Art, beer and spirituality in the age of climate change

On August 21-23, the Mekong Community Resilience Partnership (MCRP) gathered in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at a regional dialogue on knowledge-policy pathways for inclusive climate action.

I was drawn to the event for its focus on inclusion and participation in decision-making processes related to climate change. Yet what lingered with me after three days of field visits and discussions was the often overlooked and seemingly mundane.

The following are fragments of the conversations and observations that I noted down as we went on a field visit, enjoyed an art exhibit and reflected on regional challenges.

Vignette #1: Our visit to a peri-urban subdistrict of Chiang Mai, prompting reflections on the impacts of urban growth on people, places and the environment, started at an abandoned ordination hall.

Once, the ordination hall was special. It stood proudly amidst a rolling rice paddy field. Wherever you stood in the surrounding villages, you would be able to see it. It was a communal space that saw rituals, festivals and celebrations of life.

Today, the ordination hall is closed. It is humbly tucked away inside a gated community. You wouldn’t know it existed unless you knew where to look. Renovation is underway, but its original function as an ordination hall, however, cannot be restored.

The tale of the ordination hall resonates with a broader narrative, a connection severed by haphazard urban development, a metaphor for values lost in the pursuit of growth.

Vignette #2: At the art exhibit “Rising Tides, Rising Voices: Contemporary Visions of Climate Resilience”, an artist shared the story of her work.

“To me, art isn’t about aesthetics or beauty. It is a medium to tell a story.”

Kwanphitcha Kongsaeng’s story is of her grandmother’s hometown, a village on the Mekong River. She wants to unravel the impacts of infrastructure development on the river and the rich lives it nourishes. The disappearance of birds, unnoticed by most but observed by the locals, becomes a poignant symbol of the delicate balance of nature and the sidelined impacts of human interventions. She etches these birds onto photographs of the river, printed on paper infused with Mekong soil personally collected, creating an age-old appearance. Her work conveys a powerful message of loss, the passage of time and the fragility of existence.

“I could draw the birds,” she said, “but I chose to embolden it on the prints so that people will have to stop and look closely in order to see what truly matters.”

Vignette #3: Inside the conference room, a vital discussion unfolded.

• A key to effective participation seems to be about building trust.
• If you don’t have trust, the truth won’t be revealed.
• How do we build trust?
• Through beers!

A central theme of the event was inequality and marginalization in climate action. We talked about how socio-economic identities and structural inequalities render certain groups of people more vulnerable than others, with examples of fisherwomen in coastal villages and small-scale farmers in the Mekong region. We discussed the importance of and challenges to, getting their voices, actions and knowledge counted. The intersection of climate change with other development issues was at the heart of our conversations.

But ultimately, the group circled back to the question: How do we talk about climate change when people are faced with so many other priorities and challenges in their lives?

This has indeed been a challenge I experienced in my own work. When talking to people in my research, things like climate change or sustainability are often foreign and distant concepts. Their livelihood needs, their children’s education, or parents’ health: there are many other priorities. Even in places considered among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as the Mekong Delta, a common reaction to climate change among local farmers has been: “Weather changes all the time; what’s wrong with climate change?”

Recently, in a book titled “Climate change isn’t everything”, author Michael Hulme draws attention to how climate change has become the dominant narrative over other equally critical and urgent matters facing humanity. The agenda has also, for so long, been dominated by a scientific discourse that relies on technocratic language and approaches. It has rendered climate change a foreign concept to most people who indeed experience its impacts first-hand daily. And yet, their stories and perspectives are often not counted.

So, can we talk about climate change without necessarily using its technocratic language? And how do we tackle its links to development and engage the public in a meaningful way? The event gave us a few hints.

One is through lasting relationships and trust. These bonds are nurtured over time through meaningful partnerships and sustained collaborations. But they are also cultivated over genuine connections and simple everyday interactions, like sharing a meal or a drink. Such exchanges blur the divides between experts and non-experts and across cultures and experiences, cheering on mutual understanding, sharing and learning. They shift the focus back to the fundamentals of our human experience.

Powerful conduits can also be found in spirituality or the arts, allowing us to connect across languages, express alternative ways of knowing and see life through a different lens beyond the confines of logic and materiality. They nurture bonds and facilitate conversations as an entry point to change.

Like the ordination hall, these approaches may get overlooked or underestimated in a society governed by scientific models and measurable growth. Yet, they offer an architecture to foster diverse perspectives and experiences, explore different ways to make sense of the world and envision different futures. These are invaluable resources to respond to the increasingly complex and intertwined challenges of our lives. By tapping into our emotional and incorporeal dimensions, they enable alternative narratives to emerge that can further deepen our connectedness to ourselves and other humans and non-human beings. It is perhaps in the ordinary where the extraordinary emerges.

Climate change is indeed a monumental challenge, but it is not the only narrative that defines our world. It is in the simple acts of sharing a drink, telling stories through art and seeking genuine connections that we may find the key to unlocking meaningful changes. While the science of climate change is vital, the human elements of trust, creativity and shared experiences will ultimately guide us toward a more sustainable and resilient future. Climate change is not everything, but beer, spirituality and art may just be.

This piece is a reflection from a regional event under SEI’s Strategic Collaborative Fund in August this year.