Climate Change? What is climate anyway?

Awicaks

Watching the short video produced jointly by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Oxfam Hong Kong is an interesting experience. The video is basically divided into three parts: how the poor people in Indonesia's Java island perceive problems and changes of their natural resources-based livelihoods for the past couple of years; how do they respond to the changes; and, finally how did they perceive climate change and its relation to crisis they're facing.

"Few years ago I don't have to go miles away from home to get some economic fish," said a middle-aged man. "But now, I have to spend lots of money to buy more than twenty liters of gasoline to catch fishes." He later said that he always get a minus gain since price of less fresh fishes are usually worse than the fresh one.

"I'm not quite sure why cycle of the monsoon are now hard to predict. In the past we have quite predictable monsoon so we then can do some planning; when we have to go fishing, and when we have to harbor our boat."  He added that, "My parent taught me that the rainy season are always occur in months with -ber suffix, like September, October, November and December. And the dry season are usually started on March/April until August."

When it comes to the question, how then they do respond to such change, the man answered, "Try to have other job. Because I have to feed my family. If there's a neighbor need my skill in carpentry, I'll work for them for a little cash. At least I can serve some foods for a day or two."

Other fragment of the video shows a woman works in the dry rice field. She then moves to edge of the field and has some rest.

"I really don't understand why we don't have rain shower for the past two months. Couple years ago, October is the best month for us to plant rice. But now, I have even to pay some cash to rent a pump for getting water from the river." The woman said with frustration.

She comes up with about the same answer as the fisher folk, about unpredictable weather and season. She also refers to inherrited knowledge she obtained from her elders on how to use wheather season to manage the rice field planting and its harvest.

The final part of the video is opened with question, "Do you think change of climate is the primary cause to this problem?" The middle-aged fisher folk stared to the camera with confusion, "Climate? What's climate?" The woman comes up with the same reaction, "Climate change? I've never heard about that. What's climate anyway?"

I have to admit, this is the best documentary video I've ever watched. Straight-forward, not much noise in preaching and telling the audience about a serious lack of knowledge on the climate change. But also shows a serious gap between what well-educated people think about the climate change and how the vulnerable group of people who are receiving direct impact of such change perceived it. Very smart documentary...

10 October 2007

Read more... Sphere: Related Content