Webinar On Supporting Climate Action by Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples

Speakers: Hannah, Matt, Queen Quet, Ave Paulus, Suwichan Phatthanapraiwan

Hannah: Thank you very much, Matt and welcome everyone. I think it's a really exciting session today. Taking it all the way around the world. It is Working Group 7 confusingly. We were not going in numerical order as you might have noticed, but we are going to hear about supporting climate action by local communities and indigenous peoples. And this webinar addresses the power of indigenous peoples culture and local communities in meeting the challenges of climate change, focusing on good practice in action, and adaptation. The break with traditional knowledge acquired over generations of experience and involved practice, marks the loss of equilibrium in the relationship between humans and nature that has provoked the current compounded crisis of environmental degradation and climate change. And this webinar is offered through partnership between Historic England and the Climate Heritage Network, as you heard a little bit about last week.

So, just as a refresher for those of you that weren't here last week, the Climate Heritage Network was founded in 2019 by organisations around the world committing to enhancing the role of arts, culture and heritage in tackling the climate emergency.

The Climate Heritage Network is open to government agencies, civil society businesses, universities, indigenous peoples, organisations, anywhere. And you can find more information at www.climateheritage.org. I think I put the link at the top of the chat there. The Climate Heritage Network launched its Madrid to Glasgow Arts Culture and Heritage Climate Action Plan at the December 2019 Climate Summit, COP in Madrid, this time, well almost this time last year.

The plan includes eight activities which reflect the different pathways to creating the tools and frameworks to further mobilise the arts, culture and heritage fields. And the plan is meant to culminate at the next UN climate summit in 2021 in Glasgow, and today's webinar is part of a series that explores the different pathways in the Madrid to Glasgow Action Plan, and the idea is that each of these webinars present concrete, scalable activities that arts, culture and heritage agencies and organisations around the world. Can use to increase their confidence and effectiveness in undertaking and engaging with climate action. The series is provided with collaboration between ourselves, Historic England and the Climate Heritage Network and the Webinar series is part of the Climate Heritage networks broader culture by climate platform, which runs from the 12th of October to the 27th of November.

Again, there's a link at the top of the chat which I posted earlier and is designed to Unite all those interested in enhancing the capacity of the arts, culture and heritage sectors, to build a climate neutral and resilient world in the time of COVID-19. Hopefully there's something for everyone in these presentations and I will stop with the introductions and introduce our speakers for today.

So, we have Queen Quet, the elected chiefess of the Gullah Geechee Nation. A native of Saint Helena Island in South Carolina, she is an author, preservationist, and the founder of the Gullah Geechee Sea Island Coalition. She advocates for the continuation of Gullah Geechee cultural traditions and resource that are threatened due to climate change. Ave Paulus is a member of the ICOMOS Estonia, International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes and legal and administrative issues, rights based approach and climate change working groups. She is also a specialist for culture heritage issues on the Environmental Board of Estonia and Council member of and excuse my pronunciation for these words, ‘vi rumor museums’. Suwichan, and apologies to Suwichan, I'm going to attempt to pronounce your surname, but my English voice is not very good at these sorts of things, Patterpruam, is a member of the Karen indigenous people and is the first PigPig Arkanu lecturer at Sprinakharinwirot University and he writes and sings pig arkanu songs that illustrate the lifestyle and culture of his people as well as the relationship between humans and nature. And we have some links to his songs that we will share if he doesn't have time to share them with us today. So, without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Queen Quet.

Matt: OK.

Queen Quet: Peace and blessings to all. I'm here and I just wanted you all to know that that male voice is not mine. So as we would say here [local language]. Thank you to all the organisers and especially many greetings to all of you there at Historic England. So Matthew you can take it away and give them a journey here to our coast in the Gullah Geechee Nation.

Matt: That's so kind of you. Thank you very much, Queen Quet. Right, what we're going to do now is Queen Quet has given us a video presentation. We’ll run that in the webinar software, so if you can watch it here. But also if that is not working for you for reasons of bandwidth and so forth.

Queen Quet: They’ll be able to see it later at GullahGeechee.TV. Yes, GULLAHGEECHEE dot TV and I'll drop that in the chat as well. So if you have any difficulties now, never worry we'll have it there for you. Oh, thank you so much Hannah. She stopped it there. Peace and blessings.

Matt: Fantastic, OK, running the video now.

Queen Quet: [Greetings and introduction in local language] Here we stand on the same land that our ancestors worked during chattel enslavement and now we still own these same properties and continue our cultural legacy on the sea islands as long as we can. As the floods start to come in the midst of the harvest time and we stand wondering how long will our food be secure? And how long will it be before our cultural legacy stops being in jeopardy? So we end up going back to the shorelines to meditate, and there we see that the sea levels are rising and the ocean is changing [local language] The ocean has turned to acid. They call it ocean acidification, and as it started happening, the ocean started changing and the water in it started to acidify. I guess I can relate to it because further across this body of water we call the Middle Passage, that is the Atlantic Ocean, the more my ancestors were asked to change as well. Things got kind of hot for them. Things started to burn them, too, but not in a good way. But they had to figure out a way to sustain who they were.

[Local language]. Our culture is called Gullah Geechee. So whether you go to Jacksonville, North Carolina, all the way down through the South Carolina coast, through Georgia Coast, or you end up there near Jacksonville Fort, you can find the Gullah Geechee, still adapting, still holding on, still sustaining ourselves in what is ow a cultural landscape that’s everchanging because the winds are bringing in the tides even more rapidly than they used to, and the sea levels are rising and we don’t just mean as the tide changes a couple of times a day. They’re rising in a different way and that is bringing in other pollutants and other things that are contributing to this thing called ocean acidification here in Gullah Geechee Nation.

So when we fight against the destruction with projects like the one we recently fought, to make sure nothing was built on this place called Bay Point. We’re not doing it as we say [local language]. We are going it before the overbuilding into the shoreline is not causing a positive impact. In fact, they realise it’s bringing a lot of negative impact. We see these impacts along our shoreline and now we gout to those checking to see if the oyster beds are still standing in the spartina grass or the spartima grass. But these are the things that keep our island together so that we can fish for another generation. So we go out to assess what is taking place in our maritime forest as the storms continue to intensify and come through those islands every hurricane season. We see what’s coming in the future. We discuss how we can hold on to our cultural legacy. And make sure that our children well know how to continue to carry on their traditions on these shores and be able to feed themselves and the coming generations. So we go out and show them how to fish. And then teach them how to cook in our traditional way. And then teach them how to replant even back along the shore so that you can stand here once more.

So, in Gullah Geechee we’re always about having that balance. We’re all living creatures [local language]. The ocean is alive. The creatures are alive. And for us, Earth is our family and the waterway is our bloodline. More often than not, when people come to the sea islands, all they want to do is to get to the shore. Why? Because the want to get to the beach. But when they get to the beach, they’ve already bypassed a lot of what’s important to those of us who live here. They want to get to places that they think are built environments, that they have to bring light, instead of realising the real light radiates from within.

So we love the fact that we still have an historical lighthouse. That lighthouse has had to be moved four times at least in its lifetime. Why? Because the shores continue to erode naturally. Much less than what the humans are doing now to the Earth. The same humans who pass other human beings by, not recognising that anywhere you journey to probably has a cultural community there. And if you really want to be enlightened, you might want to take some time to find the people, instead of just the built environment. I bring myself down by the shoreline, not just enjoying it but documenting it, trying to make sure that someone realises we were here, these islands existed at some point in time. And to document the difference of what it was, what it is, so that we can plan for what it will be. And so, as one of the people who is considered a climate action partner of the Climate Heritage Network, that’s the point. We can climb it if we take action. We can get us above higher ground. We can reverse our behaviours on Earth so that what happens on Earth doesn’t have such harmful impacts to the waters around us. As we say here in the Gullah Geechee Nation [local language] Peace, blessings, health and safety.

Matt: OK, that’s the end of the presentation, can you all just give me that raised hand icon just to show that you have watched that successfully please? Look at that! Queen Quet, you are now an international star. That’s absolutely marvellous. OK, right, let’s clear that down. fantastic. We’re now going to move over to our next presentation which is Ave Paulus from Estonia. So, Ave, can I ask you to unmute your microphone? You have? That’s wonderful. So, over to you, Ave.

Ave: Dear friends from all over the world. Thank you so much, Queen Quet. I greet you from Estonia in Northern Europe and the Finnish Gulf Coast in Estonia. I am proud to be part of the Climate Heritage Network, and representing ICOMOS in this webinar.

So Our Common Dignity, what is it? The main aim of ICOMOS Our Common Dignity initiative is to contribute towards the rights based approaches in cultural management standards and processes, consultations from rights holders covering collective and substantive procedural rights good practice. ICOMOS’ Buenos Aires declaration on human rights states concerning cultural heritage is simple. To build strong relationships, embrace the principle of free prior formal consent for all possible assistance for heritage communities. ICOMOS cooperates with all political, academic and cultural and heritage communities intentionally. It’s not that we are speaking for the communities. However, we are talking about how local communities and cultural institutions and protected areas of politics can be good partners in making best decisions for heritage management. And there are no simple choices as we all know. ICOMOS has made several contributions on community rights, climate change and heritage management standards and documents, including the report Futures of our Past: UNESCO World Heritage Operational Guidelines 2019, ICOMOS’ contributions on climate emergency and people-centred approaches, input to the United Nations’ cultural report. These documents highlight the creativity embedded in the culture of local communities and how this knowledge gives all of the society hope for the future. ICOMOS promotes the connections of people with heritage and places, intercultural dialogue, and understanding sustainability and wellbeing when addressing local, national, and international heritage policies and practice. This will better realise the full potential of cultural heritage to deliver climate resilient pathways to strengthen sustainable development and promoting a just transition to low carbon futures.

Why are heritage communities so relevant in responding to climate change? According to some calculations we are in the state of climate emergency, ten years away from rapid global ecosystem collapse beginning. Out of change of sea and land use, change in climate science, CO2 emissions and fossil fuels, destruction of habitats, pollution, extinction at the global, local and micro level. The Global Biodiversity Outlook 2020 is straightforward: ‘None of our GBO 2010 standards have been met. Diversity is declining at an unprecedented rate. Target 18 on the practices of local communities, traditional knowledge and customary sustainable use has not been achieved.’ Environmental security issues are of the highest priority. We needed Greta from Sweden to wake us up. We don't have time to neglect. We don't have time to act stupidly. Research of IUCN and on nature based solutions. Highlights that they could provide around 30% of the cost of effective mitigations needed by 2030 to stabilise warming to below 2 degrees. It is closely connected with traditional fossil fuel, free livelihoods and cultural practices of the local communities in their fragile ecosystems. To save ourselves, we need to listen very carefully to what local communities and indigenous peoples have to say. ICOMOS has made several contributions on cultural rights and climate change issues, the United Special Cultural Report on Climate Change in close cooperation with several working groups. In the report Mrs Catherine Bannon mentioned the participation in the launch of the Climate Heritage Network as well as special thanks to Climate Heritage and ICOMOS’ contribution.

Just to point out some of our contributions relevant for the topic. Culture is closely connected to ecosystems, especially for the indigenous peoples. For rural and traditional populations culture and environment are often faith-based. Concerns for the welfare of future generations are also explicitly environmental, it should be also cultural. Cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and creativity are climate assets and should be recognised as such. Local knowledge supports contemporary mitigation options from low carbon, locally adopted approaches to the role of indigenous science to climate resilient agriculture. We need to prioritise the need for an especially urgent and effective, assertive global effort to prevent the cultural extermination of populations facing particular threats from the climate emergency such as those in polar and coastal regions, including indigenous peoples, those living in small islands. Sometimes we need a brief reminder on the content of some commitments we have made. The United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights describes cultural rights in Article 22, cultural life and intellectual property rights in Article 27. The United Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People is very specific on the rights to lands, territories, and resources of indigenous peoples in Article 26. In the framework of local community rights and heritage, there are two types of rights as to individual community members’ rights and community rights. Local individuals have the right to use resources, land and nature, to participate in cultural life and to enjoy the property.

