The project showcases, in film, photos, and news stories how people in Southern Africa are positively addressing climate change. It offers a perspective of hope and ingenuity, providing local solutions that empower people to improve their lives through the protection of the natural resources the world depends on. It educates people about climate change while inspiring and encouraging them to make a difference in their own communities.
Creating A Climate For Change is created through a grant from the Open Society Initiative For Southern Africa and the Open Society Foundation For South Africa.
The film has won best environmental film at the Film Festival Of Colorado in June 2012.
The Film:
Creating a Climate for Change – Trailer
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Creating a Climate for Change – Watch the Whole Film – For Free!
The Traveling Creating A Climate For Change Exhibition
These images are available as extremely limited editions of only 5 signed copies ever to be printed. Orders available on Canvas or Archival paper, delivered worldwide for 1050$s each. The money goes to promote the outreach of this very important project, and is a great way for individuals and companies to get involved and show their support. A signed note of thanks from the photographer, and our director, Jeffrey Barbee with a short story of the image and how it came about accompanies every print.
In the Jakotsha trust in the northern part of the Okvango Delta an ancient Baoboab tree slowly rots away. A number of old baobabs on this island are disappearing as conditions that sustained them for more than a thousand years are changing.
Elephants like this family herd on the Maramba River in Zambia are already ranging across the borders of the new KAZA park. These elephants trundled down to the river from the Zimbabwe side, drank their fill and moved on into Zambia as the sun set.
The Omaruru River in flood in Namibia. In 2011 Namibia experienced more than twice its normal rainfall in many areas of the country. This image was taken from a road that almost never floods. More variability in climate can be expected as Southern Africa warms.
A Zebra ranges across the Torra Conservancy in Namibia at sunset. The conservancy is one of the best run in the country, and allows local communities to benefit from tourists, helping finance the protection of of this ecosystem, as well as lions, elephants, giraffe, rhino, and even this one lone Zebra.
Another path winds into the distance at the Tora Conservancy in Namibia. In 2011 the grass grew over the rocky soil turning this desert landscape into a garden. If humanity to is to survive the coming changes, then we will have to embark on another path, one that sees us as custodians of our environment.
A true-to-color thunderstorm rolls into the Damaraland area of Namibia, lit by the last rays of the setting sun. The rock from which this picture is taken is a trove of stone-age artifacts, left over from a time when this harsh desert was green and verdant and hunters ranged across it. As southern Africa’s climate warms more variable weather like violent thunderstorms and searing droughts are predicted.
A typical high-veld thunderstorm rolls across the grasslands of the Cradle of Humankind, near Johannesburg South Africa. Storms in Gauteng have become more violent, delivering more rain and wind during each event. New discoveries here at the Cradle highlight the evolution of our species in Africa. Today Africans are part of a global solution that will hopefully see our species continue to survive in the face of climate change.
The power of nature reigns after a downpour over the springtime landscape at Golden Gate National Park on the border between Lesotho and South Africa. Transboundary
river catchments like this one are redefining international agreements in Africa. Only through regional cooperation can the twin evils of poverty and climate change be addressed.
The oldest desert ecosystem in the world, The Namib desert. Dr. Mary Seely, renown conservationist and board member of the Gobabeb Training and Research Center in Namibia: “We cannot keep acting like we are immune from these changes that we are seeing in the environment”.
Oom Pieter Bees, 76 from the Topnaar Community in Namibia’s Namib Desert. “The Climate here has changed, when I was younger we used to have many more wet years. Now we just don’t know what will happen”.
Many people work planting Spekboom in the western half of the Baviaanskloof. At Zevenfontien (Seven Fountains) Community Farm in the western Bavianskloof Mountains community elder Jacob Deinaar Van Mathews talks to Hans vin Voegue in Jacob’s house on the farm. Hundreds of people live on the farm and some of them find work with the Working For Water Program, restoring the landscape by planting Spekboom.
