EWC with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, recently convened a multinational workshop in Chiang Mai Thailand as the inaugural dialogue in a new series focused on “Building Bridges for Community-Centered Climate Resilience.” Participants in the discussions included community organizers, civil society representatives, and local-level journalists from India, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Now, a documentation team from Rockefeller has produced a special series of in-depth articles emerging from the discussions that highlight individual “frontline voices” from each of those six countries, whose lives are being reshaped by a shifting climate.

Article subjects in the series include:

• Floating Communities on Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap Lake Make New Plans
• A “Green Monk” Champions Recycling in Bangladesh
• Educating Indonesian Farmers About Climate Change
• In Myanmar, Prioritizing Climate Action in a War Zone
• A Forest Dweller Fights for Indigenous Land Rights in India
• A Thai Farmer Confronts Human-Induced Challenges in the Mekong Basin

The goal of the Building Bridges project is to increase regional collaboration toward more community-responsive climate policy, education, and investment. “We want to amplify the voices of people directly impacted, often by actions and decisions made outside their own communities,” EWC President Suzanne Vares-Lum said at the gathering in Chiang Mai.

The project “allows us to leap past borders that disrupt knowledge-sharing,” added Eric Arndt, Director of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Asia Regional Office, revealing “common themes across different countries in the region, but with localized focuses. [As a result,] we will better be able to incorporate their needs into our work.”