 Yes. Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whoever, wherever. Hi, Steve. Hello. In this world-taking part for today's CBS 16 fourth session, welcome, very welcome to you all. And we for today's session dedicated for community-specific indigenous knowledge, local knowledge. Each and every community has their own indigenous knowledge, local knowledge, and they inherit those knowledges to survive, to fight whatever the challenges in front of them. We'll share with you some practices, the way we listen to community, and the way the community's voice can be converted into action. And very surprisingly, today we'll all set a new dimension as a poetry. So all will take you throughout the session. Please, this is the end of the session. I hope you all will join, contribute. Our chat box is remain open. I will remain open for the end till end of the session. Please don't hesitate to raise your question or any comments. 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And finally, the reactions and I will see you to share immediate feedback with the presenter with like and dislike tool icons. Here you can update your name to let us know who you are and your organization, go to the participants, then select more and rename. How local today's session, how local knowledge rooted in cultural heritage enhances locally led adaptation and nature based solution. The very specific three objectives are identify how various indigenous local practices can be blended with new knowledge to strengthen adaptation and resilience. Highlight the importance of learning local stories, culture and art in the climate adaptation discourse. And at the same time, last but not least, we'll hear from you, share your experience in the chat box. Appajon Kurechan. I'm there. Okay, fine, great. And now let me welcome Runa Khan, Founder and Executive Director of Friendship to open today's session. Runa Khan. Thank you very much. I'm very, very happy to be with all of you today. And so I would like to thank IID and the Friendship team for hosting this event at the CBA platform. Thank you for the participation of IGES, the Luxembourg Review and Professor Hashid Latra. Thank you and welcome. So let's start with the title. So there is local knowledge rooted in cultural heritage, which enhances the LLA and nature based solutions. We have here all the key words or let's say many of the key words which today is very, very known as being one, some of the tools for mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage in the climate sector or in the climate world. But how does it interlink this fact of the local knowledge, cultural heritage, locally led adaptation and nature based solutions? As with many things in today's world, the interlink is very deep, very subtle and without which it is not possible for us to dig into the world of tomorrow, keeping climate as the central key in all our actions and work. Along with climate, the deep, deep status of human rights and the dignity of people must also be always because without this, no action can be sustainable, no action can be one affirmance. The local knowledge is central and over the last few years, COVID has certainly proven that. There have been a lot of money available, there have been scientific cultures available, there have been so much of activism all over the world, but who are the ones who have at the end been able to save their own lives, have been able to take their lives in their own hand and have taken the step for survival. It is the local people with their indigenous knowledge and today so often whilst doing very big and global, taking into account global and big issues, we neglect this, we neglect this because we'll actually make it because we have this train of arrogance, which so often endures our world and leads us to totally ignore what is already in front of us. Of course, this is not enough. Today's world is built with tools, is built with the technology, is built with scientific knowledge and understanding, with huge academic inputs. It is with all this together that we need to endure the local knowledge and ensure that that is the main goal. And today I'm also very, very proud to introduce into the CBA, add into the forum, into the platform the interaction of culture, literature, art. Culture, you know, friendship has been doing cultural preservation since 20 years now because culture is so innate at the at the central core of a person's identity and dignity. And through art, through poems, through culture and literature, one can touch the heart and one touches the heart, a lot of actions can take place, which no amount of data and no amount of push from the top or from the bottom can do. It needs to touch our hearts. And this can come through breaking barriers, not working in signage of anything, nor financial, nor the activism, nor academic, nor adaptive system implementation, nor leaving behind the art and culture and the inherent knowledge of the people who we are trying to address. I really would like to thank you once again. And I would really like to thank the intervention of the people who have joined us today. And I'm also delighted that our activities have been the locally led champion award of the DCA, the Global Adaptation Solutions, and also a mango forest has been ranked amongst the best 20 best practices of landscape restoration in Asia Pacific out of 150 projects by the IECM and FAO. And we really hope that this integration of culture, of adaptation solution, the local voices will be there at the top with the friendship interventions and the friendship sessions that you will see. And thank you very much for being there with us today. And thank you for this opportunity of co-hosting this event. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Runa Khan. Runa Khan is the founder and executive director of Friendship. She started the journey 20 years back in Bangladesh and working at a 100% climate impacted. Now I would request to invite Mr. Binay Raj, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, to share his presentation on the connections between Indigenous Knowledge and the Paris Agreement IPCC Report and LLA. Mr. Binay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Kazi. And my name is Binay Raj Sivakoti. I am from Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. Today, I'm very happy to be a co-host of this session and to present some of our work along with my colleague, Professor Harsit from IIT, Roorkee, India. So now I will have a two presentation, but first this time and later after sometime. So first, I would like to basically set a light on this importance of Indigenous, traditional Indigenous and local knowledge system for a locally-led adaptation. So please allow me to share my screen. Can you see it? Okay, thank you. So once again, my title is about the Indigenous, traditional and local knowledge system for a locally-led climate action. So I will be using TLK in short because it's difficult to pronounce whole line all the time. So first, let's start with the concept of what is this traditional Indigenous and local knowledge system. So this is based on the IPCC and the UNESCO Glossary. And TLK is mainly about understanding skills and philosophies developed by societies. And they are usually from the fundamental part of day-to-day decision making. And recently there has been a huge interest that these are also relevant for the climate change action. So that means we can say this TLK not just about some visible technologies or what we have been seeing in climate change adaptation intervention. It can be anything that is being practiced that is in the memory and that's not visible at all. So why we are doing TLK for local-led adaptation? So first reason is whenever there is a climate change impact or any external impact, these are the basic coping choice for the local communities because that's what the knowledge system