Elifuraha Laltaika, Tumaini University Makumira, Faculty of Law, Senior Lecturer of Human Rights Law & Policy

DOI: 10.65398/WUDZ7825

1.     Introduction

In recent years, the role of traditional knowledge has received increasing attention as climate scientists, policy makers, academics and community advocates have acknowledged its significant contribution to ecosystem stewardship and mitigation of climate change impacts. Yet the central role played by weather forecasting knowledge in fostering traditional or indigenous economies in the context of climate change, as well as the associated ecological and policy barriers, remain scantly documented. This paper intends to contribute to filling this knowledge gap. It explores how Maasai pastoralists in Northern Tanzania draw upon traditional knowledge to forecast weather variabilities and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The paper also outlines ecological and the policy barriers impeding the traditional herders’ adoptive capacities.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows: Part two summarizes the Maasai traditional knowledge of weather forecasting. Part three discusses how pastoralists use the knowledge to enhance their traditional economy and enhance food security and sustainable development in the age of climate change and its impacts. Factors weakening forecasting skills and corresponding decisions to enhance survival of the traditional economy are contained under part four. They include disappearance of plant species and the spread of invasive species, compounded by legal and policy frameworks that limit communal land ownership and the sharing of rangeland resources. Part Five discusses coping mechanisms. Part six contain the conclusion and recommendation.

2.     Maasai Pastoralists’ traditional their weather forecasting skills

Like other Indigenous peoples around the world, Maasai pastoralists in Northern Tanzania have well developed and robust traditional knowledge systems that are key to their survival and central to their roles in stewarding lands, territories, and resources. One key skill set relates to understanding and predicting weather patterns or variabilities. The predictive capacity is thus key to the pastoralists’ survival. To exemplify this, a constant question a person understandably asks oneself upon hearing about the nomadic lifeway of pastoralists is: how do they know there would be rainfall where they intend to relocate in search of “greener pastures”? The answer to this question points to the existence of a body of traditional knowledge and wisdom which is passed from one generation to the next through oral tradition or storytelling.

Growing up in a rangeland young Maasai adults are trained to curiously observe changes in vegetation, livestock behaviors and other astronomical signs as important predictors of how a season would turn out to be and prepare accordingly. The training takes the form of experiential learning or learning by doing, and is highly dependent on the environment, hence the local environment is regarded as the “lab”. For enforcement of the traditional knowledge imparted, trainings combine raising awareness on norms, rules, beliefs and practices, which achieve sustainable resources use within fragile environments, and which are responsive to community values and processes. In the next paragraphs examples are given of the weather forecasting skills in question.

2.1  Studying clues embedded in goats’ small intestines

For Maasai pastoralists, goats provide and important source of food, specifically much needed protein, and milk. However, it appears the utility of goats goes beyond merely providing traditional food. In addition, goats when slaughtered serve as labs for studying climate variabilities. So, during goat slaughtering, small intestines are carefully studied whenever unusual features are noticed. If for example, bubbles are more than usual that is a clue for the good news that the rainy season is drawing closer.

Unlike cattle slaughtering which is done on rare occasions to mark traditional ceremonies, goats and sheep are kept primarily for easy access as a food source. Accordingly, they provide important and timely labs because clues can be known before it is too late to take decisions.

2.2  Signs observable in vegetation changes

In addition to grasses for livestock, rangelands are also replete with other vegetations such as fruits, trees and flowers. When Olekitenyi (Abutilon Sp.) start flowering, this is a wakeup call that a dry period (which is more likely to last longer than usual) is underway. The same message is conveyed by the ripening of fruits of Ormesera (Adansonia digitata).

3. Safeguarding traditional livelihood and fostering sustainability

Maasai Pastoralists use traditional knowledge of the weather forecasting to guide day-to-day decisions, enhance their traditional economy, foster sustainable development, and enhance food security. The main decision revolves around mobility: where, when and how to relocate to a new area once certain weather indicators discussed above become apparent. This is the essence of the nomadic lifeway and mobility is its central pillar.

By moving away from a place of prolonged droughts, Maasai pastoralists rescue their traditional economy from decimation. Mobility also enhances sustainable environmental management through land fallowing and reduced degradation. Pastoralism and its products comprise larger part of food sources, hence more animals mean more secure food reserve as an informal insurance scheme. This fact calls to question uncritical policy prescriptions and academic narratives requiring pastoralists to reduce the number of livestock and align with the rangelands “carrying capacity”.

Based on the above, it is thus self-evident that pastoralists could historically avoid losing their herds during drought because of their ability to forecast weather variabilities and make timely decisions. Weather forecasting skills as a critical traditional knowledge tool has over the years played a pivotal role as a strong basis for decisions taken by the pastoral communities from day-to-day. In the next part, this paper outlines barriers hampering pastoralists from implementing findings of weather forecasting. The factors can broadly be categorized as ecological and policy. The former relates to landscape-based developments, while the latter reflects decisions taken by policymakers as observed in legislative frameworks.

