Adaptation Strategies of Indigenous People to Coastal Flooding

The negative corollaries of climate change phenomena in Africa are becoming increasingly severe
due to the weak coping capacity of affected most communities. Since the coping strategies are siterelated
and have to be developed at the individual and community level, it is important to harness and
understand local or indigenous knowledge in designing adaptation strategies. It is important to note
that climate change is not a 21st century phenomenon though the effects might have been more
severe recently due to industrial and technological developments. The local people over the ages
have developed indigenous strategies to cope with the challenges of climatic perturbations.
Indigenous knowledge have been widely advocated as cheaper alternatives to ameliorate the effects
of climate change. Ajibade (2003) has considered the term ‘indigenous knowledge’ as the knowledge
systems that are developed by a community and such is opposed to the scientific knowledge
generally considered as ‘modern’ knowledge. When local people developed approach to solving
problems that directly affect them. It is usually referred to as indigenous knowledge.