Ua ‘afa le Aso Stormy weather today: traditional ecological knowledge of weather and climate. The Samoa experience
By P. Lefale. 2010
177 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This paper examines traditional ecological knowledge of weather and climate in Samoa, a Polynesian community in the South Pacific. The research found Samoans have their own unique seasonal calendar. The Samoan seasonal calendar is predominantly based on the observations of local environmental changes, which are in turn influenced by weather and climate. Monitoring changes in plants and animal behaviour, for example, are key indicators used by the Samoans to forecast changes in weather and climate. In addition, their communal and family social activities like hunting, fishing and feasting are driven by the seasonal calendar. The Samoans knowledge of cloud formation, conditions conducive to the formation and onset of severe weather systems and seasonal changes in climate, helped them anticipate, plan and adapt to extreme weather and climate events. The ability and knowledge of the Samoans to forecast the onset of extreme weather and climate events, relying predominantly on local environmental changes are vital tools that should be incorporated in the formulation of human induced climate change adaptation strategies.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Geography, Planning and Development, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4dea9f4e4d3b015e7e399246071f5e034ed43f56
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In Atmospheric Science
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Citations in the corpus
- Value of traditional oral narratives in building climate-change resilience: insights from rural communities in Fiji (2016, background): “These narratives include observations of unusual animal and plant behavior, similar to those found in Samoa (Lefale 2010).”
- Small islands, valuable insights: systems of customary resource use and resilience to climate change in the Pacific (2014, background): “…environmental change has been the basis for the evolution of human subsistence and for directing communal activities across time and space, such as where and when to fish, plant, harvest, conserve, feast, voyage, relocate, migrate, etc. (e.g., Green et al. 2010, Lefale 2010, Leonard et al. 2013).”
- Ecosystem-Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Caribbean Small Island Developing States: Integrating Local and External Knowledge (2012, background): “In addition, whilst not always directly focused on ecosystems per se, yet nonetheless covering aspects of ecosystems, there are large numbers of case studies outlining use of local knowledge to address climate change impacts such as in Samoa [50],”