Maria Onyango & Gilbert O Ouma

Integrating indigenous knowledge in Climate Risk Management in support of

Community Based Adaptation

Maria Onyango & Gilbert O Ouma

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

• 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

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

• 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

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

• 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

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

DifferencesFactor Western

Science Indigenou

s Knowledge

How approached

Compartmental

Holistic

How communicated

Written Oral

How taught Lectures, theories

Observations, experience

How explained Theory, “value free”

Spiritual, social values

Observations

Laboratories

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

• 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

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

• 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

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

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

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

• 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

Demystification• Getting the TWO knowledge

bases sharing information• Property rights - KIPI• Data collection

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

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

• 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!

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