Environmental Management https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01264-x Influence of Indigenous Knowledge and Scientific Climate Forecasts on Arable Farmers’ Climate Adaptation Methods in the Rwenzori region, Western Uganda Michael Robert Nkuba 1 ● Raban Chanda 1 ● Gagoitseope Mmopelwa 1 ● Edward Kato 2 ● Margaret N. Mangheni 3 ● David Lesolle 1 Received: 19 February 2019 / Accepted: 1 February 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This paper investigates the influence of using indigenous forecasts (IF) and scientific forecasts (SF) on arable farmers’ adaptation methods in the Rwenzori region, Western Uganda. Despite the dissemination of scientific forecasts (SF) from national meteorological systems, arable farmers in rural areas are still very vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change. Using mixed methods approach, the study adopted random and stratified sampling in the selection of 580 arable farmers to investigate the problem under this study. Data were collected using a household survey and focus group discussions, and the multivariate probit model was used in the analysis. The findings indicated that use of IF only positively influenced crop diversification, soil and water conservation. Using both SF and IF positively influenced livestock diversification. Use of either IF only or both SF and IF positively influenced tree-planting and tree crop production as an adaptive strategy. The study recommends that although forecasts are important drivers of adaptation, other factors could also help efforts to enhance climate-change adaptation, such as improving land rights through more recognition of formal customary rights and land tenure and capacity building of farmer-to-farmer networks with climate-change information. Increasing the spread of weather stations in the different agro-ecological zones by national governments and development partners would improve the predictive accuracy and local specificity of scientific forecasts, resulting in improved climate- change adaptation. Keywords Climate information ● Indigenous knowledge ● Indigenous forecasts ● Climate-change adaptation ● Arable farmers ● Uganda Introduction Globally, concerted efforts have been agreed upon, through sustainable development goals, to reduce rural poverty and increase the use of climate information in increasing farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change (WMO 2017). Efforts to reduce arable farmers’ vulnerability to climate change have greatly influenced climate-change adaptation interventions of national and international rural develop- ment agencies. The climate information choices used in climate-change adaptation globally are scientific forecasts (SF) and indigenous forecasts (IF) (WMO 2014). Despite the dissemination of SF from national meteorological systems, arable farmers in rural areas are still very vul- nerable to the negative impacts of climate variability and change in both developing and developed countries (Coles and Scott 2009; Luseno et al. 2003; Patt and Gwata 2002; Pennesi et al. 2012; Ziervogel 2004). This is a major challenge in rural development in developing countries because high vulnerability of arable farmers relying on rain-fed agriculture to extreme weather events has led to low crop yields and food insecurity, resulting in an * Michael Robert Nkuba mnkuba@gmail.com 1 Department of Environmental sciences, University of Botswana, 4775 Notwane Road, Private Bag 00704, Gaborone, Botswana 2 International Food Policy and Research Institute, 2033 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006-1002, USA 3 Department of Extension and Innovation Studies, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Makerere University, P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda 1234567890();,: 1234567890();,: