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| Indigenous Knowledge for Climate-Smart Agriculture
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Girma Amare, Gabriel Chipando, Andrew Chisopo and Petros Chavula
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Abstract:
Climate change significantly threatens rural livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa including other least developed countries. This is due to rural communities' susceptibility to the effect of climate change and variations in these regions. Climate change exposes Sub-Sahara Africa region through increased temperature, changes in rainfall patterns, and frequency of extreme weather events such as drought and floods. Changes in climate over generations have brought about alterations in most Sub-Sahara Africa rural communities engaged in agriculture production. Smallholder farmers in rural communities have been adjusting to these changes through their indigenous knowledge which has stood in existence from one generation to another, spread by word of mouth. The objective of this paper is to synthesize indigenous knowledge captured for climate-smart agriculture. Recent empirical studies on climate-smart agriculture have revealed that many agricultural technologies and practices positively contribute to climate change adaptation in the agriculture sphere. It has been more evident in rural agro-based communities and literature has also shown that indigenous people have been excellent in providing weather-smart information services. However, adoption of climate-smart agriculture technologies which incorporate indigenous knowledge is still low in developing countries. Thus, strengthening the role of indigenous knowledge in climate change has a likelihood of contributing to climate change adaptation in smallholder farming communities. Improved adaptation, capacity building and integrating indigenous knowledge with climate-smart agriculture practices might be crucial to enhancing effective community resilience to climate change.
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