Seminar Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge, Finland
Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge
Supported by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 4 Finnish NGOs are currently undertaking research on climate change. The focus is on understanding the shifting of risks between Adaptation and Mitigation measures and the role of Indigenous Knowledge in Adaptation and Mitigation.
Human societies have shown throughout history a strong capacity for adapting to different climates and environmental changes. For example, farmers, foresters, civil engineers, and their supporting institutions have been forced to adapt to numerous challenges to overcome adversity or to remove important impediments to sustained productivity. Climate mitigation is any action taken to permanently eliminate or reduce the long-term risk and hazards of climate change to human life, property. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines mitigation as: “An anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.”
How are risks transferred between adaptation and mitigation?
- What constitutes an adaptation or a mitigation?
- How do the different aspects of adaptation relate or influence the action of mitigation and vice versa?
For example, people who move according to a flooding regime have adopted a coping mechanism that deals with floods. This kind of adaptation manages risks without necessarily passing those risks to alternate downstream communities. On the other hand, if a dam is built as a means to containing the floods, the damming impacts on the flood regime which might in turn have a negative impact on the flood plain communities.
Understanding the shifting risks between Adaptation Mitigation through Indigenous Knowledge Cases of Kenya, Vietnam and Bangladesh
International Seminar
Background: Climate change is upon us. People all over the world are already making adaptations in their environments and livelihoods to build resilience to variability in the weather – even if they do not recognise these adaptations as responses to global climate change. On the other hand technical solutions as part of mitigation action are being planned and implemented globally and at different scales.
The IPCC report on Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, says “a portfolio of adaptation and mitigation measures can diminish the risks associated with climate change.”
While adaptation and mitigation can be seen as two very clear stand alone processes, they are heavily intertwined and in some instances, the execution of one literally shifts the risks to the other. For example the building of a dam to mitigate flooding or improve water security exposes downstream communities to other risks including impacting negatively on the food security by withholding the fertile alluvial soils and changing the flood plain ecology.
The research aims to document and share some of the emerging risks associated with adaptations and mitigation measures to climate change that are happening at landscape scale, forestry, biodiversity, and how local indigenous knowledge can be used to minimise those risks.
Date 19th October 2009
Where: Helsinki
Speakers: Sukanta Sen, Kenneth Odero, Kimani Njogu, Bach Tan Sinh
Institutions: Bangladesh Resource Center for Indigenous Knowlege (BARCIK, Bangladesh) , Institute for Science and Technology and Strategic Studies (Hanoi, Vietnam), Twaweza Foundation (kenya), Climate XL (Kenya)
Venue: To be advised
Organisers:
SHALIN Finland, World Comics Finland, Finnish Vietnamese Friendship Association, Finnish Asiatic Society,
Funding Ministry For Foreign Affairs of Finland
April Greetings, the months keep moving – outside the office
Meanwhile, the other projects are supposedly still waiting for the bureaucracy to be finished. Frankly speaking I haven’t really hurried the work forward either, but instead used the chance to travel first to northern Tanzania to see my old studying friends. By the time of my departure the rains had finally started, making everybody in Nakuru so happy about the decrease of dust and severe drought all around the country. Of course I never thought about the effect of rains on travelling. The bus from Kampala to Tanzania, which I was supposed to take, never made it to Nakuru through muddy roads. Thus I ended up spending the first night of my trip at bus station’s waiting room with extremely loud bongo music video blasting all night long,.. I did make my way to Tanzania eventually, and enjoyed so much just talking with the dear people I have missed! On my way back in another bus company office in Nairobi a watchwoman I had never seen before asked me, why am I always travelling alone. Stumbling in my words when trying to reply, I really felt it was the time for me to have gone and see friends, even across the border.
After returning from Mau the long Easter was just behind the corner. I rested one day Nakuru and travelled for the rest of my time to lake Naivasha, which Grace had told me so much about. And it was even more beautiful as I expected! Place where I stayed was absolutely unafrican, but I allowed myself a little rest from being in the centre of attention. After all, they had a sauna and such good music in the most atmospheric restaurant I’ve heard once in a blue moon in here. The next day I made my way to crescent island game sanctuary. Not so much for the animals but for the absolutely beautiful scenery over the lake, and a bit more natural experience of walking all by myself around the old crater.