they have, but that's the tool they have. And they are also considered very appropriate because they are location-specific. So they are less timid and effective choice. And when we use this kind of traditional knowledge system, there is no steep learning curve as against to adaptation intervention that has been brought from somewhere else. And when we go to the planning, adaptation planning, it's often hard to plan at the local level because we start with some new concept of climate change adaptation. So we will confuse the local people from the beginning. So when we start this kind of traditional knowledge system as a basis to plan climate action or adaptation or local-led adaptation, then it looks like a logical entry point. And because they are the result of centuries of experimentation and adaptation, so they are considered proven solution. And most of this traditional knowledge system are also natural-based solution. So if we see like when I say there has been a lot of attention. So you can see like the three major policy decisions like Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Resurrection and Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework Draft. All these have mentioned this use, stress on the use of this traditional and local and indigenous knowledge system. And basically they stress on the integration of this knowledge system with the modern science and technology. So that means and the main reason is because there are multiple benefits when we do this, you do this way. As I explained earlier, if we go to this major assessment report, for example, this recent IPCC assessment report six on Working Group 2, there are 18 chapters, five or six cross cutting chapter. Each chapter mentioned about this indigenous and terrorist TLK. And one of the part of this is like there are evidences so that when we use this kind of TLK, the risk of maladaptation are very low because they are based on local reality. And this is also one way that we can bring in this use of bring a kind of create citizen science approach, what we say, how we can bring this community of the scientist, local people to work together. So this provides a very relevant topic or the issue. So and you can see also this IP base that's about the biodiversity and it also says a quarter of global land area is traditionally managed by this indigenous community. So that means a lot of knowledge system existing there are based on this indigenous knowledge system or I often intersense ILK or TLK. So it's both are same. And when we come to this one report on high map that I have been working about this and Hindukas region. So it also says that this TLK forms a basis of mountain community copying practices. And this helps to build up resilience to disaster and an important role in disaster restriction. And combining this TLK with external expertise is vital for the resilience. So these are some of the key points from the measure assessment report and also policy priorities. Actually, I became very selective, but if you happen to see any kind of recent decision, you will not miss this topic. So that means this, the importance of TLK is highly very much increasing these days. But there are also so one option, one thing that we know is that they are important and we need to promote it. So these things are fine, but there are also a lot of challenges. So we can't say that only traditional knowledge are sufficient for adaptation or not locally that adaptation. So one reason is because this knowledge system are very diverse and distributed by location, culture, people, language and practices. So there is like a practical difficulty, how we can identify, validate their utility at this moment, document, apply and upscale. So there are a long way to go. And we don't have any tools, methods or capacity to design, especially adaptation programs, based on TLK. And because of that, there is there also kind of reluctance to invest on TLK-based solution. And aside from these things, there is one, another important thing is they are themselves vulnerable to climate change impact. With a continuing increasing climate change impact, this TLK system may not work and wear down and reach to the limit of adaptation. So that is another and another point is because of that. And also there is a lack of incentive to transfer this knowledge from knowledge system from older generation to use. So that means we are also in a critical stage that we might ultimately lose all this knowledge system. So that means because of that, I mean, if one challenge is that we want to make adaptation very relevant, locally based and effective. And another way we need to also running with the time that we have to also recognize and use this kind of knowledge system for effective adaptation, cost effective adaptation. So this is kind of my short presentation about this concept. So later I will also explain, discuss about the communication aspect of this traditional knowledge system. So over to you, Kazi. Thank you. Now, it's my turn to share our friendship experience. And I'm sharing my slide. Okay. Well, so welcome you go how local knowledge rooted in cultural heritage and hence locally led adaptation nature based solution and friendship experiences. I'm sure you all aware Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to climate induce multiple hazards, but people with their indigenous and local knowledge fight to survive and adaptation. Normal flood is beneficial to people's lives and the economy of Bangladesh. But frequency, see, increasing day by day. So frequent incidents of flour and river erosion, render local people resilient. The urgency of new knowledge coupled with local knowledge is vital. And this is the aerial view of Chor. Chor is a Bangla word is the same bar island. And this is really I'm sure you can realize that they are isolated from the rest of the world, even from mainstream of the same country. And the people live here, it seems like excluded people. So our story will lead to how really we are reaching those people, how we extract the indigenous local knowledge to take those people for adaptation. Just a glimpse of idea the situation of Chor according to the National Chor Alliance about 10 million people in Bangladesh live in on 109 coastal and river Chores exposed to a vagaries of annual class. This Chor cover around 10% of land in 32 of the 64 districts of Bangladesh. And the Center for Environmental Geographical Information Service has been monitoring erosion caused by three major rivers in Bangladesh, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Magna. Every year, about 10,000 people lost their homes and livelihoods to river erosion. And according, and as I mentioned, this, this statistics we received from Bangladesh Water Development Board. And if you see the, you know, the intensity and frequency and the situation the way deteriorating in 2019 in Brahmaputra, 725 hectares of land showered. And in Ganges, 1240 hectares land lost in 2020 for Brahmaputra increase 1120 hectares land disappeared for Ganges, 1265 hectares land. So you can realize the people live on those Chor land, they are homeless, they are displaced. And friendship started this journey for those people who are climate impacted both in northern part of the country and coastal areas. And they, they are disaster impacted climate affected. And at the same time, they are poor people and friendship journey to ensure the equal opportunity for Chor dwellers. And at the same time, advocate knowledge we gained the way this, the fight with the climate changes and we explore different options to make sure better life, better livelihood. Given the changing flooding and climate pattern of Chor land, friendship took an initiative on identifying appropriate adaptive solution. And friendship employ a participatory and inclusive approach to strengthen their capacity and take their journey for a better