Asia – Page 17 – Open Minds!

Road to Bali: Beware of ‘Bad weather friends’!

All the environmental roads — well, actually flights — seem to lead to Bali in the coming days.

The Indonesian ‘Island of the Gods’, famed as a tourist resort, will play host to the 13th United Nations Climate Change Conference from 3 to 14 December 2007.

The Conference, hosted by the Government of Indonesia, brings together representatives of over 180 countries together with observers from inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, and the media. The two week period includes the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its subsidiary bodies as well as the Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Bali meeting will be a turning point in the global response to climate change, an issue which has moved above and beyond being a simple ‘green’ concern to one with economic, security and social implications. The annual meeting returns to Asia after five years, since New Delhi, India, hosted the 8th meeting in November 2002.

In the build up to Bali, a new report released on 19 November 2007 says that without immediate action, global warming is set to reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, home to over 60 per cent of the world’s population.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific – with a foreword by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Chairman of the Nobel prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – is the most extensive and concluding chapter of a unique, four-year long exercise by the Up in Smoke coalition, an alliance of the UK’s major environment and development groups.

The report shows “how the human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where almost two thirds of the world’s population live, effectively on the front line of climate change.”

When our friends at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London sent me the press release about the report last week, something caught my eye. Among the several accompanying quotes was this one concerning the media:

“In many Asian countries climate change stories don’t make it into the media, so the public are left out of the debate. The challenge for decision-makers and the media is to stimulate interest in their work and translate the complex issues into stories that capture the public’s imagination. Climate change above all requires the engagement of everyone in creating the changes required.”

This sweeping statement is attributed to Rod Harbinson, Head of Environment, Panos London.

I know Panos London well, and am surprised to read an official remark of this nature emerging from that organisation which, until recently, has tried to relate to the majority world media as a friend and supporter. In fact, the first time I had one of my own pieces internationally syndicated was by Panos Features, back in 1989.

Come to think of it, the second article I wrote for Panos Features concerned how the low-lying, Indian Ocean island nation of Maldives was preparing for adverse impacts of climate change. That was years before the web, so there’s no link I can provide.

As a development writer and journalist who has covered global climate change among other issues for two decades, I have problems with Mr Harbinson’s remark.

Drik/Majorityworld
Photo: A family looks for shelter using a raft made of banana trees during the last Monsoon: 31 July 2007: Gaibandha, Bangladesh © Quddus Alam/DrikNews Linked from Shahidul News

I’m in full agreement on the need to ‘translate the complex issues into stories that capture the public’s imagination’. There is also no argument that climate change requires the engagement of everyone.

But I would be very interested to know on what statistical or analytical basis he says “in many Asian countries climate change stories don’t make it into the media, so the public are left out of the debate’.

Asia, as Mr Harbinson should surely know, is not just China, India and Indonesia. It is large and highly diverse region, containing five sub-regions as defined by the UN. It is home to nearly two thirds of humanity, who live in over three dozen independent states or dependent territories.

Living in Asia and trying to work at regional level, I know how difficult it is to make any generalisations about this rich and constantly changing assortment of economies, cultures and societies branded as Asia (which, taken together with the small island nations of the South Pacific, is known as the Asia Pacific). In fact, it’s wise not to speak about Asia as a whole, for there is little in common, say, between Japan and Laos, or between China and Maldives.

The Asian media are as diverse as the region, and have been undergoing rapid change in recent years. Unshackled from the state’s crushing grip in most countries, the broadcast media (radio, TV) have proliferated and emerged as the primary source of information for a majority of Asians. New media – web, mobile devices and multimedia combinations – are now changing the way many Asia’s communicate and access information.

I have always been curious how Panos London, perched at its cosy home in London’s White Lion Street, assesses what goes on in the majority world. In this case, how much of Asia does Mr Harbinson know and is really familiar with? How many Asian media outlets has he or Panos monitored, assessed and sampled before coming to this sweeping and damning conclusion about the lack of climate change stories in the Asian media?

And how many of these outlets are radio and TV, and in languages other than English? I would really like to know.

If Panos London believes in evidence-based analysis, then it owes us in Asia an explanation as to on what basis its head of environment makes such statements about an entire continent, whose media output is predominantly in Asian languages, not English. And whose principal media are broadcast, not print.

And what constitutes a climate story? Tracking the endless array of inter-governmental babble in the name of working out some compromised partial solution to the major problem? Or reporting on campaigns to clean up polluting industries or sectors (such as transport) that generate most of the greenhouse gases? Or focusing on how humble communities in remote corners of the world are finding how their lifestyles and livelihoods are suddenly threatened by something they hardly understand?

To me, it’s all of the above — and a lot more. Climate change is akin to a prism through which many, many development issues and topics can be analysed. Just as HIV/AIDs long ago ceased to be a simple medical or health story, climate change has moved well beyond being an environmental story.

The more angles, perspectives and topics that are covered in the media, the better. And all of it need not be in that staid, cautiously balanced style of The Guardian or BBC that Panos London must be more familiar with.

Panos London, in its statement of beliefs, says ‘Freedom of information and media pluralism are essential attributes of sustainable development’. Surely, then, they realise that media pluralism includes speaking in a multitude of tongues, and analysing from many different perspectives — as happens in the Asian media 24/7, if Mr Harbinson and his colleagues care to spend more time in the region and keep their eyes and ears open.

