Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, AFPAT President, Chad

DOI: 10.65398/UWIW7233

I-Introduction

I come from the nomadic pastoralist community in Chad and my People are called Mbororo. They are cattle herders and live across 6 countries in Africa: Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan and, recently, due to the impacts of climate change, we also have a presence in Ghana and other countries. This has been our land for ages, even if today, due to the recent existence of countries and artificial national boundaries, within my family (cousin, uncles, aunties) we all have different nationalities.

My people live in harmony with all the natural species. We depend on rainfall, water and pastures for our cattle. Through centuries of practicing pastoralism, we have learned from our environment. Listening and observing different natural species has given us powerful assets to survive and understand our land. Where scientists see an “unstable” ecosystem, and Western representations see a “hostile” environment, Mbororo see a place where life and development are a reality. We know that for every environmental phenomenon that may involve a risk for our people, Nature has also given us a solution to cope with it. It has helped us to develop a wisdom and traditional knowledge that have been passing from one generation to another. We use this wisdom of our ancestors and modern science and technology to help communities build resilience. That is what we will share through this paper.

In this presentation I would like to show that, despite this complex situation involving Mbororo, their knowledge is proving to be a tool for us to cope with the environmental crisis. The first part of my presentation discusses some of the key findings that emerge from the community-led research that I did with my organization, the Indigenous Women and Peoples Association of Chad (AFPAT),[1] which has done so for more than 10 years, about the knowledge they have on climate and biodiversity. In particular, I will show some of the most important elements that they use to predict weather forecasts. The second part will focus on a specific example: on how the Mbororo people are currently working on their knowledge as the main resource to face the environmental challenges brought about by climate change.

II-Climate Change Impact

Due to climate change, our life and livelihood are being threatened. The resources that have been given to us are rapidly changing, and in this context our closeness to our environment is becoming an element of vulnerability vis-à-vis climate change impacts, biodiversity loss and desertification advance, and so our home is under threat.

The extent of our land’s environmental degradation is clear when we observe one of the most precious environmental spots in the region, Lake Chad. It used to be one of the top five freshwater lakes of Africa; when my mother was born, the lake was about 25,000 square kilometers of freshwater. Today, in less than two generations, the lake has lost 90% of its water. What is happening to the lake has a huge impact for about 40,000,000 people living and depending on its fragile ecosystem. It has entailed the multiplication and intensification of conflicts between communities who are fighting against each other to get access to the remaining resources.

III-Mbororo Knowledge To Predict Weather

The Mbororo people do not have access to modern science or to Western technology, but we have access to the best science and technology ever, Nature. Nature has given us all the knowledge that we have needed to find, grow and choose our food, our medicine; to practice transhumance around places during a drought or during a flood, or even to forecast weather.

Our research showed that the Mbororo people use different components to predict weather, some ecological, and others astronomical. The ecological components include trees, flowers, plants, and fruits. We observe their size and their colors, and they help us do a forecast, to know if the coming rainy season is going to be good for us or not. We also observe animals, insects, and lizards.

Unlike the modern science forecast, our forecast is qualitative, and allows us to know if we will have a “good season” or not. While the science forecast focuses on the quantity of millimeters that a rainy season will bring, our forecast produces data that is important for our livelihood, which is mainly if the rains that the season will bring can penetrate the soil and therefore, if they will allow the vegetation to grow. For us, a quantitative rain forecast can be misleading, as a forecast for a generous quantity of rain may not exclude the possibility of floods, which cannot be considered a good season.

For Mbororo, the start of each season is determined by ecological and astronomical components. The start of the season is announced by our own cattle, by the flowers, by the trees, by the wind. We observe all that and we know exactly when the season is starting. Knowing when the season starts is important, because our transhumance system is seasonal but also because our vaccination plans are also dictated by the seasons. When the season is coming, we know there are some sicknesses that can come with it, so there are specific kinds of food that are recommended to be taken at given days and given hours of the day. You may eventually get the sickness, but it will be lighter than if you didn’t have your vaccine.

We Mbororo also observe the different winds. There are many winds, and we observe their direction, if they are heavy, if they are dry, etc. We observe the cloud position and stars in the sky and we make predictions from astrological observation.

The research we have been doing is also focused on our seasonal calendars, which are based on the different ecosystems existing in our territories, including the Sahel, the savannah and the tropical forest. Each of those ecosystems involves different ecological dynamics, and understanding them demands specific knowledge about the weather. Even the way the knowledge that each ecosystem is used changes from one region to another.

1-Mbororo Seasonal Calendar

For the seasonal calendar, we have captured that knowledge in representations and here you can see the seasonal calendar from the Lake Chad region (left) and the South Chad area, where seminomadic groups live (right). This model is only a very brief summary of the research showing, as the full calendar is not yet published while we need to ensure the safeguard and protection of this unique knowledge of our people.

Our seasons are ecosystemic-based, which means that each region has its own calendar. Around Sahel and in the savannahs, which means around Lake Chad, the seasonal calendar has five seasons, and seven seasons in between the savannahs and the tropical area of southern Chad. Unlike the seasonal calendar in Europe or, in general, in Western culture, where they refer to four seasons in a very extended area, for Mbororo the season you have depends on the place where you are.

