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I guess all of you have
a smartphone or an iPhone,
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and this morning, probably
you checked on the weather,
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if its going to be rainy
to carry your umbrella,
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if it is going to be sunny
to use your sunglasses,
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or if it is going to be cold
to have an extra coat.
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It's going to give you sometime
good information and sometime not.
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Let me tell you,
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my best app is my grandmother.
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(Laughter)
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She's called ??.
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She can tell you not only today's weather
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but she can predict the next 12 months,
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if it's going to be
a good rain season or not.
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She can tell you just
by observing her environment,
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by observing the wind direction,
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the cloud position,
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the bird migration,
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the size of fruits,
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the plant flowers.
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She can tell you by observing
the behavior of her own cattle.
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That's how she knows better
the weather and the ecosystem
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that she's living in.
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I'm coming from a pastoralist community
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who are cattle herders.
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We are nomadic.
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We move from one place to another one
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to find water and pasture.
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We can move up to a thousand kilometers,
the size of California, within one year.
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And this life helps us to live
in harmony with our ecosystem.
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We understand each other.
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For us, the nature is our supermarket,
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where we can collect our food,
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our water.
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It's our pharmacy where we can
collect our medicinal plants.
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But it's our school,
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where we can learn better
how to protect it
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and how it can give us back what we need.
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But with the climate change impact,
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we are experiencing a different impact.
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In my community,
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we have one of the top five
fresh waters in Africa.
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It's Lake Chad.
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When my mother was born,
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Lake Chad used to be
about 25,000 kilometers square of water.
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When I was born, 30 years ago,
it was 10,000 kilometers square.
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And actually now,
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it's about 1,200 kilometers
square of water.
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Ninety percent of this water
just evaporated, disappeared.
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And you have more than 40 million people
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living around this lake
and depending on it.
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They are pastoralists.
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They are fishermen.
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And they are farmers.
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They do not depend on
the end of the month's salary.
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They depend on the rainfall.
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They depend on the crops that are growing
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or the pasture for their cattle.
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The shrinking resources,
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you have many communities
that are fighting to get access.
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The first come is the first served.
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The second have to fight unto death.
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So climate change
is impacting our environment
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by changing our social life,
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because the role of man and woman
in this region, it's different.
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Man is supposed to feed his family,
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take care of his community,
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and if he cannot do that,
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his dignity is under threat.
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He cannot do anything else to pay it back.
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So climate change takes our men
far away from us.
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That is the migration.
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They can migrate to a big city
where they can stay for six or 12 months,
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where they get a job,
they can send back money.
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If they didn't get it,
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they have to jump into the Mediterranean
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and migrate to Europe.
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Some of them die there,
but none of them stop going.
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Of course, it's sad
for the hosting country,
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who are developed countries,
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who have to adapt
to host the migrants coming.
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But how about those who are left behind,
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the women and the children
who have to play the role of men,
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the role of women,
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who have to take care of the security,
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of the food, of the health
of the entire family,
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children and old people?
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So those women for me, they are my heroes
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because they are innovators,
they are solution makers,
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they are changing
the little of the resources
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into the big for the community.
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So those are my people.
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So we use our indigenous people's
traditional knowledge
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to get better resilience
to what we need to survive.
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Our knowledge is not only
for our communities.
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It's to share with each
and others who are living with us.
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And indigenous peoples around the world
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are saving 80 percent
of the world's biodiversity.
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That's the scientists with ??.
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Indigenous peoples in the Amazon,
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you can find the most diverse ecosystem,
better than the national park.
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The indigenous peoples from the Pacific,
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the grandma and the grandpa,
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they know where to get food
after the hurricane hits them.
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So the knowledge that our peoples know
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is helping us to survive and helping
other peoples also to survive
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the climate change impact.
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The world is losing.
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We lost already 60 percent of the species
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and it's increasing every day.
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So one day, I took a scientist
to my community.
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I said, you are giving the good weather
information through the TV and radio,
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but how about coming to my people?
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And then they come,
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they sit around,
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and suddenly, as we are nomadic,
we just start packing our stuff,
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and then they say, like, "Are we moving?"
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I'm like, "No, we are not moving.
It's going to rain."
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And they're like, "Oh, there's no cloud.
How do you know it's going to rain?"
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We're like, "Yeah, it's going to rain."
We pack our stuff.
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Suddenly, heavy rain starts coming down,
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and we are seeing the scientist
running around, hiding under trees
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and protecting their stuff.
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We already packed ours.
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(Laughter)
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After the end of the rain,
the serious discussion starts.
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They say, "How do you know
that it's going to rain?"
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We say, "Well, the old woman
observed the insects
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taking the eggs inside their homes,
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and while the insects
cannot talk with TVs,
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they know how to predict
to protect their generations,
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how to protect the food.
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So for us it's the sign
that it's going to rain
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in at maximum a couple of hours.
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And then they say,
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well, we do have knowledge,
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but we do not combine ecological knowledge
and weather knowledge all together.
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So that's how I started working
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with meteorological scientists
and my communities
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to give better information
to get peoples adapted to climate change.
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I think, if we put together
all the knowledge systems that we have --
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science, technology,
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traditional knowledge --
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we can give the best of us
to protect our peoples,
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to protect our planet,
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to restore the ecosystems
that we have been losing.
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I did that in another way, also.
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I used a tool that I really love a lot.
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It's called a 3D participatory mapping:
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participatory, because it can bring
women, men,
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youth, elders,
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all the intergenerational peoples.
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Then they use science-based knowledge,
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and the community comes together,
they build this map,
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they figure out all
the knowledge that we have
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about where is our sacred forest,
where is our water point,
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where is our corridor,
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where is the place that we move
during each season.
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And these tools are amazing,
because it's building capacity of women,
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because in our communities
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women and men cannot sit together.
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Men talk always, women just sitting there,
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but in the back.
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They are not there to take any decision.
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So after the men figure out
all the knowledge,
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we say, well, you call the women,
"Come and have a look."
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They say, "Yes, sure,"
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because they've already done ??.
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(Laughter)
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When the women come,
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and they look at the map,
they're like, "Mm, no."
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(Laughter)
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"This is wrong.
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Here's where I collect the medicine.
Here's where I collect the food.
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Here's where I collect ??."
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So we changed the knowledge into the map,
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and we called the men.
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Well, they think about what women say.
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All of them shaking their heads.
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"They are right. They are right.
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They are right."
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So that's how we build
the capacity of the women
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in giving them a voice
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in this 3D participatory mapping,
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so women get the detailed knowledge
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that can help the community to adapt.
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And man have the bigger picture knowledge.
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So when we put it together,
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this map helps them to discuss
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but to mitigate the conflict
between the communities
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to access the resources,
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to share better these resources,
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to restore it,
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and to manage it for the long term.
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Our knowledge is very useful.
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Indigenous peoples' knowledge
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are very crucial for our planet.
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It's crucial for all the peoples.
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Science knowledge
were discovered 200 years ago,
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technology 100 years ago,
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but indigenous peoples' knowledge,
it's thousands of years ago.
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So why we cannot put
all of these together,
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combine those three knowledges,
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and give the better resilience
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to the peoples who are getting
the impact of climate change?
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And now it's not only
the developing countries.
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It's the developed countries also.
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We saw the hurricane.
We saw the flood around all the places.
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We saw the fire, even here in California.
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So we need all this knowledge
to come together.
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We need the people in the center.
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And we need the decision makers to change,
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scientists tell them,
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and we tell them,
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and we do have this knowledge.
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We have 10 years to change it.
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Ten years is nothing,
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so we need to act all together
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and we need to act right now.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)