Transcript Analysis of agrobiodiversity as a coping strategy to deal with climate

An analysis of agrobiodiversity
as a coping strategy to deal with
climate change
Paul Bordoni
www.agrobiodiversityplatform.org/climate_change
17 – 20 June 2009, Chiang Mai,
The use of agrobiodiversity by indigenous peoples and rural communities in adapting to climate change
Overview
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Where are we topicwise?
What do we hope for?
Where do we come from?
Indigenous & traditional farmers show us the way
Good practices
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Water & soil
Crops
Animals
Insects, pollinators and the environmental
service they provide
– Indigenous forecasting
• What can our workshop in Chiang Mai come up with?
• What should be our next steps?
Where are we topicwise?
• Increase in population
• Decrease in the production
• Intensification of climate related disasters
and consequently
• Increased chances of conflict over scarce resources
– Bangladeshis for example: 70% of them rely on
agriculture. 1 degree C increase in the mean T would
reduce rice production by 10%. Furthermore Bangladesh
has a limited capacity to adapt as between 1974 and
2003 it faced 174 disasters
• The stressors are not merely of climatic nature
but also
– Social
– Political
– Economic
Different hazards
• 3 type of hazards and each of them requires different
adaptation strategies
– Discrete recurrent - e.g. storms, droughts, heavy
rainfall
Early warning system, disaster reduction strategies
– Continuous - e.g. increase in temperature,
decrease in precipitation. Occurs over many years
or decades.
Evolution of new livelihood approaches
– Discrete singular - shift in climate regimes due to
changes in ocean circulation
Poorly understood. Might require abandonment of
existing lifestyles
What do we hope for?
• Indigenous People and traditional farming
communities:
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Secure livelihoods
Resource rights
Cultural survival and renewal
Food sovereignty
• Coping with climate change
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Enhanced resilience
Reduced vulnerability
Increased adaptability
Monitoring capacity
Where do we come from?
• The Christensen Funds
supports the projects’ work
• The Platform for
Agrobiodiversity Research
is implementing the project
• Bioversity International
hosts the secretariat of
“The Platform” and the
project
• A first workshop was held
in FAO, February 08
A website with a blog and
discussion forum to
stimulate communication
amongst agrobiodiversity
researchers, users and
maintainers
A collection of peer
reviewed publications &
website, databases and
relevant newsletters. A list
of experts to be extended.
Indigenous peoples
& traditional farmers show us the way
• Indigenous People respond in a different way to
climate change
• Indigenous People and Agrobiodiversity are ignored in
the debate
• Tapping into their experiences gives us to gain from
an historical perspective of adaptation to change
– !Adaptations are local and context specific!
Some points
• We do not want to tell each
others how bad it is
• Salience - people generally
take into account only what
the they are directly
concerned with – we should
look beyond our nose
• Focus on communities’
responses considering the
human dimension
Communities - social entities
• Importance of social networks
– Allow capacity building, exchange of material and
building influence through the horizontal and
vertical links of the social networks that tie
communities
– Documenting experiences provides the opportunity
to learn from each other, transfer technologies and
lobby effectively
Good practices
instead of going along the ecosystem lines
• Water & soil
• Crops
• Livestock
• Insects, pollinators and the environmental service
they provide
• Indigenous forecasting the importance of Traditional
Knowledge
Water & soil
• Qhuthañas in Bolivia - traditional water harvesting
• Flood water harvesting in Ethiopia – traditional water
management/irrigation/engineering
• Bamboo stems for drip irrigation in Bhutan traditional water management
Irrigation /engineering - adaptation from the PET pipe
drip irrigation
Daldals in northern
Tigray, Ethiopia
• New farmland created
• Contains the formation of
gullies
• Availability of well-filtered
water from the foot of
the lowest dam can be
collected throughout of
the year
Traditional microcatchment rainwater
harvesting systems,
Burkina Faso
• Develop innovative ways to
catch, store and distribute
water
• Improves soil structure
• Digging holes or 'basins'
that store rainwater
• Sorghum can easily adapt to
possible temporary
hydromorphic conditions in the
hole
• Research is being carried out
to mechanise the technique
Dambos
• In Kasungu District, Malawi
– land and water wells over exploited and degraded;
population is growing = food insecurity
– additional income by clear cutting the forests in the
hills, irrigation from perennial streams and rivers
and the utilisation of the vast dambos (grassland
plains along the rivers with seasonally high water levels)
• Water resources are overused, erosion of the hills and
dambos is taking place. After the forest vegetation is
gone and much of the top soil has washed away,
water storage is also heavily reduced. Eventually, also
these dambos, their last resorts, might be turned into
dry and infertile wastelands.
Malawi and Zambia: Simlemba wetlands
(a Wetlands international project)
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protection of the forests on the hills to stop erosion
different ploughing techniques
using crops that need less water
maintenance of the wells
communities organise themselves, to prevent
individuals to overexploit the remaining wells, dambos
and forest and to jointly work on protects like fencing
of wells or replanting of degraded forest areas -
-> Diversity as water management strategy
and value of the social network
Recommendations: Water & soil
• Capitalise on the low cost, traditional water
management and soil conservation/rehabilitation
• Transfer of technology
• Always consider soil and water together
(Although other components belong to the picture as
well)
• Encourage communication - farmers recognise good
practices that maintain their public good and share
them across the community
Crops
• Selecting, conserving and using drought, flood
resistant or salt tolerant varieties (Rajasthan)
• Community seed banks that maintain diversity – an
insurance during periods of uncertainty
• Participatory seed priming (soaking) as a method to
increase germinability in drought prone areas
• Traditional seed storage methods (Egypt)
• Using a mix of varieties (sorghum and millet) as a
safety net
• Picking of wild foods
• Agroforestry to improvement of water utilization and
conservation, as buffer against change and as a
carbon sink
• Floating gardens (Bangladesh)
Participatory Plant Breeding
for Climate Change Adaptation -
the case of FIPAH/Honduras and new Santa
Cruz and Capulin Mejorado varieties
• farmers of Santa Cruz in the mountainous Yoro region
released two new varieties of corn
• the new varieties are based on a local or ‘landrace’
variety that has large cobs but also tall stalks
• the new ones have large cobs but short stalks
• adapted to high altitude conditions, resistant to heavy
rain and strong winds
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Local seeds banks, breeding and selection approaches
have a great protential to mitigate climate change
impact
IFAD-NUS project
(Building & strengthening gene pools)
 Diversity Field Fora (DFF) give opportunities to
farmers to test cultivars and technologies adapted to
their changing environment
 Thanks to DFF, old and interesting cultivars that have
disappeared are re-introduced from other villages or
neighbouring countries
 Improved varieties proposed by Research that
present good adaptation characteristics are selected
and adopted by farmers
 To mitigate effects of climate change on existing
gene pool, farmers develop innovative strategies for
domesticating wild species
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Build gene pools to secure diversity as a tool to
mitigate climate change
Livestock
• Rendille pastoralists northern Kenya which generally
rely on their herds look out for wild fruits and
vegetables for consumption.
• Switching eating habits in times of crisis is possible for
these pastoralists only if the knowledge on wild fruits
and vegetables is accessible and transmitted amongst
the group members.
– Social network - importance of communication within
the community
Livestock
Many different strategies are put in place by pastoralists
- amongst them
• Moving with the herds
• Managing the herds
e.g. herd accumulation, destocking, splitting
• Livelihood diversification: though it is difficult for
pastoralists that engage in mining and farming activities to
return be pastoralists only
• Sharing, loaning and giving of livestock as gifts
– Collective action to provide a social safety net that can
carry vulnerable families through drought and flood
events
Environmental services
provided by Agrobiodiversity
• The diversity (animals, plants, soil biota) of traditional
agro-ecosystems is an essential component in
providing a number of key ecosystem services.
• Role of pollinators (that are decreasing tremendously
and are under-investigated in conventional science)
• Diversification enhances resilience
Indigenous forecasting the
importance of Traditional Knowledge
• Indigenous forecasting is based on behavioural
patterns of animals, leaf fall, growth of particular
plant species, water level in streams and ponds,
length of a cold season, astronomic observations such
as phases of the moon, and appearance of certain
stars
• Unfortunately, due to increasing climate variability
confidence amongst community members in the
traditional, and often solely available, forecasts is
declining…
Indigenous weather
forecasting
Australian's Government
bureau of meteorology
forecasts including the
knowledge indigenous
Australians have based on
the local sequence of
natural events
What can
our
workshop
in
Chiang Mai
come up
with?
• A framework made by
diverse stakeholders
• Advocacy and awareness
role
• Synthesis on tools and
practices relevant to using
agrobiodiversity for coping
with climate change
• Define the share for the
indigenous people
What
should
our next
steps
be?
• Take our findings at the
policy level
• Generate a statement that
can be brought to
Copenhagen
• Set up a task force
dedicated to ABD as an
instrument to better cope
with change that will
unquestionably validate
and strengthen our
message celebrating food
sovreignty, benefit to the
resource holders
Thank you for
your attention
www.agrobiodiversityplatform.org/climate_change