Approximately 70% of the developing world’s population continue to live in rural communities, there remains an inadequate understanding of just how vulnerable these communities are to climate shocks and how to improve the resilience of these communities to an expected sustained increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. We enquired this question by focusing on the Penan – a semi-nomadic tribe with an unparalleled knowledge of the Borneo rainforest. We combine high resolution gridded climate data and primary data from 200 individuals in six nearby villages in Sarawak, Malaysia to record individual perceptions of climate anomalies and to examine how perceptions correspond with instrumental data.

This research is a collaboration between University of Hong Kong and University College of Technology Sarawak and will contribute to meeting Goal 13.1 of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by helping strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of rural communities in developing countries to climate shocks.

Research Outcomes

• van Gevelt, T., Abok, H., Bennett, M. M., Fam, S. D., George, F., Kulathuramaiyer, N., ... & Zaman, T. (2019). Indigenous perceptions of climate anomalies in Malaysian Borneo. Global Environmental Change, 58, 101974.

Project Team

• Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Dr Terry van Gevelt, Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. 
• Co-Principal Investigator: Associate Professor Dr Tariq Zaman