The forthcoming book How to weather together: feminist practice for climate change is co-authored by one of the ACHP collaborators, Jen Hamilton and her colleague Astrida Neimanis. It includes a chapter called “Downscaling Planetary Health (Armidale Climate and Health Project)”, authored by Jen and focussed on the Armidale Climate and Health Project. It is specifically interested in how the project works to address big global issues at a small community scale. The idea of “downscaling” is a concept that is used in climatology and meteorlogy. It refers to an “process by which coarse-resolution GCM (Global Climate Model) outputs are translated into finer resolution climate information, so that they better account for regional climatic influences, such as local topography.” This is really what we are trying to do in the ACHP but in practice rather than just in modelling. We aim to figure out what is needed to address climate change specifically on Anaiwan Country and in Armidale. This will be very different to what folks would do in a low lying tropical coastal city, for example. The chapter narrates the process of project design and the various stages of the project to date.
The book also has insets that model how to do the work from creative activities to practical suggestions. The inset that goes with the ACHP chapter is “Community Housework” and the concept is derived from Jen’s research on housework and climate change. The Wages for Housework movement was a branch of feminism that responded to the incredible value for capitalism generated by unwaged housework and the proposition that if those wages were paid the distribution of wealth in society would be very different. “Community Housework” is a suggestion that builds on this movement from a community and diverse economies perspective: one of the questions of the book is “how can we redistribute vulnerability and shelter?” which in ACHP relates to the question how do we address climate change and improve community health and learn from and with Indigenous Knowledges in ways that support Indigenous Community? And one of the answers we’ve come to is alternative and diverse forms of community meal provisioning (which literally involves doing the community’s dishes as per the caption). This is what we’re working on now in Phase 2 of the project!
