Development practitioners must incorporate indigenous knowledge in designing intervention programmes  

Madam Mailes Zulu Muke, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Save Environment and People Agency, Zambia, has urged researchers and development practitioners to collaborate with community dwellers and incorporate indigenous knowledge into intervention programmes designed for them. 
 
She said local communities possessed their own indigenous knowledge that helped them to manage their natural resources in a sustainable manner. 
 
She noted that, however, researchers and development practitioners often abandoned such indigenous knowledge, and imposed interventions that worsened the plights of community members.  
 
She, therefore, called on practitioners to harmonise modern science with indigenous knowledge for sustainable development. 
 
Madam Muke said this during a two-day symposium held concurrently in Accra and The Netherlands, on the theme: “Justice for whom? Justice for what? Democratising Just Transitions.” 
 
It was organised by the United Nations University-Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA) in partnership with Utrecht University and the Prince Claus Chair for Equity and Development. 
 
The event included the launch of the Dare to Share Knowledge Platform (DtoSKP) on Just Transitions, an initiative to promote the inclusion of marginalised voices in the move towards a green and low carbon economy. 
 
In a panel discussion, Madam Muke said just transition and social equity should include the concerns of the grassroots, particularly on job losses, impact of mining, loss of land rights, and displacement of people. 
 
She added that young people must be trained to develop skills and become innovative so that they could come up with new strategies and invent new technologies to solve the challenges of climate change. 
 
She said moving towards a greener and low carbon economy should be a long-term approach in order to allow people to make the needed changes. 
 
Mr Olumide Idowu, Executive Coordinator, African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, said the conversation around just transition should be made more practical by linking it to basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter, to make people understand and appreciate it. 
 
Just transition, he noted, should be seen as a journey that required people to be more realistic about the goals they set towards achieving a sustainable development. 
 
Mr Emmanuel Addo Otoo, Chief Executive Officer, Eng-Solutions Ltd, added that people needed to be more entrepreneurial by adopting a problem-solving attitude to deal with the environmental challenges they faced. 
 
Citing his own case as an example, he indicated that he had developed the lifestyle of segregating his waste, which had enabled him to create a business out of it, as well as to generate organic manure for his farm activities. 
 
Ms Doris Edem Agbevivi, Lead Project Coordinator, Drive Electric Initiative, Energy Commission of Ghana, said financial constraints constituted a major challenge that Ghana faced in the just transition process. 
 
To address that, she said the country must focus more on generating funds internally, rather than relying heavily on bilateral agreements and donor support. 
 
She said it also called for private-public partnerships, as the private sector served as the engine of growth. 
 
Ms Agbevivi noted that Africa also lacked the requisite infrastructure, leading to lack of the right systems such as transportation networks to support a just transition into sustainable environment. 
 
She called for a well-coordinated national strategy and policy framework to guide both private and government efforts towards clean energy and other sustainable solutions. 
 
Ms Agbevivi emphasised the need for individuals to personalise the concept of just transition by figuring out what each person could do to promote equity and fairness.  
GNA