Launch of the SEACHA Conference Book

Art credit to Shaq Koyok Art, “Confession of Palm Oil”, 2013.

Launching the SEACHA Conference Book

Cultural Wisdom for Climate Action: Learning from Southeast Asia

How can cultural wisdom help us cope with climate change?

If you’re looking for the answers, we are proud to have just published the book Cultural Wisdom for Climate Action: Learning from Southeast Asia with experts and activists from ten countrie s of Southeast Asia. This book was the result of the collaboration and work of dozens of people who came together for SEACHA’s conference, “Cultural Wisdom for Climate Action: The Southeast Asian Contribution,” hosted by the Siam Society in January of 2023.

Together, these writers have come together to explore these key messages:

• How the traditional, climate friendly methods for living in harmony with nature that are ignored by policy makers can be wide-ranging in scope and available for broad use in the modern world.
• How the age-old and eco-friendly principles of traditional architecture and urban design can be adapted to modern materials and conditions to create better homes and cities.
• How Southeast Asian spiritual traditions, based on historically deep beliefs, wrap nature together with humanity to form a basis of activism.

As they share Southeast Asian heritage and ways of managing land, forests, rivers, and seas, they reflect on the wider application of these practices to be climate-friendly, sustainable, and capable of adaptation.

From age-old methods of building houses and cities effectively with your resources to spiritual traditions that lend to activism, Cultural Wisdom for Climate Action: Learning from Southeast Asia is a contribution from Southeast Asia to the global discourse on climate action.

You can read the book using this link or the QR code below.