The International Displacement Monitoring Centre says 17.2 million people have been displaced due to climate-related disasters.
Bangladesh has been particularly badly affected by climate change.
According to the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, it is one of the countries most prone to natural disasters, particularly flooding, storms and cyclones.
A large part of the country is on a delta with many tributaries running across it.
Many of the men work in the rice paddies while their wives raise chickens.
So when the floods come, the chickens are drowned and their livelihood disappears.
But many locals have found a solution to the problem of drowning chickens.
They’ve switched to raising ducks.
Because ducks can swim.
Now when the floods come, their livelihood doesn’t drown – it floats.
The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee has been helping people convert to duck-raising with training and loans.
Like chickens, duck lay eggs, but ducks have other advantages over chickens.
They are hardier and less prone to disease, they are easier to raise, they are more profitable, and because they can swim they eat the insects and parasites that damage the rice plants in the rice paddies.
It’s mainly women who are being trained in raising and farming ducks.
Shopna Akter used to look after 20 chickens while her husband worked in the rice paddies.
Now she and her husband have 2,000 ducks and their income has jumped tenfold.
In their region, 300 families are now hatching duckling eggs, another 2,000 families are raising ducklings, and 4,000 families are farming adult ducks.
The average income has risen from $40 a month to $65 a month, with many earning up to $200 a month.
They’ve learned that what works is to change with the world as the world changes.
In the Sundarban Mangrove Forest, the climate problem is different – the salt water and rising sea level has made much of the soil infertile.
So a lot of farmers switched from paddy fields to shrimp cultivation.
But shrimp need saltwater, and the more farmers use that the more soil gets ruined.
The Voluntary Service Overseas found a solution – they’ve been training farmers to switch from shrimp to crabs.
The crabs are more resistant to changes in water salinity, they’re much easier to take care of, they’re more resistant to disease, they can be fattened up efficiently for greater profits, so farmers need fewer of them to make the same income.
It’s better for the farmers and for the environment.
As the world changes, we can’t just stick to the same old solutions and wonder why they don’t work.
In our business our world changed from five TV channels to more than 100 channels.
It’s changed from paper-based media to online media.
It’s changed from fixed analogue media to mobile digital media.
Just like the change in the environment, everything is fluid.
So how can we stick to the same old ways of doing things: planners (strategists) writing the same old briefs for copywriters and art directors?
That process was designed for a completely different environment, no wonder it isn’t working.
I think we’re missing something very big, very simple and very obvious.
Something that, once it happens, everyone will say why didn’t we think of that before?
Something like changing from chickens that drown to ducks that swim.
Dave Trott is the author of The Power of Ignorance, Creative Blindness and How to Cure It, Creative Mischief, Predatory Thinking and One Plus One Equals Three