The community has a different set of rights. Firstly, the community defines, governs and protects cultural heritage. Secondly, the community has the right to be asked prior to giving informed consent. The exercise of the right requires the pre-existence of several other rights, such as the right to be informed and involved. Thirdly, the community has exclusive rights to their cultural heritage and intellectual property. The enforcement of rights of locals and community is done through means of public law and enforcement by private individuals is not excluded. One elaborate example is about traditional fisheries’ cultural heritage values and rights. Traditional fisheries constitute a specific interaction of nature and modern cultural landscapes of land and sea. The scheme shows cultural heritage values and related community rights. There are different dominant rights issues in different fields of heritage. First, the material heritage where rights and lawsuits are generally concentrated on ownership and access rights. Cultural landscape cases are mostly about nature use and ownership rights. Intangible heritage issues deal with intellectual property exclusive rights. To find out the concrete issues of cultural landscape and the customer rights of human rights if you prefer, I start by introducing my linguistic relatives, the Uralic speaking and Finno Uralic populations of the North. The left side shows the geographic spread of Uralic speaking peoples compared with genomic analysis made by Georgia University Integrated Genomics in 2018. The Uralic languages form a family of more than 40 languages, spoken by approximately 25 million people. Some form separate branch of Finno Uralic with a total less than 50,000 people in yellow. Only three inhabit independent States: Hungary, Finland and Estonia. Definitely most Uralic peoples are in danger of cultural extinction when the third largest linguistic group, that means us Estonia, is below 1,000,000. I’ll point out the climate change actions of two different heritage communities, global concerns of European indigenous Sami in the North of the Scandinavian Peninsula, up there in pink. There are 100,000 of them. And local landscape actions of independent – Estonian Lahemaa National Park communities. Our livelihoods depend on the cultural and natural landscapes we live in. We are all affected by climate change. We don't have snow and ice anymore in the winter. Storms are coming and going, the bog has changed and species are going extinct, ecosystems vanish.

Finally, Indigenous peoples considered as such, in all four countries in which they are residing in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia. Exclusive rights of nature use are exercised now in three countries, the latest being a stunning victory on the historic rights for the land in the Swedish Supreme Court in January 2020. A considerable portion of the Sami land is protected as wilderness areas or national parks by respective national legislations. The acknowledgement of Sami rights is of utmost importance for the survival of the cultures, traditional livelihoods, ecosystems maintaining nature based solutions in the far North. As strange as it is, Summit 2020 climate change concerns are the nature based solutions around husbandry of fishing and hunting versus nickel mines and wind turbine plants that are supposed to be for a low carbon, green economy. Russian nornickel is responsible for the environmental damage connected with mining metals, the harm from the ongoing risk of diesel oil spills, and the damage done by industrial production to traditional economic activities of indigenous peoples. Finland allows mining in the Sami homeland without their free prior informed consent. In Norway, the Sami Council addresses United Nations special rapporteur regarding wind turbine facility construction plans. These cases point out the need of taking into serious consideration the implementation of cultural rights and climate change in all heritage and environmental impact assessments. As soon as one takes into the equation the impact on existing culture, climate change, embodied and operational carbon ecosystem services, biodiversity, the outcome of the assessment will be definitely in favour of local communities’ livelihoods. Not to mention honouring the human rights of the cultural communities themselves. The second case is about how the Estonian Lahemaa National Park communities are dealing with the hard issues of climate change on the landscape level, keeping the highest biodiversity in the world on the scale of your palm and dealing with the highest dead water zone in the world. When talking about some natural habitats involved in cooperation of human and nature that you can see on the top of Estonia and Lahemaa world biodiversity records to a 10cm scale, a palm scale, comes from Estonia with 20 species of plants. Biodiversity in soil is twice as much. Lahemaa National Park is protected already 50 years on the national level. However, the Council and management body involves all local level actors. The Cooperation Council consists, therefore, of the rights holders and duty bearers, the voluntary stakeholders and experts. Lahemaa local communities own their land. Cultural heritage, cultural traditions are involved in the decision making process. The Lahemaa National Park Protection Rules 2015 and Management Plan were made in cooperation with local communities.

Management of cultural heritage is done by them. Lahemaa is lucky that more than 70% of the land cover has remained unchanged during the past hundreds of years. Forests, bogs more than 70 villages. It all has started to change. We see the loss of biodiversity on a 100 year scale, 8000 hectares of former grey, semi natural habitat, and meadows have changed the land cover. Locals are ready to restore it bit by bit in their own village lands. It is written in the management plan as well, but the issue is more complicated. It connects with recent logging and forest industry threats on the non-frozen soil we can see in the scheme of Forest Guards 2007 - 17 the magnitude of the problem. A more qualitative approach is needed, which eliminates clear-cuts, prohibits heavy machinery and minimises the changes in biotopes. A study made together with local communities and scientific institutions shows agriculture and forestry need the synergy of traditional methods and innovative approaches, including horses back in action. Lahemaa communities are concerned about the loss of the values of traditional fisheries and marine culture.