life. This is one example. We have participated planning in several, close to 20 tools we use. This is the social mapping. Their social mapping tools help us, you know, to identify specifically where the vulnerable areas, what are the reasons behind and throughout the journey, there are several tools can help us for hazard identification, risk identification, assessment of risk, vulnerability assessment, capacity assessment and wealth ranking, mobile addition of local resources. These are all help people to realize, internalize their issues, their situation. And so that they can take part in planning. See another example. This is called seasonal calendar. We draw seasonal calendar for different hazard, different crop, different livelihood. And at the same time, they can realize conflicting. The red mark you can see, these are, you know, that different hazard, the cyclone flood, drought and green are, these are actually different livelihood options and the blue are crops. So when people can realize the conflicting, the flood time and the cropping time so they can decide what need to be done and they need to shift their, their, the concept. So based on those things, we, we, very, to make them very specific and focused, we do Venn diagram and Venn diagram help them, which hazards is very close, bigger and which we need to address immediately. Here we identified the flood, which is pink, so that we help people to think about how, what are the issues related to flood, like river erosion, inundation and how can we handle this considering they are particular community. And then we know that to save from the flood, people raise their plane. This is a very indigenous local knowledge of the several hundred, you know, you know, in the whole community in the Asia and Pacific and people used to raise their plane to prevent their home state from the flood, water and erosion. But if you see the right-hand side, it can't sustain because of, you know, home state compound can't be difficult during floods and side slopes are sometimes difficult to climb. So so many critical issues we identified through this approach, but concept is very good. The, but challenges are to make sure is durability and at the same time making sure during the flood time access to hygiene, sanitation is a problem. Children can't continue the education, health service can't offer their services and there are many other issues need to think about, but the raising plane, the concept which we have taken forward. And you see, we realize the major concern is height of the flood water, rate of rise, timing and duration. And this task of protecting the plane from wave erosion is difficult because the planes are constructed from the easily erodible local soils. And these are the issues we considered in our new planning. I mean, a new knowledge we blended with local knowledge. So we identified technical solution to protect the planes from wave erosion involved measures. So absorb the emergence energy of waves. And plane actually made by local sand earth. And this is the initial design of the plane. Let's see the next. And that this is the internal strength of the plane, the oval shape, the water comes from not that can't break the plane. And so that, you know, the strength of the water while breaking the plane can protect people on its own. And this plane is a great solution for the displaced people. At the same time, a shelter for the people who are flood affected with their belongings and cattle. And that is the bird's eye view of the plane, a safe space for flood affected people, as I mentioned, with belongings and cattle and homes for displaced people. In the whole world, people are now struggling for the displaced people and major concern. But these people remain in the same community. They were belong to same community, but their home lost. They lost everything because of erosion, but their knowledge, their skills, capacity as it is so that we wanted to make sure they remain in the community. They can contribute not only for them, but for the rest of the community. And you see the evolution. The concept of local knowledge, you know, the resin plant remained there. Then we redesigned, we adjusted with the requirements, and we designed the new plant. And this is the shelter for the people who are displaced. And if you see the flood time, you will find hundreds of people, 200 people are taking shelter here. And we make sure the sufficient number of latrine, water options, and there are community space so that people can get organized gathering, discussion. And at the same time, we have a school to continue education and emergency. We have the vegetable gardening option, solar support we introduced, laser clay, and the pond in between for fissures. And if you see during flood time, 82 to 150 families can take shelter. They can't, they always take their cattle with them, poultry. So, you know, this is a big, big solution for them people in those vulnerable areas. We consider the height of the plane above the maximum flood level, like 3.5 meters, so that planes themselves would not get submerged. Then next, I'm happy to share with you that our GCA Global Center on Adaptation selected this plane out of 20 for the adaptation champion hours and hope for the best, less skipping or finger cost to to be part of these hours. And we are happy to, but the recognition is if you, those who are taking part this session, please share with people. And we, we would love to share our knowledge, technology ideas for the people in crisis. And keeping these spirit in mind, there are many people, they can't raise their plane of their home state. And I know there are financial constraints, different challenges, but cattle are in bad shape during the flood time. So we applied the concept for cattle shed. So many communities now replicating this cattle shed concept, saving hundreds of thousands of cattle. And there are another example of local knowledge, how really we utilize for protecting communities is the protected, you know, cropland from sand filling and erosion. The bamboo bundle is being used by local to stop river erosion, floodwater waves and sand filling on croplands. And these are many other, and there is another call is called Dolcolby is the scientific name is Aipomera curnia. This is a local variety of vegetation so that that can prevent erosion. Drowning is a big problem, big each year over 14,000 children in Bangladesh died due to drowning, very silent killing. And we identified there are some local knowledge door barrier can prevent children, you know, to be in the house, you know, because mothers are busy with their poking and anything. So children are very unattended. And so by anklets also we introduce, reintroduce this is the own patient in Bangladesh to look at children. Thank you. Now we'll take you for a video for three minutes, two minutes, 13 second please. Imagine an island of silt, one kilometer by one kilometer. No permanent infrastructure is possible here. Yet over 2,000 climate migrants are trying to live and survive day by day on this very island. Bangladesh is the land of 1000 rivers. Floods have always visited this land year after year, because of the country's geographical and climatic conditions. Yet the present scenario is totally different. Floods are no longer predictable for it happens three, four, even five times a year. This unpredictability in time and period of flooding causes huge loss to the economy and lives of people. This is a raised plant. You meet people here all the way displaced because of river erosion. See, we designed the plant in a way when water comes from north because of oval shaped plant, the flow of water breaks and they can't break the plant. 