Pastoralist Transformations to Resilient Futures: Understanding Climate from the Ground Up

These films were produced and sponsored by the Livestock and Climate Change Program
(LCC-CRSP) at Colorado State University along with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change and Food Security (CCAFS).

The films take viewers from Kenya's Maasai rangelands to the ranches and hippie communes of Southern Colorado, giving a voice to the diverse groups that are coping and trying to adapt to sweeping changes in their environments and livelihoods.

Three short films, created in the context of CSU's project Pastoralist Transformations to Resilient Futures: Understanding Climate from the Ground Up, led by Dr. Kathleen Galvin and Dr. Robin Reid, explore East African pastoralists' diverse perspectives on the challenges they face while adapting to climate change and other changes.

One of the short films (9 minutes), Maasai Voices on Climate Change (and other changes, too) was entirely created (directed, shot, and edited) by a group of young Maasai pastoralists in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.

A preview of the most recent short film (15 minutes), by Joana Roque de Pinho, Lindsay Simpson and Nic Tapia, provisionally entitled, Voices from the Dry Lands, shows how there is more than climate change at play in the Kenyan rangelands, will also be shown.

And, finally, there will be a sneak preview of Brian Hull's and Ralf Kracke-Berndorff's upcoming Sasquatch and the Orphan. A film about a multinational oil giant poised to frack for oil and gas in Huerfano County, Colorado. This documentary, in the tradition of Josh Fox's Gasland, takes a close look at oil giant Royal Dutch Shell as they prepare to do massive exploration for oil and gas in one of Colorado's most beautiful and economically vulnerable counties. From the hippies, to the pro-oil and gas landowners, from the Chicano locals to the ranchers devastated by a decade of drought, Sasquatch and the Orphan examines the conflicting perspectives of people trying to survive in a county the rest of Colorado often treats like a forgotten orphan, or huerfano.

*Text and Maasai photos by Joana Roque de Pinho, Skull photo by Ralf Kracke-Berndorf.