A farmer harvests rice on a paddy field in Chau Khe village, outside Hanoi, November 10, 2011.
Indigenous communities around the world are highly vulnerable to
climate change but instead of seeing them as victims, policy-makers
should tap into their centuries-old knowledge of adapting to extreme
weather patterns, aid workers say.
In Iran, which has some 700 nomadic tribes, pastoralists have been
successfully adapting to climate fluctuations for 12,000 years,
development expert Catherine Razavi told an international conference on
climate change.
In recent years they have adjusted their migration patterns and
switched to more drought resistant strains of livestock, said Razavi who
is executive director of Iran’s Center for Sustainable Development (CENESTA).
In central Iran, where much pastureland has been destroyed by
drought, she said pastoralists were now planting drought tolerant crops
on previous grazing land. These crops include pistachios and fodder
barley which can be used to feed livestock.
The story of Iran’s nomads was highlighted during the sixth International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change, hosted in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
Indigenous communities are vulnerable to climate change partly
because they are marginalised and poor and have little access to
information and services.
But far from watching passively as their ancestral lands and
traditions are threatened by climate-related hazards, many such
communities are actively adapting to new conditions, the conference
heard.
In Bac Kan province, a few hours north of Hanoi, nearly 80 percent of
the inhabitants are ethnic minorities. They are now cultivating drought
resistant rice, banana and green bean varieties as well as cold
resistant potato.
They have also adapted their farming techniques, for example,
intercropping banana and local ginger, said Tran Van Dien from Thai
Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry.
Intercropping improves a farmer's chances of getting at least one good crop and can improve soil quality.
In parts of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines,
indigenous farmers have introduced both upland rice and lowland rice at
the same time to reduce the risk of crop failure from drought or floods,
according to Nasiri Sabiah of the Malaysian community organisation PACOS Trust. Lowland rice is generally grown in flooded paddies. Upland rice is more drought tolerant.
CENTURIES OF KNOWLEDGE
"Climatic changes are now taking place on a scale, severity and
frequency beyond living memory," said CENESTA’s Razavi, showing a photo
of a mountain with almost no snow cover. “We’ve never, never seen (this)
mountain without snow before these (last) few years,” she told AlertNet
during the conference which finished on Sunday.
Another picture showed a dried, cracked waterbed. It used to be the
biggest river in Iran, she said, before climate change and ill-conceived
dams and agricultural projects severely reduced ground and surface
water.
Razavi said indigenous communities had inherited techniques from
their ancestors for predicting weather patterns and hazards and were
well-versed in monitoring and assessing how many livestock their
pasturelands could support in a given year.
“We believe and we work really hard to explain to the government that some of the indigenous practices are applicable (to other places) and are worth learning (from),” she said, adding that CENESTA has been observing the practices of pastoralists for three decades.
“We believe and we work really hard to explain to the government that some of the indigenous practices are applicable (to other places) and are worth learning (from),” she said, adding that CENESTA has been observing the practices of pastoralists for three decades.
Razavi said the Iranian government was wrong to try to get the
country’s pastoralists to settle in one place. They have adapted to
climate change for the past 12,000 years and should be allowed to
continue to do so, she added.
Other panellists in the discussion on indigenous communities said there was also a need to consult young people.
Maxwell Mkondiwa from the University of Malawi said while half the
country’s population was under 18, young people were rarely consulted on
climate policy. The increase in formal education and lack of
documentation also meant young people were losing traditional knowledge.
Mkondiwa said the university had recently launched an initiative for
young scientists to research and document indigenous knowledge.
By Thin Lei Win@Trust.org Alertnet
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