Climate and Culture

For us, from the feminist movement, there are two basic types of culture that are of concern to us. One is the material culture. I think Andrew and Aromar Revi also mentioned that earlier, the material culture, the physical things produced by a society. We are now driven a lot by the material culture that seems to be like driving development. The definition of development is to build, build, build, having something new, new, new. With the advance of technology, we have to change many of our devices. You come to think of how that actually relates to our environment, the impact to our environment. With local government and government in general, the policy they have for development is very important. The relationship of how to balance, making sure that whatever they do does not have adverse impact on our culture. Or at least now to stop some of the development trends or practices that have really shown the adverse impact on our climate. That relates to learning. Learning from experience and disasters that have impacted us. Then there is the non-material culture, the intangible things produced by society. That is as important as the material culture. How do we connect these two? For women, these two are very important. When we talk about feminism, it's about gender equality, women empowerment, and how we make sure this is part of the development process and part of how we work together and how we make sure that we preserve and we have the world that we want to leave behind for our future generations. Part of the cultural heritage, the way people used to build their buildings, and the knowledge that women have that may have been belittled by development processes need to be brought back and accepted and relearned.