There is again a whole bundle of challenges. EU regulations don’t take into account customary uses and rights of sea ecosystems and rapid decline of fish stocks influenced by climate change and increasing dead zones in the Finnish Gulf. Change of coastal lifestyle and pressure of real estate development. Currently local communities of Lahemaa National Park have conducted applied research for the conservation management of traditional coastal fisheries in cooperation with the University of Tallin Technical University, Environmental Board of Estonia, international experts, which take into account cultural values, environmental issues, legal and economic perspective. Meanwhile, the fish have gone. In 2018, Fisheries Research published findings on the dead zone in the Baltic Sea. It is the largest of its kind in the world. In October 2020, [inaudible] has preliminary data that the oxygen full area has strayed very deep into the Gulf of Finland to the marine area of Lahemaa National Park. Locals search for the solution to restore the balance in ecosystem and fishing stocks. We do hope States and institutions as well. Countdown from 2010 has turned into an endgame from 2020. On that alarming note, wishing all the wisdom and strength to all of us in these challenges. I thank you all for listening to my story.

Matt: Ave, Thank you so much. I note that you have one last slide actually. If is it OK if I push your slide forward. There you go. So there is a huge number of resources there that link out and I'm not going to attempt to copy those into the chat, I think it would just it would swamp everyone, but please do be aware that at the end of this session. I will provide you with a link that will enable you to access a copy of these slides, at which point you'll be able to get those links for it from our other slides. So thank you so much. That's absolutely marvellous. OK, moving on to our last presentation from Suwichan from Chiang Mai. So, Suwichan, if I could ask you to unmute your microphone, please. Thank you very much and over to you. Suwichan.

Suwichan: OK. [Greeting in local language]. So I’m Suwichan from Chiang Mai, Thailand. First of all, I would like to thank Historic England who have given me the opportunity to share about the indigenous situation in Thailand. The topic that I would like to share to all of you. Here in Thailand I can say something about the community centric cultural sustainability framework. In Thailand we have more than 45 Indigenous people groups. Including in the mountain part in the lowland part, and then on the sea part, so we have more than 20 million people. If you count that as an average, it's like 20% of the population of the country. Especially the indigenous people from the mountain part. Traditionally we're not the central people, so we cannot speak Thai as an official language. We don't have kind of a culture or ceremony with Thai as a central part. we have an Identity of life and culture style. So that makes the people different from the central part of the general Thai people. They say ae are the other people, we are different from them and then we are not Thai people. We are outsiders, something like that. So that makes us become marginalised. We always marginalised or we can be like second class or third class citizens in the country. But if we consider the Green Zone in Thailand. Nowadays in Thailand, you still have the Green Zone as a 25%, but almost all of this 25% belongs to the Indigenous people communities. But the situation in Thailand now. In our community you can see in the in the left photo. As I wrote down the rotational farming we have our own agricultural system. You know you might know that in rotational farming, we use the land for sustainable usage. We use it as a cycle we do not repeat use because we believe that the soil or the trees, they also have life if we need to let them take a rest. We use less and we conserve more or something like that. We use a short time and conserve a long time, but the Forestry Department don't agree with this kind of farming system. The thing with this kind of farming system is that it destroys forests. So we cannot access to our traditional way of life. We cannot access the land of our motherland. We cannot access our knowledge, to use, to continue, to maintain our knowledge. So this is a kind of discrimination so we don't have opportunity or right to use our wisdom to practice our life data. Have a relationship between human and human, human and nature and human and spiritual at all.

So, we have to change our farming system as you can see in the right photo like monocrop farming as cabbage or corn or sugar cane or something like that. So then why do we have to change? Because in the rotational farming actually we plant rice as a main plant because we eat rice even when nowadays we drive the motorbike. We drive cars but we still eat rice. We cannot eat cabbage every day we cannot eat corn every day, but we have to eat rice every day. But now we cannot do that. We cannot practice like that and then we have to send our students to school. Because if we send our students to school, they can speak Thai. They can practice Thai culture, so our children going to be recognised as Thai people. As a Thai society or something like that. So we have to send them to school. Education is the most important thing that gets our children to change to another culture. So they forget their relationship of human and human in our community and forgot the relationship in the human environment in our community. And they also don't know our spiritual side, but they have to change their religion to another religion or something with it.

