Once again, REKLIM was part of the Berlinale’s NATIVe Programme

INDIGENOUS LIFE AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE FROM POLAR REGIONS TO PACIFIC ISLANDS. FROM MELTING ICE TO SEA LEVEL RISE. For a second time, the NATIVe section of the Berlinale recently worked together with the Coordinating Office of the Helmholtz network REKLIM at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and the DEKRA University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. In the transition year 2018, the special series NATIVe will move away from last year’s focus area – the Arctic – and welcome its new regional focus: indigenous filmmaking from countries and islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the context of the event “Indigenous Life and Global Climate Change – From Polar Regions to Pacific Islands. From Melting Ice to Sea Level Rise”, researchers and filmmakers used presentations, discussions and film screenings to highlight the dramatic consequences of global warming and its regional impacts. Due to sea level rise, many islands in the Pacific will likely disappear in the near future. The rise is produced by the expansion of seawater (due to the warming of the oceans) and the inflow of meltwater from glaciers and major inland ice masses. And this is just one example of how climate changes pose a serious threat to low-lying coastal regions around the world. In connection with its Topic 2, the REKLIM research network is exploring questions on sea level rise; the loss of mass in the ice sheets on Greenland and in the Antarctic; the spread of freshwater and its effect on ocean circulation; far field effects produced by the ice masses’ changed gravity fields; and the regional manifestations of sea level rise in the coastal regions of Northern Germany. The goal of the event is to underscore the global link between the polar regions and the rest of the planet, and to demonstrate that we live in a world in which everything is ‘connected’ and ‘mutually dependent’. Accordingly, the polar regions are hardly isolated; rather, they are linked to the rest of the world by countless interactions, influence it and are influenced by it. This year, the event also focused on the living conditions on Pacific islands, which are rapidly deteriorating as global warming progresses. In attendance were the researchers Dr Ingo Sasgen, Dr Klaus Grosfeld and Dr Renate Treffeisen (AWI); Dr Ludwig Braun (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities); Prof. Rolf Teigler and film students from the DEKRA University of Applied Sciences in Berlin; and the Tahitian author Flora Devatine, whose poetic words in the film MA’OHI NUI, au cœur de l’océan mon pays  (English title: MA’OHI NUI, in the heart of the ocean my country lies) lent authority to her people’s demands for independence.

Further impressions of the event

Impressions from the event