Some features of this site may not work without it. In many countries, decision-makers are seeking information from a wide range of disciplines on the potential impacts of climate change on environmental and socio-economic systems. This handbook is designed to present future climate change scenarios and possible impacts of these changes in an understandable and accessible manner.
The handbook is designed to provide a background on the processes of global change and climate change. To bringing together stakeholders to discuss the impact of climate change on the environment.
To coordinate information exchange on climate policies and issues, amongst civil society organisations and with other interested parties. To undertake further collaborative action to promote effective involvement in efforts to avert the threat of global warming. The report was released on 26 October at a ministerial-level launch to highlight the urgency of climate action in Africa and the current state of capacity. The risks are becoming more severe. This report, focusing on Africa, will go a long way towards addressing this gap.
The contribution of the Economic Commission for Africa to the production of this report, through the African Climate Policy Centre, seeks to highlight the nexus between climate change and development, and to emphasise that building forward better from the Covid pandemic requires a development approach that is green, sustainable and climate resilient, informed by the best available science.
The year was among the three warmest years on record for the continent. That trend is expected to continue. African temperatures in recent decades have been warming at a rate comparable to that of most other continents, and thus somewhat faster than global mean surface temperature.
The latest decadal predictions, covering the five-year period from to , shows continued warming and decreasing rainfall especially over North and Southern Africa, and increased rainfall over the Sahel. There is significant regional variability in sea-level trends around Africa. Sea-level increase reached 5 mm per year in several oceanic areas surrounding the continent and exceeded 5 mm per year in the south-western Indian Ocean from Madagascar eastward towards and beyond Mauritius.
This is more than the average global sea-level rise of 3—4 mm per year. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.
In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Climate change negatively impacts the livelihoods of indigenous communities across the world, including those located on the African continent. This Comment reports on how five African indigenous communities have been impacted by climate change and the adopted adaptation mechanisms. Globally, there are an estimated million indigenous people 1 whose livelihoods are being negatively affected by climate change 2 by means of an increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, storms, cyclones, as well as heatwaves, among others 1.
While climate change is an environmental challenge that developed countries have largely contributed toward from anthropogenic activities, the negative impacts are being felt among poorer countries, particularly vulnerable indigenous communities who ordinarily live low carbon lifestyles 1 , 3. Additionally, many indigenous communities have been confined to the least productive and most delicate lands because of historical, social, political, and economic exclusion 4.
Furthermore, less consideration has been given to indigenous groups during formulation of climate-change mitigation strategies, making them vulnerable to its effects 5. Notwithstanding, many indigenous communities have enduringly used various indigenous and local knowledge ILK -derived coping mechanisms passed from generation to generation.
Here, we provide examples of the various climate-change-related challenges faced by five African indigenous communities Afar, Borana, Endorois, Fulani, and Hadza and the various adaptation mechanisms they use.
After examining African indigenous communities in the context of international trends, we offer a broader outline of the role indigenous communities can play in combating climate change by conserving environmental resources in their lands and territories, including a description of future trends and suggestions of measures via which the vulnerability of indigenous communities may be reduced.
Over recent years, scholars have drawn attention to the underappreciated potential of ILK to help manage and redress food insecurity in the face of climate change 6 , including Africa 7. There is, therefore, a compelling case to engage closely with ILK so that it may more effectively inform the global climate-change adaptation agenda. Understanding the strategies derived from ILK that indigenous groups have used to deal with ecological uncertainty a.
Resilience refers to the capacity of a system to anticipate, reduce, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event 9 , 10 , however, the resilience of indigenous communities under new climate-change-induced shocks is under pressure. Importantly, different indigenous groups can exhibit different degrees of resilience to different stresses due to the socioeconomic, demographic, cultural, and political factors at play that 11 have grouped under a framework of place, agency, institutions, and collective action.
Even so, under current trends, the rates and variabilities of contemporary climate changes threaten to outpace and overwhelm the adaptive capacities of many indigenous societies Indigenous communities have been constantly adapting to the effects of environmental stresses over a very long period with numerous climate-change adaptation mechanisms being adopted in recent decades.
However, more recent impacts of climate change have placed significant strain on these communities 13 as indigenous people are impacted in idiosyncratic ways by climate change e. Figure 1 provides an overview of the climate pressures these communities spread across Africa are currently exposed to, and the adaptation mechanisms they are deploying, so as to be in a better position to cope with the challenges posed by a changing climate.
Spatial distribution of different African communities, climate-change-related challenges faced, and adaptation mechanisms being applied. Apart from the matters described in Fig. As seen in Fig. Similarly, the Borana people have been using indigenous collective resource-governance systems, traditional social insurance and safety-net systems, and weather-forecasting systems based on changes in animal behaviors, as well as the movement and alignment of stars and divining animal entrails, which have proven to be reliable for centuries despite the challenges posed by an increasingly variable climate 18 , thus allowing acclimatization to drought challenges The Fulani people have also used such indigenous climate-adaptation techniques, such as livestock-feed diversification, cattle stress-management techniques, and division of labor On the other hand, the Endorois people have turned to climate-smart agroecological production systems such as the cultivation of drought-tolerant cereals, tubers, and vegetables.
This shift in production systems has led to more sustainable land management, minimized water usage, reduced human—wildlife conflict, and enhanced food security among the Endorois Owing to their close cultural connection to their environment, the Endorois have also embraced nature-based ecotourism enterprises, including medical, cultural, and geotourism in response to the climate-change-induced negative effects on the livelihoods.
Other adaptations to climate-change effects among the Endorois people include livestock and crop diversification, herd adjustment by class, livestock destocking, and supplementary feeding of livestock It is a matter of fact that ILK for climate-change adaptation is not limited to African communities. In Australia, the Mirriwong people, for example, have adopted the use of fauna and flora as an instrument of monitoring seasonal changes, for example, the flowering of Woolegalegeng Melaleuca argentea signals thunderstorms On the other hand, in Malaysia, the communities of Sarawak Lun Bawang, Saban, and Penan have used indigenous forecasts such as sky-color changes, moon phases, and animal migration 23 to identify changes in weather patterns.
International examples highlight the potential for ILK systems to be integrated into modern climate-risk assessments as part of adaptation to climate-change-related hazards 18 , In light of the adverse effects of climate change, indigenous people in Africa face some challenges, which need to be addressed.
For instance, these groups are often hard-pressed to maintain their unique land-use and tenure systems, which are being degraded by unfavorable climatic conditions. Also, because the livelihoods of the indigenous communities and minority groups in Africa are closely associated with their environment, there are numerous climate-change-related impacts that pose a threat to their well-being, especially nutrition.
The first part of the 6th Assessment Report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 24 has indicated that increases in both the frequency and intensity of extreme events may be expected. This trend suggests that indigenous communities may be under additional pressure to handle unfavorable climate conditions and are trying to adapt to climate change through different mechanisms.
As this Comment has illustrated, African indigenous communities are trying to adapt to the changes through different mechanisms.
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