Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis has won the National Book Award for Best Anthology at the 40th National Book Awards. Photo: Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities/Agam Agenda.
The Agam Agenda is proud to share Climate Migration Stories: our latest publication of comic books for schools and communities throughout the Philippines.
Climate Migration Stories is an innovative project tackling internal climate migration in the Philippines. Led by the Agam Agenda through a collaboration between professional artists, writers, translators, and researchers, the project is composed of a series of three comic books illustrating the different human experiences of moving from place to place due to the worsening impacts of the climate crisis.
With each comic book also translated into one Philippine regional language, the project aims to engage rural, urbanizing, and migrant communities affected by climate change in different parts of the country and contribute to collectively draw a wider audience, build awareness on and respond to the realities of climate-induced human migration.
Telling stories of people’s lived experiences of climate-related migration in the country, the Climate Migration Stories comic books are:
Pula
written by Josh Paradeza and illustrated by Wiji Lacsama
Unos
written by Anna Suanco and illustrated Iya Regalario
From Our Land Called Home
written by Anna Miguel Cervantes and illustrated by Marx Fidel
Each story aims to meet people where they stand, reflecting local realities and perspectives. People will not usually cite climate change as a reason for moving to a new locality, as shown in research carried out under the Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change (HMCCC) program of the German Agency for International Development (GIZ) in the Philippines.
The comic books were translated into regional languages by Firie Jill Ramos. Ian Salvaña served as lead editor for this series under Climate Migration Stories. Katherine Nuñez served as layout artist.
Created under the HMCCC program of the Philippine office of GIZ alongside a database of residents and migrants and an open-access knowledge portal, the comic books have been formally handed over to the Philippine government under the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM). With each comic book also translated into a Philippine language (Waray, Binisaya, Tagalog), they will be distributed to various communities across the country.
We offer the Climate Migration Stories comics as vital discussion tools for connecting the dots and uncovering the feedback loops between what is immediately visible to people and what is less visible in the climate crisis.
Do you work with a community or high school that could use the Climate Migration Stories comic books as discussion starters on the experiences and impacts of climate migration? Reach out to by emailing info@agam.ph. Agam Agenda, under the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, is offering limited copies in English, Waray, Binisaya, and Tagalog.
