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South African Journal of Science
http://www.sajs.co.za
Volume 112 | Number 3/4
March/April 2016
Review Article Enhancing climate governance through indigenous knowledge
Page 1 of 7
© 2016. The Author(s).
Published under a Creative
Commons Attribution Licence.
Enhancing climate governance through indigenous
knowledge: Case in sustainability science
AUTHORS:
Nelson Chanza1
Anton de Wit2
AFFILIATIONS:
1Department of Geography,
Bindura University of Science
Education, Bindura, Zimbabwe
2Department of Geosciences,
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University, South Africa
CORRESPONDENCE TO:
Nelson Chanza
EMAIL:
nchanza@gmail.com
POSTAL ADDRESS:
Department of Geosciences,
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
University, PO Box 77000,
Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa
DATES:
Received: 18 Aug. 2014
Revised: 06 May 2015
Accepted: 10 Oct. 2015
KEYWORDS:
climate change; local
participation; disaster
management; EBA;
mitigation; CBA
HOW TO CITE:
Chanza N, De Wit A. Enhancing
climate governance through
indigenous knowledge: Case
in sustainability science.
S Afr J Sci. 2016;112(3/4),
Art. #2014-0286, 7 pages.
http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/
sajs.2016/20140286
The current tempo of climate change strategies puts the notion of sustainability in question. In this
philosophy, mitigation and adaptation strategies ought to be appropriate to the sectors and communities
that are targeted. There is a growing realisation that the effectiveness of both strategies hinges on climate
governance, which also informs their sustainability. The application of the climate governance concept by
the technocratic divide (policymakers and climate practitioners) to communities facing climate change
impacts, however, is still a poorly developed field, despite extensive treatment by academia. By drawing
heavily from conceptual and analytical review of scholarship on the utility of indigenous knowledge (IK) in
climate science, these authors argue that IK can be deployed in the practice of climate governance. It reveals
that the merits of such a deployment lie in the understanding that the tenets of IK and climate governance
overlap and are complementary. This is exhibited by examining the conceptual, empirical and sustainability
strands of the climate governance-IK nexus. In the milieu of climate change problems, it is argued that the
basic elements of climate governance, where actions are informed by the principles of decentralisation
and autonomy; accountability and transparency; responsiveness and flexibility; and participation and
inclusion, can be pragmatic particularly to communities who have been religiously observing changes in
their environment. Therefore, it becomes necessary to invigorate the participation of communities, with their
IK, in designing climate change interventions, which in this view can be a means to attain the objectives of
climate governance.
Introduction
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a brainchild of the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP) and the World Metrological Organisation (WMO) established to give the most comprehensive
overview and fact base of climate science, recognises climate governance and indigenous knowledge (IK) in
the ongoing climate change discourse. Both concepts, however, are treated in fragmentation. Despite this
segmentation, there is a growing appetite by both climate governance community and indigenous knowledge
researchers to examine the usefulness of the concepts in climate interventions. In climate regimes, it can be
argued that climate governance has dominated climate discussions more than IK.1-3 This dominance continues to
grow against a backdrop where the intergovernmental policy arena faces substantial impasse on what constitutes
climate governance. The intricacy of the stalemate arises from a tradition characterised by a disparate magnitude of
contribution existing between the global North, largely blamed for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the global
South, paradoxically experiencing extreme climatic events. Indigenous climate knowledge, following at a distance
behind climate governance, continues to occupy space in climate literature, albeit with limited realisation of the
relationship between these concepts. It is therefore essential to advance discourse by examining the relationship
between climate governance and IK. In this paper, we argue that IK has potential to transform the technocratic-
community engagement front in the current discussions where climate science and policy regimes are increasingly
being interrogated for their sustainability.
