Hello and welcome. The more we investigate and understand about climate change, the more we identify impacts of climate change in many different elements of the ecosystems. So in this figure, we see the main drivers of climate change here in the center surrounded by the main impacts of these drivers on climate change, which on their hands. They also have impacts on several different elements of ecosystems and livelihoods ranging from impact in by diversity all the way to impact in human health and well being. And in order to understand these different and multiple impacts of climate change, we need actually a good data with a temporal depth so we need good records of past climate information. And also with wide spatial coverage, especially when we are trying to understand climate patterns that more global scales. But this data, however, is not always available. Even our more basic meteorological data is sometimes very incomplete and also the spatial distribution of meteorological knowledge. It's also very uneven across the world. As we can see here in this map, these darker colors. They show areas that have more concentrations of meteorological stations and as we can see, they are very unevenly distributed across the world. And so our knowledge on climate change and climate phenomena, it's also very especially heterogeneous. So these global scale climatic models, although they are very relevant to understand general patterns in terms of climate change. They are often insufficient to detect all the impacts of climate change, especially when we look at very local scales. And most of the evidence that has provided our current understanding of climate change. It actually comes from natural sciences and also especially from meteorological sciences. While impacts on other systems such as in biological systems or in human livelihoods are much more poorly understood. So our current knowledge and methods to understand climate change are insufficiently to thoroughly understand the climate change impacts and it's cascading effects into ecosystems and human populations. The potential of local and ecological knowledge to understand climate change has been increasingly recognized. And this is because indigenous peoples and local communities, they have a very long term interaction with their environment. Their economies and livelihoods are essentially based on the use and management of natural resources and based on this interaction with their environment. They have developed a very complex and detailed knowledge systems that allows them to identify changes in their environment. So because of that, local ecological knowledge has been the potential of that to identify effects on climate change has been increasingly recognized. And not only these local ecological knowledge allows indigenous people and local communities to identify effects of climate change, but also allows them to derive interpretations of connections between different elements that are relevant to understand changes in climate. So their holistic perceptions of climate change also can enhance a lot our understanding of this complex phenomenon. The growing interest from the scientific community on local ecological knowledge to understand climate change can be well illustrated when we look at the number of publications on the topic in the last decades or so. So especially in the last 15 years, we see a very sharp increase in the scientific attention that has been given to this topic. Some regions have been extensively investigated such as West and East Africa or the Himalayas, but other regions are still very much unknown from this perspective. But in general, there is growing recognition and scientific interest to explore the potential of local ecological knowledge to understand climate change. Local populations and indigenous people. They are not only suffering the effects of climate change, but they are also developing practices and adaptations to react to climate change. So the potential of local ecological knowledge resides not only on the potential to identify climate change impacts, but also to unveil strategies or promising strategies to deal with the effects of climate change. So here again, we see the increase in scientific attention related to the potential of local knowledge for climate-change adaptation. We can also see a very sharp and exponential increase in the number of scientific publications, especially in the last 15 years. And they are also distributed unevenly across different areas across the globe. And this potential of local knowledge to enhance our understanding of climate change has also been more formally recognized by international institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So the IPCC reports, for example, they state that indigenous, local and traditional knowledge systems and practices including indigenous peoples, holistic view of community and environment, they are a major resource for adapting to climate change. The text approved that the Paris Climate Convention for example, mentions that adaptation action should be based on and guided by the best available science. And as appropriate traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems, with a view to integrating adaptation into relevant socio economic and environmental policies and actions. And the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has also more recently created the platform called the local communities and indigenous people platform that aims to strengthen the knowledge, technologies, practices and efforts of indigenous people and local communities. Related to addressing and responding to climate change, to facilitate the exchange of experience between different indigenous communities, and to enhance the engagement of indigenous peoples in international negotiation processes. So there has been a clear recognition also from these international institutions on the very high potential of local technological knowledge to understand climate change, and also to support adaptation strategies. So finally, a few take home messages. The large scale climatic models based on meteorological data are insufficient to detect and understand climate change impacts at local scales. And especially climate change impacts that go beyond the climatic system and that affects for example, biological systems and different elements of local livelihoods. Indigenous people and local community can contribute significantly to identify and understand climate change impacts. And this is because they have a very long term and close interaction with their environment. And also because their understanding of environmental change includes very detailed but also holistic understanding of the different elements and connections between them. The potential of local ecological knowledge for climate change and the understanding and adaptation has increasingly been demonstrated and recognized. It has been gained increased scientific attention in the last decades, and it has also been more formally recognized in international climate change related initiatives. That's it, thank you very much for your attention. [SOUND]
