A case study series published by the UNISDR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group Authors: Gilbert Ouma, University of Nairobi, Kenya; Laban Ogallo, IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre; Maria Onyango, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya; Samuel Mwangi, Kenya Meteorological Department; Gordon Wayumba, Technical University of Kenya; Joseph Mbeva, Kenya Industrial Property Institute; Patricia Ochieng’, USAID, Nairobi, Kenya; Achola Pala, Great Lakes University of Kisumu, Kenya; Peter Nyamenya, National Museums of Kenya. Figure 2: Community based and modern day climate Information collection system UNISDR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group Case Studies - 2014 Community-based climate monitoring services and early warning system: The Case of the Nganyi Community The problem Recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports [1] indicate that disasters associated with current climate extremes are impacting negatively on livelihoods and socio-economic systems. Extreme weather events such as floods and droughts are negatively impacting on agricultural production and other socio-economic sectors in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) region [2]. It is expected that climate change will increase the severity and frequency of these extreme weather events with adverse effects particularly on vulnerable and poor communities. Although there has been significant improvement in the science and technology related to climate, most of the early warning strategies piloted in African countries are developed and applied without inputs from the vulnerable local communities, including their local knowledge, needs, and priorities. This often leads to non-use of the available early warning products. The science In Africa local and indigenous knowledge has been used for survival, including forecasting of local hazards by local communities for many generations. The knowledge is passed orally from one generation to another [3, 4, 5]. The community-based forecasts are founded on local indicators derived from behaviour of animals, plants, atmospheric conditions, astronomic features, among others [6]. The Nganyi are a community in Western Kenya who, for over 100 years, have been involved in providing local weather advisories based on their local and indigenous knowledge, but remain significantly vulnerable to climate related hazards. There is evidence that local/indigenous knowledge and modern climate science information can provide important climate risk reduction information tools [4], but challenges remain due to differences in approach and lack of universal benchmarks for comparison or validated frameworks for their integration [5, 8, 9]. The application to policy and practice In view of these issues, a pilot project was established by IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), Kenya Meteorological Department and other relevant local institutions in collaboration with the local Nganyi Community. The pilot attempted to integrate, at community level, climate information generated from WMO Global Climate Centres, ICPAC and Kenya Meteorological Service (KMS) with local climate knowledge from the local community (Figure 2) [4, 5, 7]. The pilot study has been running since 2008, with community-based pre-season planning and post season evaluation forums held every six months. Before the beginning of each rainfall season (March to May and September to December) the two systems develop their forecasts in parallel and are merged through a consensus meeting between the modern-day climate scientists from Figure1: Impacts of climate extremes associated with floods (L) and drought (R) in parts of GHA (Source: ICPAC) Table 1: Differences between modern-day climate science and Indigenous Knowledge based system