Conscious of the conceptual and definitional flaws, and the intricacies characterising climate discourse, we proceed
by treating climate governance as a concept embracing inclusivity in designing mitigation and adaptation strategies
by all climate stakeholders, including indigenous communities affected by climate change. Adaptation governance,
a concept that has dominated climate discussions to date, centres, for example, on participation, equality and
justice in decision-making about interventions to contain climatic events. Meadowcroft1 says that, at country level,
this requires adequate knowledge about anticipated climate effects and planning to tackle anticipated impacts on
human activity. On the other hand, mitigation governance calls for an understanding of emission sources, cost-
effective containment potentials, and policy approaches.1,2
In a related treatment, IK is a knowledge form defined by Orlove et al.4 as place-based and rooted in local cultures
that are mostly associated with long-settled communities who have strong ties to their natural environments. The
concept is now increasingly acknowledged by the IPCC as evidenced by distinct sections covering IK in its latest
reports.5-7 The disaster management community is also drawing heavily from the experiences of indigenous people
with the view of making impacting risk and disaster management interventions.8-12
Evidence of IK’s usefulness in climate science ranges from enhancing understanding of climate impacts,13-15
particularly at local scale where scientifically advanced models tend to give a coarse-grained focus,16 to informing
successful mitigation and adaptation interventions13,17-19 whose success could be credited on meaningful community
participation in identifying appropriate climate projects.15,20-22 A demonstration of the climate governance-IK
linkages is given in this paper. This is exclusively done through reviewing literature on climate governance and
indigenous climate knowledge across the world.
The overriding theme in this analysis is the interrogation of the notion of sustainability science. The genesis of
this philosophy is traced from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)
Declaration on Science and the Science Agenda Framework held in Budapest, Hungary in 1999.23 Earlier,
2
South African Journal of Science
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sustainability as a concept gathered impetus following the 1992 World
Earth Summit on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil24 but was preceded by the 1987 Brundtland Report25 that specified
a framework for sustainable development articulation. Within this view,
in order for scientific interventions to be sustainable, a platform that
incorporates the active involvement of citizens who should be served
by the science ought to exist. In the context of climate governance
therefore, climate science should be seen by local people as a shared
asset that helps them to seek practical solutions to the problems and
opportunities brought by change and variability in the climate system.
The paper implores that the praxis of climate governance at local
level is potentially realisable when indigenous communities, with their
invaluable reservoirs of climate change knowledge, actively participate
in climate regimes. Four cases relevant in climate mitigation and
adaptation are thus drawn here:
• The envisaged benefits of local participation in programmes
like that on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation (REDD+), a mechanism whose thrust is to enable
communities in developing countries to benefit from climate
funds if they actively partner in forest projects that enhance
carbon sinks
• Land Use, Land-Use Changes and Forestry (LULUCF), intended
for atmospheric carbon stabilisation through regulated activities in
local land-use planning and management
• Community-based adaptation (CBA), a bottom-up framework for
making effective adaptation through the central role of local people
• Ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA), an approach that serves both
objectives of climate proofing and emission reduction through
harnessing ecosystem services coupled with wise management
of the same.
The benefits of a climate governance-indigenous knowledge nexus
are discussed here from conceptual significance, empirical evidence
to sustainable development. But first, it is crucial to trace the major
developments on governance around climate change so as to contex-
tualise the discussion.
Nature of climate governance and problems of
articulation
There is phenomenal growth in literature that examines the concept of
climate governance. However, this has not resolved the current impasse
in the application of the concept in the global policy arena that has been
in existence for the past two decades. Biermann and Boas26 argue that
the difficulties emerge from the intricacies of the phenomenon itself,
where climate change is seen as a problematique both in causation and
consequences, where the industrialised societies, largely to blame for
the anthropogenic forcing of climate destabilisation, should have a moral
responsibility to contain its devastating impacts. Most authorities agree
that complexities in conceptualising climate governance mirror both the
multi-layered spatial scale and multi-sectoral levels of application.27-32
Van Asselt,31 for example, views this as a fragmentation of climate
governance. Bulkeley and Moser33 agree with Andonova et al.28 that
climate governance needs to be decentralised beyond multilateral
agreements, and diffused across many actors in society. Backstrand and
Loubrand29 pose that the concept has to be understood from competing
discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernisation and civic
environmentalism, where ‘…local is pitted against global, North vs
South, public vs private, decentralisation vs centralisation, and economic
efficiency vs environmental integrity.’ Other scholars, like Pattberg and
Stripple30 and Saran34, adopt the term global governance, arguing that
the challenges of climate change are global in dimension and cannot be
addressed by national or regional interventions alone. Clearly, it can be
inferred from these authorities that climate governance is a multifaceted
term with a varied scale of application.
