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.
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.
During a participatory video project, a group of Yaqui consulted their community elders to document how their local climate has changed and discovered that "water calls water": after a dam was build in the mountains, the Yaqui river dried up and rains stopped coming. As a result, the Yaqui are suffering from very long and severe droughts making it impossible for them to cultivate their fields with their native crops.
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.
The Apus, or sacred mountains are the guardians of the climate and the source of all pure water and thus have the power to protect or devastate communities living on them. The clip was made as part of a campaign to resist evangelical authorities and this video has resulted in local people taking up again traditional practices to nurture Mother Earth.
Inuit elders and youth documented how they worked together on building a traditional sealskin kayak using traditional tools - the first traditional Copper Inuit kayak since 1950s. Beautifully shot and full of laughter and traditonal crafts and cooking this video is a fascinating document of a valuable community project.
'Growing Up in Cambridge Bay' charts the experiences and lives of local youth in Cambridge Bay in the Arctic Circle. They document traditional fishing, hunting, Arctic sports, local legends on the origin of death and musical traditions such as throat singing.
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