30 family can live here for longer period. We have built 18 plants, but a lot more are needed. For today, thanks to these plants, many of the migrants have shelters for themselves and their lifestyle, but much more food is needed for the months of flood. Together with the community, we have to find other new locally led nature based solutions. Thank you. I would remind again, that is, if you have any questions, any points to share with us, please use chat box. Our colleagues are there and they will respond immediately. And now again, I request Professor Khurshid, so soon I believe he managed to join with us. Binaia, I would request Professor Khurshid to join with us now with his presentation. I'm sure Binaia will also join. Thank you, Mr. Kazi for a very interesting presentation and really good and congratulations for being selected by the GCA. So let's allow me some time to share the presentation. Can you see the slide? Yes. Okay. Let me introduce Professor Khurshid. I think she mentioned that she is from the remote location. So I think we are not hearing your voice, Professor Khurshid, so much. Can we, all of us, can we close our video just to make sure that it can be easier for us? Hello, Professor Khurshid. Oh, Binaia, can you hear me now? Yes, yes, we can hear you now. I'm somehow not able to start my video, which I think should be fine. Is that okay, Binaia? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yes, you are audible. Okay, fine, fine. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Binaia, and thank you, the organizers here, and it was wonderful to hear Kazi as well as Binaia can then also hear me. So I'm very happy and delighted. We have a sound problem. I think we should try to fix that to your side, because the sound is breaking up. Your sound is very like, really, like I'm an architect and a planner, and then I have initiated and started looking into this area as well. So maybe she can be reached through the telephone, and perhaps Binaia can... Yeah, just a moment. I will contact her by phone. Thank you. Yeah, maybe in the meantime, Binaia, you can switch to your other presentation, and she can then start again her presentation. Okay, that's also fine. Professor Harsid, in the meantime, I will start with my presentation, and after my presentation, you can start again. So that hoping that by that time, we will have you, we can hear you. Or another alternative option is... Binaia, can you hear me? Now I can hear you. Can you speak a little bit? Hello, hello. Okay, let me share my presentation, and then after my presentation, we will... Yeah, talking here. Hello. Hello. Okay, let me share. Hello. Welcome once again. Can you hear me and see the slide? Okay, thank you. So thank you, Kaji, for your earlier presentation. So here I'm going to bring in the communication aspect of Indigenous traditional and local knowledge system. So unlike what Kaji said, we are not actually doing that kind of intervention yet, but we are in a process of compiling this existing traditional knowledge system, and trying to find a way how we can communicate this. So we focus our work in this whole Hindu-Kusimala region, and the main reason we selected this area is it's a challenging area, including I mean the area that Kaji showed, Bangladesh is also a part of it. And a lot of issues are like, there are the main reason this locally led adaptation and TLK are relevant in this Hindu-Kusimala region is because of their mountain specificities. So one is their incessant remoteness. It's usually difficult to reach the place. There is a limited mobility, and there's always an issue of access. So it doesn't matter it's a far location, but it is also even it's a nearby area, but reaching there is sometimes very difficult. So because of that intervention are always not so easy. And these reasons are very fragile, as Kaji also said, like there's no permanent structure. And people are highly marginalized people there, especially subsistence farming. But at the same time there is a huge diversity and heterogeneity, which makes it also in one way it's good, but other way it's difficult because you can't apply a uniform solution. And but this area has niche or comparative advantage. So that can be capitalized. And the most important is these areas people have developed their own human adaptation mechanism under which this traditional and knowledge local knowledge system also falls. The emergence of this kind of knowledge system is also one of the result of human adaptive mechanisms. So these are some of the traditional knowledge system, like one in Pakistan where the water from glacier is people use diver the water for irrigation. There are like 30 use of traditional medicine, for example, in Myanmar. And these are the raised houses in the flood plain area in Nepal. And also one example from a guide from one professor about this floating vegetation. So these are all these traditional knowledge system. And there are also some other similar type of traditional knowledge system. So for like irrigation canal, water supply irrigation canal, this is like flood prevention like a wooden structure. And so this kind of practices are there. And what is important aspect is that, as I mentioned, traditional knowledge are locally appropriate proven solution and cost effective. And also they are there because of other lack of other copying mechanism. And as I explained, Hindustan region is a hot spot of one of the hottest spot of climate change. And this region is home to numerous traditional knowledge system. And the point is how like what Kaji has mentioned, the issue is how we are going to communicate about this achievements, effectiveness, and how this system could be recognized. Local efforts can be required at the national and international level. And what are the communication, how to communicate the needs and priorities of the local communities. So these are some of the aspects we consider. And what we are doing is we are trying to create a mechanism interface for science, media and community, where in media plays a very important role. And science means we are working with universities to do ground research. And then, and, and we are also discussing about how we integrate this traditional knowledge system into local planning. And above that, we are you working with a community radius network of community radio. We have this Amark Asia Pacific Association of Community Radials. So what we are going to do is using the collected information, we are preparing a radio programs to communicate about this traditional knowledge system. So I would like to next just give you one example. So this is like what we do is first, we try to understand the local climate risk from the people. So for example, we reach in one of the eastern part of Nepal, very close to the Kathmandu capital. So the problem is the spring water source, these are in the mountainous area, these are drying because of this changing rainfall pattern. And also more recently, because of the earthquake in 2015, it disrupted the flow of this natural spring. And as a result of that, women and children are having a huge burden to carry the water. For example, we meet one school girl. She said, see, while going to the school, she carried this water jar. And then when she comes, she bring water. So such kind of like sometimes she has to go late to the school just because she has to carry water. And in terms of, these are use physical, economic, emotional impact above that economic impact also there. For example, people are relying on libister, but when once you can't provide drinking water to libister, so it's always a problem. So they have to reduce the size number of those libister. So it has a huge socioeconomic implication. Then we try to find some kind of like identify traditional knowledge system application. So we found that there are some kind of traditional points, which were created for a long, long time ago. And people conserve it because of its multiple benefit. So because of recharge function, because this water recharge from this lake, so the downstream