To continue the Week Eight theme of “Water: Crisis, Beauty and Necessity,” Marc Bierkens, Malin Fezehai and Arati Kumar-Rao will engage in a conversation about water conservation and the role that storytelling and art can play in advocacy.
For Bierkens, professor of hydrology in the Department of Physical Geography at Utrecht University, storytelling provides a first-hand look at the social-cultural impact of his research of water scarcity and the global water cycle.
Bierkens’ research focuses on the human impact on the global water cycle and the problems posed by water scarcity. He and his team work to understand what happens to rainfall on a global scale, both in terms of where it is distributed and how it is used by humans. They do this by using global map models or hydrological models to divide the world into sections and look at how rainfall is dispersed in each section.
Through this research, the group is able to understand the human impact on the water cycle through usage and pollution, both in regard to human existence and in regard to the future of the planet.
While Bierkens’ work employs studies and research methods to understand what is happening to the water cycle on a global scale, Fezehai and Kumar-Rao both employ visual communication and art to convey some of the same information to people through visual documentation.
Fezehai is a photographer, filmmaker and visual reporter, and part of National Geographic Society and The Climate Pledge’s 2023 cohort.
Kumar-Rao is an environmental photographer, for whom storytelling is an integral part of changing the future of the planet for the better. She works primarily in South Asia in a weather-dependent agricultural community, so the community depends heavily on water.
Kumar-Rao said she uses many different storytelling mediums like photography, writing, art, sound and animation because different narratives are told most effectively with different methods.
“Information is absorbed by people in various ways, and also as a storyteller, the story itself lends itself to various methods of expression,” she explained. “Whatever applies best or suits that part of the story best to bring out the message in (the) most lucid manner is probably best employed by a storyteller.”
The group will be in conversation during today’s lecture about the intersection of art and advocacy, particularly in regard to water conservation and the National Geographic Explorers project.
“What is so nice is that the storytelling gives you the peoples’ perspectives on the grounds,” Bierkens said. “It’s more the social-cultural dimension of water, (and) also at the individual level that we never touch upon when we do these global modeling, large-scale models.”
Bierkens said it’s interesting to see the solutions that people find to these large-scale problems and he finds the innovation inspiring. He said storytelling is helpful in showing scientists the value of the social dimension in conversations about both impact and solutions.
Bierkens hopes people will leave the lecture feeling more informed and “water literate.” He explained that people shouldn’t feel hopeless, because there are many initiatives and efforts underway and that when people are more informed, they are better equipped to think about solutions.
Kumar-Rao hopes Chautauquans leave the conversation with an understanding of the relationship between humankind and the planet — that “the land is what holds everything together, holds us.”
“I would love for people to reconnect with the land in whatever way they can and stay rooted, stay connected,” she said. “Once we lose that connection is when we flounder, and which is why we find ourselves in all the issues that we have today in the world. It’s because we’ve lost that elemental man-earth relationship,” Kumar-Rao said. “I would love for people to reconnect with the land, reconnect with the elements and keep observing, because they’re in for so many treats. All of us are in for so many treats when we’re observant like that.”
