To Manage Wildfire, California Looks To What Tribes Have Known All Along

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.

After a devastating cyclone changed the nature of local soil, NGOs preserved Indian rice crops by reintroducing traditional rice varieties that can be cultivated even in salt-ridden earth. Although some first met this idea with skepticism, many farmers have now adopted the practice after witnessing the success of the crops.

Property rights, circumscribed jurisdictions, and conflicts with neighbors exacerbate Native American efforts to restore tribal land and resources. Some tribes have found success by tapping into a trend of support from the government and conservationists.

With a global food crisis, farmers look for how to get long-term high yields out of difficult farmland. In Oaxaca, Mexico, farmers farm like a forest, eat low on the food chain, restore damaged land, and have reverence for the planet.

Immigrants from Laos farming in California are using traditional knowledge and small-scale farming to make farming economically viable. While Hmong farmers face cultural challenges, they are looking to sustain and expand their businesses to new markets.

The El Paso Times reports from the heart of the Rio Grande Basin - where drought has led to dramatic decreases in water supply, and serious changes in management of river resources are called for - on how the region plans to tackle the effects of climate change. Citizens work to increase water regulations and frugality in order to find a solution to the dwindling water problem.

Population growth, historical dryness and predictions of a warming climate all mean a future of scarce water in the Rio Grande's Upper Basin. Farmers and the irrigation districts are left to try and find ways to conserve what river water they have - and there's a lot to be saved. To minimize such losses, both irrigation districts have taken a number of steps.

In a country of limited resources — and perhaps for that very reason — preparing for natural disasters is top of the agenda in Bangladesh. Various grassroots, collaborative programs have been put in place over the years to help address many facets of the calamities caused by cyclones, from improved emergency shelters to long-term support for those who lose their livelihoods in the storms.

In the face of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in modern history, health officials found themselves struggling to prevent the virus from spreading due to clashes with local traditions, cultural mistrust of outsiders, conflict, and misconceptions about healthcare in West Africa. To effectively treat patients and stop the spread of the disease, organizations had to work closely with locals and adapt procedures to incorporate their culture.

Warming water has led to the collapse of coral reef systems in the western Indian Ocean, essential to fisheries, protecting shorelines, and reducing beach erosion and sea-level rise. Marine scientists from Nature Seychelles, as part of an international project to protect and restore the reefs, are promoting varieties of coral that they have found to be resistant to the rise in temperature.