But instead, they seem more like a group of well-meaning people with a solution in search of a problem. For the past many months, Panos London has been crying wolf about the allegedly poor coverage of climate issues in the majority world media.

That was the main thrust of a report they published in late 2005, titled Whatever the weather – media attitudes to reporting climate change.

According to Panos London website that I have accessed today, “…the survey found that there is little knowledge among journalists about these important choices and they are rarely discussed. The dramatic impacts of extreme weather events, for example, rarely feature in relation to climate change and the topic remains low on editors’ story sheets.”

The survey was based on ‘interviews conducted with journalists and media professionals in Honduras, Jamaica, Sri Lanka and Zambia’ and claimed to ‘give insights into the attitudes of journalists and the status of the media in these countries.’

Well, I was one of those majority world journalists covered by the survey — and I had major reservations about how they used my responses. Being cautious, I had used email (and not the phone) to respond to their survey questions – I therefore have a complete record of everything I said. When the draft report was shared on my request, I found some of my responses being distorted or taken out of context. I had to protest very strongly before some accuracy was restored. I later regretted having agreed to be part of this dubious survey.

It was flawed in many ways. The questionnaire was very poorly conceived and structured. I actually declined to answer some questions which were worded in such a way as to elicit just the kind of response that Panos London wanted — to make a case that journalists in the majority world are so incompetent that they need help.

A glaring omission in the final report was that it carried no list of journalists interviewed. I had to ask several times before I could even find out how many others participated in the survey (apparently some three dozen). But my requests for a list of other survey respondents were repeatedly declined by Panos London, who said it was privileged information. They later took the position that European data protection laws did not allow them to disclose this information!

In an email sent to Rod Harbinson on 22 Feb 2006, I said: “I would argue that Panos London had pre-conceived notions that it wanted to present in this report, and used superficial and largely unprofessional interview surveys with a few scattered journalists as a rubber-stamping exercise to publish what it wanted to say anyway. This is further borne out by the fact that some of my more outspoken responses have been completely ignored.”

I have seen or heard nothing since to change the above view. And the contents of Whatever the weather – media attitudes to reporting climate change are consistent with what Rod Harbinson says in the IIED press release that prompted me to make this comment.

Yes, climate change is the Big Issue of our times that needs everyone to rally around and search for ‘common but differentiated’ solutions and responses. But no issue or global threat is too big to warrant the willing suspension of time-honoured journalistic or academic values of honesty, integrity and balance. Issuing lop-sided ‘survey reports’ and making sweeping negative statements do not help the cause of improving public discussion and debate on climate change.

The road to Bali and beyond is going to be an arduous journey. On that treacherous road, we in the majority world need to beware of ‘bad weather friends’ who come bearing bad surveys and self-serving offers of ‘help’.

— Nalaka Gunawardene

Note: In the spirit of communication for development and media pluralism, I invite Panos London to respond to the above critique, and offer to publish their response in full.

I remain a critical cheer-leader of the global Panos family, and serve on the Board of Panos South Asia, an entirely independent entity that has excellent relations with Panos London. Like all families, we don’t always agree – and that’s part of media pluralism!

Protect journalists who fight for social and environmental justice!

In June 2007, I wrote about the late Joey R B Lozano, a courageous Filipino journalist and activist who fought for human rights and environmental justice at tremendous risk to his life.

For three decades, Joey survived dangerous missions to defend human rights using his video camera in the Philippines, a country known for one of the highest numbers of journalists killed in the line of duty. Joey went into hiding numerous times, and he dodged two assassination attempts.

Last week, a leading Filipino academic and social activist called for greater protection for local level journalists who cover social and environmental justice issues risking their life and limbs.

“Things are pretty savage at the grassroots level in some of our countries. Journalists who investigate and uncover the truth take enormous personal risks – the vested interests hire killers to eliminate such journalists,” said Professor Walden Bello, executive director of the Focus on the Global South (photo, below).

He was speaking at the Greenaccord Media Forum on 10 November 2007 in Frascati, Rome, where several dozen journalists covering environmental issues had gathered for a four-day meeting.

He delivered an insightful survey of social movements across Asia on environmental and public health issues, where he questioned the role of elites in the global South in standing up for what is right and fair for all people.

During question time, I asked him how he saw the media playing a role in social movements that he’d just described. It varied from country to country, he said, and gave several examples.

In China, most environmental exposes in recent years have been made by ‘very brave journalists’. Their investigations have compelled the local and central authorities to address the massive incidents of pollution and environmental degradation resulting from China’s economic march forward.

In South Asia, the record is uneven. Indian publications like The Hindu newspaper and Frontline magazine are at the forefront in reporting and analysing ‘almost exhaustively’ on environmental struggles in the world’s largest democracy.

In contrast, Singapore and Malaysia have no critical mass media to turn the spotlight on excesses or lapses, he said. In these countries, journalists as well as activists have turned to the web to express themselves — but even they are under pressure from their governments.

In Thailand, the two English language newspapers The Nation and Bangkok Post have both have a long tradition of covering environmental issues and supporting mass movements. A number of Thai language newspapers also have sustained coverage.

In his native Philippines, Prof Bello singled out the Philippine Daily Enquirer for persisting with environmental coverage and exposing environment related scandals. But that comes with its own risks.