2-Astrological and constellation observation

The Mbororo also observe stars and constellations in the sky. There are millions of stars, and we follow the stars day or night to guide our displacements. Stars give us the predictions that we need, and insights on how we can adapt our life to different scenarios. For example, when it rains, we need to have a shelter to cover our people and our cattle. When you are a pastoralist, you know you need to be in the grasslands but there are not many shelters in those lands. As nomadic people, you need to predict the weather so you know when exactly it is raining, and can be close to a place where you can hide. You need to know that very precisely, as you also know that, if it is not raining, you have to be outside feeding your cattle and, if it is a dry season, to hide from the hot weather and water scarcity. This is why it is so important for nomadic people to predict the weather.

From the millions of stars in the sky, our people have identified 28 stars that are really crucial. We know each of them and we know when they will come up and go down. Twenty-seven of them are visible in the sky for 13 days and during that time they provide information to us, but one of them is visible for 14 days. This happens during the heavy rainy season. The cycle of those 28 stars is equivalent to 365 days, which corresponds to a 1-year cycle. Our people do not have yearly calendars, but we calculate our years based on the stars, and they guide us to know exactly how we can travel.

3-2D/3D Participatory mapping: Using Science, Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and technologies

Our research has identified key challenges that our knowledge is facing nowadays. The Mbororo people are wondering how, in this context, it would be possible to transfer their knowledge to the next generations. Our knowledge is oral and it is not for us, it is also for the next generations who are the young people that can now use the technology and the science to safeguard it.

Having that as a context, I, through my organization, initiated to combine and marry the three different knowledge systems: the traditional knowledge of our people, modern science and technology. This initiative is to tap their knowledge and reinforce it through 2D or 3D participatory mapping, also engaging some science and technology tools. This experience will be explored in the following second section.

The use of 2D and 3D participatory mapping has revealed itself to be an experience with tangible results in terms of strengthening resilience for the Mbororo people and other communities living together. I will share some findings from the most recent experience, which is 2D participatory mapping. Unlike 3D participatory mapping, which requires engaging a baseline of geographical information to build the map with the community, 2D participatory mapping can be built with a satellite image. We worked with a database organization that provided us with the relevant images.

In the last three years, the Mbororo people have focused on two maps. One of them, in the southern part of Chad, represents an area of 2,500 kilometers square and involved 116 communities’ chiefs from villages and the nomadic stopping areas. While a second one represents the area around the Lake Chad, and covers 3,500 kilometers square, the latter has involved working with more than 556 community villages (who represent a few thousand people), nomadic stops, villages and islands because it is around Lake Chad.

The process is, after printing the satellite images at the exact scale, I went to the community. We first worked with the communities in the elaboration of legends that could be designed and agreed by everyone and decided on the one we can translate through the general languages and the one that we have to keep only in our indigenous language to protect it. Our project encountered some challenges when trying to engage our knowledge in this collaboration with science and technology. Our knowledge is based on oral traditions, and the way we speak about it or explain it are quite different from the methods used by science. This is a challenge when it comes to trying to work with the knowledge of the Mbororo people in contexts that are different from the ones in which it originated, and especially when trying to engage our knowledge in a dialogue with science, to translate this knowledge in order to reinforce both knowledge systems in a way that can save us for long.

From that perspective, it was very important to respect and be faithful to the way the knowledge was expressed and shared by the community. Sometimes they said, for example, that the water was green in a place, and so the legend has to reflect that, as the legend has to mean something to the community as it is them who know better their environment.

At the end of the work on the legends, we open the map, and we put them in specific places on the map. When you start matching the map with the knowledge the people have about it, you realize that the best satellite image is nothing if it is not populated by the data of the community. At the end of the exercise, I take a photo of the map, and I digitalize it. The result is the map that you can see on the left of the image below.

IV-Indigenous Knowledge for Decision and Policy-Making

The next stage of the process was to go back with the printed map to the community, and work with them to produce a charter of principles to guide their action on the basis of the knowledge captured in the map. The last charter we did has 20 articles in 3 chapters: chapter one focuses on how they can better manage the natural resources and share them; chapter 2 focuses on how they can mitigate the conflict over the resources, and chapter 3 looks at how they can protect and share and save the traditional knowledge that they have. At the end of the drafting, each community chief agrees, signs the charter and we then develop a workplan of implementation. The main activities of the work plan include the restoration of the land, the strengthening of women and youth participation, women’s land rights, a conflict resolution committee, etc.

Every member of the community took the charter and a copy of the digital map with them, as a document that will help the community to solve conflict, guide land and natural resource management, and live in harmony between them. A salient outcome of this exercise is, for example, that two months ago, a community chief gave land rights to women in his community and, for the first time, women got land rights. Since then, different communities want to walk in that direction and we are now working in getting them an official paper for their land. Communities involved in the project have also agreed to do a collective agroecology project to transfer relevant Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge to their children, while also ensuring to have an income to send the children to school and protect their area from environmental hazards.

At the national level, the experience I have just explained has also been very powerful. Our research and experience has helped the national government of Chad to better work with the Indigenous communities, and to include them in decision-making processes when they are planning adaptation and mitigation. We have achieved that, when you look at the Chad National Adaptation Plan, there is a paragraph that recognizes the work of the Mbororo people on participatory mapping, and recognizes community knowledge, which is important for a National Adaptation Plan.

The experience I brought to you today shows that by putting modern science knowledge together with Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge and technology, we can really build a better place for the communities and include the communities who did not go to school, to get the chance to contribute and also to safeguard their knowledge.

[1] http://www.afpat.net