African Climes

  Indigenous people are peoples who are native to a particular geographical area and have lived there for a long time frame (decades to centuries) before the arrival of other migratory peoples bent on conquest. Indigenous people can trace their ancestral heritage to a particular region which they have occupied for a very long time. There are more than 476 million indigenous people in the world today. They are about 5% of the Earth’s population but constitute 15% of its poorest. However 22% of the Earth’s surface is under their management and 80% of the Earth’s natural wild flora and fauna, its biodiversity, is also in indigenous territories. The colourful Samburu community of Kenya. Source laura/iwaria With regard to climate change, indigenous peoples are important because they are a vital component in the climate fight. They are also a unique group of people who are differently affected by human caused climatic changes. We look at a few reasons why. Indigenous people are special

Peatlands are a type of organic soil that is very rich in carbon. Peat soils are dark in colour and are formed from accumulation of hundreds to thousands years of undecomposed remains of plants and other organic matter. These lands in particular are a combination of peat soils covered by water. They are therefore peat wetlands or peatlands in short. These wetlands occur almost everywhere on the planet, from tropical to temperate regions. Almost every country globally has peat in one form or another. Peatlands cover 3% of the planet but are so rich in carbon that they host almost a third or 30% of all soil carbon with slightly more than half a trillion tons of carbon. This makes them the biggest land-based reservoirs of carbon ahead of forests (twice bigger). Peatlands vary widely, and consist of mires and bogs, waterlogged soil, fens and swamps to forest peat. An example of forest peat is the vast stores of peat found underneath the Congo Forest which is the second largest forest n