 My name is Akinde Jifalaki. I work with the National Orientation Agency and what we do essentially is to communicate government policy to the people at the grassroots and get feedbacks from them back to government as part of the policy process. And what I would just like to do is to put a human face to the issue of climate change. I'm sure many of us have watched this South African comedy before the gods must be crazy, but the bottle of coke that fell, and well, since it fell from heaven and nobody lives in heaven, it's God that threw that bottle. We have said a lot about the impact of climate change, and we know in Adriatic economy, all aspects are impacted, vulnerable, human settlement, health, but in particular agriculture. And so I would just zero in agriculture, and the impact it has increased in hunger, malnutrition, decline in rain-fed agricultural yields, shifting crop cultivation, several impacts. And I'm sure you know, in my own presentation, I'm dealing with small-scale farmers, they provide the food for the nation. And I would just skip through a number of slides. So we're talking about adaptation, how they adapt, and like we have said repeatedly in this conference, adaptation is about development. And take the MDGs, for instance, they measure progress towards sustainable development, and we know climate change can directly affect their ability to meet the MDGs. It can also indirectly erode in their capacity to adapt. This research is within the context of a program called Sleaze Farm Sustaining, Strengthening the Lively Wood of Small-Scaled Farmers in Nigeria. It's a project by Oxfam GP and European Commission run from 2008 to 2011. And what they essentially want to do is to get 6,000 local small-scale farmers and two different interventions, Village Savings and Loans Group, and also the formation of small-scale marketing association. But one thing they discovered, there were no climate change component into this program. And they just suddenly discovered halfway that all of their program is being messed up with the changes in the climate that was not factored into the program. So specific objectives have got five, but I would just zero on the one that I've underlined. Look at 30 years' temperature and rainfall trend and also look at what the farmers think. I mean, we have our own data set, but we must also know exactly what's the mindset of the rural people that we are dealing with. My studies within the middle bed of Nigeria, the middle bed of Nigeria is very strategic. One is the food basket of the nation. Secondly, it's also the area where you have, as a result of migration, in the northern part of the country, you have the Savannah area where there is the desert area. And so because of the impact of climate change in that area, people are moving downwards to the middle belt. And also if you get to the southern part that borders the Atlantic Ocean, where you have the forest, but we also have its own local impact of climate change, sea level rise and all of that, people also move towards the middle belt. So you end up having issues of conflict over control over resource, natural resources and all of that. So it's a very strategic place to study. And also if you look at it, you will see that the play two, just high up there, almost about 5,000 meters elevation. And right here, we have the Benwey trough, just a little above sea level. So we're also going to look at perception right up there and right down there. And these are the communities. We looked at it in three states, play two Benwey and Nassarawa, nine communities and 34, nine local government, 34 communities and 6,000 households. To take this sample, we took farmers that have lived in a community for at least 30 years, because we won't be able to know if they have lived there and they can tell us what they think. I mean, just simply, what do you think is happening to rainfall and temperature? And we also picked farmers who are 40 years above, so they're experienced and they can tell the difference. And I just put a few context as far as I can. Most of the farmers are females. Literacy is very low. Household size is average of about 11. Social network is quite strong because we have a lot of people who probably may be able to live within the village. Average of residents, we see the kind of buildings where they live. And all of these also have implications for climate change, for global warming, for heat, houses without windows and all of that. Common household appliance, radio, motorcycle, mobile phones, access to banking facilities is very poor. Dependence is on a petrol-powered generator because public parts of life is so erratic. 95% depending on fuel would. I mean, it's just parts of the culture. Dependence on rivers and streams, toilet facilities, you just go to the nearby bush and defecate. So to put a human face, we see women suffer so much in fact. When the rivers dry, they travel very long distance. That means many times they're out of school. They also have to take care of the children. At the same time, they go fetch firewood and when it gets so scarce, they also still have to travel far. You take care of the family, you take care of your husband, you are out of school, you're fetching firewood, you're fetching water. And these are very serious issues with them. Disease budding, quite high. Distance to clinic, very, very large and access to medical facilities is very poor. Just to give us a context, these are purely, purely farmers. So let me let, and then access to extension agents. If you look at this, you would see that BNWI has it 5% while NASRA and P2 has much, much, much lower. And also not just extension, access to extension services, but also, also importantly, access to information about expected rainfall temperature, maybe through the radio. People, I mean, you're told on radio that expect rainfall in this state. But within that state, you see there are microclimates. And so what's happening in the northern part of that is not what is happening in the southern part of that state. So sometimes people are just misled when you say in Plato state, it's going to rain. But in my own Plato state, it's not raining. So these are all issues that farmers have to contend with. Nigeria is a very all rich country. And in OPEC, we have, we pay the highest per liter for petrol. Minimum wage is also the lowest among OPEC countries. So you see clearly that there is so much resources that the country has access to, but there's so much poverty. Also because of the issue of corruption. So we have very fat government and very lean people. And all of this is still part of the context because it's the government that will push the policy. The policy itself is political. So when we have so much disconnect, so much resources, and yet it doesn't filter down to the grassroot, that's what we have. So it's still within the context that we're dealing with. Now, so it's still about the chicken. This chicken knows there's something about this man. It's just different. He knows there's something about him, but he really doesn't know what exactly it is. Now let's look at exactly what the people think. And we've asked them in the last 30 years, what do you think about the perception of air temperature? Now, if you look at this, it's that this is not too clear, but 72% generally in all these three states tells us that rain, air temperature has increased. But that could be misleading. If