4 min read IPACC COP26 side event report

Including Indigenous Traditional Knowledge Systems in the Heart of Climate-Resilience Planning and Implementation

This event at COP26, organised by IPACC, had a panel of four speakers discussing the use of indigenous traditional knowledge systems in the battle against climate change. The event began with an introduction from Hindou Ibrahim and Isatu Ibrahim, considering how indigenous knowledge can contribute to the mitigation of climate change through natural conservation. The event sought to explore the link between climate justice, human rights and indigenous peoples and local communities, and their knowledge systems.

Hindou’s work in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin and Chad provides a focal point for knowledge and ensures it is reflected more widely within the regional governments and their policy making. Hindou further reviewed a seven-year project to improve weather forecasting in Chad, as well as pastoral plantations in Benin using indigenous knowledge to inform a national adaptation plan. A discussion of how female traditional knowledge in Mali and Niger can help alleviate the effects of climate change in desert areas was also explored. Similarly, workshops in Burkina Faso are also improving seasonal knowledge, where each season relates directly to a specific knowledge, to help deal with the devastating effects of climate change and resource extraction. Questions such as how we can use indigenous knowledge to fight ecological disaster, and put such knowledge into discussions and platforms surrounding policies, decision making, mandate making and capacity building are raised.

Kanyinke Sena, IPACC’S director, follows Hindou’s discussion with how IPACC’s projects are supporting indigenous knowledge systems from these communities and their implementation into national adaptation plans and nationally determined contributions, and how indigenous peoples and local communities are adapting to climate change across five western African countries. As well as their partnerships with the governments of these five countries, especially the government of Benin. This subsequently contributes to the LPAC platform, which as it moves forward, will hopefully start to bring indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ experiences of climate change into the spotlight. IPACC hopes that once their strategies are solidified and strengthened in west Africa, the same initiatives can be launched in central, east and eventually southern Africa.

Mariam Bouraima presented a case study on how climate change has affected communities, including her own, in Benin, as well as how the inclusion of traditional knowledge systems should be included in the planning and implementation of climate change resilience tactics. Isatu Ibrahim provided an insightful perspective on these matters, in the context of her own community. The event drew to a close with a presentation of IPACC’s publication on integrating indigenous and traditional knowledge in national adaptation plans and strategies.