Stars and Satellites: Understanding strengths and opportunities for traditional and modern sciences to support climate adaptation
Part 1 of 2 about how Mercy Corps is using digital technology to support climate adaptation.
The arid and semi arid lands (ASALs) of Kenya are typically hot and dry, with frequent wind storms that blow the red soil across the landscape. These lands comprise over 80% of the country and are home to ten million people, the majority of whom are pastoralists who move seasonally with their sheep, goats, camels, and cattle. Livestock production in the ASAL regions supports 30% of Kenya’s annual meat consumption, contributes to both export markets throughout the region as well as household food production, and is a hugely important socio-cultural identity for diverse pastoral communities.
For thousands of years, pastoralism has been a highly adaptive response to climatic variability. People use the stars, wind, cloud formations, or the movement patterns of insects to make forecasts and then rely on an intricate governance system to make decisions based on that information. For example, the Afar pastoralists from Ethiopia triangulate weather information by sending a scout and consulting with community leaders before making a decision like whether to migrate. The generation, verification, and use of weather information for adaptation — and ultimately, survival — is complex, nuanced, and systematic.
With the increasing rapidity of climate change and the urgent need for the global community to respond, many academics and climate adaptation practitioners are returning to these ancient practices and land management tools as solutions. In the international development sector, actors like Mercy Corps are trying to draw on these ways of knowing, understand them alongside modern science, leverage them, and resource them to support communities’ resilience.
In the ASAL regions of Kenya, Mercy Corps has been using digital and geospatial technology to support pastoralist communities as they adapt to more erratic rainfall and more severe droughts. In this program, we are supporting county governments’ use of geographic information systems (GIS) software to model ecosystem services alongside geotagged participatory data. For example, we can help governments and communities identify grazing lands that would benefit from reseeding and greater protections. Equipped with multiple sources of information about the dryland region, pastoralists and county governments work together to co-develop natural resource management plans and to share in the governance and protection of those lands.
In addition to improved land management, we are incorporating traditional knowledge in radio and mobile phone based climate information. While we designed this program to be intentional about the use of traditional knowledge, once we started implementing, we knew we had a lot to learn about how to meaningfully do so. We started by conducting a study amongst pastoralists to better understand the role of climate information in their households and lifestyle, with four key learnings as a result of our consultative process:
First, utilize inclusive research design principles: We hired a team of researchers to conduct desk research, interviews, and focus group discussions about climate information needs. This team included researchers with firsthand experience of pastoralism and fluency in the language spoken by communities in our program areas.
Second, understand trust, decision making, and power: The pastoralist communities we surveyed categorize their decisions according to whether they were short term tactical decisions or longer term strategic decisions. For example, the decision about what types of livestock to keep is made on a longer term strategic basis with combined information from community elders and personal experiences. Decision making is a collective process, agreed upon by several households. These decisions are guided by community elders, but men, women, and youth all play different roles in the decision making process.
Third, understand information production and information flows: Through focus group discussions and household surveys, we learned how information related to crop and livestock production was informed by community elders, personal experiences, observations, and the traditional calendar. Agricultural extension agents, livestock traders, and external weather forecasts such as the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) also provided information, although to a lesser degree. These information sources were shared across a variety of mediums, from public meetings to word of mouth, to radio bulletins, but varied in their effectiveness.
Nearly half of all respondents were mistrustful of weather forecasts because they were seen as being highly uncertain, although they were slightly more trustful of forecasts related to extreme weather and the onset of the rainy season. Respondents were also more trustful of forecasts related to pests or parasites, reiterating indigenous expertise in this area. Of particular importance to our program and our exploration of the use of technology to share climate related information, we learned that people were most likely to trust messages disseminated via mobile phone or radio if they were reiterated offline by community leaders.
Fourth, use those learnings to supplement, rather than replace, traditional climate information: This study sheds light on the specific ways in which Mercy Corps can add value to pastoralists’ complex information and decision making ecosystem. Our survey and interviews point to a clear need for improved ongoing forecasts on the amount and timing of rains, extreme weather events, and security alerts. Improving the availability and relevance of this information for pastoralist communities can and should sit alongside complex systems for gathering, sharing, and making decisions based on traditional knowledge. Additionally, by better understanding the specific use cases for climate information amongst pastoral communities– for example, decisions around migration, herd splitting, and water and pasture availability– outside actors can add the most relevant messaging and advice to support adaptation.
Traditional knowledge about climate and weather patterns has been critically important for a very long time and is essential to adaptation in the face of rapidly accelerating climatic changes. By complementing this knowledge with modern science and leveraging relevant technologies to bring both sources of information together, humanitarian actors like Mercy Corps can improve inclusion and buy-in for our climate adaptation programs.
