Late on Saturday afternoon (16), anticipating the Sunday break for COP29 participants, the Regional Climate Foundations Pavilion hosted two events that entertained as well as provoked reflection. First, a large board was opened up on the floor of the pavilion, and the participants were invited to play the game ‘Funding the Planet’s Guardians’, which explore real-world challenges, showcasing how local funds drive grassroots solutions for environmental and social justice across the Global South.
Afterwards, a session showed excerpts from documentaries made in the Kashmir region of India and a film whose virtual reality technology took the audience inside the floods that swept through southern Brazil in May.
“Many times we are challenged to be creative in finding new ways to tell our message”, explained Juliana Tinoco, the executive coordinator at Socio-Environmental Funds of the Global South, which developed the Funding the Planat’s Guardian game.
In the game, three groups assume a different vulnerable community identity and need to solve problems to get more money, attention or human resources to the cause. In each step of the game, they receive a card with the challenge and options to overcome it. “There is no right or wrong answer. This is a dynamic to engage people with the work we do”, continued.
Engage people with a cause is also the main objective of the documentarists Sara Ramos de Ávila, from Brasil, and Syed Jazib Ali, from the Himalayan region of Kashmir. Both are involved in projects that dive into the realities of communities affected by climate change in their countries. Ávila is the director and creative producer of the Immersed Reality project, that offer a Virtual Reality experience that carry the spectator to the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, that destroyed 95% of this state in Brazil.
In the occasion, over 600,000 people lost their homes, and the film present some of them in their destroyed homes, as so allow the spectator to navigate in boats that substituted cars in the flooded streets of the capital, Porto Alegre. “We have the images of the floods, as well the sounds. All bring new emotions, taking the person closer to the situation. This leads to feel empathy, it is a strong tool to raise awareness about the climate change’, said, evoking a discussion made the day before in the RCF pavilion.
Syed Jazib dedicated himself to amplify marginalised voices and to promote sustainable practices and climate justice trough documentaries. He agrees that media and cultural narratives can bridge the gap between local actions and global climate solutions. But also mentioned that his films produced a sense of community among the population. “My community was never represented in a piece like this, they felt connected and identified”, said.
Completing the team of speakers was the Colombian researcher Andrea Ramírez, that works on capacity projects that teach small communities communication abilities — from social media management to drone pilot and filming with mobile phones. “It is not about the technology and the gadgets, but about the interest in telling their stories”, she concluded.