My final and wonderful experience was from a weekend in Nairobi. As dear friend as my small radio is to me, it is only a small radio. Also my chinese-made fake nokia from Tanzania is starting to ask for retirement, so I needed to go and find more decent medium for music and communication from the Big City. In addition Kwani Trust, a group of concerned Kenyan Writers, invited a couple of young talented writers to read their short stories aloud for anybody interested to come and listen to them on the very same weekend. And I went, and loved it!
Nakuru is not really a place for culture so in Nairobi I really enjoyed myself! Funny enough I’ve always felt art exhibitions or theatre a bit distant in Finland, but here I’m very excited about seeing them. At least it’s something very different, new and interesting from anything before. And when listening to Kingwa Kamencu, Kaume Marambii and Monica Arac Nyeko from Uganda reading short stories in a very warm and close athmosphere with maybe only ten other participants, I absolutely went with the flow and reflected the stories. I feel that especially Kenyan literature is such a way of connecting with people as they are behind their origins, that I really like reading and knowing more about it. It’s also such a side of Kenya which people outside don’t often think about so I want to change that idea, too.
A stove at a time can save the planet!
Anila, the smokeless stove that uses agro-waste to burn and makes charcoal as a by-product. Photo/CORRESPONDENT
A new stove that uses gases from rotting materials (bio-residues) to burn and which could potentially change the lives of rural people for the better, has been launched.
Given the shortage of conventional fuels such as kerosene and LPG, Anila, the smokeless stove, is expected to be a boon to people up country where agro-waste is available in plenty.
If well managed, this stove can earn a household up to Sh515,000 a year, reduce on the rate of deforestation, improve on soil fertility and mitigate climate change.
The stove which burns coconut frond, coir, baggase, husk, groundnut shells, areca waste, mulberry leaves and similar agro-wastes, has been developed by Shalin, a Finnish networking organisation focused on social, environmental and economic issues in collaboration with Helsinki University of Technology.
Ms Eva Kagiri, one of the researchers, says the Anila stove has shown the potential to improve the efficiency in biomass energy production by almost 60 per cent. Read more from the Daily Nation
Yiaku People and Mukogodo Forest
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1:10,000 scale (2 x vertical exaggeration) Participatory 3D Model of the Mukogodo Forest, Laikipia District, Kenya, (Nov. Dec. 2007). Note: The model (57,600 ha or 576 km2) has been the second Participatory 3D Model constructed in Africa.
Depicted data reflect the mental maps of approximately 100 Yiaku Peoples. Elders populated the model with their memories and reconstructed the present landscape . The model displays xx data layers including different types of areas, points and lines.
Recommended readings:
Julius Muchemi: Account of the Participatory 3D Modelling of the Mukogodo Forest (Blog) 11 December 2007
Julius Muchemi, Peter Kuria, and Jeniffer Koinante (2008). Safeguarding Yiaku Eco-cultural Heritage in Mokogodo Indigenous Sacred Forests: Application of Participatory 3-Dimensional Modelling and Mapping, Laikipia, Kenya
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The Mukogodo is one of the last pristine forests in Kenya. Corruption, logging, uncontrolled agricultural incursion have all taken their toll on the forests of Kenya. The destruction of forests have placed traditional hunter gatherer communities in a position of vulnerability and insecurity. IPACC, ERMIS Africa and Shalin Ry have been cooperating with the Yiaku Peoples Assocation to conduct a P3DM exercise of the Mukogodo Forest. The event has been timely, as there are only 5 known speakers of the Cushitic Yiaku language (also called Yaaku and Mukogodo), making it Kenya’s most endangered language. Most Yiaku today speak Laikipia Maa, a nilotic language of herders. During the legend making process a number of words unknown to the younger generations surfaced in the discussion and a 3 language legend was produced. The Mukogodo mapping has been a follow on on last years highly successful mapping of the Mau Forest Escarpment by the Ogiek people of Nessuit. |
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The exercise has been made possible by the coordinated effort made by the Yiaku Peoples, ERMIS-Africa, Shalin Ry and the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) |
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3D Model adaptability Africa Agriculture Amahoro Andreas anila biochar Bonn climate Climate Change COP15 ERMIS Eva Kagiri extractive industries Folke Gunther GHG GISEEM Helsinki Helsinki University of Technology Illona Indigenous IPACC IPCC IPCC Fouth Assessmment Juudit Kenya Kios Manila Declaration Mikko mining Mitigation Mukogdo Namibia Network options Professor Ravikumar Project SACDEP SGT Students shalin Suvi Waitara tkk UNFCCC Yiaku
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