Assessing indigenous knowledge systems and climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture: A case study of Chagaka Village, Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi

Nkomwa, Emmanuel Charles; Joshua, Miriam; Ngongondo, Cosmo; Monjerezi, Maurice; Chipungu, Felistus

doi:10.1016/j.pce.2013.10.002

Cited by 122 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Small farmers use several techniques to reduce climatedriven crop failure such as use of drought-tolerant local varieties, polyculture, agroforestry, water harvesting and conserving soil (Browder 1989;Altieri and Nicholls 2008;Chhetri et al 2012). Indigenous peasnats use various natural indicators to forecast the weather patterns such as changes in the behaviour of local flora and fauna (KalandaJoshua et al 2011;Nkomwa et al 2014). Farmers in Chagaka Village, Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi use several indicators for climate and weather prediction.…”

Section: Integrated Crop-animal Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to these farmers, occurrence of grasshoppers and a bird called Chinkhaka flying in household vicinity indicates the drought. Moreover, shedding of leaves by Adonsonia digitata (baobab/mlambe), Cordyla africana (mtondo) and Faidherbia albida (nsangu) indicates the onset of rainfall and well distributed rainfall season (Nkomwa et al 2014). Farmers of Cameroon use the height of an ant nest in trees or colour of frog to forecast the onset and cessation of rainy season as well as the quantity of rain (Molua 2006;Tingem and Rivington 2009).…”

Section: Integrated Crop-animal Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Traditional agriculture: a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production

Singh

2017

Energ. Ecol. Environ.

243

118

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sustainable food production is one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century in the era of global environmental problems such as climate change, increasing population and natural resource degradation including soil degradation and biodiversity loss. Climate change is among the greatest threats to agricultural systems. Green Revolution though multiplied agricultural production several folds but at the huge environmental cost including climate change. It jeopardized the ecological integrity of agroecosystems by intensive use of fossil fuels, natural resources, agrochemicals and machinery. Moreover, it threatened the age-old traditional agricultural practices. Agriculture is one of the largest sectors that sustain livelihood to maximum number of people and contribute to climate change. Therefore, a climate-smart approach to sustainable food production is the need of hour. Traditional agriculture is getting increased attention worldwide in context of sustainable food production in changing climate. The present article advocates traditional agriculture as a climate-smart approach for the sustainable food production and also deliberates the correlation between climate change and agriculture.

show abstract

Section: Integrated Crop-animal Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integrated Crop-animal Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traditional agriculture: a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production

Singh

2017

Energ. Ecol. Environ.

243

118

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Nkomwa et al (2014) reported that there are examples of local people in small villages worried about climate change and who are noticing changes in climate. Nkomwa et al (2014) gave as an example Chagaka Village, which is using more drought-tolerant crops such as pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum [L.]R.Br.) and sorghum (S. bicolor [L.] Moench) and early-yielding varieties as their adaptation strategies for the climate change observed during the last decade.…”

Section: Climate Change and Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation strategies to adapt to projected climate change impacts in Malawi

Kambauwa¹,

Mlamba²,

Delgado³

et al. 2015

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Moreover, coping strategies are often location-specific. Thus, it is necessary to assess coping strategies specific to forest-based communities in order to develop appropriate locationspecific policies and interventions (Williams and Kalamandeen, 2013;Nkomwa et al, 2014). In support of the Wilk et al (2013) argument, interventions designed to enable adaptation are likely to be successful if they are localised.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This originates from the fact that adaptation to climate change is inevitably and unavoidably local. Therefore, this study was based on the notion that incorporating current local coping strategies into climate change policies and interventions can lead to cost effective, participatory, locally relevant and sustainable interventions (Twomlow et al, 2008;Nkomwa, et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing forest-based rural communities' adaptive capacity and coping strategies for climate variability and change: The case of Vhembe district in south Africa

Ofoegbu

Chirwa

Francis

et al. 2016

Environmental Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, various coping strategies used by forest-based rural communities in Vhembe District of South Africa in response to climate variability and change challenges were investigated. The effect of community socio-demographic characteristics on the adaptive capacity and choice/effectiveness of coping strategies was examined. Household level data were collected from 366 respondents selected from 21 rural communities using the proportionate random sampling procedure. The Pearson Chisquare test was used to analyse the coping strategies. The effects of household and community sociodemographic characteristics on choice and effectiveness of coping strategies were determined using the binary logit model. It was observed that the respondents used diverse coping strategies, depending on the nature of climate variability and extreme weather events they were confronted with. Rainwater harvesting was the most popular strategy that the respondents in Makhado (90%), Mutale (96.3%), and Thulamela (50%) used to cope with erratic rainfall. Tree planting around houses and on farmland were the most popular strategies (90-100%) to counter the effects of extreme temperature. Furthermore, household and community demographic characteristics in particular education and skills levels, and forest products, institutional services and infrastructure available in the communities such as markets, and water supply facilities significantly (p<0.05) influenced the choice of households' coping strategies. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that efforts that enhance the household's capacity and community infrastructural development might be viable and sustainable ways of improving rural communities' resilience to climate change and variability challenges.

show abstract

Assessing indigenous knowledge systems and climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture: A case study of Chagaka Village, Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi

Cited by 122 publications

References 6 publications

Traditional agriculture: a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production

Traditional agriculture: a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production

Conservation strategies to adapt to projected climate change impacts in Malawi

Assessing forest-based rural communities' adaptive capacity and coping strategies for climate variability and change: The case of Vhembe district in south Africa

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About