Project objective
Lesotho is a mountainous land-locked country in Southern Africa. Lesotho’s rural population is highly dependent on subsistence farming. Due to its terrain, the weather changes quickly and is very localized. With changes in the climate, the weather becomes even harder to predict.
One of the communities, for example, highlighted the recent occurrence of snow in summer, which destroys flowers, and with that kills insects that rely on those flowers. They have experienced a collapse in their ecosystem because of this – the beehives are out of service.
Project experience
In the Climate Observatories in Lesotho, we (the communities together with the local researchers) therefore focused on understanding weather patterns and Indigenous weather forecasting methods. The local communities use these methods to forecast, but with climate changes, it becomes important to understand whether this knowledge is still relevant. We focused on different weather types and the indicators that could be used to forecast such weather. Each community member became in charge of recording their chosen weather indicators in a weather diary that they kept over the period of one month. This was done four times in total at different times of the year. After each period we came together to reflect on what was observed by the communities. ‘Scientific’ weather measures, such as rain meters, rulers to measure snow, and thermometers, were brought in, to understand whether the forecasts matched the actual weather, which we then used to reflect on what this means when forecasting or whether other methods to forecast are needed. We summarised our findings through a card game and are currently exploring action possibilities.
Project outcome
The communities proposed paths that they consider important to continue with. We are currently looking for ways to make this happen, thereby continuing to together work with the communities.
Reach out for more information
If you want to know more, contact either, Lizette Reitsma (Lizette.reitsma@mau.se), Molibeli Taele (bmtaele@gmail.com) or Charles Tseole (tseolecharles@gmail.com)
Blog posts from Lesotho project team
Below you will find blog posts and updates regarding the project from the team in Lesotho.