“At the local levels, journalists who take up these issues face many threats, including the very real risk of extra-judicial killings. The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world today for independent journalists and human rights activists,” he added.

Journalists living in the provinces and reporting from the grassroots are more vulnerable than those based in the cities. This is precisely why local journalists need greater support and protection to continue their good work.

The local elites and officials would much rather silence such journalists. International solidarity for such journalists could make a big difference, Prof Bello said.

He had a suggestion for his hosts, Greenaccord, which annually organises what is now the world’s largest annual gathering of journalists and activists concerned about the environment: Invite and involve more local level journalists in the future forums.

That will give them a voice, and strengthen their resolve to continue the very important work they do.

Read April 2007 blog post: Can journalists save the planet?

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

Beyond coffee and bananas: We need fair trade in international media!

Fair trade is gaining momentum worldwide. More products are coming within the scope of fair trade in more countries.

That’s certainly good news in a world full of exploitation, inequality and unfairness at various levels.

But are we, in the mass media whose business it is to gather and deliver news and information, yet part of this good news ourselves? In other words, isn’t it high time there was fair trade in international media products too?

This is the simple question I raised this week at the V Greenaccord International Media Forum on the Protection of Nature, held from 7 to 11 Novmeber 2007 at the historic Villa Mondragone in Frascati, some 20km southeast of Rome.

During the 3.5 day international gathering of journalists and scientists concerned about the environment, we had several speakers referring to fair trade in Europe and at a global level. As more consumers become aware of environmental and social justice considerations, they are doing something about it in their buying of goods that are fairly traded, we heard.

The Wikipedia describes fair trade as ‘an organised social movement and market-based model of international trade which promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods.’

The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine and fresh fruit.

Fair trade is all about creating opportunities for small scale producers in the developing countries to get organised and supply directly to consumers in different parts of the world. When they sell direct, with few or no intermediaries, they can earn three or four times more, and that money will enhance their incomes, living standards and societies.

Fair trade is certainly a cherished ideal, but it’s mired in complex economic and political realities. The globalised march of capital, profit-maximising corporations and developed country farm subsidies are among many factors that make fair trade difficult to achieve.

Fair trade activists are well aware of these realities. Their success is built on connecting producers with individual consumers. The proliferation of new media – especially the Internet – has made it easier to sustain such communications.

But the fair trade movement is still largely rooted in goods, not services. In my view, this is necessary but not sufficient in a modern world economy where nearly two thirds of global GDP comes from the services sector. (The Wikipedia’s breakdown for global GDP is agriculture 4%; industry 32%; services 64%).

I can’t immediately find how much the print, broadcast and online media contribute to that 64%, but it must be significant in the media saturated world today. And certainly the flow of media products — text, audio, photographs, moving images, online content and derivatives of these — has become more globalised in the past two decades.

So why not begin to agitate for fair trade in media products when they cross borders? Why aren’t we practising fair trade in our own media industry even as we cover fair trade as a story in our editorial content?

I didn’t get a very clear answer from fair trade activists that I posed this question to this week. While agreeing with me that the same fair trade principles can be applied to the media sector, they acknowledged that each sector has its own dynamics and must develop realistic ways to accomplish fair trade.

So it’s up to us who produce, distribute and manage assorted media products to begin this transformation from within.

Let’s not kid ourselves about what we are taking on. As I wrote in a blog post in September 2007:

“In the media-rich, information societies that we are now evolving into, media and cultural products are an important part of our consumption — and therefore, more of these have to be produced. In the globalised world, more television and film content is being sourced from the majority world — or is being outsourced to some developing countries where the artistic and technical skills have reached global standards.

“But in a majority of these media production deals, the developing country film and TV professionals don’t enjoy any fair terms of trade or engagement. Their creativity and toil are being exploited by those who control the global flow of entertainment, news and information products.

“This is why the top talent in the global South become assistants, helpers and ‘fixers’ to producers or directors parachuting in to our countries to cover our own stories for the Global Village. Equitable payments and due credits are hardly ever given.”

In the same commentary, I added:
“Unfair trade in film and TV is also how the unsung, unknown creative geniuses contribute significantly to the development of new cartoon animation movies or TV series, as well as hip video games that enthrall the global market. Lacking the clout and skill to negotiate better terms, freelancers and small companies across the global South remain the little elves who toil through the night to produce miracles. They work for tiny margins and even tinier credit lines. Some don’t get acknowledged at all.”

Read my blog post: Wanted: Fair trade in film and television!

Raising this amidst 60 journalists and producers from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean attending the annual Greenaccord meeting, I pointed out that many of us were keen to contribute to media outlets beyond the countries where we are based. It gives us a chance to tell our stories to a bigger audience, and to have our voices heard about a range of issues and topics important to our communities.

And yes, the additional income that such work brings in is quite useful too, thank you.

Heads were nodding when I pointed out how hard it is for a talented, hard working journalist based in the majority world to break into the tightly controlled international media outlets. Even when they make an occasional breakthrough, they are often exploited by being paid lower professional fees for the same output and quality of work.

