Land-based responses to climate change can be mitigation (e.g., renewable energy, vegetation or crops for biofuels, afforestation) or adaptation (e.g., change in cropping pattern, less water-intensive crops in response to moisture stress), or adaptation with mitigation co-benefits (e.g., dietary shifts, new uses for invasive tree species, siting solar farms on highly degraded land). Formal education is necessary to enhance adaptive capacity of ILK, since some researchers have suggested that these knowledge systems may become less relevant in certain areas where the rate of environmental change is rapid and the transmission of ILK between generations is becoming weaker. For example, including indigenous and/ or local people in programmes related to environmental conservation, formal education, land management planning and security tenure rights is key to facilitate climate change adaptation. To be effective, initiatives need to take into account the differences in power between the holders of different types of knowledge. ILK can also be used as an entry point for climate adaptation by balancing past experiences with new ways to cope.

Water management, soil fertility practices, grazing systems, restoration and sustainable harvesting of forests, and ecosystem-based adaptation are many of the land management practices often informed by ILK. ILK is often dynamic, with knowledge holders often experimenting with mixes of local and scientific approaches. For example, they can contribute to effective land management, predictions of natural disasters, and identification of longer-term climate changes, and ILK can be particularly useful where formal data collection on environmental conditions may be sparse. These forms of knowledge, jointly referred to as Indigenous and Local Knowledge or ILK, are often highly context specific and embedded in local institutions, providing biological and ecosystem knowledge with landscape information. Local knowledge (LK) refers to the understandings and skills developed by individuals and populations, specific to the place where they live. Indigenous knowledge (IK) refers to the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings.

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