spring will have always continuous flow of water. And when in a dry season, they can use it, animals can use it. So this provides a lot of benefits. And to do that, and they have established a traditional religious norm. We can't hear you anymore. We can't hear you, right? We can't hear you anymore. Can you hear us? I think it has been disconnected. Professor Harshik, can you please try again to speak so that we can check if your song is working well? Hello. Yes. Is that better now? Not really. Can you speak a little bit so that we can test? No, it's... I'm sorry to sound this bad, but we can't hear you. Still expression, so I hope. Yeah, am I audible? This is Harshik here. Harshik? Okay. Harshik? Yes, now we can hear you. We can hear you, but it's breaking up all the time. So the sound is very bad, but I think we should move on to the next part because we've lost Binaya and we can't hear you, Professor Harshik. The sound is breaking up and we can... I mean, it's too bad. So I think we should move on to the next part. Sure. Okay. Great. Now I will take you a very different session. First time in CBA, 16. First time in CBA in the last 16 years, we are introducing a new dimension, the poetry. You know, the poetry has a very powerful spirit to take people to the to the destination for their... for their... for their struggle. And in Birmingham Student Climate Change Writing Competition, they mentioned that her trends are coming when we'll be winding the voice of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other way of being and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom, parts, visionaries, realist and of a larger reality. We believe the literature and in another quote, I would like to share it to the literature has a multiplier effect. Ideas spread quickly and more fluently than PDF reports, charts and figures. The fuel for change is hope and literature can provide this. And hope you remember in COP26, during COP26, in Scottish Parliament had a big buzz with a poet, his name is Schezardosa and he is with us today with another poet. I would like to hand over Schezardosa from, let's remember, review of this session, Taking Care by Schezardosa. Schezardosa. Hello, everyone. I'll begin with the poem, I think. Originally had a speech which I was going to go first, but I think it's more important to show just what poetry can do to open up hearts and minds. So this is a poem which I had written for the University of Glasgow for COP26. It's called No Fresh, So I Left to Plant. Can everybody hear me? Is the sound okay? Yes. Yes, Schezardosa. Let us take a moment to look on and see. I remember an old man telling me his gaze obscured, his, the unobtrusive horizon and wanting lines between survival this day and perhaps onto the next. The line is an indecipherable one, shallow one day, crops once grew luminescent in a vague semblance of thumb, fertile familiarity of families being fed now mitigated by uncertainty of surrendering months. The water rescinds and returns as the line encroaches and disembarks from the same gut as grave and grief. Every wavering season precedes ash, lost, delineated across timely distance. The tether demands this other half, exercise restrained inexcusable refrains. There is that difference. When seasons quiver together in subservience, assortments which once grew in temperate calm, repeals any further invitation. Festiges of any arterial pulse is replaced as veins stretched out as a new collapse in waking lungs and no fresh soil left to plant. So hello everyone, my name is Schezard and I am a poet but also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Luxembourg Review. So we ask ourselves why poetry? You know like what can poetry sort of go ahead and accomplish? Well since I was a child I always believed poetry has the power to change the world and give voice to the voiceless. I know this as a troop firsthand because I myself have always looked to poetry as an extension to a voice I was unable to have at such a young age. I'd also come across a quote by the great poet P.B. Shelley who said poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Although not to be taken literally of course, there was an unequivocal belief that poets are able to appreciate and channel a deep bond with the age they preside in and that understanding allows for special connections to form and poetry to act as a conduit between the world of the imagination and unseen and oftentimes unaccepted truths and those wishing to enter the space. I have personally been privileged to have seen how poetry is able to immortalize, give voice and help shape policies at a global level. In 2019 the poet and dear friend James Byrne and I set out to give poetry workshops, Rohingya refugees at the Friendship Learning Centers in Cox's Bazaar. From what from that we were able to bring together a book of poems written by the refugees at the camps and larger diaspora from across the world. A deeply marginalized and prosecuted group through poetry, activist poets from our edited anthology were able to play a small role in the prosecution against their oppressors by giving their poems act as a testimony of witness with one of the poets being part of the prosecuting team. As addition to this as well, this poem which I just read out was also scouted in the Scottish Parliament and there is and with that, you know, we like the MSP and I were able to come to an understanding of how intricately poetry is able to change and shape hearts and minds. So soon, very soon we'll be having the first poetry in Parliament session in November and hopefully this idea will find its way into different parliaments from across the world. So perhaps soon poets won't just be the unacknowledged legislators anymore. Bangladesh is a land of a thousand rivers. Every tributary, distributary, meandering channels encompass and relays a unique story, one wrapped in history being soaked and seeped into its very bones. The poetry here is innate, a living art form that is constantly in motion and needs to be told. As the river shifts every season, the poems of the rivers finds its way to adapt and evolve. It is a synergetic harmony that can well be applied to so many various approaches. Sometimes solutions to so many global problems can be found after relentless, pragmatic approaches and sometimes it can be as simple as listening to a poem, understanding how it relates to the needs and aspirations of the local people who weave themselves into these words, into the corner, into the core of their being and finding ways to work alongside this inherited wisdom. Ways to make lasting change is not always the easiest solution to find, but I believe poetry is one of the mankind's strongest tools in the fight against the oncoming climate change. That's one of the reasons why I've always believed in poetry and how it's adapted to every geographical location around the world. Even with the Luxembourg Review to give voice to so many upcoming emerging writers, I'm very delighted. I will read one more poem and then I will introduce Maria Sledmere who is from, who's an incredible poet in Catriona, Sutherland as well. They will also read their poems to you and I hope you enjoyed the session. This read is called Tremors on Mosque Assaulted Skin. You say tremors are buried deep under a silica of ignoramus rock, cornerstone of civilization icing taking back murals of water. From tenements to green posture I smoke rings around to undiluted rasps and the stars app years like confetti and the party is a sub basement masked, unmasking lost mother tongues, the microscopic entrails of home in actions, movements, rinse, skin rinsed clearer. The silt deepens to ensemble carry its last vestiges in your soul. I carry the silt as skin and deposited fishers avert grace. Thank you and I welcome Maria Sledmere. Thank you Shazal. It's such a delight to be here so thanks for having me. I'm