Or worse, majority world journalists are slighted and insulted for being where they are and who they are, rather than be judged on the merit of their work. As I wrote in a commentary published by SciDev.Net in November 2005: “Media gatekeepers in the North often dismiss the better-informed and equally competent Southern professionals — saying, insultingly, that ‘they don’t have the eye’! And for years, I have resisted the widespread practice of Northern broadcasters and filmmakers using the South’s top talent merely as ‘fixers’ and assistants.”

All this makes it imperative for us in the globalised media — in the developed North and developing South — to begin agitating for fair trade in media products and services. As in other products, we are not looking for charity or tokenism or a lowering of standards. We must strive for fairness and equality while working on building the capacity of southern journalists to generate world class media products.

And as my friend Darryl D’Monte — whom we missed dearly at this year’s Greenaccord forum — has been saying for years, publishing each other’s stories is one great step forward.

Mahatma Gandhi put it this way: we must be the change we wish to achieve.

Note: My own organisation, TVE Asia Pacific, practises what I preach here, and always engages local camera crews when we film TV stories across Asia. We will be taking up Fair Trade in Film and Television (FTinFT) as a campaign from 2008.

Image of camera crews courtesy Pamudi Withanaarachchi of TVEAP.

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

Journalists and scientists seeking Green Accord

Can journalists save the planet?

This was the question I raised in a blog post written in April 2007. Arguing that environmental journalists alone cannot adequately address the multitude of complex environmental challenges faced today, I wrote: “We urgently need more good journalism that covers sustainable development as an integral part of mainstream human affairs.”

For the past five years, an Italian non-profit cultural association named Greenaccord has been attempting just this. In the (northern hemisphere) Fall of each year, they invite and host 50 – 60 journalists and scientists from all over the world to discuss how the media can be an integral part of society’s response to today’s environmental crises. In fact, they believe the media must play a path-finder role in our search for solutions.

During this week, I have been attending the V Greenaccord International Media Forum on the Protection of Nature, held from 7 to 11 Novmeber 2007 at the historic Villa Mondragone in Frascati, some 20km south east of Rome.

It has been a time to meet old friends again and to make new ones. I have been part four of the five Greenaccord media forums since the first one was held in Rapolane Terme, in the Tuscany valley in northern Italy in 2002.

Greenaccord is the only regular (annual) meeting that I know of where practising journalists and media gatekeepers come together from all regions of the world to discuss the state of the planet and state of their profession.

Each year, we have some ‘regulars’ returning while new participants join the growing network. As some old hands noted this week, it is evolving into an extended family.

That family consists mainly of print and broadcast media journalists from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Many are engaged in ‘deadline journalism’ of news and current affairs, while a few of us, like myself, have moved on to more reflective and analytical kind of journalism. We also have a few researchers, activists and public information officers among us, enriching our discussions with a diversity of perspectives.

To engage this group of participants over three and a half days, Greenaccord invites a dozen or so scientific or industry experts from different regions of the world and different disciplines. This year’s theme, ‘Capitalising on the Environment’, was explored by business leaders, fair trade activists, economists and a number of technical experts specialising in fields such as clean energy, clean technology and organic farming.

As with all meetings, some speakers were far more interesting than others. And some sessions were blessed with competent chairpersons who kept overenthusiastic speakers in check and allowed meaningful discussion and debate to happen.

Sitting through such meetings is a bit like gem mining. One has to sift through a lot of gravel to find a rare precious gem. When that happens, it’s well worth the hassle.

Well, I’ve had my share of gravel moments (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!) and precious moments (Eureka!) this week. I’ll write separate blog posts on some of the latter. They are indeed worth sharing.

The real stars (or gems if you like) in this whole exercise are the participants themselves. We come from such diverse backgrounds – the sessions are supported by simultaneous interpretation in English, Spanish and Italian, with an occasional remark in French – that we enrich each other by simply being there.

Some of us can barely contain our passion for what we do, and keep making comments or asking questions at every available opportunity. Others are more quiet during sessions but expressive during the many hours of networking and socialising over fine Italian wine, coffee and gastronomical treats. All these are part of Greenaccord’s cultural diversity that we contribute to, and then celebrate.

Even if we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we do discuss sobering issues. On the one hand, the planet is in peril, largely thanks to human bungling over generations. On the other, mass media itself is in crisis in many countries — under siege from oppressive governments, grappling with limitations of money and skills, and facing competition from new media platforms grabbing audiences and revenue.

For example, a colleague from Cameroon found the government closing down his privately owned FM radio station just a couple of days before he left for Rome. Others had worrying tales to share about official censorship, physical violence unleashed on media organisations and journalists, and the tension between media owners’ interests and the public interest.

We expressed solidarity and support for all Greenaccord colleagues currently experiencing difficulties of various kinds. The spirit of camaraderie in this network is strong – and keeps growing.

So is all this networking and meeting hopping a distraction from real work, which each one of us have to perform at our desks, or in our studios, on an individual basis? I don’t think so. Far from being a drag on my time, I find gatherings like Greenaccord inspiring and energising. They also remind me that I’m not alone in the daily struggle and drudgery of deadlines, government bureaucracies, funding crises and a never-ending race to keep up with new media technologies.

A planet in peril and a media in crisis need more platforms like this to connect and support many more of our kind who weren’t in Rome this week. Greenaccord isn’t perfect (we’re working on it), but it has lit more than a few candles against the looming darkness.

