Traditional Knowledge: A Potent Weapon To Achieve Food Security In The Era Of Climate Change

Abstract

Indigenous peoples have millennia of experience in collecting and applying local environmental information to help their communities plan for and better manage the risks and impacts of the natural variability and extremes of climate. Here comes traditional knowledge’s role to help reduce the risks related to food security. In this paper the researcher is trying to establish that where traditional knowledge is revived there the food security outcomes are better. Millions of traditional farmers and indigenous and local communities use their traditional knowledge to ensure food and livelihood security in a wide range of ecosystems, including fragile and harsh ones. Such practices can also be applied in innovative ways to help tackle today’s problems through their on-farm/in situ conservation.

These vulnerable groups use their traditional knowledge about the environment e.g. frequency of rains, flowering of certain plants, frequency of pest influxes, etc. to determine when to plant and when to harvest. Indigenous peoples rely on a diversity of crops, varieties and planting locations to cope with excessive or low rainfall, drought and other environmental changes. This serves as a safety measure which ensures that, in the face of severe environmental change, some crops survive. Various adaptive strategies employed in areas that are subject to water stress build upon

traditional indigenous peoples’ techniques of soil and water conservation. Indigenous peoples around the world diversify their livelihood systems in order to cope with climate and environmental changes. Strategies such as maintaining genetic and species diversity in fields and herds provide a response to uncertain weather conditions, while the diversified use of the landscape, mobility and access to multiple resources increase the capacity to respond to environmental variability and change.

Hence in the present paper deals with issues related to recognition of indigenous peoples’ coping and adaptation strategies, and respect for their systems. Further there should be dialogue with governments and the private sector to value the indigenous peoples’ knowledge and perceptions regarding food, livelihood systems, natural resources management and biodiversity conservation. And the key elements that must be incorporated into climate change policy at the national and international levels. In order to do so, indigenous peoples should be enabled to actively participate in decision-making processes at regional, national and local levels and same can be achieved by giving affirmative rights to these communities by way of international treaty and national legislations.