going to begin by reading some poems from my first collection, the Luna Irratum and this actually came out the exact same time as COP which maybe wasn't the best decision in some ways but also very fitting in others and it was such an intense time and one of the things that struck me was how a local space can be so transformed by other people coming in and even in the contingent moment of something like a climate conference, what struck me the most was that feeling of having bodies and cultures in space and sharing that and that's kind of like part of the poetry of the street I guess. So I'm just going to read some poems and I'll say a bit more about ecology and poetry generally. Fresh holds, there are points that tip, this much oblivious, collect your sun lamps, acid tears, emergency candy. The rainforest prepares itself for release. I had a breakdown on the phone to my saint. If a tree drops, singles the rainforest desiccates. Coral flakes off its lunar spine and starts to bleach. We live in darkest catastrophe. I scrape at the wax. Bodies are still to come. Bodies are still coming on the line, on the notch in your bed. I had a license to drill and I pulled up terrible orange and heartwood. Orange and heartwood cut my peaks into rings of celestials. Life pushed this back into the sea. Images were clipped to invisible blossom, rising, risen. I carry pieces of forest in the way that I speak to make toast. Remember what we lost before us? Glitter and twigs have cancelled walks. Tip, tip, tip. There is an economy of such excess as to starve and do nature better. The problem with indigo. The sky is a textile conglomerate. We bit a hole in the economic donut. At any moment, dreaming element or electrical storm of the movie, all the troposphere sewn to my tongue. Imagine if carbon came as soft serve. One of the ghosts was a polar thought and tasted of lyric. It split down the middle with cream and the earth was inside like the stone of a peach. Felt little buds in the cells of my blood. Exhalations of cloud vines anywhere. I wanted to pass some more decorative energy and I wanted to sleep forever until everything we did was undone as it was, milking computer with the moon. Its iris became a rose in your eye and looped back into phantosmia, sequined the dark with notes of underwrite banana, bergamot and petrachore, curing diacritics for breakfast, varnish, cash, the last of our futures centered. How to live now without drying the ice after party towards which our bus heaved likeness tussocks, a snog of lost solarity, I wanted to enter with sincerity, my hundreds and thousands, the M8 bridge to nowhere, with love and solarity for Katie. Careless braiding the fur of a pair, I look for nourishment in water as though it were other, something to be peeled and left beautiful in a state of undress. Have you seen a lime without skin? All of my friends have chemical burns from working in bars, the juice reacts with what sparse light we acquire this north. A round on the floor is lunar grammar. You could just cut into wax another thought softening feasts of it. The hour has a casual tenacity I link to strata, all prior hours stacked freesier, the work of exchange, which happens in wires and clouds. I forget to use soap, the line feels briny. Ocean becoming a perfect sphere, angelic with avatars loosening new celebrity halos. I say anthropic to a light from the email, shining with several extinctions, matters of plundered velvet kelp beds we slept in aeons before. I want to roll around the earth again, I fall off my calorific plateau, this specific fruit like seed, it stresses a surface, nothing grows back like the violet hurt of forgetting a paleo exchange in awkward phosphines. What if the pear bled tender and tried to scream would it slit without juice a radium lyric? I could make playlists of this, I could collect the lovely adverts in chorus. Nevertheless, we slant towards sun. It is only the origin story of a special excess which cools without section. Everything falls online with enzymes until what ceases is more than a rain. The door kind of opened in the air again. I drew bright circles in the sky to find it. So the question of how poetry can help us think ecologically, for me poetry is a way of attuning to the world's multiplicity. Language is a kind of interfacing skin capable of picking up sensory phenomena beyond the visual and I think the visual mode of witnessing is not enough to understand what's happening. Poetry is also stored energy, it's potential coiled or unfurling, it helps us negotiate the unequal distribution of harm, the vast scale problems of climate crisis within the everyday life as well. It can intervene in the violent boundaries such as subject, object, nature, culture, these kind of binaries which sustain capitalist anthropocynic thinking. In a time of algorithmic governmentality which limits our thinking, poetry can help us imagine history, futurity and the present as otherwise to consider the temporalities and experience of other species to understand how the elements weather our thoughts. Poetry is about vulnerability, entanglement, desire and mourning, forming unexpected communities. To me these are all ecological feelings. I love this quote by Jackie Wang from her book Castoral Capitalism. She's talking about what writing can do within the context of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex but those capitalist logics of control, management and racialized violence are equally relevant to ongoing issues of climate crisis. So Jackie Wang writes, quote, I know that as a poet it is not my job to win you over with a persuasive argument but to impart to you a vibrational experience that is capable of awakening the desire of another world. Our bodies are not closed loops. We hold each other and keep each other in time by marching, singing, embracing, breathing. And I think it's that emphasis on breath that is what poetry can do. So thank you very much. Thank you Maria. And next we have Catriona Sutherland. Hiya. So I'm going to read two poems and they're based on the Scottish discussion of the environment but also drawing in other cultures. So I study medicine as well and I think as well as writing a little bit poetry and I think it's that these crossovers between say like doctors and poetry, scientific research and like art where new patterns of thought are formed that are kind and rooted and people's experiences. So I'm going to start with a poem called Creature of Habit. Habitual rhythm, pace with me. Well traced, speckled nose in the familiar amber of curtained comfort. Soft pillow dreams, curling, draughty, uncultured flower of misdiagnosed fungi. So how, my Asselin, do you know the edge of giving? Creature of habit, friend of pattern, tired, stragg in horizon towards suspension. While I walk in campfire darkness, the lots pebble depths, we can't gulp this watered bliss with you. Creature of habit, we hate to care, robbed authenticity as woodgrain telling ore in the circles of aged memory. Traced clouds of a tiger stripe sky. Give up your stripes. The relief of Eurasia is a leopard. And one more and this one's called sand castles. Trap them against the surface, follow them or cut a not quite iced fairy tale kinship, we are now royal tales in history, distorted to foam. In seagull cried wolf, the herons posture dissipates. Beaked untold outline in a pause to digging questions intended to sculpt incarnal. Not for you. Bubbling eyes to gleam, lost slipper footprints path forbade in silver curls. Iron ladder of trapped grief. Stonehaven to grandmother cement, protect and protect in stepping stone path that lifts from surface tension whispers. Tight ropes often lead to arched doorways of easy chaos. Yet we say we are unbalanced into pillow oblivion friendship of candles and fire fingers we gleam stories. Word of mouth only shadow puppet politicians grasp reality chopped wood stack