– Nalaka Gunawardene, Frascati, Rome: 10 November 2007

Meeting photos courtesy Adrian Gilardoni’s Flickr account

New media anarchy is good for you!

“You people are too well mannered! I’ve never been to a conference where people are so properly dressed and so polite to each other!”

With these words, Neha Viswanathan made sure she had everyone’s attention. But it was not just a gimmick — she was contrasting the relatively more orderly, organised world of mainstream media (MSM) with the decidedly more anarchic world of new media — including blogs, wikis, YouTube and Second Life.

Neha, South Asia Editor of Global Voices, was speaking on a panel on ‘new media’ during the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ in Geneva this week (22 – 26 Oct 2007).

The panel topic itself showed the rapid change taking place in the humanitarian sector. As the panel premise said: “Within minutes of a disaster or conflict, the first images are seen on YouTube rather than CNN, and probably to a larger audience. YouTube, Flickr and blogging are bringing wars, disasters and their humanitarian consequences to the attention of the public, government and aid agencies more efficiently than ever. It’s now possible to keep watch on a Darfur village through satellite imagery, or take a virtual tour of a refugee camp.”

The panel was to discuss whether citizen journalism and new collaborative/ networking technologies are improving humanitarian response, and review how the humanitarian community is faring in this new environment.

My own views on this are found in another blog post: New media tsunami hits humanitarian sector – rescue operations now on!

Neha’s take was slightly different. She started reminding everyone that the new media activists were unruly and not always polite. The blogosphere is very much a contested and contentious space where arguments rage on. Not everything is moderate, balanced or ‘evidence-based’ (to use a new favourite phrase of the humanitarian community).

But in times of crisis or emergency – whether disasters or war – new media activists are increasingly the first responders. The anarchic nature actually provides them with an advantage: they are distributed, self-organising and motivated. There is no central newsroom or coordination point telling them what to do. In typical Nike style, they just do it.

As an example, she described World Wide Help, whose introduction reads: “Using the web to point help in the direction where it’s most needed”.

This blog was started by several founders and members of the SEA EAT (South East Asian Earthquake And Tsunami) blog, wiki and database, all of which gained worldwide attention at the time of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on 26 December 2004. The group, now calling themselves The World Wide Help Group, has since remobilised to aid in other relief efforts.

Read the whole story of the SEA EAT Blog: A Candle in My Window by Peter Griffin, one of its co-founders

As Sir Arthur C Clarke has also noted, the 2004 tsunami marked a turning point in how citizen journalists and other new media activists respond to emergencies. Since then, the power of new media has been unleashed on many public interest issues and humanitarian causes. As an example, Neha cited the online campaign against street sexual harassment in India.

In Neha’s view, new media can collate authentic testimonials of those directly affected by disasters or other crises, and keep the public attention (and thereby, political interest) on emergencies beyond the first few days.

Her advice to humanitarian aid agencies: keep looking at the new media, especially blogs, to find out what people at ground zero are saying about relief and recovery work.

“Bloggers are not objective – they talk openly, and express themselves freely,” she told the largely prim and proper Geneva audience, where some participants had referred to the meeting as ‘this august gathering’!

Finally, in situations where MSM (the formerly big media!) are shut down, restrained or intimidated into not carrying out their watchdog role, it’s the new media that fills the voice. Neha described the pro-democracy struggles in Nepal in 2005 – 2006 as an example where the people power struggles continued to be reported and commented on after the autocratic king clamped down on all print and broadcast media.

Read my August 2007 blog post: The Road from Citizen Kane to Citizen Journalist

No copyright on this planet – thank Heavens (and NASA) for that!

As the Space Age completes 50 years today, 4 October 2007, we have at least two generations of humans who take images like this one completely for granted.

Yet no one had the capability – and vantage point – to take such images until satellites were launched into orbit, and later astronauts followed.

Beginning in the 1960s, thousands of stunning images — showing our planet in space, as well as the Moon and other celestial bodies in our Solar System — have entered the public domain. These are now part of our popular culture and represent a major educational resource.

These images didn’t come for free. It has cost space agencies – primarily NASA, the American space agency – literally billions of dollars over the decades to capture and deliver these images that we happily, freely bandy around. Contrary to what some people believe, NASA is not a world space agency. It’s the national space agency of a single country, financed by tax payers of that country.

Yet, early on, NASA adopted a very far-sighted, public spirited policy that all its space images would be made available free of copyrights to anyone, anywhere on the planet. This is what enables me to use space images on my blog – and keeps tens of thousands of such images in the public domain.

This is what the NASA official website currently has to say about it:
“NASA still images, audio files and video generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends to personal Web pages.”

Significantly, this includes commercially produced and marketed products, even though NASA’s guidelines make it clear: “If the NASA material is to be used for commercial purposes, especially including advertisements, it must not explicitly or implicitly convey NASA’s endorsement of commercial goods or services…”

There are some reasonable restrictions on this fair use. Read the full NASA copyright policy.

I was curious to see what copyright policy the space agencies of other leading space-faring nations follow. This is what I found on the European Space Agency’s website:
“The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users’ personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.”

As we can see, it’s a lot more restrictive than NASA’s. I haven’t been able to check the policy of Russian, Chinese or Japanese space agencies, and wonder how liberal or restrictive their copyright policies are.