At a higher level, governance of climate change is predominantly seen
in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The UNFCCC is designed to
stabilise GHG concentrations to levels that would not interfere with the
earth’s climate system, while in addition to sharing the objectives of
the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries
to stabilise their GHG emissions. Ashton and Wang27 are of the view
that the two regimes reflect a general calculus of equity through the
principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Under this
framework, attention can be given to poor and vulnerable societies to
acquire technology and funds to adapt to climate change. However, the
intergovernmental policy landscape still faces challenges in articulating
the idiosyncrasies of climate impacts permeating diverse sectors that
are not clearly specified in the multilateral climate agreements. Van
Asselt31 argues that the international environmental law in place has
not been able to comprehensively deal with the issue of global climate
governance. One of the areas not clarified by these regimes is the
phenomenal increase in the population of climate refugees as noted by
Biermann and Boas26 and Martin35.
At the regional level, for example, the European Union (EU) and
Southern African Development Community (SADC), climate gover-
nance can be effected through appropriate regional environmental
policies and protocols. Oberthür36 is of the view that the limitations of
the current global climate institutional architecture can be reinforced
through strengthening regional climate policies, such as that of the
EU. In Africa, for example, these regimes have been characterised
by a fragmentation of responses, which has not done justice to the
demands set by climate governance.28
Nationally, climate governance is tackled in the form of climate policies
and institutions. In most countries, however, the policy domain is
marked by a patchwork of public and private institutions that differ in
their mandates and interests, with potential to cause conflicts that are
likely to stymie governance issues.26 Meadowcroft’s1 paper looks at
national level climate governance, which can be influenced by promoting
coalitions for change, minimising antagonistic forces, establishing
centres of economic efficiency, creating robust institutions, adjusting
national environmental legislations, and transforming citizen behaviour.
He cites the problem of institutional inertia, where perceptions about
adverse consequences of mitigation policies in combination with
scientific uncertainty tend to block progress towards the attainment of
global climate governance.
In order to address some of these problems, United Nations Development
Programme/ United Nations Capital Development Fund/ United Nations
Environment Programme (UNDP/UNCDF/UNEP)2 identifies 5 entry
points for enhancing the way in which national or local governments can
interface with climate change:
1. National climate change and sub-national governance policies should
involve clear links between national policies and decentralisation/
sub-national policies, especially in developing countries where such
linkages are best described as weak or non-existent
2. Improving local understanding of climate change issues; that is,
knowledge of what climate change means to local governments
in concrete and tangible terms, such as information on nature and
risks they face
3. Financing arrangements for climate change; including corruption
proofing, where there is room for information transparency and
oversight on resource use by community stakeholders
4. Operationalising local democracy for vulnerable groups such as
involving indigenous peoples in climate change decision-making
processes and adaptation strategies, which would include the use
of indigenous knowledge and innovations
5. Addressing the capacity question, where capacity assessment of
institutions, organisations and individuals is interrogated
Because of these problems of articulation at differentiated spatial and
sectoral levels, the emerging situation is that climate governance remains
a rhetorical commitment, particularly when viewed from the perspectives
of poor and vulnerable communities relying on climate-sensitive liveli-
Review Article Enhancing climate governance through indigenous knowledge
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hoods. Despite increasing global certainty about anthropogenic forcing
of climate change and the challenges it poses on humanity noted by
the IPCC’s5 report, Oberthür’s36 remarks resonate with Pattberg and
Stripple’s30 earlier observation that the policy architecture in place is
incapable of effectively addressing climate change. Here we propose
a configuration that links climate governance and IK in order to
operationalise climate governance, with the intention of offering directions
for building resilient sustainable communities in many parts of the world
experiencing climatic events.
Climate governance-IK linkage: A conceptual
necessity
Governance refers to the ways in which scale level decision-
making takes place. It is called ‘good governance’ when it reflects
scrutinisation and oversight by citizens, openness and transparency
and participation.2,32 The IPCC7 views governance in climate change
as a more inclusive approach that recognises the various levels of
government (global, international, regional, national, local) and the
responsibilities of the private sector, non-governmental actors and
the civil society. The problem of conceptualisation has been widely
reported by other scholars such as Chirisa and Chanza32, Bulkeley
and Moser33, Pattberg and Stripple30,37, Okereke and Bulkeley38, and
Macey39. Macey39 even suggests a redesign of the climate governance
framework from scratch, while Bulkeley and Moser33 recommend
a shift from conceptual necessity to empirical reality. Chirisa and
Chanza32 adopt a local governance perspective in order to demystify the
institutional strictures, dispel corrupt tendencies and empower citizens
for participatory democracy.
