“Climate change has now become a climate crisis. Each person has to take action to save this earth.” Laili Khairnur, Gemawan.
Laili Khairnur, one of the women interviewed for our campaign in the lead up to International Rural Women’s Day and Global Day of Action for Food Sovereignty, gave us an insight into her life and concerns in the field of agriculture due to climate change.
Laili works with the organization Gemawan and a women’s group in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. She tells us that there are only two seasons, dry and rainy, and that in her area climate change has become a real concern: “We can see that with weather being unpredictable, it is directly impacting our daily lives. We are actually now in the dry season, however sometimes we can also get very heavy rain. This impacts our local fruit productions, water stocks and also food stocks and we don’t know when the crops season will produce now”.
Laili and her community have not stood idly by. “Climate change has now become a climate crisis. Each person has to take action to save this earth” says Laili. With Gemawan, they are able to lead campaigns against the expansion of palm oil, the main reason for deforestation in Indonesia, and accompany the community with a social forestry programme, through a government plan to protect the forest and foster prosperity in the community.
Gemawan also works with families and women’s groups to restore forests through Analog Forestry. She indicates: “we know that climate change is caused by the increase in the temperature of the earth as a result of the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere due to human and commercial activities. We also know that various trees and biodiversity in forests are able to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Forests also act as water catchment areas so as to prevent flooding. So Analog Forestry brings the imitation of forests into our present situation with an approach towards ecosystem restoration”.
The International Analog Forestry Network has been working with Gemawan since 2020, through virtual capacity strengthening workshops and mentoring.
Source: IAFN