On strict legal terms, I suppose, creators or finders can be keepers. Arguments can be made that space images obtained at tremendous cost to tax payers can be owned, copyrighted and managed by those agencies and nations footing the bill. This is what makes NASA’s open copyright policy so creditable. Our visual public media — broadcast television, video, DVD and the web — would all have been so much poorer if some nitpicking lawyer or bureaucrat had succeeded in persuading the early NASA management to be more restrictive.

While still on the subject of space images, I wonder why so many images of Earth from space show Africa. I had to search for some minutes to find an image that showed Asia – the largest continent – from space. Next to Africa, the one showing the Americas seems the most popular.

We have to remember that some images we find online are composite images, carefully assembled by combining the best attributes of many images taken over time. Photographing or video filming our planet is not as simple as just going to space, aiming a camera and shooting. It involves a great deal of skill, resources and effort.

And keeping the resulting images in the public domain and open to access takes foresight and public spirit. As the Space Age turns 50, we must acknowledge this aspect of space exploration, which allows compositions like this, found on YouTube, for all of us to enjoy.

MTV Exit: Entertainment TV takes on human trafficking

Television gets blamed for lots of things that go wrong in our world. This isn’t surprising, given it’s the world’s most powerful medium and the key role it plays in our cultural, social and political lives.

A sociological study some years ago said broadcast TV was partly responsible for the movement of millions of people from villages to cities in search of jobs, higher incomes and better living standards. The glitzy lifestyles dramatised on TV was creating illusions in the minds of rural women and men, especially the youth, it said.

Of course, such migrants soon discover a very different reality in the cities. But few want to go back to where they came from. As they hang on in the cities, some fall prey to human traffickers, always on the prowl for vulnerable people to trade in.

The United Nations estimates that the total market value of human trafficking is 32 billion dollars — one of the most lucrative illicit trades in the world. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that worldwide, about 2.5 million people are victims of trafficking.

If TV indirectly contributed to this human perversion, it can also help society stand up and fight against it. As Music Television (MTV) is now doing.

MTV, the most popular music channel in the Asia Pacific region, will be playing a different tune in the weeks to come. For half an hour at least, beginning 18 September 2007 for MTV Thailand, live and hip music will give way to the harrowing accounts of three victims of human trafficking. This is part of the MTV Exit campaign.

Trafficking of people in the region will be given a human face through the personal accounts of Anna, Eka and Min Aung. Anna was forced into prostitution in the Philippines, while Eka is an Indonesian who was an abused domestic worker in Singapore. Min Aung from Burma recounts his sad experiences working and being practically imprisoned in a factory in Thailand for two years.

Lynette Lee Corporal writing for Inter Press Service (IPS) quotes MTV Thailand campaign director Simon Goff as saying: “We worked with organisations and talked with experts to see what forms of trafficking we would focus on, the most prevalent forms that affect our audiences. We selected regions that would best represent the issue. Then, finally we brought in a production team, led by a Thai producer and a director from the UK.”

Taking it personally: Anita Roddick’s Arabian Nights

“I am overwhelmed by the potential of the web to link like-minded people and move them to mass-action,” the late Anita Roddick once wrote. “We are excited to experiment in other media too — perhaps subversive billboards, or a television program, or other print projects. As someone once said, we are only limited by our imaginations.”

In my personal tribute to Anita, written shortly after her untimely death on 10 September 2007, I touched on her extraordinary skills as an activist-communicator. It was in connection with a global television series that I last met Anita in person.

In the summer of 2003, I was invited to join a small group of people at Anita’s country home, Highfield House, in Arundel, Somerset, England. It was a one-day brainstorming on the future of Hands On, a global TV series that she’d been hosting for three years.

Hands On stood out as a beacon of hope amidst so much doom and gloom on television -– it featured environmentally-friendly technologies, business ideas and processes that have been tried out by someone, somewhere on the planet.

It covered a broad range of topics, from renewable energies, waste management and information technology to food processing and transport. The aim was to showcase good news and best practices so they could inspire others — entrepreneurs, communities or even governments — to try these out.

The series was first broadcast on BBC World and was redistributed to dozens of TV channels worldwide through my own organisation, TVE Asia Pacific, and others. It was backed by the reputed development agency Intermediate Technology (now called Practical Action).

Watch a typical Anita introduction of Hands On and a sample story in capsule form:

Anita brought her usual passion and dynamism to our discussion, energising the development and communications professionals enjoying her hospitality. Covering good news was already going against the media’s grain, but it was harder to keep at it year after year, especially when the media landscape was changing rapidly. It was a challenge to stay engaged and relevant to viewers across Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe.

During the meeting, Anita asked me to sum up the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which was coming up in a few months. Putting aside all the ‘developmentspeak’ of UN agencies, I described it as an attempt to put new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to work for the poor and disadvantaged of our world. Or get the geek tools to work for the meek. (I still think my phrase ‘Geek2Meek’ sounds better than the official ICT4D, where D stands for development.)

We agreed that civil society had to seize the opportunities offered by these new media tools. (A few months later, Anita presented two Hands On editions called ‘Communicating for Change’ on BBC World that profiled some initiatives doing just this.)

Always fond of analogies, I likened Hands On to Arabian Nights, which, according to legend, a young woman had spun from her rich imagination for 1,001 nights to save her life from an evil king. In Hands On, I suggested, we are telling stories to save not one life, but all life on Earth.

