Paper short abstract:

Topic presentation: This project will implement and analyse an intervention with small scale farmers who are vulnerable to escalating climate variability, to improve their response to these impacts. Interventions that integrate traditional knowledge may hold the key to climate-resilient communities.

Paper long abstract:

This project will involve ethnographic research among 5 communities surrounding Munywana Conservancy and the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. My research will study the implementation and development of a resilience intervention with specific focus on the impact of climate change. Research will be conducted through Africa Foundation, a community-based conservation NGO that works in communities surrounding nature reserves. The aim of this project is to understand how to improve the ability of rural communities, and in particular, subsistence farmers, to respond to the emerging impacts of climate change. Interventions like localized climate-wise agriculture, and small-scale water harvesting may hold the key to climate-resilient communities.

As communities become involved in adaptation planning activities, such as the one implemented by Africa Foundation, I argue it is important to have well-developed understandings of the vulnerabilities and resiliencies identified by local residents, and how these intersect with other factors such as Indigenous Knowledge, and gender. There is a need in this space for the concepts of resilience and vulnerability to be defined by community members instead of researchers or scientists, as well as the collaborative involvement from community members in the process of building resilience to climate change. Learnings from the project will have relevance beyond this case study. In many countries, such as Australia, strategies to improve co-management of land with Indigenous populations, as well as interactions in the delegation of World Heritage Sites in the face of climate change, could benefit from research into climate resilience interventions.