So, that is a cause and effect in our community that you can see like monocrops are exported a lot in our community, and now even more and more our area is have more code if the people they're plans as a monocrops they can sell the product. But if we plan like a traditional plant or we practice our traditional ways, we cannot. We cannot sell this kind of product. We cannot get money to contribute to our children or something like that. So when we change our planting or agricultural system to monocrops. You can see the effect of the situation. We have to work more. We have to use more land. Sometimes it causes the problems especially in environment and health issues. Also cultural issues, so you can see like it's cause of the fire like a forest fire. Last year in Chiang Mai we had the biggest crisis of PM 2.5 in the world. So then when they use monocrops and then repeat use of the land, they have to use more and more chemicals. They have to use more and more fertilisers. So it also affects the people and also affects to the other diversity, such as in the rivers, we cannot eat the fish because now the fish get sick. Some rivers are empty. In some rivers you can see like a big mountain. We also have landslides. We have a lot of problems with that. Every finger in the city is pointed to the mountain, pointing to the indigenous people because of indigenous people. People are the cause of PM 2.5 because indigenous people are the cause of the erosion. Or the cause of the environment crisis in the country, when the water floods, they also point to the mountain, when the water climbs they also point to the mountain when they have a smoke or PM 2.5 they also point to the mountain. We don't have confidence, we don't have any esteem in our culture and ourselves anymore pointing at our students don't want to be indigenous people anymore, because they don't need every finger pointing at them anymore. So this is the big issue in our in our community that we would like to change this kind of situation and we would like to have a more alternative way of life in our society. In the beginning we tried looking back to our community to discover that we still have cultural capital, which is living, such as craft and music, art, and cultural natural resources or something that we still have this kind of knowledge to manage. So we think that this one might be the alternative solution. So how to make the new generation know about their cultural capital and they can use this. They can develop, they can write this one too to create a new alternative way of life.

Regarding what is relevant to natural resources, relevant to culture and spirit, and also relevant to economics, this is the alternative solution that we try to achieve via the Community Centrix- Cultural Sustainability Framework.

In this framework, we try to start from the self-perception of the of the young generation to know themselves, to know what they have to know, what good thing that they have. After that, they're going to have a self-esteem in their traditional culture and then they're going to build self-awareness for them to carry on this kind of knowledge, this kind of wisdom, this kind of culture that is relevant to environment and relevant to economics. How to how to develop, how to create innovation of life. If then they can discover these kind of alternative ways, they're going to have more self-confidence and then they're going to have self-sufficiency. Finally, they're going to choose when they go, they move out of community, go to study in the city, and then they're going to have the goal of life that. Which subject which cannot knowledge they're going to study and then finally, there's going to be like a change agent. They can make decisions on which kind of knowledge they can bring back to the community to integrate the knowledge from outside and inside, like external knowledge, and internal knowledge to work together.

So in this this framework, we collaborate with many sectors to work together and to build capacity for our indigenous children in our society. So we work, for instance, with Domian Carrot, who is working at the Smithsonian Institute who got a Fulbright Scholarship as a specialist and he is our supervisor from for this project and then we also work with the work with the schools, because we need to create this kind of curriculum for the schools. We push this kind of curriculum as a one of the subjects, in the school, integrate in the core curriculum. We also work with the Public Policy Studies Institute. They support us in the budget and then the US embassy in Thailand and then also we also have Teams or we expect that we’re going to change or make impact. To our new children on new blocks of our culture or a new set of cultural making three levels. The first level in individual believers so they can know themselves and they can have. They can realise that they also have capacity to be a part of community to be a part of society as they can be like a good citizen in their indigenous society. The second one. We also hope that it's going to be in the areas in the in the region, especially in Chiang Mai City. They're going to understand more about how cultural capital data can integrate with their city people, so our culture in the future, will not be as an exclusive culture anymore. We would like our culture to be an inclusive culture and people from the city can apply, can integrate, can accept us as a one of the multicultural society in the area. The last level or the third level.