Read my July 2007 post: Telling stories to save ourselves…and the planet

Anita quite liked my analogy. She was always a good story teller, and had so many good stories to tell (A favourite opening line from her biography, Body and Soul: “There I was, with my panty down to my knees.” You’ll never guess why until you read that story…)

She challenged everyone at that meeting to make Hands On more interesting to younger viewers in different cultures. We recognised that offering one media product to a global audience was a tough sell: most people prefer a home-made, local story.

But then, she’d built the entire Body Shop chain with a largely common product offering, even if raw materials were sourced from different parts of the globe. She never imposed the Body Shop experience on our meeting, but it was sometimes instructive to look at how a globally available product could still be localised.

This is just what we did in the months and years following the Arundel brainstorming. We rolled out the ‘Localising Hands On in Asia’ project, which saw several dozen Hands On stories being versioned into local languages and distributed through broadcast and narrowcast means in Cambodia, India, Laos and Nepal. The two-year project, generously supported by Toyota, was hugely successful in delivering the Hands On stories to millions of people who would never have been exposed to it in original English.

We were thrilled when our localising work inspired similar local TV shows in three countries (Cambodia, Nepal and Laos). Yet it was the narrowcast outreach that was more rewarding.

Read about one narrowcast experience in my April 2007 blog post: Anita Roddick, Angkor Wat and the development pill

Coming soon: Who killed Hands On, one of the most successful multimedia initiatives in recent years to communicate development?

Running the planet without a user-guide

There is a best-selling small book titled Everything Men Know About Women. It’s authored by Cindy Cashman, writing under the pseudonym Dr. Alan Francis.

The book is revealing as it’s simple: every page is completely blank.

I was reminded of this little book while listening to some of the world’s leading environmental scientists and conservationists speak this week during the 4th IUCN Asia Conservation Forum, held in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, 10 – 13 September 2007.

Expert after expert admitted how limited our understanding still was of the planet’s intricate and inter-linked natural systems. Some processes — such as how climate change would impact different geographical regions, natural cycles and ecosystems — are only just beginning to be understood. We know more about the surface of the Moon than about the bottom of the oceans on our planet. We have only had a few recent glimpses into the large and complex world of micro organisms.

In short, many pages of our planet’s ‘operations manual’ or user guide are still completely blank!

Yet the ecological threats are real, and they are here. The pressures we humans exert on our environment is increasing by the day. Deferring action until we have better knowledge and understanding is no longer an option.

Instead, we now have to use a combination of the best current knowledge, common sense and intuition to address a multitude of formidable environmental issues including the growing piles of our waste, intensification of disasters, march of desertification, changing climate as well as the poisoning of our freshwater, seas and the air. Some of these degradation factors feed on each other, producing more damage – and rude shocks – than each one could on their own.

In this scenario, the conservation community — in Asia and elsewhere — faces three major challenges:

First, they just have to doggedly persist in gathering new knowledge, and deriving understanding and insights on how our planet works. This is not research for its own sake, or mere academic theorising. It’s now a pre-requisite for survival.

Second, they have to find smart and strategic ways to fill up the ‘blank pages’ in our planet’s user-guide. In the 1970s, they used to say we have been handed over a planet without that manual and it seemed we had time to figure things out. The truth is, time is running out and we have to write that manual as we go along.

Third, it’s vital that the user-guide is widely shared using every available advocacy and dissemination method, tool and medium. Staying within comfort zones and talking to each other in technical jargon is not enough. This is the point I personally stressed at the meeting: use modern ICT tools to discuss, debate and engage everyone in changing their ways where needed.

The current conservation imperative reminds me of what H G Wells said: History is a race between education and catastrophe. Right now, it seems, we are just staying ahead to avoid disaster.

Thanks to initiatives like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, those blank pages in the Earth’s user guide are filling up.

Strange as it sounds, the book’s already filled pages have to be be peddled far and wide even as the other pages are being written.

Talk about a race between education and catastrophe!

Crossing the other Digital Divide: Challenge to conservation community

Digital Divide refers to the gap between those who have regular, easy access to modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) and those who don’t. In the past decade, the IT industry and development community have launched various initiatives to bridge this divide. The One Laptop Per Child project is among the better known examples.

As digital technologies and media gain momentum and wider coverage than ever before, another kind of digital divide has emerged. This week in Kathmandu, during the Fourth Asian Conservation Forum, some of us have been talking about this new divide — between the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.

This latter divide is mainly a product of age, not socio-economics. Market research and sociological studies now confirm that today’s younger people – raised on a diet of mobile phones, video games and mp3 (music) players – have radically different ways of accessing, receiving and coping with information.

Recognising this new Digital Divide is vital for communication and advocacy work of conservation groups, such as IUCN – The World Conservation Union, conveners of the Kathmandu forum.

For nearly 60 years, IUCN has been an effective platform for knowledge-based advocacy. Using scientific evidence and reasoning, it has influenced conservation policies, laws and practices at country and global levels. The world would be a worse place to live in if not for this sustained advocacy work by thousands of experts and activists who were mobilised by IUCN.

Much of that work has been accomplished through the classical advocacy tools: scientific papers, books, conferences and, in recent years, ‘policy dialogues’ — meetings where experts and activists would sit down and talk things through with those who make policy in governments and industry.

