Although indigenous peoples’ “low-carbon” traditional ways of life have contributed little to climate change, they are the most adversely affected by it. This is largely as a result of their historic dependence on local biological diversity, ecosystem services and cultural landscapes as a source of sustenance and well-being.
Community-based and collectively-held knowledge offers valuable insights, complementing scientific data with chronological and landscape-specific precision and detail that is critical for verifying climate models and evaluating climate change scenarios developed by scientists at much broader spatial and temporal scale. Moreover, indigenous knowledge provides a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation and mitigation actions that sustain resilience of social-ecological systems at the interconnected local, regional and global scales.
This project is aimed at documenting climate-related traditional ecological knowledge, divining and enhancing indigenous communities understanding and assessment of the impacts of climate change on the future of their bio cultural heritage through research, intercultural dialogue exchanges and intergenerational alliance.
The project envisions to build the capacity and strong intergenerational and inter-cultural partnerships among the Boran and their neighbors so that they may further understand and take action against the impacts of climate change for the current and future generation.
The strategies for Northern Development (SND), is a registered local Non-Governmental Organization working with nomadic pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya (Marsabit, Mandera and Wajir Counties). It sprouted from two CBOs (Pastoralist Strategies and Rehabilitation Programme (PASREP) which was registered in January 2002 and Community Development and Poverty Alleviation Program (CODPAP) registered in January 2004). The two CBO’s were merged to enable their resourceful persons share their wealth of experience and skills in order to address the emerging challenges faced by pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya. SND got registered with NGO board as a fully-fledged NGO on 6th of December 2007 with charity no:OP.218/051/2007/0421/4877.SND envisions to build resilient and empowered pastoralist communities who are in control of their lives and livelihoods. SND’s mission statement is to enhance pastoralist communities’ resilience to poverty shocks, climate extremes and their impacts through secured livelihoods, access to affordable quality education and Health care services as well as good governance.
