THIS week the country ends a week of prayer for rains.
Interestingly churches were at the forefront in leading the prayers, and this is despite our having masvikiro enyika and a known rain-making shrine, the Njelele in the Matobo Hills.
The role of churches-‘only’ in rain-making ceremonies has been questioned by African traditional believers who feel the mushrooming of these fly-by-night churches, tsikamutandas and prophets who disregard African religion is the root cause of some of these recurring droughts.
Last Sunday, Christians led by Acting President Phelekezela Mphoko thronged a Family of God Church in Bulawayo city centre to pray for rains. Simultaneously sounds of mbira and drums could be heard in the Matobo Hills where traditionalists had gathered for a similar ritual.
Elderly men and women braved the sweltering heat as they danced to Mwari to open up the heavens. True to their pleas, the heavens opened up and it rained in Bulawayo. I stood in awe as both groupings claimed credit for the rains.
The last issue of The Patriot had a very interesting article by Chakamwe Chakamwe which buttresses this fact. I have also previously written extensively on the need for mukwerera and how certain tribes carry out this age-old tradition.
However, the purpose of this article is to provoke thought around traditional knowledge systems of indigenous people and climate change which is believed to be the major cause of droughts and the extreme weather conditions we experience today.
Although indigenous peoples’ ‘low-carbon’ traditional ways of life have contributed little to climate change, indigenous peoples are the most adversely affected by it. This is largely a result of their historic dependence on local biological diversity, ecosystem services and cultural landscapes as a source of sustenance and well-being.
The very identity of indigenous peoples is inextricably linked to their lands, which are located predominantly at the socio-ecological margins of human habitation — such as small islands, tropical forests, high-altitude zones, coasts, desert margins and the circumpolar Arctic. Here at these margins, the consequences of climate change include effects on agriculture, pastoralism, fishing, hunting and gathering as well as other subsistence activities that include access to water.
Fishermen have talked about changes in fish catches that are becoming bad, but they don’t understand the connections to climate change.
Indigenous peoples, however, are not mere victims of climate change. Comprising only four percent of the world’s population (between 250 to 300 million people), they utilise 22 percent of the world’s land surface. In doing so, they maintain 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85 percent of the world’s protected areas. Indigenous lands also contain hundreds of gigatons of carbon — a recognition that is gradually dawning on industrialised countries that seek to secure significant carbon stocks in an effort to mitigate climate change.
With collective knowledge of the land, sky and water, these people are excellent observers and interpreters of change in the environment. The ensuing community-based and collectively-held knowledge offers valuable insights, complementing scientific data with chronological and landscape-specific precision and detail that is critical for verifying climate models and evaluating climate change scenarios developed by scientists at much broader spatial and temporal scale.
Moreover, indigenous knowledge provides a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation and mitigatory actions that sustain resilience of socio-ecological systems at the interconnected local, regional and global scales.
While unmitigated climate change poses a growing threat to the survival of indigenous people, more often than not they continue to be excluded from the global processes of decision and policy-making, such as official UN climate negotiations, that are defining their future. After limited, some would say failed, efforts at previous major conferences over the last two decades, starting with Rio, then Kyoto, then Copenhagen and the recent Paris meeting, it is time some recognition is given to the role of indigenous people’s contributions to climate change mitigation.
The consequences of such marginalisation are that many globally sanctioned programmes aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change — such as mega-dam projects constructed under the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) framework — further exacerbate the direct impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples, undermining their livelihoods even more.
In addition, poorly designed and implemented climate change adaptation programmes, for example, Reducing Emissions, Deforestation and Degradation (REDD/REDD) initiatives, often weaken the customary rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and natural resources, impairing their resilience. Indigenous peoples are facing these escalating pressures at a time when their cultures and livelihoods are already exposed to the significant stress of accelerated natural resource development in their traditional territories, due to trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Indigenous knowledge, although new to climate science, has been long recognised as a key source of information and insight in domains such as agro forestry, traditional medicine, biodiversity conservation, customary resource management, impact assessment and natural disaster preparedness and response. Indigenous peoples and rural populations are keen observers of their natural environments.
Indigenous observations and interpretations of meteorological phenomena are at a much finer scale, have considerable temporal depth and highlight elements that may be marginal or even new to scientists. They focus on elements of significance for local livelihoods, security and well-being and are thus essential for adaptation.
Indigenous peoples’ observations contribute importantly to advancing climate science, by ensuring that assessments of climate change impacts and policies for climate change adaptation are meaningful and applicable at the local level.
Indigenous responses to climate variation typically involve changes to livelihood practices and other socio-economic adjustments. Strategies such as engaging in multiple livelihood activities and maintaining a diversity of plant varieties and animal races provide a low-risk buffer in uncertain weather environments.
The planting of finger millet, sorghum and other drought resistant crops has been considered a labour-intensive exercise by many modern farmers, yet these crops have provided enough food and sustained families in times of drought.
In some rural setups like Binga, every household has a small field reserved for planting these traditional crops, as these are important in times of drought and are also used to brew traditional beer at traditional ceremonies such as mukwerera, lwiindi, gonde and others.
The ability to access multiple resources and rely on different modalities of land use contributes to their capacities to manage local-level climate change. Traditional systems of governance and social networks improve the ability to collectively manage diversity and share resources, while dissipating shocks and reinforcing innovative capacities.
Resilience in the face of change is embedded in indigenous knowledge and know-how, diversified resources and livelihoods, social institutions and network as well as cultural values and attitudes. Policy responses to climate change should therefore support and enhance indigenous resilience. It is unfortunate, however, that many government policies limit options and reduce choices, thereby constraining, restricting and undermining indigenous peoples’ efforts to adapt.
This is reflected in counterproductive policies, including those leading to increased sedentarisation, restricted access to traditional territories, substitution of traditional livelihoods, impoverished crop or herd diversity, reduced harvesting opportunities and erosion of the transmission of indigenous knowledge, values and attitudes.