Seasonal Climate Prediction and Adaptation Using Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Agriculture Systems in Southern Africa: A Review

Abstract

Erratic rainfall and increasing temperature is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious global problems affecting many sectors in the world. It is considered to be one of the most serious threats to sustainable development with adverse impact on environment, human health, food security, economic activities, natural resources and physical infrastructure. Southern Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change in the world, particularly because of widespread poverty, recurrent droughts, inequitable land distribution, over-dependence on rain-fed agriculture and low adaptive capacity. Yet rural farmers in southern Africa have managed to survive the vagaries of climate change over the years. This review reveals that these rural farmers can use indigenous knowledge to cope and adapt to climate change. Availability and access to scientific weather information to make cropping and other decisions at the local level remain key issues to usage of climatic data by rural farmers. On the other hand, indigenous knowledge is what rural farmers have been using but is also becoming unreliable due to climate change and variability. Integration of indigenous knowledge and scientific seasonal forecast seems to be a key possible thrust to reduce vulnerability, enhance resilience of rural farmers and increase their adaptive capacity.

The effects of 2015 El Nino on smallholder maize production in the transitional ecological zone of Ghana

“…The extension service intensified their contact with farmers after the rainfall had delayed and the early crops had been destroyed by late onset. The fact that the farmers who yielded to the information provided by the extension service and used drought resistant maize varieties sustained lower losses confirms observations of earlier works by Amegnaglo and Mensah-Bonsu (1999); Adesina and Elasha (2007); Fosu-Mensah et al (2012) and Jiri et al (2016), that the application and use of forecast information, science and technology is still limited among poor rural farmers, thereby affecting their productivity. This also implies that to build resilience against climate variability and climate change, smallholder farmers would have to embrace the use of climate information and technology as well as careful crop selection, as proposed by Owusu (2017).…”

Indigenous weather and climate forecasting knowledge among Afar pastoralists of north eastern Ethiopia: Role in adaptation to weather and climate variability

“…Variation in nature of the wind has been used by traditional societies as an indicator of weather change since time immemorial (Jiri et al 2016). The Afar observe the direction, strength, force and duration of winds that blow at different seasons and use these as sources of information for predicting weather.…”

“…Recognizing the unique values of both modern and traditional weather and climate forecasting systems, various researchers (Armatas et al 2016;Sanni et al 2012;Jiri et al 2016) opted for finding synergies that would enable the co-production of weather and climate forecasting knowledge by the indigenous and modern forecasting systems. However, apart from showing similarity and correlation between the two knowledge systems and giving the inevitable recommendations of 'integrating' indigenous and modern system, many researchers failed to show a practical approach for the synergetic use of the two knowledge systems.…”

Barriers Affecting Sustainable Agricultural Productivity of Smallholder Farmers in the Eastern Free State of South Africa

“…Previous studies have indicated that older farmers are less likely to adopt new sustainable practices and often rely on their indigenous knowledge to manage their farms [18,35,41]. However, their indigenous knowledge is becoming unreliable due to climate change and variability [42,43]. Therefore, integration of indigenous knowledge and scientific agricultural management practices seems to be a key for sustainable agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers [44].…”