Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List

Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until December 31, 2025

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM THE LOWVELD IN ZIMBABWE, 1930-PRESENT

Chishaka, Passmore
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1690893527694653

Abstract Details

2023, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History.
Based on a critical reading of colonial archives and extensive use of oral sources, this dissertation argues that indigenous custodians of the landscape in semi-arid regions of the Zimbabwean Lowveld have a longstanding experience of harnessing their environmental literacy and detailed knowledge of nature to combat climate change. Starting with colonial encounters and contested boundaries of knowledge in Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe) since the early twentieth century, I demonstrate that oral traditions survived the onslaught of colonialism and offered new generations ways of responding to climate change. I use empirical examples to demonstrate that indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) have been obscured under the veneer of colonial historiography, hence, the importance of recovering African cultural achievements and indigenous agency to the historical record. This dissertation examines the adoption of various coping strategies and sustainable agricultural practices initiated by indigenous people to promote climate smart agriculture and identifies the factors that influence adoption of certain adaptive practices. Water has been a central and defining factor of Africa’s development trajectory. A growing body of literature has demonstrated that agricultural yields have been declining in developing countries, including Zimbabwe, due to the impacts of climate change. Indigenous experiences, conceptions and perceptions have played a vital role in the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Indigenous farmers are at peace with modernity and modernization, but in the absence of modern technologies and state support, they have been going back to traditional forms of development. The interrelated objectives of climate change mitigation, adaptation and food security were simultaneously sustained through the hybrid integration of indigenous and modern farming practices in agricultural production and sustainable development planning. Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are adaptable in building resilience of agricultural systems to climate change. Historically, the use of IKS and climate smart agriculture techniques increased indigenous farmers’ resilience to climate change impacts. The notion of decolonizing knowledge has larger resonance with the quest for epistemic sovereignty. Since the early twentieth century, top-down scientific agricultural research initiatives and the West’s more abstract ideas about progress and enlightenment in African colonies, including Southern Rhodesia, were challenged by the African communities, and sometimes adapted to local realities. At the heart of the conflict lay questions of control, continuity, and sustainability. Although the British structure of knowledge and colonial knowledge production overlooked IKS and privileged Western environmental management practices, indigenous farmers held fast to custom and tradition. Despite being subjected to involuntary resettlement in unproductive Reserves and Tribal Trustlands (present day communal areas), indigenous farmers continued to tap into local knowledge to survive and make ends meet in inhospitable ecosystems. They are in perennial battle mode, a battle that will never end. The colonial period was engulfed with contested boundaries of knowledge between preexisting indigenous epistemologies vis-à-vis Western modern approaches to environmental conservation. Nevertheless, indigenous people did not abandon their ways of knowing and of reading landscape because they do not trust experts but their experience. I transcend Western frames of reference to recover indigenous lifeways and sustenance systems of custodians of the landscape who have bonded with the land for generations. A preponderance of exclusionary colonial policies and forced removals of indigenous people from their productive farming areas in the Highveld created a longstanding land question that eventually triggered Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle between the 1960s and 1980. Two decades after Zimbabwe’s attainment of independence and self-determination, the land question lingered on, unresolved. It took the agency of bottom-up social movements to challenge primitive accumulation and racial landscapes of exclusion. The Fast-Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP), which commenced in earnest in 2000, helped to redress skewed land ownership regimes of the colonial period. White commercial farmers who had retained productive commercial farmland after independence were eventually booted out and replaced by indigenous farmers. Zimbabwe attained political transition in 1980 but hardly any notable economic transition and empowerment until 2000. Indigenous beneficiaries of the land reform program adopted a hybrid use of indigenous and modern knowledge to inform and shape farm structure, management, and practice. The thesis concludes that there is no perfect solution to sustainable agricultural development particularly in the tropics. Climate change impacts have made it more challenging to produce sufficient food and contributed to a substantial decline in the agricultural output. Since the sum-total of crops harvested per unit of land cultivated have not met forecasted demand for food, the hybridization of indigenous and modern knowledge holds promise to enhance agricultural productivity on existing land through irrigation, hybrid fertilization and adoption of new methods like precision farming for sustainable development. Breaking down the dichotomous binaries between indigenous and modern knowledge yields higher promise for synthesized planning and sustainable development. More sustainable agricultural development gains could be achieved through integrated support systems to climate forecasting, knowledge weaving, hybrid extension advisory, and adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices to address gaps in food security. For sustainable agricultural growth to be achieved, institutional reform concurrent with significant investments in agricultural modernization is needed in developing countries. Alternatively, food distribution should be evenly shared from where it grows in abundance to where it doesn’t. Governments and business would also need to work together to encourage innovation, increase productivity and integration in supply chains toward a sustainable food balance. This affords us prospects to rethink Zimbabwe’s development trajectory since the colonial period and a window of opportunity to carve out appropriate tools and solutions to guide sustainable development. Broadly conceived, this dissertation has larger implications for food security and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa in general, and rural Zimbabwe in particular.
Timothy Scarnecchia (Advisor)
331 p.
African History; Agriculture; Animal Diseases; Environmental Management; Environmental Philosophy; Environmental Studies; Evolution and Development; Folklore; Forestry; Gender; History; Land Use Planning; Livestock; Religion; Spirituality; Sustainability; Water Resource Management
Climate Change Peasants Indigenous Knowledge Indigenous Knowledge Systems Landscape Knowledge Sustainable Development Rural Development Hybridization of Knowledge Afro-modernity Decolonization Post-Colonialism Custodians of the Landscape Modernity Modernization Environmental Literacy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Chishaka, P. (2023). INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM THE LOWVELD IN ZIMBABWE, 1930-PRESENT [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1690893527694653

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Chishaka, Passmore. INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM THE LOWVELD IN ZIMBABWE, 1930-PRESENT. 2023. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1690893527694653.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Chishaka, Passmore. "INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM THE LOWVELD IN ZIMBABWE, 1930-PRESENT." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1690893527694653

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1690893527694653
© 2023, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS FROM THE LOWVELD IN ZIMBABWE, 1930-PRESENT by Passmore Chishaka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.