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UN / BOLIVIA CLIMATE CHANGE
STORY: BOLIVIA / CLIMATE CHANGE
TRT: 02:56
SOURCE: IFAD
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: SPANISH / NATS
DATELINE: 25-27 NOVEMBER 2018, CAMARGO, CHUQUISACA, BOLIVIA
1. Wide shot, Lidia approaching ant hill
2. Close up, Lidia’s hand touching ants
3. Close up, ant hill and ants
4. Wide shot, Lidia working in her peach orchard
5. Med shot, Lidia working in her peach orchard
6. Med shot, Lidia looking at sick peach tree leaves
7. Close up, peaches on the tree with fungus on skin
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Lidia Mondaque, Peach Farmer, Charpaxi:
“Despite our efforts fighting against climate change, we would like the times from before to come back. More rain, larger harvest, more farms. There was more of everything. Not like today, we would like to go back those days away from climate change.”
9. Wide shot, community members from La Plateada working with technician (Mirtha) to make a talking map
10. Close up, hand drawing crops on a talking map
11. Med shot, technician (Mirtha) working with community members on talking map
12. Various shots, finished dioramas
13. Close up, hand pointing items shot, on finished map
14. Wide shot, community leader from La Plateada discussing finished map with technician (Mirtha)
15. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mirtha Caracoles Rivera, Field Technician, ACCESOS – ASAP Project:
“It’s important for the communities to plan by themselves. They actually can… They can relay in these maps and models all of their ideas they have to advance into the future, and how they want their community to look like. Right now, is the dry season, and there are many natural disasters. And they need to plan, plan based on their ideas and their knowledge and their perspectives about the present and future of the community.”
16. Med shot, competition judges
17. Med shot, indigenous women attending competition
18. Various shots, Lidia with technician (Mirtha) and husband looking at her community reservoir
19. Med shot, tube emptying water into community reservoir
20. Close up, water in community reservoir behind barbed wire
21. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Lidia Mondaque, Peach Farmer, Charpaxi:
“It’s possible to fight against climate change, as long as all humans commit. Because if we are the ones causing it, we should also be the ones working to stop it so that we won’t suffer everywhere. We might not be the ones suffering but our children and grandchildren will suffer this, too.”
22. Wide shot, Lidia and husband working in new protected plot
23. Med shot, Lidia planting a new peach tree in her protected plot
24. Close up, Mirtha setting a sprinkler in her peach orchard
25. Close up, water coming out of sprinkler in peach orchard
16. Wide shot, arid land turned fertile because of irrigation
17. Med shot, Lidia carrying a basket of dried peaches
From 3-14 December, world leaders will meet in Katowice, Poland, for COP24 - the UN’s annual climate change conference. On the other side of the globe, in Bolivia, nearly 40 percent of the population is directly affected by climate change, with persistent droughts, floods, and unseasonable frosts destroying agricultural livelihoods. Now farmers are using ancestral knowledge of monitoring and predicting weather to develop concrete strategies to adapt to a changing climate.
In the southern Bolivian village of Charpaxi, Lidia Mondaque is looking for ants. As her grandparents taught her, she knows that when they are reinforcing their nests with dirt, much-needed rain is coming within days.
Lidia is a peach farmer. But she is also a Yapuchiri, an agriculturalist who tracks signs in the environment around her and documents weather changes to develop adaptation strategies for better harvests.
Drawing on this ancestral knowledge has become crucial as rains no longer come when they are supposed to. Sharp freezes and strong hails further damage crops. These extreme changes in weather mean that once-productive fields now lie fallow.
By 2030, 27 percent of Bolivia is predicted to be affected by a persistent drought.
For Lidia, drought has already come. Her peach crops face a lack of water, and an increase in fungus and pests.
SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Lidia Mondaque, Peach Farmer, Charpaxi:
“Despite our efforts fighting against climate change, we would like the times from before to come back. More rain, larger harvest, more farms. There was more of everything. Not like today, we would like to go back those days away from climate change.”
Now a collaboration between the Bolivian government and the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is helping farmers use traditional practices to develop climate change adaptation strategies and to engage with local municipal governments to put these strategies into practice.
Using what is known as ‘talking maps’, farmers work with technical experts from the project to create visual representations of what their community looked like in the past, what it looks like now, and what they hope for the future. These maps include drawings or dioramas representing their lands.
The mapping process includes using bio-indicators and other traditional practices of monitoring the weather to understand climate patterns and plan for the future in these otherwise unpredictable times.
SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Mirtha Caracoles Rivera, Field Technician, ACCESOS – ASAP Project:
“It’s important for the communities to plan by themselves. They actually can… They can relay in these maps and models all of their ideas they have to advance into the future, and how they want their community to look like. Right now, is the dry season, and there are many natural disasters. And they need to plan, plan based on their ideas and their knowledge and their perspectives about the present and future of the community.”
Communities bring their talking maps to a competition, where their proposals are judged by technical experts, the best ones receiving financial and planning support.
Lidia’s community was successful with its proposal, and now with support from the local government, it has built two 1,750-cubic-meter reservoirs to serve nearby families.
Today, her plots of peach trees are part of a community rotation of water use. Her family has been able to till new land covered in semi-shade netting, where she is planting new peach trees to improve their income.
SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Lidia Mondaque, Peach Farmer, Charpaxi:
“It’s possible to fight against climate change, as long as all humans commit. Because if we are the ones causing it, we should also be the ones working to stop it so that we won’t suffer everywhere. We might not be the ones suffering but our children and grandchildren will suffer this, too.”
And by having the opportunity to combine their traditional knowledge with the planning tools of talking maps and with financial support, Lidia and more than 11,000 other small-scale farmers in Bolivia now have the opportunity to fight against the changing climate, building a better future for the next generation.
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