Durban - When Pablo Suarez began teaching farmers, fishermen
and emergency volunteers about rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns
using scientists and a powerpoint presentation, people were falling asleep in
Eventually he decided on a very different approach.
"I had to convey the idea of a storm, of an extreme
weather event, and I had a Frisbee and I just threw it into the audience,"
Suarez, a Red Cross associate director of programmes, told Reuters on the
sidelines of the Durban global climate summit.
"And the audience woke up, they saw that there was
Soon Suarez began using games to explain more complex ideas
like micro insurance to mitigate risks for subsistence farmers. He also teamed
up with the Parsons School for Design in New York to create a number of climate
games geared at communities, volunteers and policymakers.
"Farmers in Ethiopia don't have insurance in their
language so we introduced a game with stones, where everyone has some stones
but not enough to pay for when their child gets malaria and has to go to
hospital," the Argentine researcher said.
Janot Mendler de Suarez from the Boston University Pardee
Centre, who collaborates on the project, explained its impact.
"When you have that 'Aha!' moment in the game you see
people's faces light up," she said. "That's a knowledge that you're
much more likely to act on."
Games are not the only way to teach about climate change.
In Uganda, a national radio network brings farmers onto the
newscast to explain, often in the local dialect, what seeds or trees are best
to plant where and when.
In Jamaica, think-tank Panos Caribbean enlisted the help of
well-known local artists to write climate change songs and perform them at
schools and in communities.
Through catchy tunes, some of them performed to reggae
rhythms, songs such as Global Warning or Mother Earth's Cry help people to
understand the dangers, said Indi McLymont-Lafayette, Panos' regional director
"Jamaica and the Caribbean are an oral culture and
(people) would much more quickly absorb the message through music than through
reading something in the newspaper or watching it in a newscast," she