Changing Climates

Workshops, organized by international organizations, NGOs, or governments, come with the tides here in the South Pacific. It seems like there are workshops on every imaginable topic, from traditional knowledge management to capacity building for conservation. Disaster preparedness and related issues do not escape the workshop fever.
But, what do these workshop deliver? Everyone seems to aim to raise awareness, and everything remains business as usual. This trend of ‘raising everyone’s awareness’ is dangerous, I believe. The agenda pushed by all of these workshops does not have any strategic coherence, and they seem to disregard the already weak efforts by ministers. Organizers mean well, but I find that they need to coming up with deliverables (like a workshop) in short project cycles leads to this superficial approach to addressing the core problems that make communities vulnerable and prone to environmental degradation.
In addition, the environmental services market has become so competitive that the raison d’etre of NGOs and other community-based groups has been lost in the fundraising frenzy, and community needs are now to be molded to outside environmental schemes. As I think of adaptation to climate change, I believe we need to go back to longer project cycles that are part of a longer sustainable development mission –preferably facilitated by government and provincial authorities. Little will be achieved raising awareness of the problem if efforts are not trying to address the more complex issues that make communities vulnerable. Awareness if a step, but it should not confused for capacity building.