Panel “How can observing swallows help us adapt to climate change? Biodiversity perceptions as drivers of local understanding of environmental changes” –  Conference of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the BM Department for Africa, Oceania and the Americas, entitled “Anthropology, Weather and Climate Change” (Londres, British Museum , 27-29 mai 2016)

In this panel we will explore how individuals and communities make sense of climate change, which can be difficult to understand because its processes operate at spatial and temporal scales that are different from those at which we operate on a day-to-day basis. We hypothesize that individuals’ observations of local biodiversity change inform their understandings of climate change. Flora and fauna, many of which are important natural resources for human communities, respond to the pressures of environmental change, and people observe those responses at a local scale and on a daily basis, even when they may not be able to observe the drivers. Ethnographic inquiry is, in this case, particularly important to understanding local perceptions and knowledge of climate change.

We invite presentations that seek to understand how biodiversity and its transformations are used as local indicators of climate change and that address how these locally-derived understandings of climate change can aid in resource management and small-scale climate adaptation. We also welcome contributions showing how these local perceptions and understandings influence citizen action and policy making at different scales. We are interested in contributions from researchers and practitioners in a variety of organizational types and would welcome papers that discuss how local environmental knowledge can be made useful for managers and resource users as well as for policy making and implementation.

Convenors : Anne Sourdril (UMR 7533 Ladyss – CNRS) 
et Meredith Welch-Devine (CICR – UGA)

Call for papers opens on 28 August 2015 and closes on 8 January 2016 : http://www.nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2016/panels.php5?PanelID=3662