Climate of Change Festival brings together art, music and debates on decent housing in the face of the climate crisis

On May 14, starting at 4pm, Recife will host the Climate of Change Festival, an event that invites the public to imagine real solutions to the climate crisis from the perspective of climate impacts on the struggle for decent housing. The festival, organized by the NGO Habitat for Humanity Brazil and Centro Sabiá, is part of the 19th edition of the International Conference on Community Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA), a mobilization led by civil society organizations in countries of the Global South to strengthen the voice of the peoples and communities most impacted by the climate crisis. The Climate of Change Festival program is free and open to the public.

The event will include a socio-biodiversity fair to sell local products, cultural presentations, talks and an exhibition. The event also has a network of local partners, coordinated by the local committee. The festival’s aim is to occupy the public space with solutions that are already being built by communities and collectives in their territories, through culture, the creative economy and traditional knowledge.

“Climate justice will only be possible if we guarantee the right to the city, decent housing and the strengthening of local economies and cultures. The International Conference on Community Adaptation to Climate Change represents this global effort for climate action rooted in the territory and in the protagonism of communities, and the Climate of Change Festival is a call to that the climate crisis cannot be solved only with global agreements, but also with popular action, local articulation and collective occupation of spaces,” says Raquel Ludermir, Political Incidence Manager at the NGO Habitat Brasil.

“Climate adaptation will only be true if it recognizes the knowledge, practices and resistance that spring from the semi-arid territories. The Brazilian semi-arid region, which is often made invisible, is a living laboratory of social technologies, agro-ecology and coexistence with drought. We’re not talking about the future – we’re talking about the present, about rooted climate justice, made by those who plant, care for and resist. CBA19 and the Climate Change Festival are more than events: they are windows of opportunity to show the world that solutions already exist, but they need to be recognized, financed and expanded. Adapting, for us, is not a choice, it’s the only possibility of staying alive and taking care of the planet for generations to come,” said Carlos Magno, social mobilization coordinator at Centro Sabiá.

International Conference on Community Adaptation to Climate Change
This year, the city of Recife will be one of the protagonists of the 19th International Conference on Community Adaptation to Climate Change. With the participation of more than 30 countries and dozens of local territories, the meeting aims to build a narrative of climate justice based on the realities experienced in the Global South, placing issues such as territory, decent housing, food sovereignty, culture and traditional knowledge at the center of discussions.

About Habitat for Humanity Brazil
Habitat for Humanity Brazil is a civil society organization that has been working for over 30 years to combat inequalities and ensure that people living in poverty have a decent place to live. Present in more than 70 countries, the organization promotes public policy advocacy for the right to the city and solutions for access to housing, water and sanitation, in conjunction with various sectors and communities.

About the Sabiá Agroecological Development Center
The Sabiá Center is a non-governmental organization founded in 1993, based in Recife, which operates throughout the state of Pernambuco, with a strong presence in the semi-arid region and structured work in urban agriculture in the Metropolitan Region. For more than three decades, it has promoted family farming as a strategy for fighting hunger, tackling the climate crisis and building socio-environmental justice. It has directly ed more than 15,000 farming families, strengthening agroecological systems without the use of pesticides, social technologies for coexistence with the semi-arid region and concrete solutions for climate adaptation. Its work integrates the promotion of food security, the fight against domestic violence and youth protagonism, betting on local knowledge and the strength of the territories to regenerate the planet and build fairer and more resilient futures