We also hope that at the national level. So we're going to use this kind of framework as a model or as a pilot to cooperate, the people to come together and to see what the capacity of the people in the in the region area to protect, to conserve to use the natural resources, sustainability. Because it is especially important for people that we also have we teach our children that if you eat fish, you have to conserve the rivers, but conserving the rivers is not enough. You have to consider the forest. If you would like to eat frogs, you have to conserve the caves, so we're teaching our children if you would like to be fed. You have to fish, but you cannot fish if there are no rivers and no forests, no fish also. So this is a kind of the Community Centrix cultural sustainability framework that we do. So we think that we are the human in the world. We have enough natural resources, but our task is to use and to conserve. We have to balance life and conservation. So this is the kind of framework we would like to take. Take back the people in in the in the city to see and then to learn together, to cooperate to work in the future. For how to use and how to conserve the natural resources to balance. Balancing means sustainability. This is the topic or the content or the story that I would like to share with all of you tonight. Thank you. [Local language]

Matt: Suwichan, thank you so much. Absolutely fantastic presentation and as one of our attendees said in the chat, their education is the key, but it needs to be two way the non-indigenous communities need to be re-educated in respect to our relationship to the environment and I think that's absolutely key. This slide here. At this juncture, I am going to hand back to Hannah who will chair the Q&A session. But before she does that, I'm just going to bring this little window into your screen. You will see there is a text box at the bottom of that window, and if you type any questions you have into that text box. Or indeed into the chat room, either or we will respond to those questions as they come in. That said, over to you, Hannah.

Hannah: Thank you, Matt. Thank you so much to all of you. Three really inspiring presentations, I think you'll all agree, and I certainly can draw parallels and lessons with my own experiences in my own communities and I'm sure many of you can as well. So as Matt said, please do pose questions in the Q&A box if you have any you may be all over inspired and mulling over what you’ve learned. In the meantime, I have I have a question for each of you. I think you all spoke very eloquently about your experiences and the communities in your regions in your areas. What is it that you think we can take from your experiences globally and internationally and those of us in in communities outside of those, what would be the lessons that you that you'd like to share all the messages that you'd like to share with us? Perhaps if I could ask that to Queen Quet first.

Queen Quet: No problem, thank you, Hannah, and thank everyone for the great comments. I would say that we have to know that the experts are really those who are living the experiences. They are the ones literally on the front the shorelines of the impacts that we are all working to reverse and minimise and eliminate for the future, and so the educational exchange has to be circular. The information needs to go out and come back around and be a shared experience. Not that there's a hierarchy. And the way that the information is shared because there's so much that our traditional indigenous communities have to offer to the world that could be modelled in various parts of the world. If it is only respected and presented in the way that we give it and with the love that we give it with.

Hannah: Thank you, thank you Queen Quet. Suwichan, I don't know if you have any thoughts on the messages that we can learn from your experiences.

Suwichan: I just read one that Kathy Daly commented about education. We are an indigenous people. So there is an established group. We call it IEN (Indigenous Education Network). So we also link with the Thai alternative education. As Kathy mentioned, in Thailand they had a very string structure and a core curriculum direct from Bangkok. So in Bangkok, they don’t mention local knowledge much. So actually, locally we have the knowledge, more than knowledge, we call it wisdom-based, not knowledge-based. The wisdom of the local people, especially indigenous people, deals with the relationship between humans and nature and spiritual. To teach or to share with our children. To learn about how to live with nature in harmony or something like that. So yes, this is still important and in our community, we cannot separate culture, nature and economics. Each is relevant to each other.

Hannah: Yes, thank you. I think that addresses the question that Olive Fanny has raised there about how you look at the curriculum in in schools. So thank you. Ave, did you have response to that?

Ave: A very, very small comment. I totally agree with Queen Quet’s previous presentation. From my experience and ICOMOS’ experience, generally great solutions come from cooperation of all stakeholders, rights holders, experts. It is about equal partnership and it is about recognising the problem and issues. Yesterday when the cultural rapporteur was presenting, actually this report on cultural heritage and climate change. It was actually sad to hear that the United States, Russia and China neglected the problem. So it all must start with awareness of the issues and severity of the issues and that there are local communities that can give solutions.

Hannah: Yes, thank you. We have a question here about opinions or thoughts on documenting and authenticating indigenous knowledge for future use and right rights based action. I don't know if anyone wants to address that question.

