The chapter delves into the challenges faced by coastal communities in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea due to climate change-induced sea level rise, tectonic movements, and environmental changes. It highlights the issues of forced migration, submergence of coastal areas, destructive king tides, temperature rise, drought affecting farming, and the struggle to adapt crops to water scarcity amidst fatalism and a sense of predestination.
What would you lose to take a stand?
Gianluca Grimalda, a climate change researcher, lost his job after he refused to fly back from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Gianluca has been “slow travelling” for decades. He thinks his former employer tried to make an example out of him because of his climate activism. It’s one of those stories that reveals the madness of the world—he was sent to research how vulnerable communities are responding to climate change as the seas consume their villages, and then told he could no longer continue that research if he did not commit an act of harm.
He joins me to share the preliminary results of his fieldwork and tell this incredible story: his activism, the threats of dismissal, the ongoing fight with the institute, and the incredible journey from Bougainville to Germany by ferry, train and coach. This is a tale that reminds us that some things are less complicated than we are led to believe—and that we cannot rely on our institutions for moral clarity.
Watch the film made about Gianluca’s journey here.
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