Traditional Indigenous Climate Knowledge (TICK) of Select Towns in Upland Cavite Province: Inputs to a Sustainable Local Climate Action

This paper explores the traditional indigenous climate knowledge (TICK) of the select towns of Cavite province’s upland region (Upland Cavite) composed of Silang, Tagaytay City, Alfonso, Amadeo, Indang, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo (Bailen), Magallanes, Maragondon, and Ternate. TICK as a knowledge system embedded in culture is an integral part of the communal life that is known only to the local communities that need to be documented, studied, analyzed, integrated, and adopted into the mainstream knowledge of the society before it is too late. This encourages preservation and protection of local cultural and environmental heritage; promotes environmental consciousness that is necessary to build a disaster-resilient community; and ensures community participation and support to a sustainable climate action in the community – a first step towards achieving a sustainable future. The findings will enable local government units, educational institutions, peoples’ organizations, and interest groups to have equitable access to resources on TICK that will help in the wise use and allocation of natural resources; preparation of sustainable natural resource management roadmaps; designing community-based and initiated disaster risk reduction plans; and in strengthening local peoples’ organizations to become collectively and actively involved. The empirical data of this ethnographic research will be obtained from the results of interviews with the oldest possible residents in the community and will be analyzed and interpreted qualitatively through triangulation approach (communal knowledge interpretation and analysis, archival documentary analysis, and scientific findings or technological applications analysis). The TICK will be identified and documented through oral histories; folkways; belief systems, rituals, and cosmology; literary forms, subsistence farming and hunting; ethnobotany and traditional ecological knowledge; traditional and alternative medicine; celestial navigation and ethnoastronomy; arts and music; and crafts and skills.