Adaptation measures to sustain indigenous practices and the use of indigenous knowledge systems to adapt to climate change in Mutoko rural district of Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article examines adaptation measures used to sustain indigenous practices and the use of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) to adapt to climate change in Mutoko rural district of Zimbabwe. Community-based adaptation is able to reduce the vulnerability as well as improve the resilience of the local people to climatic variability and change. Subsistence farmers have always adopted adaptive strategies to some of these changes over the years. As such, the adoption of indigenous practices will significantly help rural community members to adapt to climate change. This study employed a qualitative method and an exploratory design, and the results are derived from 30 purposively selected in-depth interviews. The study discovered that there are numerous measures used to adapt to climate change and subsequently to sustain indigenous practices. The study also found that the community no longer grows maize in large quantities, having shifted to millet and sorghum in order to adapt to climate change. The community also provided various strategies to adapt to climate change. These strategies include mulching, creating large storage houses for produce and creating temporary walls on riverbanks in order to store water when the rivers dry up. This study concludes that climate change adaptation measures employed by the community have significantly helped them to sustain their indigenous practices in many ways. Also, the use of IKS, through activities such as crop type change from maize to traditional millet and sorghum (which facilitates traditional lifestyle and activities), re-establishes the community’s indigenous practices since they are made to observe the practices of yesteryear.

Climate change and variability perceptions in Ga-Dikgale community in Limpopo Province, South Africa

“…Bhusal (2009) attests to this observation that stressful climatic extremes leave local communities searching for solutions to minimise climatic and social threats to their livelihood (Smith and Reynolds, 2005;Brohan et al, 2006;Caesar and Alexander, 2006). In local communities, community members have developed indigenous and culture-based mechanisms of coping with harsh weather conditions, which negatively affect their subsistence economies, cultural rituals and festivals, health conditions and the natural environment from which they derive their livelihood (IPCC, 2007;Jianchu et al, 2007;Mugambiwa, 2018).…”

Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Seasonal Calendars in the Context of Climate Change: A Case Study from China

“…Indigenous peoples worldwide use cues from nature to carry out seasonal activities, according to studies from different regions [18,27,48]. The management of annual activities is based on long experiences of the aboriginal communities [11,28]. David-Chavez and Gavin [49] developed indicators for assessing responsible community engagement and identified patterns in levels of community engagement.…”

“…Furthermore, climate change threatens human and social development by altering customary means of livelihood, forceful migration and finally traditional knowledge loss [8,9]. Indigenous communities are active in a broad range of ecosystems [1], they can provide valuable information about social-ecological systems, climatic change, and traditional way of adapting to changes in the place where scientific data is scarce [10,11]. Indigenous people understand and respond to climate change in creative ways, as they find solutions that may help society at large cope with approaching changes based on traditional knowledge and new technologies [2,12,13].…”

“…Accordingly, such knowledge can help assess how the socio-cultural values of indigenous communities inform environmental management decisions [18]. Studies of indigenous communities in Africa [11,21], Asia [22,23], Australia [20], and South [18,24] and North America [25] all revealed that indigenous communities have utilized various ecological indicators and approaches based on TEK to predict weather conditions, interpret implications and assess their ecosystems and available resources [26]. Based on their TEK, indigenous people have shifted their crop type to adapt to climate change [11].…”

“…Most of the researches on adaptation to climate change have been focused on tropics and lowland (e.g., Ghana, Zimbabwe and Brazil) [11,21,27]. Recently, documenting the traditional knowledge of aboriginal mountainous communities (e.g., alpine Himalaya region, Ethiopia and Tanzania) [15,[28][29][30] was considered an essential task.…”