INDIGENOUS TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
Little back ground about
urgency and climate change, to act protest, rally might be solutions to
share urgency, on times it’s becoming another way to expose and publicize self
than issue unless there is critical mass who understands the urgency. The other
way could be exploration, discussion, documentation and promotion of the
knowledge that helps in adaptation to climate change.
Inclination towards climate change issues and
feeling of importance to spread message to larger mass as a change makers: a
part of Global movement, with innovative
idea of research and promotion of Knowledge that helps to combat climate
change.
Where ever science talks about
climate change first thing that come to my mind is community, its indigenous
Knowledge and it's documentation through research. Disseminating message
against climate change and sharing importance of adaption and plight of citizen
I went to document “Community based Adaptation on Water Crisis" at
Bhaktapur, golmadi. A community has been witnessing water crisis since 7 years.
Surprisingly Bhaktapur being so near to Kathmandu and city to surprise, no effort
is made to address this issue as compared to patan and Kathmandu. So, I decided
to document and develop small video to aware and to highlight possibilities of
rain water harvesting and other means of water storage and management (
traditional and modern). Is just one example there are many communities
witnessing such crisis. While trying to interlink water crisis, also found out
that other factors such as watershed degradation, urbanization, growing
population are the major factor for water crisis here, climate change is thus
accelerating it more.
Nepal
has become one of the first countries to consider scaling up community-based
adaptation (CBA) to climate change and making it part of national development
policy. For a Least
Developed Countries (LDC's) mentioned in UNFCCC, countries are not capable of
dealing with adverse effect of Climate Change, supporting preparation and
implementation of National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) in LDC's. Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with
the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been
affecting food security. In response the country decided to experiment with a
bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10
districts across the country in 2010.
Climate Change and
the resulting impacts are altering ecosystems in profound and irreversible
ways. The impacts of climate change are more pronounced in agricultural
systems. There is a
need to further strengthen and enhance the knowledge base on the emerging
challenge of climate change and adaptation on agricultural sector. It is obvious that the effect of climate
change will directly affect the profession of more than two third people
involved in agriculture and will ultimately question the status of food
security, which makes news headlines every year.
Urgency and dream of contributing for
environmental protection and conservation, further aiming to explore, discuss,
document, and promote the Indigenous Traditional knowledge (ITK) as Community
Based Adaptation techniques that has been practiced by different indigenous
community in Nepal in agriculture against Climate. Since Nepal is
geographically diversified so cropping pattern and indigenous practice varies
according to the climate. The research covers three climatic zones in western
part of Nepal.
"To
feel the changes, to see the changes, we need is to explore the places and
learn the process of change."
The journey started from Dolpa to
Rukum and ended in Bardia as "Community knowledge Management"
research. The purpose is to promote indigenous traditional
knowledge which is being lost due to certain driving factors such as policies,
subsidies that promote modern techniques, and less media promotion.
While traditional knowledge and
crop varieties of indigenous people, local communities are important in
adapting climate change and traditional races are genetically diverse and more
resistant to climatic change than modern varieties. The finding of study may guide
the educationist to design the curriculum to be imparted to rural population to
cope up with the climate change along with policy makers and future researchers
working in the field of climate change and agriculture.
Thus, the these kind of research
will help to highlight the awareness level and importance of ITK, impact of
climate change, how it is affecting the agricultural practices and how people
are adapting the change through the use of ITK. Realizing the importance of its documentation
and promotion, blog, social media, mainstreaming media and a documentary are
the strong way to reach large mass.
Spreading need of more Research and importantly Policy implementation Focused
on community based Adaptation and exploring by Documentary and stories as creative activism and most importantly
knowledge Documentation will be most important part.
Source: http://glocalkhabar.com/indigenous-traditional-knowledge-climate-change/
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