comfort of winter known warmth. How do you puppet players no more than molecular library pretends. Follow through or cut follow down or cut this is not your platform to breathe in the green leafed world. In a pond skaters lily pad dreams a new gravity conceived. Orca clenched and chained demand to a past crafted in monolith. Dialect of distance how were you formed words to conjugate are not supposed to connect contours to you idle mountains now frame grief in this valley of poverty. The love that I neighbor billboard your eyes so we understand commodified to distance as statistics to miss. Whitewash intended an actual crimes of survival we pal sound in colonial homes. Tiny hands on miniatures is it innate to take in tidal echo or breathe. The stolen submergence most to gather phone wide eyes again drink in quicksand beer. Entrenched below crucified guilt of gilded towers bricks of sea blood now aligned by the salt of the sea. The closest to the open window lifting up in seated exhale light coat cotton sleeves trail in the ghost like movements for the suspended or unknown. Reach back to the other six and unseamed yes but fairy tales you know you know. These whispers language of white current sea lines no distance here but a silky it's law from an unbehome of curtain to come with it. Curtain closed exclusivity red carpet blue creates perfect circle eyes if we change the windows to souls evicted the soft wailing drops. Curves to the eroded clips of rebounded arrows and lost salt coated scars. Save our seas in shadow puppet call to arms listen in wide eyed phone belief the current swisper gospel history. Thank you. Thank you and yeah pass it back to you. Kevin or I'm not. No no to me. Wow. We lost our words. You know you took us in a different world with your love affection spirit you know in few words how can you capture the whole whole spirit. Thank you so much. Treasure Maria and Carolina Katrona Katrona and we are truly impressed amazed moved and we do believe but now on the worse definitely will will be part of our whole journey to fight climate crisis. Big thanks appreciation please keep continue the spirit and this is our energy truly as you mentioned the poetry is stored energy truly truly we will want you to take with us for the journey rest of our destination. Thank you. Now we will ask question and see there are plenty comments appreciation in the chat box and now I would request the audience participants if we have any question please raise your question we have few minutes in hand as if we may maybe like a few minutes for for Binaya or maybe if Binaya still yes try for Professor Hashi if the sound is is better hopefully I don't know we may have a last try. Okay yes thank you second I'm actually about to yeah I'm back actually I listened to the poetry it was really very nice to the year and I really liked it and this is a kind of new things for me too yes all of us yes so let me just share my final few slides one or two slides and then I will conclude and invite Professor Harsit if he if he can join yeah yeah okay so just a voice test if it's coming yeah it's coming now yes okay just let me quickly finish it yeah so I was just hope you remember I think I'm sorry if some of of the participant joined later I was there to explaining about existing natural prongs traditional pounds created for long long time and its benefits and next I want to explain about what is happening at the current moment so we have lakes and what what is the problem so we have a water supply problem there and and but we also have lakes so what happened is like because of this water scarcity there are a lot of intervention coming from the projects or program or things like that and in one of the area what we have found that they have constructed this kind of water storage tank this idea was to store the water so that communities can access in a secure manner but and what happened after that is like because this system was constructed like mostly concrete the local communities has no find no fund or any skills to for its maintenance so what happened in the current is that they are going through acute water scarcity and that point in this water tank is not used it's not not so much useful and this is just the one a physical thing and what another disturbing thing we found was people have become very dependent on external intervention so we are hearing that they are planning another like a lift kind of water supply system so through the support from other like ngu i ngu and at the same time and what we have found that they have lost because they are introduced with new system they have lost this traditional bond so at the location there used to be a traditional bond and the guy the person we asked several time why this happened and he his understanding was because this new water supply system was better compared to their previous one which need a continuous repair and some few leakage and he still thinks that the new system is better so what we realized that they are underestimating their own traditional knowledge system so this is like a kind of we can't say it's a maladaptation because the tank was constructed to supply to deal with the acute water shortages but in the long term if we see if such kind of systems are brought without much thinking and longer term thinking horizon then there would be a little bit of challenge and we heard this is not just one case we have heard there are several this kind of traditional leaks has been lost so in the past people used to say that it was a religious act if they construct this kind of point in the hilltop so that animal can drink water and it will reach out so they think it is a religious act but now that's kind of knowledge system are running out so what we are now trying to do is we will prepare a radio program about this problem and then we are going to transmit to this amark radio station there are over 300 radio stations and our intention is that we will continually try to prepare such kind of programs and we establish a model like how we how communities reduce capacity can be built to prepare a very genuine type of climate sense adaptation or local adaptation type of programs so that they are because they are directly serving to the community and the community believes them so that way we are thinking that we can not only save this kind of traditional knowledge system but we can basically use as a basis for locally lead adaptation so thank you for your kind attention and my apologies for this connection problem so without wasting any moment I would like to request Professor Harsid to give her presentation so let me share her presentation over to you Professor Harsid thank you so much Binay and I hope I'm audible now to yeah it's much better yes thank you so much thank you thank you for being patient with me all of you all right so I'm going to quickly share about our experience in with the Mao community the other indigenous people in the Himalayan region and then the important like I'm an architect and planner so I was basically exploring this through measure drawing camps with our students there from architecture perspective but I learned a lot about the community there so just to quickly tell about those community Binay next slide please so it's in the north eastern part where in Manipur we have been exploring there for quite some time documenting their architecture and then also their planning like how the entire village settlement is planned so another slide please thank you so that's the part we're looking at so if you look at zoom down to Indian context and Manipur so that's the Kalinamai village we have been documenting for the past couple of years and looking at their lifestyle culture and how what their experiences are what their narratives are so learning through that we realized that there are a lot of complexity and this inbuilt lot of innovative techniques with the community's