Many Indigenous , like Africa's Mbororo, are facing temperatures that are lethal. The heat, fires, droughts, floods and other climate impacts are degrading and destroying the natural resources these people depend on. Burkina Faso, Mali, & Niger Show the way to prosperity!
While climate change is an environmental challenge that developed countries have largely caused, the negative impacts are being felt among African resource rich countries, particularly the vulnerable indigenous communities who ordinarily live low carbon lifestyles and have their resources stolen by the West!
Many indigenous communities have been confined to the least productive and most infertile lands because of historical, social, political, and economic exclusion that gives the best lands to foreign corporate interests or corrupt politicians. Furthermore, less consideration has been given to indigenous groups during formulation of climate-change mitigation strategies, making them vulnerable to its effects and putting blocks in the way of national prosperity.
Understanding the strategies derived from indigenous groups that have been successfully used to deal with ecological uncertainty (a.k.a. environmental risk) such as droughts, food insecurity, and loss of, or displacement from land, and how they build resilience against climate-related stresses and shocks, can be harnessed for present and future community application. Resilience refers to the capacity of a people to anticipate, reduce, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event. However, the resilience of indigenous communities under new climate-change-induced shocks is under more pressure than ever before. Importantly, different indigenous groups can exhibit different degrees of resilience to different stresses due to the socioeconomic, demographic, cultural, and political factors at play. Therefore uniting and sharing information and skills is key to creating an atmosphere that allows everyone to prosper and win!
The Borana people have been using indigenous collective resource-governance systems, traditional social insurance and safety-net systems, and weather-forecasting systems based on changes in animal behaviors, as well as the movement and alignment of stars and divining animal entrails, which have proven to be reliable for centuries despite the challenges posed by an increasingly variable climate. The Borana migrated from southern Ethiopia to Northern Kenya, where they mainly live in Marsabit and Isiolo Counties.
The Fulani people have also used such ingenious indigenous climate-adaptation techniques, such as livestock-feed diversification, cattle stress-management techniques, and division of labor. On the other hand, the Endorois people have turned to their own version of climate-smart agro-ecological production systems such as the cultivation of drought-tolerant cereals, tubers, and vegetables. This shift in production systems has led to more sustainable land management, minimized water usage, reduced human–wildlife conflict, and enhanced food security among the Endorois.
Owing to their close cultural connection to their environment, the Endorois have also embraced nature-based ecotourism enterprises, including medical, cultural, and eco-tourism in response to the climate-change-induced negative effects on the livelihoods. Other adaptations to climate-change effects among the Endorois people include livestock and crop diversification, herd adjustment by class, livestock destocking, and supplementary feeding of livestock.
Climate-change adaptation is not limited to African communities. In Australia, the Mirriwong people, for example, have adopted the use of fauna and flora as an instrument of monitoring seasonal changes, for example, the flowering of Woolegalegeng (Melaleuca argentea) signals thunderstorms. On the other hand, in Malaysia, the communities of Sarawak (Lun Bawang, Saban, and Penan) have used indigenous forecasts such as sky-color changes, moon phases, and animal migration to identify changes in weather patterns.
African indigenous communities are trying to adapt to the changes through different mechanisms tt
hey have gained through thousands of years of generational knowledge. In contrast, the governing framework at international, national, and regional levels in response to the negative impacts of climate change does not or cannot effectively protect indigenous people’s interests, including their culturally valued lifestyles, livelihoods, and resources by not listening to those with ancestral knowledge the countries run the risk of causing mass starvation for their own people thus making their nations weak.
The Sahel countries Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Niger combined contribute less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and all five countries have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In addition, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger pledged in Glasgow to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. The Sahel is characterized by low and erratic rainfall and represents a challenging environment for agriculture. Sedentary agriculture takes place in the wetter, more southerly zones and is generally of the smallholder type, often representing a marginal existence in the face of drought, soil denudation and erosion. By pooling resources and green tech such as desert water collectors and solar powered atmospheric water collectors the countries could have bountiful crops and increased intra African trade!
In recent years, desert greening efforts have also been boosted by the development of renewable energy technologies, such as solar and wind power. These technologies provide a sustainable source of energy for desert regions, which can be used to power irrigation systems and other farming equipment. AWG Atmospheric Water Collection tech for agriculture is inexpensive and simple to replicate. This is a testament to the effectiveness of these super machines. In addition to the environmental benefits, there are also health benefits. Studies have shown that AWGs can help to reduce the amount of bacteria, chlorine and other contaminants in drinking water.
A team led by African American Inventor Moses West developed an energy-efficient solar powered technology for harvesting fresh drinking water from the air, which is contained within a shipping container for easy transport. The AWG system, can generate 4,000 liters of water per day by combining cold and hot air to create condensation, in a manner that replicates the way clouds are formed it is effective in deserts and used by the US Army. Yet the technology is easily replicated and can used anywhere on the planet!
The shipping container sized machine basically creates artificial clouds inside a shipping container-lined sterilized and waterproofed and then condenses them to a drinkable liquid. The system works by pulling in warmer air from outside the box and combining it with cold air inside, producing condensation. To power the system, it uses sunlight powered solar panels, a renewable source of energy that has the added benefit of producing heat. The extra heat and humidity allows the system to extract even more water from the air. In recent years, dozens of companies have entered the atmospheric water-generation market. They’re seeking to tap into the approximately 3.4 quadrillion gallons (that’s 3,400,000,000,000,000) gallons of water trapped in the atmosphere at any given time. This tech means the end of droughts if embraced.
While atmospheric water only accounts for about 4 percent of freshwater on Earth, it’s far less energy-intensive to extract than glacier water, which account for about two-thirds of Earth’s fresh water supply. Although the AWG machine can produce water for less than 1 cent a liter, this doesn’t include the initial cost of the machine itself. The average unit for agriculture produces 2000 liters per day costs $15,000 to build that's 10,000 less than a Toyota Corolla.
Using this technology with ancient knowledge of planting using Bunds is the plan being looked at by Burkina Faso. In Tanzania, farmers using bunds – barriers that, at their most basic level, are simply mounds of earth – have taken parched, overgrazed and eroded land and turned it green. The barriers trap water running off the ground and allow it to penetrate the earth. Grass seed sown inside the bunds grows, and over time greenery extends beyond them, dramatically transforming the landscape. Bunds play a critical role in retaining moisture/water especially on sloped ground, providing access to fields, and delineating ownership.
Poor desert soil can be regenerated cheaply using “green manure,” a mixture that includes garbage compost, biochar and microorganisms that help the soil “wake up,” Biochar is a form of charcoal that can help arid soils retain water. Biochar can easily be made from many fuels using the top down burn method. Light the top of a pile and quench the embers when the fire burns down. African farmers typically burn maize stalks by lighting a pile on the side but the char can also be made from bamboo the method works well with many fuels such as rice straw, cassava stems, bagasse... Pile the organic material into the drum or trench and light it from the top down.
Once the smoke turns grayish blue, add a layer of soil over it and leave it to burn slowly. After the organic matter is charred, put out the fire with water. The material left behind is your bio charcoal (biochar).
Some non-food crops are grown specifically to be used for biomass energy production. One of the best biomass energy crops grown for the production of biochar is switchgrass. Although it is native to North America the grass is also found in South America and Africa where it is used as a forage crop. Switchgrass is a perennial grass propagated by seed that can be established at low cost and risk and requires very low inputs while giving high biomass yields, even on marginal soils.
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