INDIGENOUS AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN NEPAL (original) (raw)

Knowledge summary The findings of this study reinforce widely held views that ILKP help local communities deal with climate-induced hazards and risks through various autonomous adaptation strategies. Such practices are sustained and improved over time by succeeding generations and help improve livelihoods, reduce disaster risks to ecosystems, lives and community assets, improve resilience and create adaptation solutions to deal with climate change impacts. They can also help people and their institutions to prepare long-term adaptation strategies, plans and programs. Many of the indigenous knowledge practices can be integrated with scientific knowledge, tools and technologies to support adaptation actions through switching strategies, modifying or transforming existing behaviors while dealing with climatic or non-climatic shocks. Traditional and indigenous practices in the present form will not be able to deal with the shocks that climate change entails without continous support. With multiple stressors at play, which impact of climate does one adapt to? It is a difficult but important question because to establish causal relationship among human-induced climate change, local weather events and its impact is hard. Individuals, households and communities have dealt with natural climatic variability for centuries establishing indigenous and local knowledge practices, which have served the community well and in governance of local natural resource use. Government and donor agencies have used formal scientific knowledge to address development needs and also respond to disaster risk reduction. In responding to climate change challenges both knowledge systems face limitations : a) knowledge about future climate is uncertain, b) context and location specific ILK will become inadequate to deal with low probability high exposure climatic shocks. The challenges present new interface in the knowledge-policy domain with respect to building adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. The directions for action on adaptation and resilience building must be able to contend with uncertainties of climate change and limitations of ILK highlighted above. For effective climate change adaptation, this study argues that ILK and scientific knowledge must engage each other to generate shared and new knowledge. Developing such knowledge requires greater participation of local agents where adaptation is most needed and where integrating both types of knowledge systems must happen. While science based climate and environmental information are critical for responding to the impacts of climate change, traditional forms of knowledge and the wisdom they offer are useful institutional context for synthesis. Such integration need to (a) promote effective communications of weather and specific hazard information; b) improve mobility during, and in the aftermath of extreme climate events; (c) link women and other traditional groups with local financial institutions to access funds for risk spreading before, during and following extreme climatic events; (d) diversify livelihoods through access to a range of options; (e) provide education on basic language and skills necessary to understand climate change, risk perceptions and livelihood strategies; (f) ensure rights to organize, express voice through diverse public, private and civil society organisations; and (g) synthesize scientific as well as indigenous practices to proactively identify hazards, analyze and minimize risks and attain wellbeing.