Apparently, most scholarly work is silent regarding examining the role
of indigenous knowledge in climate governance. For example, scholars
like Orlove4, Nyong et al.13, Berkes18, Mawere40,41, and Mawere et al.42
who have written extensively on IK applications in climate change,
have not embraced this concept. Espousing the spatial dimensions of
applicability featuring prominently in many scholarly work1-3,28,33 and
policy regimes,30,36 a re-examination of climate governance would point
towards climate governance-indigenous knowledge connectedness.
This linkage is argued here as a conceptual necessity for premising
climate governance.
IK as a concept, defines knowledge that is location specific, acquired
in situ, through progressive study of the community’s interaction
with the environment, and orally transferred both within and between
generations.4,40-52 Mawere40,41 sees IK as useful in establishing a moral
virtuous society whose usage helps African communities to realise
a sense of responsibility in environmental resource exploitation, thus
ensuring food security in the event of environmental shocks like
drought. To Shizha43, this knowledge strengthens the education of the
African population, which is a necessary foundation for sustainable
development. Some key issues related to governance can be inferred
from this conceptualisation. Firstly, the knowledge is understood
collectively to include community skills, technologies and practices
that give the community collective understanding and responsibility to
sustainably utilise the environment. Secondly, in both theory and praxis,
the concept is holistic, empowering and participatory. As can be seen
in Figure 1, IK elements are a function of climate governance. Here the
major elements characterising climate governance are also found in the
utilisation of IK. For instance, the knowledge form is decentralised at
grassroots level structures in an autonomous arrangement where there
is no exclusion in accessing the knowledge. Whenever a response to
climatic events such as floods and drought is called for, users of IK
are flexible to actively choose available coping and adaptive options
for climate proofing. Although not clearly referring to the concept of
climate governance in their arguments, Gwimbi10, Mawere et al.42 and
Chanza44,45 write about the significance of IK in mitigating the negative
effects of climate change such as floods, violent storms, dry spells
and drought.
CLIMATE
GOVERNANCE
INDIGENOUS
KNOWLEDGE
Decentralisation
Autonomy
Accountability
Transparency
Responsiveness
Flexibility
Participation
Inclusion
Figure 1: Basic elements of climate governance and indigenous knowledge.
Climate governance-IK linkage: An empirical
reality
The climate change community cites mitigation and adaptation as central
themes governing climate interventions. Mitigation, in climate science
deployment, is a dual-faceted concept: firstly, as a human intervention
to reduce sources or enhance sinks of GHGs; and secondly, as the
moderation of potential adverse impacts of climate risks and disasters
through actions that reduce hazard, exposure and vulnerability.6 In
order for local mitigation programmes to be effective, they need the
support of key stakeholders that include local citizens where activities
are implemented. Two interventions used by the IPCC and the UNFCCC
worth noting here are REDD+ and LULUCF.
REDD+ is a carbon compensation programme that covers the role
of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhance-
ment of forest carbon stocks in developing countries.53 In the
planning and implementation process of the programme, the full
and effective participation of indigenous people who use their IK
to manage forestry resources can be realised. Through traditional
resource management regimes, indigenous people can translate
climate governance into practice. For example, the effectiveness
of REDD+ projects in Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Peru and
Tanzania is attributed to participatory planning involving local citizens
whose knowledge is crucial in the technical analysis to address the
drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, as well as barriers to
sustainable management.54
The fifth assessment report (AR5) of the IPCC reports that GHG
emissions from agriculture comprised about 12% of manufactured
pollutants in 2010.7 This makes LULUCF a critical area for mitigation
strategies. Furthermore, the Kyoto Protocol identifies changes in carbon
stocks and GHG emissions by sources and removals by sinks related
to direct anthropogenic land-use change and forestry activities.55 In
order to operationalise this strategy at local level, customary laws
and practices governing land-use, land and forestry management
activities in rural communities of most African societies, for example,
can be drawn upon. In Zimbabwe, for instance, Mahamed-Katerere56
concludes that land-use practices are interwoven with cultural beliefs
under the administration of local traditional leaders in a philosophy she
calls ‘environment-spiritual connection’. Within this belief system, she
cites two laws that guide sustainable land management. The first is a
collection of rules that link abuse of resources to spiritual sanctions.