Topnaar Communities in the Namib Desert are getting assistance from the Gobabeb Training and Research Center in how to evaluate their livestock and their farming systems so they can make more informed decisions about their economic future. Only through education and sustainable alternative land uses can small communities adapt to climate change.
In the north of Zambia near the town of Mpika the ladies of the Mupumbishi Women’s Club help each other sort out their seed grain for their next bean crop. Beans and other legumes like peanuts are one of the main elements of Conservation Farming. There are more than 300,000 Conservation farmers in the country. The Conservation Farming Unit, a Zambian non-profit
group, believes that these farmers have helped turn the country into a food exporter.
Near Mchinji in Malawi small farmers are working in conservation farming methods as a way to adapt to Climate Change. Eight year old Brian Phiri holds up a bowl full of peanuts. Conservation farming has changed his life. Now that they have a food surplus his family has enough money to send him to school.
Johanna Swartz runs a team of Spekboom planters in the Baviaanskloof on contract for the Gamtoos Irrigation Board, with help from the NGO Living Lands.
“There is a great change in my life, because all the things I needed and can’t buy before, I can buy them now. I don’t struggle with money any more. Now there are opportunities I would grab, too, things that I love”.
The Talks, Exhibitions and Multimedia in Action
The project contains a strong multimedia element, with shorter films that work best on the web or web-enabled devices like iPhones or tablets. These films are downloadable from the the award-winning news sites through the links at the bottom of this page. The film and photographs have been on tour with the producers throughout the world, engaging local audiences in venues like the University of Colorado in Boulder, The Labia Art Cinema in Cape Town, and community centers in Namibia.
At these special screenings the producers invite local stakeholders to join a panel after the film to lead a debate around the key messages of the movie and how they can be applied in other parts of the world. This creates local dialogues about how to address climate change and what effective partnerships are necessary to make this happen. The film and exhibition through these outreach efforts further the understanding that the solutions to climate change come from the concerted efforts of individuals, businesses, communities and governments joining forces to effect change.
Schools, Communities and Universities and any other interested parties can contact the producer for a screening of the film and a talk at their venue. More screenings are planned in Germany, South Africa, Namibia, and elsewhere.
Hi to everybody, my name is Prisca Emberti Gialloreti, I write from Rome, ITaly, I have a lot of photographic material that I have taken in recent years. From 2016 I have been following the activity of bees, wasps and stray cats that I sterilize for the care of the environment, above all because in Italy in Rome and Ciampino nobody helps the citizens to take care of the environment or protect wildlife, there are many wars of money in the middle. I would like to send you some shots and document how the felines are behaving with climate change. Reproductions have also changed. I collaborate with an Onlus roman association called A.S.T.A. I do it with love from always, my job is another. But thanks also to my house cats I was able to adapt to changes that I didn’t think I would face before. Wait your kind response. Thanks for your attention. Have a good weekend. Prisca Emberti Gialloreti
The project showcases, in film, photos, and news stories how people in Southern Africa are positively addressing climate change. It offers a perspective of hope and ingenuity, providing local solutions that empower people to improve their lives through the protection of the natural resources the world depends on. It educates people about climate change while inspiring and encouraging them to make a difference in their own communities.
Hi to everybody, my name is Prisca Emberti Gialloreti, I write from Rome, ITaly, I have a lot of photographic material that I have taken in recent years. From 2016 I have been following the activity of bees, wasps and stray cats that I sterilize for the care of the environment, above all because in Italy in Rome and Ciampino nobody helps the citizens to take care of the environment or protect wildlife, there are many wars of money in the middle. I would like to send you some shots and document how the felines are behaving with climate change. Reproductions have also changed. I collaborate with an Onlus roman association called A.S.T.A. I do it with love from always, my job is another. But thanks also to my house cats I was able to adapt to changes that I didn’t think I would face before. Wait your kind response. Thanks for your attention. Have a good weekend. Prisca Emberti Gialloreti