Commissioned case study prepared for the Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK, for their Climate Change, Innovation & ICTs Project.
InsightShare and IIED worked together during 2009 and 2010 in an action research project called Community-Based Adaptation in Africa, using participatory video for monitoring and evaluation.
In 2009 InsightShare was invited by IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) to develop ways to use participatory video to monitor and evaluate climate change adaptation. Over 18 months, we held workshops in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Malawi under the Community-Based Adaptation in Africa (CBAA) initiative.
'Lives of the Forest' was created by indigenous activists from across the Asia Pacific region exploring the likely impacts of the UN's REDD programme on indigenous resources and lifestyles. It was created during a participatory video facilitator training in Ifugao (Philippines) by representatives of 15 distinct indigenous communities from 8 different countries.
In this video the Comcaac explain how Western companies came to their communities -- promising lots of money -- but causing climate change, contamination and depletion of their natural resources. The Comcaac are proud of their wisdoms on how to conserve nature and feel responsible to leave a healthy and alive Earth behind for the coming generations.
Conversations with the Earth has led to an international indigenous family of communities and media hubs covering 4 continents and many diverse ecosystems. Participatory Video capacity building was the catalyst to community empowerment and the amplifying of excluded voices of the traditional custodians of our planet's biocultural diversity. This photostory visually describes the 10 days we spent together in Copenhagen in December 2009 participating in the UN COP15 conference and Klimaforum, the people's summit.
Participatory Video created by members of various indigenous communities in Itogon, Philippines, tracking the impacts of large-scale mining and now climate change on their environment and culture.
In this article Nick Lunch (InsightShare Co-Founder & Co-Director) describes how the Biocultural Portal (currently working under the project name 'Conversations with the Earth), functions as a web based resource for Indigenous Peoples and other stewards of biocultural diversity to share participatory video promoting local solutions to preserve the worlds biocultural diversity. He argues how the project - as a process at grassroots level - challenges power inequality but is simultaneously empowering for government officials, UN officers, civil servants, donors, NGOs, activists and communities alike.
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