When we discuss climate change, we often forget that people have been navigating environmental upheavals for centuries. Indigenous communities around the world have survived droughts, floods, earthquakes, and countless other climate events that we are only just starting to understand. Their practices and knowledge have enabled them not only to survive but to live in harmony with their surroundings.

Yet, in our modern, Western-driven world, we often ignore or even dismiss these cultures as primitive or irrelevant. What if the solutions we are desperately searching for already exist, embedded in the traditions, stories, and sustainable practices of these communities?

Take, for example, the Krahô indigenous community, whose sustainable practices are beautifully portrayed in The Buriti Flower, a film by João Salaviza and Renée Nadar Messora. For generations, the Krahô from Brazil’s Tocantins state, have fostered a culture of living in harmony with their environment—a relationship that’s rooted in deep respect and care. They maintain the purity of their water sources, ensuring clean, uncontaminated access, and their approach to agriculture reflects an understanding of ecological balance. Instead of depleting the land, the Krahô practiced rotational agriculture. They cultivate crops in small plots for a few years, then move to a new area, allowing the previously used soil time to recover its nutrients. This shifting agricultural practice enables the forests to regenerate, returning the land to its wild, untamed state.

Krahô actors protest against Land Ownership Bill in Brazil at Cannes festival

In the film, The Buriti Flower, the members of this community are seen fighting for their rights on their lands against the government’s anti-conservation policies. They are asking the governments to partner with them to protect their forests. In the film we follow the life of protagonist Ilda Patpro Krahô (who is also the movie’s screenwriter) as she prepares herself and her community to attend the national conference and protest march for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Brasilia, the capital city.

The parallels of people against the government in the fight for climate change are not new. In the second film, Once Upon a Time in Forest, we are taken to the enchanting Finnish coniferous forest where a bunch of young people are up against the forest industry giants. Finland, known for its vast forests and pristine lakes, might not immediately come to mind as a battleground for forest conservation. Yet, as this captivating documentary reveals, nearly 90 percent of these forests are commercially exploited, posing a serious threat to their biodiversity.

The story follows 22-year-old Ida as she ventures deep into the forests, swims in the clear lakes, and sings a poignant farewell to the endangered species at risk of vanishing. Her journey is one of resistance and passion; she confronts forest officers, debates with her grandfather, and even clashes with the police in her efforts to halt the relentless clearing of forest land.

Ida on one of her forest surveys (still from the film)

During the podium discussions after the screening, the film’s director, Virpi Suutari, provided the historical context that has shaped Finland’s forest policies. Following World War II, Finland faced significant debt to the Soviet Union and privatized 90 percent of its forest land to repay it through timber and paper production. In support of this strategy, the government offered subsidies for forest rehabilitation and peatland drainage, hoping to maintain timber output while preserving biodiversity. Instead, this legislative policy that soon became a traditional practice disrupted natural ecosystems and altered landscapes.

In one of the film’s most powerful moments, we see Ida confronting her grandfather. She argues that forests shouldn’t be forced into cycles of exploitation and replanting but allowed to regenerate on their own, decaying and renewing at nature’s pace. This powerful exchange highlights the generational divide and differing visions for the future of Finland’s forests.

The third film, The Battle for Laikipia, by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi, takes us to another conflict and divide in terms of lifestyle and political histories. It depicts the lives of white Kenyans who stayed back after the independence from British rule and integrated into the system and the indigenous nomadic pastoralist community who find themselves on the outskirts. For the Kenyan-educated, integrated population, Laikipia is now home, a land inherited from their colonial ancestors and developed as ranches and game reserves to protect African wildlife. They view the pastoral nomadic community as encroachers. Meanwhile, the indigenous Samburu tribe sees their nomadic lifestyle as a cultural tradition they have been practicing for generations where exchanging and maintaining cattle and sheep herds is central to their way of life. For years, these two communities coexisted in regions like Laikipia, but that peace is now threatened. The changing climate has brought drought conditions to this region. The lack of good grazing areas has driven pastoralists onto privatized lands. The subsequent resistance of ranchers has started the debate over ‘whose land is it anyway’. The indigenous community argues that white settlers should leave, while the ranchers claim the land as their inherited legacy.

The film highlights how the Kenyan government often favors the privileged. In a key scene, ranchers discuss potential solutions to the land conflict, suggesting that pastoralism is outdated and uncivilized. What is striking is the absence of any representatives from the pastoralist community at this discussion, showcasing a blatant disregard for their voices and perspectives in decisions that directly affect their way of life.

Is the nomadic or pastoral lifestyle really the problem here, though? The drought conditions are affecting both communities, and here the solutions might lie in working together rather than standing up against one another. Droughts have always been a part of nomadic life. For centuries, nomads have developed livelihood strategies to cope with a trying climate, whether it is understanding the water sources, pasture cycles, or animal foraging needs. Since the launch of the UN platform to include local communities and Indigenous people in shaping climate action in 2017, unique perspectives of various pastoral communities on adapting to and building resilience against climate change have come to light and they integrate well with the existing scientific knowledge.

Tamara Ohmura, lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, notes that scientists often provide solutions grounded in both ecology and economics. In Finland, it was environmental experts who backed the forest rehabilitation strategy. The Western scientific worldview often disregards the metaphysical aspects of cultures, reducing them to physical components that can be empirically investigated. This approach fails to account for the broader, non-physical dimensions of knowledge that many cultures, particularly Indigenous ones, possess.

As Leroy Little Bear notes, “Scientific facts are as much a product of observer’s human nature as they are of an underlying reality.” To effectively address climate change, it is essential to incorporate and respect these diverse perspectives, as they offer valuable insights into sustainable practices and resilience in the face of environmental shifts.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-The Buriti Flower, Once Upon a Time in Forest and The Battle for Laikipia were screened at the 6th Global Science Film Festival on November 9th and 10th this year in Zurich, Lugano, Basel, and Bern. Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi won the ‘Walking Ibex’ Grand Prix 2024 for The Battle for Laikipia. Thank you Life Science Zurich and Swiss Science Film Academy for inviting us to be part of the screenings.