Indigenous knowledge meets science to take on climate change

I guess all of you have
a smartphone or an iPhone,

and this morning, probably
you checked on the weather,

if its going to be rainy
to carry your umbrella,

if it is going to be sunny
to use your sunglasses,

or if it is going to be cold
to have an extra coat.

It's going to give you some time
good information and sometime not.

Let me tell you,

my best app is my grandmother.

(Laughter)

She's called ??.

She can tell you not only today's weather

but she can predict the next 12 months,

if it's going to be
a good rain season or not.

She can tell you just
by observing her environment,

by observing the wind direction,

the cloud position,

the bird migration,

the size of fruits,

the plant flowers.

She can tell you by observing
the behavior of her own cattle.

That's how she knows better
the weather and the ecosystem

that she's living in.

I'm coming from a pastoralist community

who are cattle herders.

We are nomadic.

We move from one place to another one

to find water and pasture.

We can move up to a thousand kilometers,
the size of California, within one year.

And this life helps us to live
in harmony with our ecosystem.

We understand each other.

For us, the nature is our supermarket,

where we can collect our food,

our water.

It's our pharmacy where we
can collect our medicinal plants.

But it's our school,

where we can learn better
how to protect it

and how it can give us back what we need.

But with the climate change impact,

we are experiencing a different impact.

In my community,

we have one of the top five
fresh waters in Africa.

It's Lake Chad.

When my mother was born,

Lake Chad used to be
about 25,000 kilometers square of water.

When I was born, 30 years ago,
it was 10,000 kilometers square.

And actually now, it's about
1,200 kilometers square of water.

Ninety percent of this water
just evaporated, disappeared.

And you have more than 40 million people

living around this lake
and depending on it.

They are pastoralists. They are fishermen.
And they are farmers.

They do not depend on
the end of the month's salary.

They depend from the rainfall.

They depend from the crops
that are growing

or the pasture for their cattle.

The shrinking resources,

you have many communities
that are fighting to get access.

The first come is the first served.

The second have to fight unto death.

So climate change
is impacting our environment

by changing our social life,

because the role of man and woman
in this region, it's different.

Man is supposed to feed his family,
take care of his community,

and if he cannot do that,
his dignity is under threat.

He cannot do anything else to pay it back.

So climate change takes our men
far away from us.

That is the migration.

They can migrate to a big city
where they can stay for six or 12 months,

where they get a job,
they can send back money.

If they didn't get it,

they have to jump into the Mediterranean

and migrate to Europe.

Some of them die there,
but none of them stop going.

Of course, it's sad
for the hosting country,

who are developed countries,

who have to adapt
to host the migrants coming.

But how about those who are left behind,

the women and the children
who have to play the role of man,

the role of women who have
to take care of the security,

of the food, of the health
of the entire family,

children and old people?

So those women for me, they are my heroes

because they are innovators,
they are solution makers,

they are changing
the little of the resources

into the big for the community.

So those are my people.

So we use our indigenous people's
traditional knowledge

to get better resilience
to what we need to survive.

Our knowledge is not only
for our communities.

It's to share with each
and others who are living with us.

And indigenous peoples around the world,

saving 80 percent
of the world's biodiversity.

That's the scientists with ??.

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon,

you can find the most diverse ecosystem,
better than the national park.

The indigenous peoples from the Pacific,

the grandma and the grandpa,

they know where to get food
after the hurricane hits them.

So the knowledge that our peoples know

is helping us to survive and helping
other peoples also to survive

the climate change impact.

The world is losing.

We lost already 60 percent of the species
and it's increasing every day.

So one day, I took a scientist
to my community.

I said, you are giving the good way
for information through the TV and radio.

But how about coming to my people? And then they come, they sit around, and suddenly as we are nomadic, we just start packing our stuff, and then they say, like, "Are we moving?" I'm like, "No, we are not moving. It's going to rain." And they're like, "Oh, there's no cloud. How do you know it's going to rain?" We're like, "Yeah, it's going to rain. We pack our stuff." Suddenly, heavy rain starts coming down, and we are seeing the scientist running around, hiding under trees, and protecting their stuff. We already packed ours. (Laughter) After the ends of the rains, the serious discussion starts. They say, "How do you know that it's going to rain?" We say, "Well, the old woman observed the insects taking the eggs inside their homes, and while the insects cannot talk with TVs, so they know how to predict to protect the generation, how to protect the food. So for us it's the sign that it's going to rain in at maximum a couple of hours. And then they say, well, we do have knowledge, but we do not combine ecological knowledge and weather knowledge all together. So that's how I started working with meteorological scientists and my communities to give the better information to get peoples adapted to climate change.