Harnessing diverse knowledge and belief systems to adapt to climate change in semi-arid rural Africa

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dc.date.accessioned 2022-08-17T13:38:13Z
dc.date.available 2022-08-17T13:38:13Z
dc.date.issued 2019-05-30 en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/13964
dc.description.abstract Farmers in semi-arid regions have historically coped using long established practices such as place-based climate forecasting using observations. However, this is becoming less reliable with climatic changes. Meteorological forecasting based on numerical prediction provides an alternative that is also now widely available to enable adaptation. However, this climate information has constraints including uncertainty and a broad spatial and temporal scale. The use of these two sources of forecast information is also affected by farmer perceptions of its advantages and disadvantages as well as beliefs and social norms. This study uses the case of Bobirwa subdistrict in Botswana to investigate the role of traditional norms and religious beliefs in the use of place-based and national meteorological forecast information to inform adaptation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 82 farmers from 8 different communities. We found that whilst some farmers use national meteorological information, others use place-based forecast information only and some combine the two. We also found that certain religious beliefs and traditional norms prevent the use of national meteorological forecast information by some farmers. An integrated climate information system that is credible and accessible to farmers from different belief systems will provide opportunity for farmers to use this climate information to adapt better to climate variability and change. en
dc.format.medium Print en
dc.publisher Elsevier en
dc.subject AFRICA en
dc.subject CLIMATE CHANGE en
dc.subject FARMERS en
dc.title Harnessing diverse knowledge and belief systems to adapt to climate change in semi-arid rural Africa en
dc.type Journal Article en
dc.description.version Y en
dc.ProjectNumber N/A en
dc.Volume 14 en
dc.BudgetYear 2019/20 en
dc.ResearchGroup Economic Perfomance and Development en
dc.SourceTitle Climate Services en
dc.ArchiveNumber 10875 en
dc.PageNumber 31-36 en
dc.outputnumber 9952 en
dc.bibliographictitle Spear, D., Selato, J.C., Mosime, B. & Nyamwanza, A.M. (2019) Harnessing diverse knowledge and belief systems to adapt to climate change in semi-arid rural Africa. Climate Services. 14:31-36. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/13964 en
dc.publicationyear 2019 en
dc.contributor.author1 Spear, D. en
dc.contributor.author2 Selato, J.C. en
dc.contributor.author3 Mosime, B. en
dc.contributor.author4 Nyamwanza, A.M. en


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