Climate Change Challenges for the People of the Kalahari
Daqm goes out early each morning to check on the vegetable garden in Djamta!’ae village in the eastern reaches of Namibia’s Kalahari. The tomato plants are stunted. The soil is dry. Again. “Every year, I hope the rain will come on time,” he says, wiping dust from his hands. “But the rains are not the same now - they come late, then suddenly leave.”
For the Ju|’hoansi villagers ‘climate change’ is not a distant concept. It’s the shape of each dry season, the empty watering hole, and the paths they no longer take because wildlife or edible plants are gone. For them, climate change is tangible. Erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts, and increasing heat threaten gardens, wildlife, and traditional food sources. And as the environment shifts, so do the risks to their traditions, survival, and the future.
Djamta!’ae
Vegetable Garden
Daqm hand waters the plants to keep them alive until the rains come.
The Ju|’hoansi are one of the oldest, ongoing, hunter-gatherer cultures on our planet. These master trackers and foragers lived sustainably in their semi-arid habitat for thousands of years, nourished by their vast knowledge of plants, animals, and water sources. Now, there is a new risk to their resilience, climate change. Over the past few years, especially in areas like the Nyae Nyae Conservancy and Tsumkwe, Ju|‘hoansi communities have experienced droughts more frequent and more severe than in living memory.
The impact of a hotter world
Climate projections for Namibia’s Kalahari region suggest that temperatures will rise substantially - maybe 2-3°C higher by 2050. Increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are changing the desert's rhythms. Seasonal showers, which used to arrive consistently, now arrive late or not at all. When rain does appear - in short, violent bursts - it washes across the sun-baked ground before water can seep into the parched soil, to replenish the aquifers. For a community that relies on wild tubers, berries, and game, there is less food and less predictability in the future. Crops fail, gardens dry up, wild plants and game become scarce as surface water vanishes. Ju|’hoan women need to walk so much farther to find essential food plants to forage. Families go hungry or depend heavily on relief aid – predominantly maizemeal, rice and sugar. Hardly a nutritious diet.
Wildlife, core to Ju|’hoansi culture and diet, faces similar hardships. Grazing herds of kudu, springbok and other antelopes move to new areas once the pans dry up. Most relocate to the permanent waterholes of the Khaudum National Park in the north. Once the Ju|’hoansi would have followed their migration, but now they are forbidden to hunt there. The land returned to them as the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, in 1998, only contains pans that have water for part of the year – if the rains come. When grass and shrubs don’t recover between the summer heatwaves, the animals do not return. Hunters search in vain for tracks and signs. The old hunting grounds are silent. The ancestral knowledge shared by elder generations is still invaluable, but the content of the lessons must now include survival in a landscape struggling in hotter, drier years.
Social change and resilience
Climate stress is associated with social change. Over several decades, the lives of many Ju|’hoansi were radically changed by being uprooted into townships like Tsumkwe, where they rely on purchased food from occasional wages or handouts. Now, escaping disease (HIV and TB), alcohol, unemployment, depression and other problems of dislocation, they’ve been returning to their villages, relying on their traditional knowledge before it disappears. But life is no longer the same for them. Bushes do not produce berries like they once did. Tubers take longer to grow. Water scarcity prevents them following the semi-nomadic ways of the past. They are tied to the government water wells, operated by solar panels. Pumped into enclosed plastic tanks, they provide people with water but not the wildlife on which they depend. Natural wells dry up more often and digging for water along the old riverbeds no longer comes easy. Outside the villages, families have to assess how far they walk and how much water they carry, to keep their children and elders safe in the heat.
Despite all the challenges, the Ju|’hoansi actively adapt. Experiments with small bush gardens planted near shaded water drinking points are gaining traction in communities. People are re-learning older forms of knowledge, such as storing seeds and rotating harvest sites for healthier plants. Some villages are using shallow pits lined with stones to slow the passage of rainwater, in keeping with old desert traditions.
Working with the Ju|’hoansi
The Heritage Village Foundation uses your donations to pay salaries to traditional teachers, so that they can pass on the knowledge of surviving in this often harsh, but incredible landscape. Young people, finding a Western-style education does not relieve them from unemployment in Tsumkwe township, are given the opportunity to learn animal tracking, hunting, foraging, medicine and survival skills. We also work with community members to maintain bush gardens and explore sustainable systems that suit their community-led village master plans.
In the face of climate change, the Ju|’hoan path relies on integrating their traditional knowledge, skills and way of life with the best of modern technology. The Foundation works with them on developing their master plans helps them to know what choices are available while avoiding the pitfalls and problems that afflict the West. The Ju|’hoansi are creating science-based solutions to climate change, and the challenges of permanent settlements, by integrating their heritage and ancestral knowledge with the modest use of modern materials, tools and green technology such as solar power.
For friends and supporters from outside the region, working with the Ju|’hoansi through climate-related stressors is more than heart-felt sympathy for a diaspora culture of some of the last indigenous hunter-gathers on the planet. It means standing with people whose understandings of desert plants, animals, and weather hold lessons for all the world. Your monthly contributions mean an educator, gardener, or tracker is in the field. As a Member, you can visit to support and encourage Ju|’hoan families and their work on various projects, and to ensure that the profits of tourism go directly to the villages.
The wild, desert landscape of the Kalahari remains beautiful and holds promise for the Ju|’hoansi. Their future depends on continued funding and respect for their diversity of expertise and way of life. With shared care and commitment, these communities can continue to exist, while teaching the wider world how to live in a fragile land.
