Borneo Laboratory: Our Climate Glossary

In Bornean culture, baskets are vessels of survival, memory, and resistance. Often regarded as the community’s first weapon, baskets hold a symbolic power. The act of weaving brings threads together, transforming them into something that can carry and protect. In this book, the basket appears as a recurring visual element, echoing the spirit of collective holding.

This ethos of weaving also shapes the structure of Our Climate Glossary, a publication that brings together over 40 writings by more than 30 contributors, reflecting on reciprocity in relation to the environment and human experience. Some texts emerged from the On Reciprocity programme by the Borneo Laboratory; a three-week international exchange that took place in Sarawak in early 2025. Others were written independently, yet speak to similar concerns.

The contributions take many forms—essays, poems, fragments, and some undefined—touching on themes such as climate conditions, ancestral knowledge, memory, and place. Yet, this glossary does not aim to define, rather to open. It is an evolving document of relation, that is between human, land, biodiversity, and possible futures.