Linking Local Knowledge and Local Institutions for the Study of Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change: Participatory GIS in Northern Tanzania

在非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲，研究人员已经根据当地知识确定了大量的环境、社会和经济战略，使农村人民能够实践自己的生计。最重要的是，这些策略使它们能够缓冲自己免受干旱和洪水等极端事件的影响。在东非，全球气候变化将改变高原和稀树草原地区对气候敏感的生计系统。因此，它对农村生计系统的短期应对方法和长期适应能力都提出了根本性的挑战。迄今为止，许多关于气候变化适应的研究都集中在区域和国家层面的适应政策和计划上，而微观尺度的适应以及其所基于的地方知识是一个尚未得到充分研究的维度。该项目将通过多方面的参与性方法评估当地知识对适应能力的贡献，该方法抓住了坦桑尼亚北部不断变化的人类环境系统的关键要素。这样，该项目将有助于改进衡量和分析家庭、社区和区域尺度适应能力的传统方法。该项目的第二个主要贡献是在社会经济、环境和技术知识的外部来源的背景下，解决有关地方知识系统和地方机构之间相互作用的知识差距。该项目调查了人力、社会和制度资本使家庭和社区能够利用知识减轻气候不稳定加剧对农村生计的负面影响的各种方式。最后，该项目验证了这样一种观点，即气候变化开辟了新的生计选择，并可能导致社会经济和文化群体在环境和制度背景下加强合作和群体间联系。该方法包括一系列实地方法，包括家庭调查、认知地图、参与性社区论坛和机构利益相关者研讨会。将开发一个参与式地理信息系统（PGIS），以整合和分析来自实地研究、统计和空间数据以及气候模拟结果的信息。PGIS还作为在整个项目期间进行的参与性学习活动的工具。气候变化给农村生计和国家政策带来了前所未有的挑战。这一事实使该项目更加关注当地知识、当地机构和适应之间的相互作用。这项研究的科学、政策和教育贡献是相互交织和协同的，因为它采用了多方利益相关者参与的方法。该项目将有助于设计有效的气候变化适应方案，特别是有助于将地方一级的进程纳入国家适应政策。在国际一级，在向新的国际气候变化适应政策过渡即将生效之际，这些成果和制定的框架将丰富其他地方的科学工作。在坦桑尼亚，PGIS将被改进，作为一个基于网络的模拟工具，用于研究小组与决策者和民间社会的互动。项目活动还将在多个层面上产生教育效益。该项目的研究成果以及PGIS和其他方法的发展将加强美国和坦桑尼亚大学的人类环境地理学、环境科学、地理技术和语言学的教学。

Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, researchers have identified a multitude of environmental, social, and economic strategies based on local knowledge that enable rural people to practice their livelihoods. Most critically, these strategies allow them to buffer themselves from extreme events such as droughts and floods. In East Africa, global climate change will alter the climate-sensitive livelihood systems of highland and savanna areas. It thus poses a fundamental challenge to both short-term coping methods and long-term adaptive capacity of the rural livelihood systems. Much research on climate change adaptation has so far focused on regional and national level adaptation policies and programs, while micro-scale adaptation, and the local knowledge on which it is based, represent an understudied dimension. This project will assess the contribution of local knowledge to adaptive capacity through a multifaceted participatory methodology that captures key elements of changing human-environment systems in Northern Tanzania. In so doing, the project will contribute to refining the conventional means of measuring and analyzing adaptive capacity at household, community, and regional scales. A second primary contribution of the project is to address the gap in knowledge concerning the interaction of between local knowledge systems and local institutions in the context of external sources of socioeconomic, environmental, and technical knowledge. The project investigates the myriad ways in which human, social, and institutional capital enable households and communities to draw on knowledge to moderate the negative effects of greater climatic instability on rural livelihoods. Finally, the project tests the notion that climate change opens up new livelihood options and may lead to increasing cooperation and inter-group contact between socioeconomic and cultural groups across environmental and institutional contexts. The methodology includes a range of field methods, including a household survey, cognitive mapping, participatory community forums, and institutional stakeholder workshops. A participatory geographic information system (PGIS) will be developed to integrate and analyze information from field research, statistics and spatial data, and climate modeling results. The PGIS also serves as a tool for participatory learning activities conducted throughout the duration of the project. Unprecedented challenges are posed to rural livelihoods and to state policy by climate change. This fact gives additional saliency to the project's focus on the interactions between local knowledge, local institutions, and adaptation. The scientific, policy, and educational contributions of this research are interwoven and synergistic because of the multi-stakeholder, participatory approach. The project will make a contribution to the design of effective climate change adaptation programs and in particular will contribute to the incorporation of local-level processes into national adaptation policies. At the international level, the results and the framework developed will enrich scientific work elsewhere at a time when the transition to a new international climate change adaptation policy will be coming into force. In Tanzania, the PGIS will be refined for use as a web-based simulation tool for the research team's interactions with policy makers and civil society. Project activities will also result in educational benefits at multiple levels. The project's research findings and the development of the PGIS and other methods will enhance the teaching of human-environment geography, environmental science, geographic techniques, and linguistics at U.S. and Tanzanian universities.