Abstract

Society is faced with a range of challenges, from poverty eradication to hunger and wars to diseases. However, the most challenging problem is that of global warming and climate change, as it poses serious negative impacts on all sectors of the economy. Therefore, the urgent need to find effective solutions that can enhance the adaptability capacity, resilience-building and sustainability is crucial, especially in agriculture, as it is key to socioeconomic development in many third-world countries. However, for decades, the implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies, mechanisms, and solutions in the agriculture sector has been mainly embedded in scientific knowledge sidelining local ecological knowledge (LEK). LEK is knowledge unique to a given culture or society, as it is acquired through the accumulation of years of experiences from the local people and passed on from generation to generation. This article draws on research examples to argue that LEK is as important as scientific knowledge in effectively addressing climate change impacts, and the successful incorporation of effective elements of LEK into policy and integrating it with scientific knowledge can be rewarding and beneficial in adapting to a changing climate. This article analyzes past and present climate change-related impacts on agriculture and identifies effective LEK adaptive mechanisms utilized by the local smallholder farmers in central and southern Zambia. The article concludes that the integration of effective LEK with scientific knowledge and the ultimate incorporation of key aspects of LEK into developmental and climate change policies can be one of the most effective ways for a sustainable and adaptive agriculture sector in the face of climate change.