you don't look at it at the micro level, again, majority says that air temperature has increased. But rainfall, if you look at it here, you will see aggregate. Majority says that rainfall has also increased. But if you look at it at the micro level, you will see in Bainway, which is located at the Bainway Trophy, Lowland. You will see that more people say, yes, rainfall has increased close to the rainforest. But closer not to the savannah, the people have completely different perception. They just say that rainfall, majority people say rainfall has decreased. Also, because it's not just about the amount of rain that falls, but also more importantly, the distribution of the rain. If you have so much rainfall over a short period of time, and then you have a long dry spell, it's not good for farming. So we also want to know if the rain falls at the right time. And also, judging by the perception for majority across both says that the rainfall pattern is unpredictable, different from the pattern they are using. So let's just go quickly through these graphs. And let's see what the data set says. We've looked at what the mindset says, the data set says. In Makodi, the temperature is on the increase. Minimum temperature, maximum temperature is on the increase. In Jaws, minimum temperature is on the increase. In the last 30 years, increasing at very interesting percentages, I would just keep through this. Maximum temperature in Jaws also increases. So generally, the system is warming up. But in rainfall, in Makodi, there is an increase from the meteorological record. Now, this tells us that when I was in school a few years ago, and the textbooks we read talks about the concept of the August break. Nigeria, we have double maxima rainfall in June, and in September, the rainfalls are very high. In August, it's low. And the farmers understand this, and they've lived with this all over the years. But in the last 30 years, all of that is changing. So even our textbooks, our geography textbook, is changing, because what we can see from the data set is that in August, we're having more rains. Just these last augusts in Nigeria, it was terrible. The nation was literally underwater. More than two-thirds of the states were flooded. What you would normally think that in August, there would be no rain. So one thing we can get is that the farmers know that something is happening. They just know that something is happening. The same thing with rain days. But if we look at just, interestingly, the perception of the local people tallies with exactly what the major local records are saying, and what is it that there is a decline in rainfall. Remember, just is up there on the plateau and it's closer to the north, where you have the desert. But even given the fact that the rainfall is on the decline, again, we see that in August, contrary to what we think, that rainfall is on the increase. So the dry spell in rainy season is moving away from July to August. Now that bringing a lot of distortion to the thinking of the farmers, what they have historically been used to about rainfall. And so we have so much rain, devastation, public facilities destroyed and there's so much desert at the same time. It can be so bad that sometimes people may need to depend when it gets so bad on water from some very strange sources whether to drink or to have their bath. Now these just paper cuttings of just recent happiness. These were in the month of August, play to where you would ordinarily think things are dry, so much devastation and people just which look I'd rather not just live through this, farmland, houses, several destruction of lives and properties that are taking place. Now, so the people can get exactly that something is changing, but what's the cause of what is happening? Just by asking them, what do you think is responsible for climate change? Aggregated and bush burning, tray cuttings, but people would also tell you, interestingly, all of these are significant. I'm running an over, so people generally would believe that seen and evil spirits are more responsible for climate change than industrialization. Now that's what they think, whether it's right or wrong. We know what it is, we know what it is. But again, let's look at it at the local level. Let's just break that and just ask in terms of numbers. You will see in Benway, remember I said, people in Benway have more access to agricultural extension and more access to information on rainfall and temperature, but in Nashawa that they do not have. So you will see that the perception in Benway, it goes closer to what we know, scientifically proven to be responsible for climate change, tray cutting, bush burning and industrialization, but not the same with areas of the Middle Belt where they have poor access to agricultural extension. So what do they do? Change in tree planting, date, improved livestock and changes in household construction. In one of the villages where we visited, there was a flood, massive flood. But the people in one village discovered that every single building in that village was leveled. But in the next village, no single building came down. And so they went to ask, what were you doing differently? And they just suddenly discovered that in their village, they build their huts very tall. And because the center of gravity, when the rains came, the buildings came down. When the next village, they build their buildings very short and all the buildings stayed. And so they just learned that we are gonna change the way we build. We will now build shorter buildings and so that when the rains come, they can stay. So they are learning in their own indigenous way how to cope with this system. But interestingly, when people perceive that it is evil spirits and sin and adultery and fornication and stealing, that's responsible for the rains, not falling when it should fall or how it should fall, then the results to carrying out spiritual exercises, offering sacrifices to gods and asking questions, what have we done wrong? The gods should forgive us. And these are issues. I remember making a presentation at the faculty and somebody asked me a question. How do you measure sin? And I said, well, I'm not measuring sin. How do you measure evil spirit? I said, well, I'm not measuring spirit. He said, what you cannot measure, you can't talk about. I said, well, scientifically, yes. But this is what the people say. And I think we should be humble enough to listen to what they say. And one of the professors says, well, maybe because they say that sin and evil spirit are responsible for the change in climate that is affecting the agriculture. So you just tell them, make sure that you don't, make sure you don't do the wrong thing. So how are they adapting? You're just rounding up constraints, poverty, development issues. If you provide imputes, you provide access to finance, you provide access to information on weather and climate, you see that the people would learn to adapt. And this is my closing slides. This man is a witch doctor, a jujuman, a shaman. I don't know. All the years he has learned to tell the people this is how it will rain, this is when it will rain. But we in the science field must learn to bring about a link, to listen to what this man says, to let him also have access to scientific information and see how we can marry together with our humility and see how we can also shape their perception. Thank you very much.