The situation is really now quite alarming for the pastoralist community, especially where I come from, explains Jane Naini Meriwas, a Yaaku from Kenya (Africa). Traditionally, we say that in this season it is rain, in this other season it is dry. So the community makes plans. As my community is nomadic, we move with the livestock. If it will be a very long dry spell, then we use a traditional set-up where we select places where animals can graze, and other places that we will protect. And then other times, we will move. So when it is dry, people migrate. However, if you cross from your own district to this other district, there are already people there. We border with the Samburu, Borana and Bantu. The people here do agriculture. Also we border with other settlers. The lands that are actually left to graze have become really limited. In 2000, we really experienced a lot of drought. For a whole year there was no rain. It was terrible. The drought forced the community to migrate. It was so alarming that the government had to open the very big Park Mount Kenya where they gave the pastoralists permission to take their animals. But to move to Mount Kenya, you have to walk 100 km along a fenced road. The animals are weak and because it’s fenced, they don’t have water or grass. So thousands of animals died along the road. You can find many carcasses when you go to Mount Kenya. Since 2001 the rain pattern has now changed completely. When the rain pattern changes, there is no way to prepare the community.
In my own part of the country, the winters are clearly not as cold as they used to be. Nor is there as much snow, reports Doug Kiel, an Oneida Indian from Wisconsin, USA (North America). Wisconsin’s 15,000 lakes are a tremendously important natural resource and we usually fish them year-round, even after they freeze over in the winter. But the winters are getting warmer, and in recent years this has not always been possible. When I was a child, the lakes froze over in December and did not thaw until nearly April. Now, the lakes do not freeze until much later into the winter – if at all – and the ice is often dangerously thin. And now when the lakes do freeze, they don’t stay frozen. The water is getting warmer during the summer months as well, and this threatens the walleye and trout, two of our most important cold-water fish species.
Before the fifties, we used to depend on the knowledge of our old folks, observes Iteli Tiatia from Samoa (South Pacific). These old people know what wind is blowing just by feeling the wind or looking up at the tree tops. They have names for winds from any direction, like the TO’ELAU, LA’I, LA’ILUA, TUA’OLOA and many others. But wind patterns have dramatically changed, the direction but also the timing. For example, the old folks know in which months hurricanes are possible: Late January, February and March were the worst months; November and December used to be the best. But Hurricane Valerie, one of the most destructive in Samoa, was in December 1991. Moreover, in the past, a hurricane used to come in one direction and eventually fade out once you hear strong lightning and loud thunder. That’s when these old folks would say in Samoan “Ua taliligia le matagi – the hurricane is being shaken”. However for Hurricane Valerie in 1991, it did not end till it covered the four directions and it did not end despite strong lightning and heavy thunder while at its most destructive power.
