Introduction

Humanity recognised millennia ago the importance of climate variability to the sustenance of life, whether that variability was expressed in the form of droughts, floods, heat, cold, or wind. Coping strategies, developed to handle the consequences of climate variability, helped ensure mankind’s survival, although the historic record indicates that not all societies successfully overcame past challenges imposed by long-term droughts, extensive flooding, and the like. Early coping strategies included migration, invasion, appropriation and storage. In addition many, probably most, perhaps all, societies developed indigenous knowledge or belief systems that they felt enabled them to foresee or control those elements of the climate that are so critical for maintaining water and food supplies.