Martine Nyeko

Climate change is a complex, systemic phenomenon with far-reaching social, economic, and environmental impacts. This review adopts a systems thinking approach to explore the interconnectedness of climate systems and their cascading effects on global and regional scale climate, with a particular focus on Uganda. Systems thinking, which emphasizes interconnectedness, feedback loops, emergence, and non-linearity, provides a holistic framework for understanding and addressing climate change. A systematic literature review was conducted using structured Boolean search strategies across databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus, SpringerLink, and Nature Climate, supplemented with grey literature from organizations including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and United Nations Environment Programme. Only English-language sources explicitly addressing systems thinking in climate change mitigation or adaptation were included based on predefined relevance criteria. The review highlights the application of systems thinking to climate change mitigation and adaptation. In the context of climate change mitigation, systems thinking is applied to integrated energy systems, circular economy principles, and sustainable land-use management. Case studies from Denmark and the Netherlands illustrate the effectiveness of these approaches, such as Denmark's transition to renewable energy and the Netherlands' circular economy initiatives. These examples demonstrate how holistic strategies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resource efficiency, and promote economic resilience. For climate change adaptation, systems thinking emphasizes resilient infrastructure, ecosystem-based adaptation, and social equity. Examples include mangrove restoration in Southeast Asia and heat action plans in Ahmedabad, India, which highlight the importance of integrating natural ecosystems and inclusive policies to build climate resilience. In Uganda, efforts to integrate renewable energy, circular economy practices, and sustainable land-use management exemplify the application of systems thinking in a developing country context. Initiatives like hydropower projects, waste-to-energy programs, and climate-smart agriculture demonstrate progress, but financial constraints, capacity gaps, and policy implementation challenges remain. The review also noted that notwithstanding the potential of a systems thinking framework to address the multifaceted challenges of climate change, its application is constrained by complexity, data requirements, institutional barriers, and equity concerns experienced most in most developing countries, Uganda included. To address these challenges, interdisciplinary collaboration, robust data infrastructure, and inclusive governance are required. The current review contributes by bridging global systems thinking frameworks with localized climate action challenges in Uganda, offering context-sensitive pathways for operationalizing holistic climate solutions.

With increasing incidences of the negative impacts of climate change to smallholder farming, an understanding of the effects of farmers’ adaptation options to climate change on crop yield is critical in designing practical measures and policies for increasing food production and food security. This study assessed the effects of smallholder farmers climate change adaptation intensity on crop yield with focus on maize, groundnuts and beans in Apac and Amuru districts, northern Uganda. Cross-sectional survey design was employed for data collection. Data were analysed using both descriptive and econometric approaches. Results showed that the most common climate change adaptation strategies used by smallholders related to varietal adjustments including planting different crop varieties each time, drought-resistant varieties, early maturing varieties, improved seeds and changing the time of planting. Yield comparisons between adapters and non-adapters for the three major crops showed that adapters realized significantly higher yields than non-adapters for most of the climate change adaptation strategies. This study suggests that farmers who used more adaptation strategies realized higher yields than the non-adapters. Our findings call for increased efforts by stakeholders to strengthen agricultural extension services and coverage to enhance smallholder farmers capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change.

The shift from flood protection to flood risk management, together with recent arguments on incorporating culture in managing risk, underscores the application of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in managing disasters from flood hazards. Yet, documentation and incorporation of TEK into practice remains a challenge. This article contributes to addressing this challenge by exploring the existence of TEK to flooding in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda. Using semi-structured interviews, data were collected from residents of the Nyamwamba watershed where intense flash floods caused deadly impacts in May 2013. Collected data were analysed using content, thematic and interpretive analysis techniques. Results indicate that TEK is exhibited through various traditional ecological approaches (TEAs). Although endangered, TEAs (conducted through collective action for a communally accepted end) are framed in three main activities: (1) assessment and prediction of rainfall and flood by the traditional hydro-meteorologist (diviner) and the traditional rain forecaster (rainmaker); (2) the mountain cleansing ritual (which act as flood risk awareness platform); and (3) immunising riverine communities through planting certain indigenous plants, which improve hydrological systems through their high conservation value for native ecological diversity. As most TEAs are conducted through collective action, they represent a platform to understand local capacities and enhance adoption of measures, and/or a source of knowledge for new measures to address flood risk. Therefore, full-scale investigations of these TEAs, determining how relevant TEAs are fine-tuned, and (scientific) measures enculturated based on fine-tuned TEAs could result in effective flood risk management in various flood hotspots where TEAs influence action.

In the lower Aswa basin, Uganda, the changes in land use due to complex demographic and social economic factors are among the numerous challenges facing management of the limited water resources. The current study analysed the degree to which water yield in the Aswa basin could be changed by altering the vegetation cover (here considered to be agricultural use and forest) at the basin and sub-basin level, and whether manipulation of vegetation cover can complement water resource management objectives in the study area. The distributed hydrological process Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to simulate the impact of the changes in vegetation cover on water balance. The impact was compared with the water balance simulated using the year 2001 as baseline. The results showed that: 37.5% afforestation at the basin scale can reduce water yield by 15.85%; using 53.7% of the land for agriculture can increase water yield by 27.6%, while a combination of 23.2% forest and 52% agriculture can increase water yield by 24.85%. The location of forest and agricultural land cover with respect to rainfall regime also indicated a notable impact on sub-basin water balance. In particular, afforestation in sub-basins receiving less than 900 mm annual rainfall considered as dry showed minimum change in surface runoff and net water yield, while in sub-basins receiving more than 900 mm annual rainfall afforestation showed notable change in water yield. In this way, afforestation in dry sub-basins can be used to offset the afforestation pressure in the wet sub-basin without altering the basin water balance.