page_title: Climate change and indigenous peoples
section_title: Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Climate change and indigenous peoples / Africa
caption_attribution_description: English: Farm tools at Chitedze Research Station, Malawi.
context_page_description: Climate change disproportionately impacts indigenous people around the world, especially in terms of their health, environments, and communities. Indigenous people found in Africa, the Arctic, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America and the Pacific have strategies and traditional knowledge to adapt to climate change. These knowledge systems can be beneficial for their own adaptation to climate change as well as applicable to non-indigenous people.
  The majority of the world’s biological, ecological, and cultural diversity is located within Indigenous territories. There are over 370 million indigenous peoples found across 90+ countries. Approximately 22% of the planet's land is indigenous territories, varying slightly depending on how indigeneity and land usage is determined. Indigenous people have the important role of the main knowledge keepers within their communities, including knowledge relating to the maintenance of social-ecological systems.
context_section_description: Climate change in Africa will lead to food insecurity, displacement of Indigenous persons, as well as increased famine, drought, and floods. In some regions of Africa, like Malawi, climate change can also lead to landslides, hailstorms, and mudslides. Pressure from climate change on Africa is amplified because disaster management infrastructure is nonexistent or severely inadequate throughout the continent. Furthermore, the impact of climate change in Africa falls disproportionately on Indigenous people because they have limitations on their migration and mobility, are more negatively affected by decreased biodiversity, and have their agricultural land disproportionately degraded by climate change. In Malawi, there has been a decrease in yield per unit hectare due to prolonged droughts and inadequate rainfall.
  The northernmost and southernmost countries within the continent of Africa are considered subtropical. Drought is one of the most significant threats posed by climate change to subtropical regions. Drought leads to subsequent issues regarding the agricultural sector which has significant effects on the livelihoods of populations within those areas. Pastoralists throughout the continent have coped with the aridity of the land through the adoption of a nomadic lifestyle to find different sources of water for their livestock.
caption: Farm tools from Malawi, where researchers studied Indigenous agriculture techniques.
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