The relationship between climate and society has been dynamic throughout human history and pre history, a relationship that has been variously elemental, creative and fearful. The relationship has now taken a more intimate turn. Human actions, globally aggregated, are changing the composition of the atmosphere, which alters the functioning of the climate system.
Climate variability acutely affects rural livelihoods and agricultural productivity, yet it is just one of many stresses that vulnerable rural households have to cope with. A livelihood approach is used to assess the potential role that seasonal climate forecasts might play in increasing adaptive capacity in response to climate variability, using Lesotho as a case study.
Many commentators attest to a paradigm shift in biodiversity conservation, away from exclusive protected areas towards more people-centred or community-based conservation. This has been referred to as ‘new conservation’. However, new conservation could be thought of as an attempt to re-label and re-package conservation and to ‘get people on board’ existing strategies.
Much research in recent years has addressed the contribution of indigenous knowledge (IK) to development initiatives in developing countries. An IK system that continuously evolves and adapts in response to environmental and socio-economic change is often considered to be at the core of sustainable natural resource management practices and rural livelihoods.
Environnement et accès aux ressources en Afrique: un document programmatique. Le but de ce document est de fournir un programme de recherche sur l'environnement et l'accès aux ressources en Afrique.
Climate change is widely acknowledged as foremost among the formidable challenges facing the international community in the 21st century. It poses challenges to fundamental elements of our understanding of appropriate goals for social and economic policy, such as the connection of prosperity, growth, equity, and sustainable development.
The interface between school and indigenous knowledge of local plants is rarely a focus of attention in classrooms. The transfer of indigenous knowledge from everyday life to schoolwork is not always valued or encouraged, and indigenous ways of knowing may not be recognized by teachers.
t In developing countries where economies and livelihoods depend largely on ecosystem services, policies for adaptation to climate change should take into account the role of these services in increasing the resilience of society.
We address the issue of how to develop credible indicators of vulnerability to climate change that can be used to guide the development of adaptation policies. We compare the indicators and measures that five past national-level studies have used and examine how and why their approaches have differed.