Enhancing Climate Change through Climate Smart Agriculture

The dramatic increase in climate-related calamities like increasing occurrence of extreme climate hazards have exacerbated the high vulnerability of poor indigenous communities. Communities are isolated when access roads are impassable due to landslides and heavy rains. Limited coping strategies and weak adaptive capacity to climate change result to low yield in agricultural production. They remain in subsistence level and hardly sufficient to meet basic needs.  Some rice fields have been abandoned due to lack of water supply. New pests and diseases in crops and livestock threaten  the farmers’ produce.  Forest resources are diminished due to forest fires and increased timber harvesting without determined efforts to reforest. Wildlife has decreased. Traditional Indigenous Resources Management System has significantly weakened. Chemical-intensive farming have continuously put environmental pressure and impacted on the habitat, water and forests. Massive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides has contributed to toxic emissions that continuously pollute the soil, water and air. Forests and protected areas like watersheds are continuously converted into vegetable gardens to  support the increasing demand of upland vegetables. The continuing deforestation aggravated also carbon dioxide emission. Because of these drastic changes, Indigenous communities are confused and had to struggle to cope with erratic climate variability.