The program aims to engage community radios as a key vehicle in the dissemination of indigenous local knowledge (ILK) as a climate change response mechanism. The program seeks to create an alliance among local communities, research communities, and community radios to bring out the essence of local knowledge.
Climate change (shifts in temperatures and weather patterns) is affecting human lives worldwide and this is unavoidable. It is imperative to adopt climate change adaptation techniques and learn to rise back and return to normalcy. For this, ILK has been identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a potential solution for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
ILK is usually the default or first choice when responding to changes and it refers to understandings, skills, and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings and it informs decision-making about fundamental aspects of day-to-day life (including daily activities to longer-term actions) to many communities, including responses to climate change.
The program is focused on (a) capacity building of community radio broadcasters, (b) promoting collaboration with research institutes, (c) motivating community radio broadcasters to research the local knowledge available in their community, and (d) disseminating the knowledge through radio programmes.
The program was implemented in four countries of the region – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal.
This program is kindly supported by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) & Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).