Alongside this, there are also spiritual rules that restrict use and
condemn unsustainable exploitation.
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In a similar case, Turner and Clifton57 in their study targeting indigenous
citizens of Hartley Bay in British Columbia, Canada, observe that the
motive behind sustainable land and forestry resource utilisation is the
strong indigenous belief that the resources belong to ancestry and the
spirits. As such, the locals have a moral and spiritual obligation not to
violate the environment. This means issues of governance are properly
understood and practised at grassroots levels that shape human-
environment interactions.
In climate literature, adaptation is treated as a response interventions to
some climate stimuli so as to minimise harm or enhance the benefits
brought about by climatic conditions or events.5,58-60 Strategies to contain
climatic events are usually practical at local or project level involving
interactions with the people. In this way, the participation of indigenous
people using their knowledge, skills and experiences drawn from many
years of coping and adapting to changing and variable environments
deserve emphasis.
One of the predominantly preferred strategies by the climate change
scholars and practitioners is community-based adaptation (CBA). CBA
is viewed as a community-centric approach whereby the locals are
positioned as the main stakeholders in the implementation of coping
and adaptive interventions.61-63 The intention is to build adaptive capacity
and enhance community resilience against the disturbances potentiated
by destabilisation in the climate system. In application, it can be seen
that this strategy embraces a bottom-up approach where indigenous
people are given respect and space to select from a toolbox of their
own adaptation options. Kirkland63 emphasises that CBA projects are
more effective if they actively solicit the input and participation of
local people, which from the viewpoint of Ensor61 is governance for
community-based adaptation.
In a study to understand the value of IK in climate adaptation in
the African Sahel, Nyong et al.13 mention 5 reasons meriting giving
attention to local knowledge in order to guarantee successful adap-
tation. These are IK:
• is rich in cultural context
• is an appropriate and sophisticated knowledge form
• increases community buy-in
• promotes equity, efficiency and environmental integrity
• leads to increased communication and understanding
Experiences by Practical Action, working with indigenous rural com-
mu nities in Bangladesh, Kenya, Peru and Zimbabwe show that for
adaptation governance to be realisable it ought to be ‘…understood as
a process, through which communities gain access to skills, resources
and information so that they can continuously shape their lives and liveli-
hoods as the environment changes around them.’61
Another key strategy capable of operationalising the climate governance-
IK linkage to advance both the goals of mitigation and adaptation
governance, is that of ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA). Defined by
Munang et al.,64 EBA ‘is the use of natural capital by people to adapt
to climate change impacts, which can also have multiple co-benefits
for mitigation, protection of livelihoods and poverty alleviation.’ In
other words, the concept provides multiple benefits for society and the
environment as it contributes to reducing vulnerability and increasing
resilience to both climate and non-climate risks.64-67 Worth noting is
that the main activities of EBA, listed by the UNFCCC67 as vulnerability
assessment, capacity building, designing policy measures and
implementation, can involve local people leveraging their IK to ensure
adequate climate proofing and emission reduction. The Sweden case
involving ecosystem-based measures by the local farmers is given as
an example (see Box 1).
Box 1: Farmers network using ecosystem-based measures to cope
with uncertain climatic conditions
Adjusting management practices, including adopting traditional farming
techniques, can help to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to the
effects of climate change. The east-central area of Sweden presents difficult
climatic conditions for small-scale farmers who experience long winters and
frequent periods of drought. This climatic uncertainty, combined with threats
from pests and disease, presents challenges for sustaining livelihoods, with
climate change expected to exacerbate these conditions. To build resilience,
farmers in the Roslagen region began incorporating a range of ecosystem-
based practices. Measures included diversification of crops in time and space
to reduce the risk of crop failure, using multiple crop varieties to increase genetic
diversity and pest resistance, incorporating crop rotation to revitalise soils and
prevent pest infestations without reliance on chemical fertilisers and pesticides,
and planting shade trees and cover crops to enhance seedling survival to
cope with drought. In addition, by establishing an informal local network,
the farmers were able to share best practice and local ecological knowledge.