Queen Quet: I would love to address that, since that's what I'm actually teaching on right now at the University of Minnesota and the Department of Geography, Environment and Society, and one of the things that we've done is what we call turning the course inside out in terms of letting the people on the ground, the indigenous people, the people in those communities direct the research. And so that that way, as you're documenting things what you're documenting is of value to that community and what your final product is doesn't just remain within academic circles, museum circles, and so forth, but that they can be utilised by the communities, and I think that also addresses what Andrew is saying. Because then the indigenous communities are empowered because they may not have the resources for the technological components to maintain archives or maintain these photographs on their own. But then if you come in with those resources and then provide them with the end product, they can use them for further empowerment. They can use them for the curriculum in other ways. So resourcing the communities is valuable and that's how they can always help us from my perspective, but that also goes into how do you help? What is it in the field that we need? Because maybe documenting things to present to a government body might be of value and you could bring your skills to the community and they could use it and then translate it into language that is used at political level and things of that nature. So that's the way that we're actually using it, so these are living examples. We're really doing that here in the Gullah Geechee Nation with collaborations with universities and museums and other institutions.

Hannah: That's great, thank you very much and have a great day. Anyone else like to answer that question about documents and culture institutions supporting the workload.

Ave: Maybe a brief comment? Yes, intellectual property rights must be taken care of when dealing with intangible heritage and that is not only authorship rights but also presenter rights as well as personal data or some delicate issues, I mean it needs to be taken care of, yes?

Hannah: Yes, those are good points, thank you. I think we have reached time so I'm just going to ask if our speakers have any final comments before we say thank you very much. Ave, first. Is there anything that you'd like to say to close?

Ave: Thank you, all of you. It is an inspirational webinar and you are doing such a great job. Climate Heritage Network, Historic England, ICOMOS, Andrew and Hannah and so on and so forth. So thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

Hannah: Thank you, Suwichan?

Suwichan: Yes, I would like to respond another question more so before I will say thank you. So the question is, how do you manage the curriculum in the school?

I'm referring to having teachers or training that can facilitate the subject and what was the perception of the student to the subject matter. So as I mentioned, in the school we try to select the subject because in Thailand we have a sort of eco-curriculum subject. Now they have a choices such as such as social studies, mathematics, Thai studies, science, environment an artistic courses or something. So we try to choose. We try to choose the core subject that really goes with our local wisdom. For example, like social studies, like art and then sometimes like environment. We also try to input our knowledge into the core subject and then we integrate the teacher from local teachers and then get like a regular teacher to work together, to teach together. So we try to collect, we try to send back the student to the community. Actually the school inside the community. But they let the student study only in the school, in the school fence, in the school area. But now we try to send back the student back to the community. So when the student is out of the school fence and back in the community, we let the local knowledgeable person teach the student, but the regular teacher is still like a core teacher or a core facilitator together someday, so we have to write the curriculum that the local people can use and then the regular teacher can use the same curriculum. The challenge is implementation in our in our area now with the previous challenge because if the regular teacher, doesn’t have the motivation to teach, it is quite complicated to force them. So now we have to work very hard, to set not only to convince, but to advocate or to make them to understand about why and the aims of this kind of knowledge and this kind of curriculum to the school. We have to work with like a school, the Master of School, the teacher. And then also we also have to work with like we collect a pizza. A pizza is a legend and the Education Area Service is belong to employee of the nation or something that we have to we need to work with various sectors that were relevant to the education or something to allow us to input our curriculum in the school. Very short question, but I explain quite long. Sorry about that.

Hannah: So, fantastic, Suwichan, and thank you. Finally, Queen Quet, did you have any final comments?

Queen Quet: Yes, I just want to encourage everyone to continue to do interdisciplinary, and intergenerational teaching and learning. And that's the way that we'll continue to keep these traditions alive and also create the next series of stewards to do the work that we're all here to do as climate actors. So I want to thank everyone who's taking action on climate to ensure that heritage is part of the discussion and just want to wish you all well and pray that you remain safe and healthy. And as we always say here [local language]. So we pray that today we've given you good tools to dig a little deeper into this topic and to continue to carry on your work. Peace and blessings.

Hannah: Thank you ever so much. So that's the end of our webinar for today. I have to let you know that next week we're hearing more about the role of cultural heritage in climate action that will look at the challenging critical activity of communicating that, particularly with policymakers and policy advisers. So, do tune in same time next week, back to you, Matt.

Matt: Hannah, thanks….