Traditional Knowledge and Climate Change: Indigenous Peoples perspectives on Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture

Prasanna K. L. Kumar, Dayakar P., Ali. Sk. Z.

Agri Biotech Foundation, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad

Abstract: Climate change is a determining phenomenon for the growth of world economy. The effects of climate change is indiscriminative and made developing economies and under developed economies more vulnerable to it, in spite of their relatively less causal influence to climate change. Though the climate change is perceived as a limiting factor for economic growth of the nations, it has been contributing for scientific knowledge development through its role as a stimulator for human cognizance. To improve the adaptive capacity of the people in current climatic conditions we need to look back to our ancestors cultural and social life styles. Though the modern societies are perceived as climate change inducers, the impact of climate change is more severe on indigenous people, since the latter are mainly dependent on the nature for their sustenance without any modern technological assistance. The lessons learnt from the Indigenous communities about their coping strategies to climate change will contribute for the emergence of new platform which facilitate to convergence of modern science with indigenous knowledge for the development of climate change coping strategies.

Key words: Indigenous peoples knowledge, Climate change, Coping strategies

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Change in earths climate is a natural phenomenon and hence living forms were given a chance to adapt for their survival since their origin on this earth. In the history, our globe had passed through phenomenal stages from Hadean Era, i.e. 4.5-3.8 billion B. C., to Holocene Epoch, i. e. 12,000- present century (Stanley 2005). The climate transition from ice age state to warming state accused for extinction of several species and exponential growth of other species (Gradstein, Ogg et al. 2004). Those which were endowed with the ability to adapt according to climatic variation have sustained to place their foot prints in this modern climatic condition while others have vanished. The ability to adapt to certain natural condition has its limits, no living form would transform its biological activities beyond that limits to survive climatic variations (Lunine 2013). Up to human civilization period climatic variations were induced by endogenous forces of the nature, there after the phenomenon of climatic variations coupled with natural and human interventions. Despite the natural causes for climatic variations, unjudicial usage of natural resources by modern society, for their own wellbeing, resulted as a major threat for living hood on this earth (Kasting and Howard 2006). Though the modern societies are perceived as climate change inducers the impact of climate change is more severe on indigenous people, since the latter are mainly dependent on the nature for their sustenance without any modern technological assistance. Indigenous people have been practicing adaptation activities, which were passed on from generation to generation intertwined with culture, for ages and now they were forced to develop new strategies to cope with severity of the climate variations (Tsosie 2007). In this paper we tried to present indigenous peoples perspectives on climate change coping mechanisms. On the outset cognitive ability of the human beings enable them to develop contingent survival strategies to cope with climate variations (Grothmann and Patt 2005). The process of

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evolution of coping strategies is a continuous process in which nature plays a deterministic role and acts as a source for guidance, monitoring and evaluating the human intelligence. Indigenous people have developed various coping strategies with the help of their immense knowledge on local natural resources and local environment (Patt and Schrter 2008). These strategies are evolved through cultural practices of the indigenous communities and the efficacy of the strategies varies across communities who were geographically scattered form each other. The knowledge about coping strategies is passed on from one generation to other through folklore form and cultural practices (Heyd 2012). The strategies developed by the indigenous people are regional specific and multitudinous in nature. Many of these strategies are time tested and evolved outside the scope of scientific revolution. Unlike scientific solutions, indigenous strategies are framed on the basis of trust on accumulated experiences of indigenous community, as a whole, with local environment and hence lacking in generality (GRENIER 1998). Since the indigenous strategies are regional, community and individual specific, for example indigenous knowledge on irrigation practices, soil conservation, varieties development, plant protection, agronomical practices, sociocultural and administrative initiates (Smit and Skinner 2002). For instance indigenous knowledge on soil conservation practices in climatic stress periods follows as planting of creepers to cover soil, preparation land in ridge pattern in hilly slopes to escape from soil erosion due to rain water, mangroves planting across the borders of landscape of sea shore to prevent soil erosion from sea water, soil transformation in uncultivable fields with fertile soil, micro climate modification with organic wastages like drenching of certain plants in paddy land preparation, covering dykes with bamboo sheet to prevent soil erosion form constants tidal water current, soil organic matter enhancement with the

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application of dung and extracts of animals, digging of pits to be filled with manure to spread the nutrients in to land layers with the help of saprophytic creatures which feed on the available organic matter in the pits. These strategies signify the importance of sons of soils expertise in utilizing available resources in creative way to find a solution for the problems (2003, 2006, Jadeja, Odedra et al. 2006, Tsosie 2007, Anandaraja, Rathakrishnan et al. 2008, Lal and Verma 2008, Lohani, Rajbhandari et al. 2008, Patt and Schrter 2008, Balemie 2011, Sethi, Sundaray et al. 2011, Lekshmi and Dineshbabu 2013).