The ecosystem-based measures led to the farmers producing high-quality
and organic products, whilst increasing their resilience to climate variability
and change. Biodiversity and economic security has also been enhanced.
Source: UNFCCC67
It should be noted here that focussing on IK does not guarantee the
project will be equitable, just and successful, as expected in climate
governance. Saran34 states that given the appropriate conditions, local
knowledge is capable of making interventions more effective. One of the
factors that guarantees successful mitigation and adaptation for local
based projects is the existence of social capital,62,68 defined by Woolcock
and Narayan69 as the standards and networks that drive people toward
collective responsibility and action. Under this concept, the role of
social networks, community linkages and institutional structures can be
exploited to enhance the objectives of climate governance or to build
community resilience against the devastating impacts of climate change.
Climate governance-IK linkage: A drive towards
sustainability
In the preceding sections, we have argued that the realisation of
social, economic and environmental sustainability can be enhanced by
mitigation and adaptation options that are appropriately crafted through
issues of participation, consultation, inclusivity, efficiency, accountability
and decentralisation. The IPCCC’s6 emphasis that ‘sustainability in
the context of climate change is addressing the underlying causes of
vulnerability, including the structural inequalities that create and sustain
poverty and constrain access to resource’ is wor th noting. In other
words, climate governance should be the means to sustainability.
Backstrand and Loubrand29 suggest that the composition of future
global climate governance should address elements of fairness, burden-
sharing, poverty alleviation, par ticipatory democracy and sustainable
development. The Climate Action Network70 gives guidelines that can be
followed for adaptation governance to be sustainable. The principles for
adaptation governance are summarised as70:
• Prioritise the adaptation needs of, and ensure that resources
reach, the most vulnerable, including marginalised groups, women
and children, indigenous peoples, local communities and those
disproportionately impacted, as well as vulnerable ecosystems,
through enhancing adaptive capacity and reducing vulnerability.
• Recognise that responses will have to be based on local assess-
ment of risks, needs and circumstances and be relevant to local
people and communities.
• Maximise national, sub national and community level ownership
over adaptation planning and implementation processes, and
disbursement of adaptation finance, in order to enable and encou-
rage participatory local level planning and implementation.
• Plan and implement adaptation actions in a transparent and well-
documented way that is open to public scrutiny and discourse. Ensure
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the representation of key stakeholders, especially representatives
of vulnerable communities, marginalised groups, women, and
indigenous peoples at every stage of the process as appropriate –
including in the governance and disbursement of adaptation finance,
planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting.
• Adopt a process-driven learning-by-doing approach on adaptation
planning and implementation, respecting the Precautionary
Principle while recognising the urgency to adapt in the absence
of complete information and the need to develop and implement
flexible plans and programmes that can be updated on the basis of
new information and learning.
As the global community drifts towards the post 2015 sustainable
development goals (SDGs) marking a paradigmatic shift from the
millennium development goals (MDGs), there is need to retrospectively
centralise discourse on the sustainability of climate interventions
as climate change will remain a cornerstone of the SDGs. The issue
of translating climate governance rhetoric into practice should be the
central theme of such a transformation. It should be learnt here that
local community knowledge, skills and experiences are key in shaping
sustainable climate interventions.
Conclusion
In the milieu of climate governance rhetoric characterising the climate
regime terrain, the potential role that IK can play in transforming theory
into practice deserves attention. The view advanced in this debate is that
of taking governance issues to the people who are facing climate impacts.
It is hoped that the first point of entry for meaningful climate mitigation
and adaptation is the local level where knowledge and experiences
of those witnessing the climate phenomena can be harnessed. The
effectiveness of REDD+ and LULUCF projects, which are being
considered as driving climate stabilisation agendas in many parts of the
world, should not be devoid of elements of local governance reflecting
local input through IK. Similarly, if adaptation is to build community
resilience and adaptive capacity, adaptation governance informed by IK
and experiences of locals cannot be ignored. Prioritising local climate
governance would translate into local sustainable development which
could lead to potential ramifications in higher levels and towards global
sustainability. Therefore, it serves to mention that climate governance
dialogue should be supported star ting at grassroots where indigenous
people, with their banks of IK, should characterise the policy discourse
for sustainability.
Authors’ contributions
N.C. was the lead author who structured the paper concept. AdW
reviewed the draft paper and made various suggestions to improve its
readability for the target audience.
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