By Natalie Limwatana
Climate change is an issue that affects all of us, so it’s too important to be left in boardrooms and government conference halls. That was the thinking behind the first climate week, held in New York in 2009 alongside the UN General Assembly. While the leaders talked inside, the idea was to give communities, grassroots groups and everyone else a way to engage.
The idea caught on because of how it decentralises the opportunity and now there are climate weeks all over the world. Instead of everyone running their own event on their own week, we pick one week and organise at the same time. Hundreds of things happen at once: workshops, film screenings, exhibitions, walking tours, talks. That pulls in far more people than any of us could reach alone, and it means the different groups actually cross paths and can collaborate afterwards.
Last year was the first Bangkok Climate Action Week, with over 250 events across the city. This year is the second, running from 3 to 11 October. I will be sharing some events on the theme of water, communities and collective action!
Friday 9th October: Water is Love documentary and talk
Water doesn’t separate us, it connects us – to land, to community, to climate itself.
Water is Love is an award-winning documentary, filmed at Tamera Ecovillage in Portugal as part of the There’s No Planet B series. The film highlights inspiring stories from India, Kenya, and Portugal where community water retention projects have transformed degraded landscapes and brought ecosystems back to life.
But this is more than an ecology film. Water is Love is a call to remember our connection to natural rhythms, and to recognise that we are part of the water cycle – not separate from it. It invites us to reflect on how far we’ve strayed from living in balance with nature and shows that real solutions already exist.
As part of Bangkok Climate Action week, GENOA project Thai living systems will be screening the documentary. If you are in Bangkok, come join us at Alliance Francaise on Friday 9th October at 18:30 to watch the film with Thai subtitles. Register via the Bangkok Climate Action Week event link.
After the screening we will hear from Thai Agri-Nature Network on a community watershed restoration project in Nan. See how this project is collaborating across sectors to restore the river watershed, using low tech simple and proven strategies to empower the local community. Read more about Thai Agri-Nature Network and the Nan project here.
For those who cannot join us, you can watch the film and more at www.waterislove.org. The project includes an animated explainer on the full water cycle and educational resources for schools, see their website for all the details.
Register via the Bangkok Climate Action Week event link.
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Saturday 10th October: Reef Talks – Science Art project for coral reef restoration
Coral reefs are disappearing faster than almost any ecosystem on Earth, and much of the restoration work underway today may not be built for the seas we now face. This is a passion project I have been dreaming about for years. Under the See: Coral brings together art, marine biology and community action to explore a multidisciplinary approach to reef restoration.
It is a science and art collaboration between me, artist Natalie Limwatana, and Dr. Rahul Mehrotra, Research Director at the Aow Thai Marine Ecology Center (ATMEC). It builds on ATMEC’s field research showing that new coral recruits survive bleaching events better than older reefs and cloned corals.
Background
Globally, some 500 million people depend on reefs for food and their livelihoods, and 30 million of them almost entirely (NOAA). When a reef fails, the fish go and the job goes with them.
Coral reefs sit in warm shallow tropical waters, and the greatest concentration in the world is right here in our region of Oceania and Asia. One area, known as the Coral Triangle, crosses Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. It covers less than one percent of the ocean surface yet holds 76 percent of the world’s reef-building coral species and around 30 percent of all its reefs.
Most of the coral restoration work happening is not being done by scientists. It is being done by citizens: fishers, dive operators, coastal villages, volunteers. Three times more of it, in fact. People who live beside a dying reef do not wait for a research grant. They get in the water and try something. But the methods being used have not kept up with the science. A lot of effort, time and care goes into this work. I want to help us get the most impact for that effort, with a science backed blueprint that a regular person can follow.
The project
This is a multi year project. The first phase focuses on the shapes and materials of the modules, working within a hard limit: they have to be easy to make and deploy with no special equipment. The next phase is to work with reef communities willing to test the process with me. Later phases will include carbon and biodiversity accounting, to find ways to fund the restoration of this essential ecosystem, and scientific data collection to back up the field observations and steer coral conservation policy towards artificial reefs and new coral recruits.
The exhibition runs from 1 to 11 October, coinciding with Bangkok Climate Action Week. The day after it closes the artificial reef sculptures will be deployed into the Gulf of Thailand. See full details about the exhibition here.
To sign up to follow this project or for more information please visit nalimwa.com.