4.     Barriers to implementing Weather Forecasting Findings

(a)  Ecological barriers

Across rangelands in Northen Tanzania, there is an alarmingly notable disappearance of plant species the Maasai pastoralists have traditionally used to predict weather variabilities. Conversely, there is a surge of invasive species, mostly exotic. As a testament to their exotic nature, most of the invasive plant species have no common Maasai names. Instead, they are named according to how they look. A towering example is Parthenium hysterophorus, named in Maa (the language of the Maasai peoples) as oloibor lukunya (literally translated as white-headed because it blossoms white flowers).

While the origin of oloibor lukunya remains unknown, car dust propagates the invasive plant even further. The plant is testament to changes in weather patterns, and highly destructive to the pastoral indigenous livelihood because it competes with pastures for livestock and causes disappearance of plants used to predict the weather.

Apart from oloibor lukunya, a number of other local plant species are intruding in the grasslands. In the past, rangelands were evenly divided into bushes, trees and grasslands but currently grasslands are increasingly shrinking as a result of growing bushes of invasive species. They include Iltepes, which are very prevalent in Armanie sub-village of Terrat in Simajiro. This plant species is growing at an alarming proportion, and herders attribute it to change in the weather patterns over the last one decade. Compounding this, some disappearing species constitute very nutritious feeds for livestock and once completely lost, pastoral life in the rangeland will be more stressful.

(b)  Policy barriers

Tanzania is characterized by overlapping legislative frameworks whose net-effects is to favor wildlife conservation over pastoralism. They include the Wildlife Conservation Act, 2009, the Ngorongoro Conservation Act, 1959 and National Parks Act, 1959. The interpretation and enforcement of the laws in question has resulted in forceful evictions and shrinking of pasturelands hence restricting mobility which is central to the pastoral lifeway.

Additionally, categorizing land used by pastoralists as village land (pursuant to the Village Land Act, no. 5 of 1999) has weakened traditional land use patterns and their supporting traditional institutions. This is largely through the creation of village governments which are semi-autonomous institutions on land management, accompanied by insistence on respecting village boundaries. While the Village Land Act allows for sharing of resources by neighboring villages, the process is easily reversible, cumbersome and too legalistic.

Another barrier is the introduction into the Tanzanian statute book, of the concept of ‘unused’ land (equivalent to the colonial concept of terra nullius). Specifically, the Land Act no. 4 of 1999 describes general land (which is available for allotment to the general public, including for the purpose of foreign direct investments) to include “unused village land”. This concept disproportionally affects mobile pastoralists hence discourages them from moving lest their land be seen as ‘idle’ or unused.

5.     Conclusion and Recommendations

Pastoralists have, from time immemorial, used traditional knowledge as an important tool kit for managing their traditional economy. A key skill set relates to weather forecasting, enabling them to make decisions on when and where to relocate as part of mobility. In the Context of Climate Change however, both the “raw materials” needed to make the predictions more accurately are highly affected. Additionally, what they do with the findings of their prediction remain highly affected by restrictive legal and policy frameworks that are unfriendly to pastoralism. This paper recommends implementation, in good faith, of various articles of the UNDRIP requiring protection of traditional livelihoods such as Article 20, 29 and 32.

Selected References

Andrew Mollel and Edward Porokwa. Pastoralists Land Rights and Space: A Challenged Livelihood in Tanzania. Journal of Land and Society, (2014) Vol. 1, No.1, 25-42.

Hendlin, Yogi Hale. “From Terra Nullius to Terra Communis: reconsidering wild land in an era of conservation and indigenous rights”. Environmental Philosophy (2014).

Laltaika, Elifuraha Coping with Drought: Climate Change and Maasai Pastoralists in Tanzania. In Ann Laareto Tamaiyo and Wilfredo V. Alangui (eds) Knowledge, Innovation & Resilience: Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation Measures. Tebtebba Foundation, 2012

Laltaika, Elifuraha, I. and Kelly, M. Askew. “Modes of Dispossession of indigenous lands and territories in Africa”. Lands of the Future: Anthropological Perspectives on Pastoralism, Land Deals and Tropes of Modernity in Eastern Africa. New York: Berghahn Books (2021); 99-122.

Mattias Ahen, “The Provisions on Lands, Territories and Natural Resources in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: An Introduction”. In Clare Charters and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (eds), Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

* Preparation for this presentation benefited from an empirical Study I conducted in 2016, with the support of UNESCO’s Local and Indigenous Knowledge System (LINKS). I am thus thankful to UNESCO and my field researcher assistants Lucas Yamat, Saitoti Parmelo and Bahati Singo, as well as my student research assistants (as they were then) from the Faculty of Law, Tumaini University Makumira-Gift Joshua, and Elizabeth Kabwe.