use so those are like there but now it's a little bit with the parallel systems coming in little chaotic situation but they are already there and if we identify them acknowledge them then there's a lot of potential for streamlining our interventions what our entire our discourse is here today so moving on to next slide please Binay yeah so this is the land use map which like as a planner we were trying to understand what the different components there and you would see that they have so many like I have never come across so many users in in the urban areas but you would see that they have sacred growth they have dancing grounds they have megaliths they have like traditional water structure they have community bath all these kind of land users are there and main important thing is that they help to support the lifestyle and culture of the people and another important thing is they bring the people together and any any part of any change when a community goes through then bringing them together is very very important like how they act together how they think together so in this village settlement we see that there's a dancing ground there's like megaliths or monoliths and a lot of sitting places where people communicate with each other and then a lot of stones and sculpture through which the narratives are transferred stories are transferred to the newer generation next slide please Binay yeah so like these are all the sacred spaces which we identified during our camps there so we see that there was a lot of unbuilt spaces like unbuilt relationship with the nature we see the sacred roofs then we had like the bright stone ritual place honeymoon place so these kind of places allowed a lot of interaction with nature and it kept them connected so one problem which is all by being connected is that you understand what what is going on what is changing in the environment when we are disconnected we don't even understand that there's something is changing so the community we saw that was well aware of what's really changing what's happening and they understood the nature here so you can see the range of spaces which we found there so you can see the example of monolith and then the activity open spaces and other stick elements where all the celebrations took place so all these rituals which are already there and most often when we do our camping we end up documenting very a lot of built structure we ignore the unbuilt which is there so how identifying them can also help us to retain the actual core essence of the community next please so now like I captured some of the narratives from the community and then the kind of problems they were facing so like now our friends narrated that there's been food shortage with the growing population and how they are seeing the climate change which is happening there so they're seeing the deterioration in the quality now they are seeing that there's high usage of fertilizers there's loss of organic food and then there's change in the nature of the way they cultivated and then also attitude towards the organic food and they are they since they are connected with nature they have been able to identify those things like less quantity and variety of fish these days and then many birds are missing these days so that connection is there and they have been able to identify this then I also got narrative from Mr. Kaiko here pastor who also told that some of the medicines are available but now they are also losing the knowledge which was there and some of the species now they are not even able to find but these fine understanding we could see in this village here and move to next so again we see another narrative coming from this place is like also change in the quality of fresh water in the village how that's happening high usage of fertilizers and then how this streams which were there is now no more like really available and it's like destroyed or their mechanism has been interfered by the new systems which we are creating and that has led to lot of deterioration in this place move to next place so this is the picture of the traditional water system which was there but no more is functional because there was lot of road construction and other things came and then that the traditional water system got destroyed and then you can see how now the water is being transported through the pipe system so we can see that such kind of changes are happening here and how the entire ecology is getting disturbed here apart from what is happening at the larger global scale and move to next slide please yeah so I think we are we are already beyond scheduled time so if you kindly finish in few minutes yeah yeah yeah thank you thank you I'll I'll just go to next binaya so the climate change what they saw and then how what are their observations related to springs coming early and then one important point I would just tell we'll skip this one also binaya next we'll go to next one so here I we also our team also discovered that there's a celebration gena which is like a festival which is observed for like a lot of rituals for landslide control fire control so they have this inbuilt within the community within their pattern and then all those folk lords are there which are there to tell people to create awareness within the traditional systems so those are here again which is observed for even fire control even for earthquake then they also have for landslide and maybe we'll move to the next slide please so these are the kind of songs which they sing and narrate and create the awareness like the meaning is oh tomorrow it is the good fire or men indulge do not indulge in other activities or today so these kind of songs which are there in the community so once we start looking at those things we find these things that inbuilt within the community system how all these elements of resilience and awareness are there yeah I'll just move to next yeah so all these components are there and I moved to the last one just to wind up so you can see that how they have been like there are certain plans traditionally known plans which have been also been covered earlier also so those plans are also there and then how they are related with their folk songs their rituals and how they are integrating it now and reinvesting and investing in this neighborhood in this community so the main point I wanted to make here is like looking at the complexity like looking at the complete land use of how there are different elements and looking at their rituals and other things have helped us to understand these elements as well as the engaging with the younger students and helping them document has helped us to identify them and also make them knowledgeable by the community itself so that's it for now from my side yeah thank you thank you so much professor hashit we have to close our session and if you have any burning question please raise we can dedicate one or two minutes for any burning question if not please you can share with us your question remarks later no problem we'll look back to you I would request I would now upper our rudak are you here with us no anyway okay let me thank you so much particularly colleagues from IED who really extended support for organizing the whole session binaia thank you so much professor hashit and thank god you managed very well and finally we did it we made it excellent and Shazer wonderful session thank you so much and Maria Katriona truly we are amazed uh Stefan for taking keeping uh the steering in perfect mode my colleagues in friendship IED communication climate actions and others and please join with us for the next session uh in two at 16 CET uh and the session is very interesting climate justice approach to locally led adaptation thank you so much see you again sometime somewhere bye thank you so much thank you really appreciate for all to join this session thank you from IGS bye thank you bye bye