Integrating Local and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) Systems into Climate Adaptation Policy for Resilience Building, and Sustainability in Agriculture

Abstract

With the inception of global climate change and its related risks, impacts, and challenges many rural and indigenous communities across the globe are today facing tremendous cultural, economic, and environmental change which is likely going to weaken their adaptability and resilience capacities to climate change. Indigenous and local people have for centuries been known to possess the capacity to adapt to environmental change within their ecological environment. However, in the face of profound and continuous global environmental change, some scholars have argued and projected that cultural, biological diversity, as well as local resilience capacities to environmental change, will likely be severely impacted leading to the ultimate loss of these valuable sources of livelihood and survival of the many remote, rural, and local communities across the world. Despite this popular notion that local and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) systems will disappear, the academic vision of local and IEK has progressively shifted from being viewed as a static body of knowledge to one of dynamism. Today, this knowledge is being hybridized through the accommodation of new forms of information or its exposition to external socio-economic drivers. Therefore, its relevance and the role it plays in disaster risk management, natural resource conservation, and management, and now in climate change adaptation must be clearly understood, acknowledged, and given the utmost attention, it deserves if we are to fully address the impacts emanating from a warming climate. In understanding the role and relevance of local and IEK systems in climate change adaptation and disaster risk management this paper analyzes present climate change-related impacts on agriculture in Barisal Southern Bangladesh and identifies effective local and indigenous ecological knowledge adaptation mechanisms being utilized by the local people in this region for climate change adaptation, resilience building, and sustainability. Through literature reviews, fieldwork research, interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) the findings of this research indicate that local and indigenous adaptation strategies to climate change impacts are striving and are enhancing the adaptability and resilience capacities of the many poor local people in this region. This research, therefore, recommends that the usefulness and relevance of local and IEK must be acknowledged and incorporated into the mainstream developmental and climate change policies, particularly at the local and community level where resources are scarce, and the adaptability capacity, is weak.