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There’s a call for the use of science in understanding tradition and increase scope for collaboration particularly on issues of environment and climate change

Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
WHEN farmers in Chitora village near Mutare see mysterious, spontaneous fires blaze through the local sacred mountains, it is a sure sign that rains would be plenty that season, and farmers needed to plan accordingly.

Farmers also believe that when old people are drinking too much water, it is a promise of imminent rain. But many a climate scientist dismiss the villagers’ beliefs as myth. They have a better scientific explanation for such kind of “naturally” occurring fires: the interaction between dry vegetation and flammable gases ever present in the atmosphere and so forth. Old people with a giant thirst, well, that’s a fairytale, they say.

That means communal farmers may never pay specific attention to scientific forecasts such as those issued by the local meteorological office that emasculate their trusted and tested age-old practices, passed from old generations, as much as scientists play down traditional knowledge systems. But the Meteorological Services Department (MSD) is now looking to bridge this divide. Forecasters are seeking ways on how climate science could link up with traditional skills to produce relevant weather and climate information that can help small-scale farmers to plan better at a time of changing climates.

“We are now starting to build a relationship between indigenous knowledge systems and climate science, We have contracted a professor from Chinhoyi University of Technology to carry out research that will inform us on how that relationship can develop.” said acting MSD director Rebecca Manzou by phone

For instance, farmers in Chitora utilise a variety of tools to predict weather and climate, from bird migration to wind direction, moon and sun positioning to the eating habits of ants, with much success, according to studies by Dr Ezekia Svotwa et al of Chinhoyi University (unrelated to the MSD’s commissioned research). Yet, similar signals find no place in scientific forecasting, which works by analysing data collected over time using sophisticated computer models. Manzou said her department had deployed meteorologists across Zimbabwe’s ten provinces to research on how such traditional practices can be combined with science to help farmers build resilience against climate change.

“We are down-scaling our forecasts to provincial level. So the meteorologists we have posted out, (through interaction with the local communities), are able to tell us whether what indigenous knowledge is saying agrees with what climate science says, and if not, where it is they aren’t agreeing,” said Manzou. Weather and climate have a very important role in Zimbabwe, an economy based on agriculture, which sector directly and indirectly supports over two thirds of the 13 million population, according to national statistical agency Zimstat.

Reliable forecasts could mean the difference between hunger and plenty, economic growth or decline. In Zimbabwe, small farmers face some of the greatest risks from rising global temperatures, indeed there already are, because of their limited capacity to cope with the change, say experts.

However, integrated forecasting services could help ease the coping headaches. And as droughts and floods come frequently – with an El Nino-induced drought in the summer of 2015/2016 leaving four million people hungry – farmers have yet to see the worst. Scientists at the UN panel on climate change predict that in a warmer world, Zimbabwe will suffer yield declines above 30 percent by 2050 due to a shortage of rain.

Distrust
But seasonal forecasts from the MSD have often been met with disdain and distrust by rural farmers who depend mostly on radio broadcasts and agriculture extension workers. This lack of trust has tended to make the MSD’s forecasts ineffective. For example, a two-year study by University of Zimbabwe researcher Ignatious Gutsa recently concluded that farmers in Domboshawa, a rural area on the outskirts of Harare, found little use for scientific predictions because of accuracy issues. When the MSD advised farmers through radio to plant early in the 2013/2014 cropping season in anticipation of a poor rain season, when the rains eventually came they didn’t stop, causing farmers to suffer severe losses, says the study.

After this fallout, farmers labelled meteorologists “guess, guess people”. And on a scale of 100 percent where 100 indicates greatest accuracy, the Domboshawa farmers rated scientific forecasts in the nether lower regions while indigenous prediction tools were seen to be 50 percent accurate. Bekezela Dube, a local knowledge advocate with Isibi SaboMthwakazi Trust, a Bulawayo cultural organisation, said there was no reliable way of foretelling the future, but working together indigenous knowledge and climate science could build a stronger front.

“Indigenous knowledge systems are not a magical solution to problems of climate change but offer an important resource in audience gathering initiatives for information dissemination,From science we learn that the incidences of environmental disasters are going to become more frequent in the future. The objective . . . is not to argue that tradition is better than science but to call for the use of science in understanding tradition and increase scope for collaboration particularly on issues of environment and climate change.” said Dube in emailed responses.

Juliet Gwenzi, a physicist with the University of Zimbabwe, has found that one of the key factors making scientific forecasts of less effect in rural areas was their tendency to use a one-size-fits-all approach in areas of different climates and weather. She also lamented that the rural folk “don’t understand the idea of uncertainty and probability”.

“Forecasts are given for regions of co-variation yet with huge differences in amounts of rainfall received,” Gwenzi told a climate symposium organised by the MSD in 2013.This has resulted in continuous drainage of adaptive capacity of mostly communal farmers.” Her solution involves the development of a new structure “that can combine the knowledge emerging globally with local factors” to provide sustainable coping strategies to communal farmers. In its implementation, Gwenzi urged caution.

“Such a structure should be locally sensitive and practicable, whilst remaining principled and fully up to date with emerging science,” she said.

God is faithful.

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