BioGrad Foen Peng spent several weeks in China learning about climate change this summer. Read about his experience below!
This summer, I was enrolled in the Ecology of Climate Changecourse in Xishuanbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Yunnan, China. This course lasted for about one month. We had 26 classmates in total, who were from 16 countries in Asia, Europe and America. Our lecturers were also from diverse countries.
It was really fun to communicate with students from diverse countries. A lot of our lecturers asked students to connect the impacts of climate change with our respective background, like local agricultural changes, farmers’ experiences, and vegetation changes. For example, the oral history class asked us to do an interview with one or two local farmers in our own countries. When we were discussing our data, we were surprised to find that our results were so different: farmers in some regions like Kashmir, India have experienced dramatic changes in recent decades– as a result of water availability and increased temperatures they have changed the major agricultural plants they grow. However, in some regions of America, farmers don’t believe and even refuse to talk about climate change.
The course schedule was very tight. We learned a lot about climate change in that month. I think what I got most from this course is an understanding of the importance of multicultural communication, especially in dealing with the global issue of climate change.
~Foen
