Enhancing climate governance through indigenous knowledge: Case in sustainability science

Abstract

The current tempo of climate change strategies puts the notion of sustainability in question. In this philosophy, mitigation and adaptation strategies ought to be appropriate to the sectors and communities that are targeted. There is a growing realisation that the effectiveness of both strategies hinges on climate governance, which also informs their sustainability. The application of the climate governance concept by the technocratic divide (policymakers and climate practitioners) to communities facing climate change impacts, however, is still a poorly developed field, despite extensive treatment by academia. By drawing heavily from conceptual and analytical review of scholarship on the utility of indigenous knowledge (IK) in climate science, these authors argue that IK can be deployed in the practice of climate governance. It reveals that the merits of such a deployment lie in the understanding that the tenets of IK and climate governance overlap and are complementary. This is exhibited by examining the conceptual, empirical and sustainability strands of the climate governance-IK nexus. In the milieu of climate change problems, it is argued that the basic elements of climate governance, where actions are informed by the principles of decentralisation and autonomy; accountability and transparency; responsiveness and flexibility; and participation and inclusion, can be pragmatic particularly to communities who have been religiously observing changes in their environment. Therefore, it becomes necessary to invigorate the participation of communities, with their IK, in designing climate change interventions, which in this view can be a means to attain the objectives of climate governance.

Strategies for Sustainable Use of Indigenous Cattle Genetic Resources in Southern Africa

“…This is because women spend more of their income earnings on the household food and nutrition compared to men [88]. In that regard, an engendered approach that takes note of local circumstances, existing adaptive IK, and resilient technologies for use as a bulwark for adaptation against the effects of a changing and increasingly variable climate [90] could result in sustainable use of indigenous cattle. The youth generally lack interest in cattle farming as they consider it dirty, laborious, and unrewarding [91].…”

Urban Sustainability and Resilience Governance: Review from The Perspective of Climate Change Adaptation And Disaster Risk Reduction

“…Technological complexity must be accompanied by increased governance capacity (Jiang et al, 2018). Governance in the context of sustainability must be aligned with local situations and community needs so as not to produce pragmatic policies and strategies (Chanza & De Wit, 2016). Various disaster management policies at all levels state the importance of community participation in decision-making.…”

A survey of governance approaches to ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction: Current gaps and future directions

“…Theory Sources Governance of socio-ecological systems and resilience [14,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Adaptive governance [14,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Climate change and risk governance [34][35][36][37] Transformative governance [38][39][40] Ecological economics [22,41] Building on theories of SES and resilience, the concept of adaptive governance focuses on learning and knowledge co-production within governance systems and in their interventions to adapt to external shocks [27,32,33]. However, significant challenges for adaptive governance have been identified, including the presence of institutional and legal barriers in ecosystem-based adaptation [29].…”

“…Some theories apply adaptive governance to climate change [36] and risk [34]. Both approaches build upon previous work on SES and argues that in order to govern climate change and to cope with emerging risks, policy-makers must embrace the notion of participation among stakeholders [26].…”