Assessing Indigenous Knowledge through Farmers' Perception and Adaptation to Climate Change in Pakistan

Integrating local perceptions and indigenous knowledge along with climate change policies has always been a neglected issue in developing countries. The approaches used are mostly originated from western concepts, developed in totally different socio-economic, cultural and political environments without recognizing local resources, individual opinions and knowledge. The present study tries to fill this gap and emphasizes the realization of the importance of need and transmission of modern scientific knowledge to local communities. So, the broader objective was to examine farmers' perceptions about climate change and other environmental issues through their indigenous knowledge. For this purpose, data was collected by interviewing 386 farmers from three different agro-ecological zones of Punjab Province, Pakistan. The methods used were problem cataloging index, weighted averages index and constraint index. Results indicated climate change as the biggest environmental problem, whereas scientists and the media were credited as the two most effective and reliable sources for climate information dissemination. In order to handle the issue of climate change, government, local councils and business and industry were assumed to be highly responsible, but farmers did not trust them. Although farmers' perceive climate change, due to many constraints very few of them were adapting accordingly. The major constraints were lack of money, high cost of farm inputs and lack of knowledge about appropriate adaptations. Findings suggest that inclusion of indigenous people in the decision-making process about local and national adaptation initiatives will help policy makers collaborate with local residents more effectively in order to better deal with the crisis of climate change.