The aim for the workshop is to discuss how we can make vulnerable areas more resilient to changing weather conditions and particularly weather extremes such as floods and droughts. Global warming and increased income gaps often strike harder on the most vulnerable areas, particularly in rural areas, where alternative income generation through natural resources is essential. By adapting life to the everyday challenges that changed weather conditions trigger, events such as forced climate migration, could be mitigated if not prevented by changing households’ calculus, i.e., the decision to move to other areas, often cities, thus worsening urban problems (slum creation, crime, lack of sanitization, family break up). Such adaptations can be new farming techniques, different spatial land use, higher landscape heterogeneity, including e.g., more woody vegetation to prevent and mitigate negative impacts through floods or droughts. Further, stronger building materials in the homesteads and livestock diversification, education, strengthening community/feeling of ubuntu, alternatives to fishing (in coastal areas, where warmer waters force the fish to seek deeper waters; e.g. fish farming etc.), could be promoted. Local involvement is a sustainability factor (culture wise, as well as environmental, human and natural resources, maintenance, actual needs, etc.
The workshop seeks to invite an assemblage of people who are concerned with sustainable livelihoods, preservation and conservation of natural resources, and empowering vulnerable communities to be resilient. Therefore, we would like to develop future collaborations and activities by putting together a team for collection of data in affected areas, e.g. in KwaZulu Natal, and work in an inter-disciplinary and trans-sectoral nature. The ambition of such a project is to co-create and co-produce knowledge for impactful community change for self-reliance and self-determination through community participation. We will share experiences of using a PRA approach or ethnographic fieldwork and plan to apply this in evidence-based decision making and holistic community participation. In the workshop, we will talk about our own research experiences, and invite the audience to an open interdisciplinary discussion around different expertise areas, for everyone to think beyond their scientific disciplines, and how we can work together towards a more sustainable society while co-creating knowledge with communities and ressearchers in a transdisciplinary platform. This, we hope, will culminate in the creation of a community of practice on climate change and sustainable development.
The first hour will be dedicated to an introduction of the research field, followed by our own experiences and focus areas within the field.
The second hour will be allocated to Q&A and an open discussion, where we will prepare some topics and questions to get the discussion started.
Our hope is to hear voices from other fields, and their experiences and ideas for a possible future collaborative project.
Speakers:
Miss Judith Vincent – Social Anthropologist and MA student at Division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping University, judith.anthropologist@gmail.com, judvi639@student.liu.se
Miss Nomaswazi Dlamini – Student and Lecturer at the University of Zululand, South Africa (PhD Candidate Politics and International Relations), Swazidlamini03@gmail.com, Dlamininp@unizulu.ac.za,
Prof. Oliver Mtapuri – Full Professor at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa (Development Studies), mtapurio@ukzn.ac.za, simbaomtapuri@yahoo.com
PhD Karin Steen - Sustainability Science, Lund University, Sweden, karin.steen@lucsus.lu.se
PhD student Cecilia Hagberg - Animal science and livestock production, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, cecilia.hagberg@slu.se,
PhD student Anna Stubbendorff - Nutritional epidemiology, Lund University, Sweden. anna.stubbendorff@med.lu.se
Prof. Mfundo Mandla Masuku - Associate Professor at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa (Development Studies), masukum@ukzn.ac.za, profmmasuku@gmail.com,
PhD Mahama Tawat – School of Learning and Communication, Master’s Programme in Global Studies: Sustainable Societies and Social Change Jönköping University, Mahama.tawat@ju.se Keywords: Climate change, sustainable development, vulnerable areas, indigenous knowledge systems, climate migration
