Student Documentaries Examine the Effects of Climate Change on Farming in South Africa and Kyrgyzstan
Led by Brandon P. Anthony from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at Central European University (CEU), CORUSUS has allowed faculty and students at CEU in Austria, University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Kyrgyzstan, and American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon, to share knowledge and experience in the pursuit of research goals.
An integral part of the project is its support for student exchange among partner institutions and integrating interns from CEU’s Master of Science in Environmental Sciences and Policy (MESPOM) program. In the summer of 2023, seven MESPOM students did their mandatory internship within the framework of CORUSUS, conducting research among rural farmers. They have now produced two short documentaries reflecting their findings, which are being shared with the livestock farmers who were interviewed and with the interested public.
“Living from Livestock” was produced by Hedda Thomson Ek, Jasmine Chakravarty, and Medhini Igoor, MESPOM students at CEU, and supervised by Professor Wayne Twine of Wits and Professor Brandon P. Anthony. Previously, quantitative data had been collected through household surveys of rural livestock farmers in four villages in the Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces of South Africa. For their internship, Thomson, Chakravarty, and Igoor filmed interviews with local farmers, highlighting the impact of climate change on their traditional practices and livelihoods, as well as their coping strategies. The students found that sustenance crop farming and livestock farming are highly interdependent in the South African context. They also learned that weather patterns and climate change affect crop farming equally, if not more, than livestock farming.
“Working in a new cultural context has been a privilege, both to practice working and collaborating internationally within the project and to learn more of other traditional knowledge systems and world views,” says Ek. She says the internship taught her about teamwork and helped her to see the value of working with various languages and translating speakers’ intended meanings in interviews.
“Voices of the Peaks: Navigating Climate Change with Kyrgyz Farmers” was produced by Monika Somogyi and Guilhem Chiarello Coupinot, MESPOM students at AUCA, and supervised by Associate Professor Ruslan Rahimov, of the Anthropology and International Development program at AUCA. For this project, students conducted interviews with scientific experts but also filmed discussions with local nomadic pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan as a means of investigating the impact of climate change on livestock farming in the area. They sought a balance between interviews, scientific data, and images, producing a documentary that is accessible to those within and outside of the scholarly community.
“The primary objective was to utilize this documentary as a valuable research resource and share it with farmers, community members, researchers, decision-makers… to raise their awareness about this issue,” says Somogyi. “Upon its completion, it will serve as an important tool for shedding light on the ongoing challenges related to climate change and pastoralism in the country.”
Partners in Lebanon are still capturing footage from research sites in that country, which the team plans to add to a forthcoming full-length documentary covering all three project locations.
Watch the trailer for Living from Livestock. Watch full versions of Living from Livestock and Voices of the Peaks.
Post Date: 08-12-2024