Kisumu)
• GLUK

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Objectives

• The general objective of this project is to
  enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities
  to the negative impacts of climate variability
  and adapt to climate change through integration
  of indigenous knowledge (IK) and western climate
  risk management science

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Specific Objectives

• Demystify Nganyi community IK and develop
  sustainable framework for integrating IK and
  western climate risk science
• Gender Analysis roles in access, control and
  management of natural resources including climate
  risk management

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• Develop and improve the packaging and
  communication of IK integrated seasonal climate
  forecasts.
• Investigate the potential impacts of future
  climate changes on the IK systems
• Develop curriculum that can be used to Integrate
  IK and western science disaster risk reduction

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Demystification

• Getting the TWO knowledge bases sharing
  information
• Property rights - KIPI
• Data collection

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Gender Analysis

• Preliminary results show that the women
• have heavier workloads
• have higher illiteracy levels
• Have limited control over natural resources
  including getting into the observatories
• Less access to information
• Project therefore focused on capacity building
  for women and youth through activity-based group
  formation and income generation

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Integrated forecasts

• Two seasons covered
• Results of 1st season qualitatively validated
  through information given by the community at the
  2nd workshop
• Results were surprisingly good the community
  concurred that the forecast was accurate
• This was surprising because most of the comments
  from the other parts of the country suggested
  that the forecast was wrong
• Integration of IK could have better captured
  local effects

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• The major breakthrough for the moment is the
  dissemination aspect
• Incorporating govt officers from different
  sectors, we were able to deliver the message in
  practical, usable terms not so much
  meteorological terms!

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Other Activities

• Climate scenarios are currently being run for
  2030, 2050 2080 using Precis
• The development of curriculum is ongoing
• Draft modern science curricula have been
  sourced, collation ongoing
• Draft IK curriculum has been developed
• Integration will be done and result presented to
  a group of experts for validation