摘要：People everywhere experience changes and events that impact their lives. Knowing how they perceive, react, andadapt to climatic changes and events is helpful in developing strategies to support adaptation to climate change. Mamberamoin Papua, Indonesia, is a sparsely populated watershed of 7.8 million hectares possessing rich tropical forests. Our study comparesscientific and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) on climate, and analyzes how local people in Mamberamo perceive andreact to climatic variations. We compared meteorological data for the region with local views gathered through focus groupdiscussions and interviews in six villages. We explored the local significance of seasonality, climate variability, and climatechange. Mamberamo is subject to strikingly low levels of climatic variation; nonetheless local people highlighted certainproblematic climate-related events such as floods and droughts. As our results illustrate, the implications vary markedly amongvillages. People currently consider climate variation to have little impact on their livelihoods when contrasted with other factors,e.g., logging, mining, infrastructure development, and political decentralization. Nonetheless, increased salinity of water supplies,crop loss due to floods, and reduced hunting success are concerns in specific villages. To gain local engagement, adaptationstrategies should initially focus on factors that local people already judge important. Based on our results we demonstrate thatTEK, and an assessment of local needs and concerns, provide practical insights for the development and promotion of locallyrelevant adaptation strategies. These insights offer a foundation for further engagement