Indigenous people have developed a repository of knowledge on irrigation practices in climatic stress periods, such as constructing of micro irrigation facilities like channeling rain and drainages, dwelling pits in the field to capture surface water flow, water extraction from ponds and wells on full moon day, usage of rain water harvest constructions like continuous hurdles in steep slope, gravel and sand floor small ponds, moisture conservation tillage, etc. implies that indigenous people have been critically observing the relationships among the geographical factors like soil types, rain flow patterns, rain ground water conversion, underground water flow process and seasonal variation in surface and ground water levels (Smithers and BlayPalmer 2001, Stigter, Dawei et al. 2005, Borthakur 2009, Rawat and Sah 2009, Teron and Borthakur 2009, Jha and Jha 2011, Lammel, Dugas et al. 2011, Turner and Singh 2011, Gebresenbet and Kefale 2012). Historically indigenous people follow a unique system of agricultural practices, i.e. Domestication of wild plants for varieties development which should be input efficient and should be highly productive in prevailing agro climatic situations. They prefer to cultivate multivarietal crop to cope with climate extremes and diseases. They have been practicing the

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development of genetic pool with diverse local plants with in which they would tried to develop varieties based on the phenotypic requirements for the survival of the contingent situation. These practices indicate the indigenous peoples deep belief on nature role in co-evolution of competent germplasm to adapt for climatic variations (Smithers and Blay-Palmer 2001, Sharma, Chauhan et al. 2005, Stigter, Dawei et al. 2005, Joshi 2006, Narayanasamy 2006, Phukan and Chowdhury 2006, Reddy, Pattanaik et al. 2007, Hilgen, Aubry et al. 2008, Nath, Das et al. 2009, Teron and Borthakur 2009, Dey and Sarkar 2011, Lammel, Dugas et al. 2011, Egeru 2012, Gebresenbet and Kefale 2012). There is no one best cropping system for ever, the history on cropping system evolution highlighted the interactions among various factors such as ratio of human population, number of domesticated plants, observed climatic variations, societal food habits variations, etc. For instance indigenous knowledge on cropping systems in climatic stress periods follows as agroforestry incentive system, mulching the land with vegetative waste, domestic vegetable gardens, raised field agriculture, poly-cropping, resorted to early or late sowing, resorted to early harvest or late harvest, introduction of new crops, substitution of earlier crops with late secondary crop. On the other hand, indigenous knowledge on plant protection practices like spraying of medicinal plant extracts like neam oil, custard apple leaf and seed extracts, ashes, fumigation with herbal plants etc. indicate that indigenous peoples generational experiences with lifecycles of insects and plants and application their observations to counter existing problems (Karanth 1991, Vedwan and Rhoades 2001, Smit and Skinner 2002, Smit and Pilifosova 2003, Jamir and Lal 2005, Bosello 2007, Howden 2007, Kiruba, Jeeva et al. 2007, Altieri and Koohafkan 2008, Sen and Dollo 2008).

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As we referred above, development of indigenous coping strategies to climatic variations is intertwined with sociocultural characteristics of indigenous community, indigenous people have made adaptation at community level such as peasant conversion in to labor, migration form one place to another, selling of grain stock in exchange of medical and other amenities, sale of cattle and movable assets to save inputs and to gain relative economic advantage in famines. They have also substituted their mainstay livelihood with other supportive initiatives like sheep raring, firewood cutting, collection of forest products, etc. (Karanth 1991, Downing, Ringius et al. 1997, Smithers and Blay-Palmer 2001, Vedwan and Rhoades 2001, Adger, Huq et al. 2003, Smit and Pilifosova 2003, Jamir and Lal 2005, Jadeja, Odedra et al. 2006, Howden 2007, Altieri and Koohafkan 2008, Lal and Verma 2008, Patt and Schrter 2008, Prabhakar and Shaw 2008, Sen and Dollo 2008, Balemie 2011, Bonye and Godfred 2011, Jat, Singh et al. 2011, Pareek and Trivedi 2011, Bank 2012, Heyd 2012).They have minimized consumption of food grains and also consumed non-conventional food and fodder. They also followed Altruistic strategies like construction of common water sources for drinking, plantation of trees on the sides of common road ways, maintaining individual discipline in utilization of natural resources, voluntary disbursement of excess food stocks to the needy people like, saints, untouched people, servants, priests, etc. They have inculcated these nature friendly practices in their culture and preserve it for further generations. Discussion: Climate variations like irregular rainy seasons, extended dry spell, raising average temperatures, change in monsoon time periods, rise in sea level, rise in earth temperature were associated with manifestation of floods, drought and other natural calamities. Present society with sophisticated technological advancements is being predicting the climate variations and

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struggling to develop appropriate solutions with ease in use and access to common people. But the indigenous communities, though stayed away from modern society, have succeeded to develop coping strategies by which they have been surviving for centuries from livelihood demising threats like floods and droughts which were induced through climatic variation. This is the high time to realize the validity and applicability of indigenous knowledge on climate change coping strategies and should incorporate in strategy for climate resilience. These indigenous strategies show us the perspective of indigenous people on climate change and guidelines for the development of coping strategies for climate variations. Indigenous people perceived climate variation as inherent phenomenon and had to cope with it, rather than confronting, through their generational experience and knowledge on nature.

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