In Malawi, production from subsistence rain fed agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change and variability. In response to the adverse effects of climate change and variability, a National Adaptation Programme of Action is used as framework for implementing adaptation programmes. However, this framework puts limited significance on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS).
Recent trends in abrupt weather changes continue to pose a challenge to agricultural production most especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper specifically addresses the questions on how local farmers read and predict the weather; and how they can collaborate with weather scientists in devising adaptation strategies for climate variability (CV) in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.
This article describes how farmers of Burkina Faso predict seasonal rainfall and examines how their forecasts relate to those produced by meteorological science. Farmers’ forecasting knowledge encompasses shared and selective repertoires. Most farmers formulate expectations from observation of natural phenomena.
The focus of the great majority of climate change impact studies is on changes in mean climate. In terms of climate model output, these changes are more robust than changes in climate variability. By concentrating on changes in climate means, the full impacts of climate change on biological and human systems are probably being seriously underestimated.
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.
The recent Red Cross experience acting on forecasts in west Africa provides examples of how climate information can be linked to decisions and serve development in low-income regions, and how climate and weather forecasts may become useful to communities at risk from climatic events, provided that the obstacles thwarting these communities’ access to and use of forecasts are clearly identified a
Recent trends in abrupt weather changes continue to pose a challenge to agricultural production most especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper specifically addresses the questions on how local farmers read and predict the weather; and how they can collaborate with weather scientists in devising adaptation strategies for climate variability (CV) in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.