1,001 Voices on Climate Change is a new book that tells the personal stories of people around the world and how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.

The book, which is based on interviews compiled by the book’s author and journalist Devi Lockwood, features insights on the effects of climate change from people on every continent except Antarctica.

Devi Lockwood set out around the world in 2014, travelling often by bicycle, collecting first-person accounts of climate change. She frequently carried with her a simple cardboard sign reading: “Tell me a story about climate change.”

Over five years, covering twenty countries across six continents, Lockwood hears from indigenous elders and youth in Fiji and Tuvalu about drought and disappearing coastlines, attends the UN climate conference in Morocco, and bikes the length of New Zealand and Australia, interviewing the people she meets about retreating glaciers, contaminated rivers, and wildfires. She rides through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to listen to marionette puppeteers and novice Buddhist monks.

While the journalist spent a great deal of time travelling during the time she was researching, she also developed her skill of listening. Devi Lockwood said: “A core part of this project is about listening. Over the course of several years, I developed a practice of deep listening, which was hard-earned and not instinctual. Deep listening has to start from the basic premise that we are all equal, all worthy of being listened to, all human — that everyone has a story to share, that those stories matter and that we can learn from each other, if only we are fully present.”

1,001 Voices on Climate Change by Devi Lockwood is available from Amazon and all good bookstores

Rosa Medea is Life & Soul Magazine’s Chief. She writes about lifestyle including sustainable and green living