Indigenous Knowledge and Farmer Perceptions of Climate and Ecological Changes in the Bamenda Highlands of Cameroon: Insights from the Bui Plateau
1
Department of Geography and Planning, The University of Bamenda, P.O. Box 39 Bambili, Cameroon
2
Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, Catholic University of Cameroon (CATUC), Bamenda P. O. Box 782 Bamenda, Cameroon
3
Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Technische Universitat Dresden, 01737 Tharandt, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Climate 2019, 7(12), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli7120138
Received: 24 October 2019 / Revised: 26 November 2019 / Accepted: 6 December 2019 / Published: 8 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Roles of Farmers and Other Actors in Developing Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change and Variability)
Anticipating seasonal and shorter time scale dynamics to farming practices is primordial for indigenous farmers’ resilience under extreme environmental conditions, where climate change is a menace to agro-hydro-ecological systems. This paper assesses the effectiveness of indigenous farmers’ knowledge and aptitude to read weather signs for informed decisions on their daily and seasonal activities. Such climate-proof development is anchored on indigenous people’s knowledge and perceptions in circumstances where the dearth of scientific evidence or information exists as in Cameroon. The study is based on eight focus group discussions and a survey of 597 farming households in seven agro-ecological basins on the Bui Plateau of the Bamenda Highlands. The results indicate that indigenous smallholder farmers value their ability to accurately observe and anticipate local conditions in various ways to serve their local realities more aptly than outside forecasts. Such local knowledge should thus exercise a complementary role weave in a local climate information understanding system that replicates ecological variability.
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Keywords:
ethno-meteorology; farmers; indigenous knowledge
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MDPI and ACS Style
Tume, S.J.P.; Kimengsi, J.N.; Fogwe, Z.N. Indigenous Knowledge and Farmer Perceptions of Climate and Ecological Changes in the Bamenda Highlands of Cameroon: Insights from the Bui Plateau. Climate 2019, 7, 138.
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