Report: tap Indigenous practices to combat climate change

Embracing and using LAIKS requires “thinking differently about the relationship between nature and society” as LAIKS prioritise long-term survival and deep sustainability, says the 27-page report, which joins the expanding research portfolio of the Cambridge Peaceshaping and Climate Lab at the CCSI.

The report’s co-authors include Neil Stott, Management Practice Professor of Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge and Co-Director of the CCSI, Michelle Darlington, Head of Learning Design and Content Development at the CCSI, and a team from BCG – Torsten Kurth, based in Germany; Santino Lacanna, Brazil; Dean Muruven, South Africa; and Julia Chabariberi, France. Dean Muruven is an alumnus of the Master in Social Innovation programme (2021) at Cambridge Judge and is an Honorary Fellow of the CCSI.

“LAIKS can serve as the basis for a hybrid approach to managing and governing natural resources,” the report says. “Using LAIKS to address environmental challenges could create economic opportunities with an estimated value of $150 billion annually.”

From floating gardens to pits dug in degraded soil

Examples of using LAIKS practices include floating gardens in Bangladesh to provide food security while controlling flooding, and the zaï pits dug in degraded soil by West African farmers to capture rainwater. 

Such local and Indigenous techniques are especially crucial at this time when global humanitarian systems face extreme pressure given shrinking aid budgets in key donor countries such as the US, UK, France and Germany, coupled with rising numbers of people involuntarily displaced from their homes or otherwise needing humanitarian assistance.

“For the wellbeing of the planet and people everywhere – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – current systems must change,” the report concludes. “LAIKS represent an alternative way of knowing and acting in the world and have much to offer organisations working on solutions to address environmental challenges.”