Traditional knowledge and awareness programs on climate change

Abstract

Available literature on indigenous and local knowledge1 provides ample argument and evidence of how indigenous peoples and local communities have been adapting for generations to climate-induced hazards and risks by developing situation-specific livelihood practices and building the resiliency of their households and communities. However, in recent years, increasingly frequent and ferocious climate extremes have revealed the limitations of indigenous and local knowledge and this has motivated local communities to adapt to the new situation by combining indigenous knowledge with modern scientific knowledge systems. In fragile and vulnerable Nepal, the dire need to cope with natural and climatic hazards has, for centuries, led local people to make necessary changes to their institutional and behavioural practices to ensure not only their personal security and that of their environment, but also security in supplies of water, food and energy. Much of this indigenous knowledge was gathered in the ages-old practice of shifting cultivation and traditional livelihood systems, and the closeness to nature that swidden farming and subsistence living entailed. In recent decades there has been a general shift from traditional and shifting cultivation to cash-crop plantations and agroforestry in Nepal, but local communities still cling to a wealth of knowledge that arose from swidden and traditional farming and forestry on the country’s steep slopes.