IUCN continues to pursue all these methods, with creditable impact. IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, whose latest edition is being released today (12 September 2007), is among the best known examples of how the Union’s work informs and inspires urgent action for saving the world’s animals and plants driven to the edge by human activity.

To remain similarly effective in the coming years, IUCN — and the rest of the conservation community — need to evolve and adapt to changing realities in human society. One such reality is the proliferation of ICTs in the past two decades.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced recently that the world’s telephone connections had passed four billion. Largely thanks to the explosion of mobile phones in the majority world, the total number of telephones (fixed and mobile) had quadrupled in the past decade.

While exact figures are hard to come by, it is estimated that around 1.17 billion people (almost 1 in 6 persons) have access to the Internet, even though varying levels of quality.

These are the more widely quoted figures, but the media mix keeps diversifying even as the size of the overall ‘ICT pie’ keeps increasing. For example, the 1990s saw a channel explosion in both FM radio and television across much of Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America, hugely increasing viewers’ choice and enhancing the outreach of broadcasting. The popularity of video games (and now, online games) has spawned trans-boundary subcultures that were inconceivable even a decade ago.

It is this bewilderingly media-enriched world that IUCN’s members and experts are trying to engage, hoping to persuade everyone — from governments and industry to communities and individuals — to live and work as if the planet mattered.

In Kathmandu this week, I argued that scientific merit and rational (and often very articulate) reasoning alone won’t win them enough new converts to achieve significant changes in lifestyles, attitudes and practices. To be heard and heeded in the real world outside the charmed development and conservation circles, we need to employ a multitude of platforms, media and ICT tools. And we have to talk in the language of popular culture.

We have come a long way since the 1980s, with the new ICTs evolving parallel to our own understanding of sustainability.

When we were involved in processes leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, back in 1992, most of us were still using fax and snailmail to exchange information. Email was confined to academic circles and the web was not even conceived.

By the time Johannesburg Summit was held a decade later, email had come into wide use and static websites were being used to disseminate information and opinions. E-commerce and music file sharing were gaining momentum.

Just five years on, the rapidly evolving web 2.0 offers us more tools and platforms to not just engage in one-way dissemination, but to truly communicate with a two-way flow. Wikis allow participatory document drafting. Web logs or blogs enable faster, easier expression and discussion. YouTube and other platforms have suddenly made sharing of moving images much simpler (assuming we have sufficient bandwidth).

In fact, connectivity is improving in many parts of the world, though there still are many gaps, frustrations and cost issues to be resolved. Young people, under 25 years, are leading the charge in entering and ‘colonising’ the new media. Social networking platforms such as MySpace and FaceBook are only the tip of this cyber iceberg. And virtual worlds — such as Second Life, with over 8 million online members — are moving in from the periphery to occupy a clear niche in our new digital world.

Every indication is that these trends will continue. IUCN and other conservationists, with their rigorous scientific analysis expressed in technical papers, print publications and the occasional op ed article in a broadsheet newspaper, have to navigate in this whirlpool — and it’s not easy. But their choice is between engagement and marginalisation. The planet cannot afford the latter.

I’m not suggesting that conservation scientists and organisations must drop their traditional advocacy methods and rush to embrace the new ICT tools. But they need to survey the new media landscape with an open mind and identify opportunities to join the myriad global conversations.

A good part of that is what intellectuals might see as chatter, or tabloid culture. It’s precisely this mass tabloid audience that needs to be engaged for conservation.

There are inspiring examples of how other sections of the development spectrum are seizing new media opportunities:

* Some humanitarian groups now use Google Earth online satellite maps for their information management and advocacy work, for example in Darfur, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

* In an attempt to name and shame offenders, human rights activists are using YouTube to post incriminating video evidence of human rights abuses worldwide. The influential Foreign Affairs journal recently called this the YouTube Effect.

Fortunately, at least a few Asian conservation leaders already appreciate this enormous new media potential. In Kathmandu, Surendra Shrestha, UNEP’s regional director for Asia Pacific, echoed my views.

“My young kids spend several hours each weekend in virtual worlds. We need to get in there and engage them with our content,” he said. “To do that, we have to get inside their minds, and speak their language.”

Shrestha mentioned how UNEP in Asia is attempting this with ICT-based projects for youth, such as e-generation which, according to him, has involved half a million young people.

Such initiatives are beginning to happen, thanks to a few conservationists who are pragmatic enough to exploit the inevitable. But much more needs to be done to make conservation ‘cool’ and hip for Asia’s youthful population, half of them under 35, and many of them Digital Natives.

For sustainability measures to have a chance of success, these upwardly mobile, spend-happy youth have to be reached, touched and persuaded. If it takes tabloid tactics to achieve this, so be it.

And given Asia’s growing economic clout and ecological impact – with China and India leading the way – the fate of the planet will be decided by what is done, or not done, in our region.

While they debate the finer points of conservation strategies and activities in Kathmandu, Bangkok and other cities across our massive region, Asia’s conservation community must quickly cross the new Digital Divide that currently separates them from Digital Natives.

Declaration of interest: I was part of IUCN Sri Lanka Secretariat (1992-1994), where I started its communication division, and have been a member of IUCN Commission on Education and Communication since 1991.

Read my April 2007 post: Do ICTs make a difference?