The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the local people to describe the Abominable Snowman said to inhabit the deep Himalayan valleys of Nepal and Tibet. Most scientists consider this legendary ape to be part of cryptozoology – which searches for creatures said to exist but have never been documented.
But this does not take away from the allure of Yeti – it’s like the North American fascination with Big Foot.
I’m spending the week at the 4th Asia Conservation Forum in Kathmandu, organised by IUCN, the World Conservation Union. Here, we have been talking about another kind of Big Foot, and the increasingly crushing footprint that this assertive creature stamps everywhere.
This, of course, is a reference to us Homo sapiens – and the growing ecological footprint (EF) that our species is generating.
EF quantifies our demand on Nature and natural systems. It measures the amount of biologically productive land and water required to meet our demands (for food, timber, shelter), and to absorb the pollution we generate.
Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how many planet Earths it would take to support all of humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. For example, if everyone aspires to European lifestyles, we are going to need three planets. And for American way of life, four.
As of now, the Earth is the only naturally habitable planet that we know and have.
The Kathmandu meeting’s first substantive session, on the Future of Sustainability, heard how we are dangerously close to the Earth’s tipping point. Indian development thinker Ashok Khosla, UNEP’s regional director Surendra Shrestha and other leading analysts presented unmistakable indicators for this trend.
This resonates with a new report that came from WWF in late 2006, which concluded that our global footprint has already exceeded the earth’s bio-capacity by 25% in 2003. This meant that the Earth could no longer keep up with the demands being placed upon it.
The WWF Report has presented this graphically by sorting countries as eco-creditors and eco-debtors. Much of Asia falls into the latter category (map, below, courtesy BBC Online):
So here’s the news headline from YetiLand: we have finally met Big Foot. And it is us.
Meet Mala. She lives in in Kottaikkadu village in Kancheepuram District in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state.
She was 11 years old when, in December 2004, the Asian Tsunami crashed into village without warning. This made her very poor family desperate and destitute.
The disaster didn’t kill anyone in her village, but caused considerable property damage. In her case, the waves that rolled in spared their small hut, but her fisherman father was nearly drowned: he survived with some injuries.
But the family’s fishing boat and gear were gone. That was a mighty blow.
After the waves had retreated, they returned to their house and started rebuilding their lives. They thought the world’s generosity in responding to the Asian Tsunami will somehow bring some help.
They were wrong.
When the Tsunami triggered massive aid donations, all affected countries pledged to distribute it in a fair, equitable and transparent manner. But as the aid trickled down layers of government and charities, various biases and distortions crept in.
What happened in Mala’s village was an example. We came across the situation when tracking Mala’s family for a whole year (2005) after the Tsunami, documenting their long road to recovery as part of our Children of Tsunami media project.
We tracked two affected families each in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, filming their progress — or the lack of it — every month and producing video reports that were uploaded to a dedicated website.
The most striking example of aid disparity came from India. Even months after the disaster, Mala’s family — or anyone else in her village — received absolutely no relief or recovery assistance.
Officially, it was because ‘no one was killed’ in her village. But everybody in Kottaikkadu village knew the real reason: in the Indian social hierarchy, they occupy the lowest level, known as ‘Dalits’.
Apparently, that was why both government agencies and charities stayed clear of the village.
Our India production team, led by senior journalist and film-maker Satya Sivaraman (with video camera in the photo, below), investigated further. They compared Kottaikadu with its adjoining village of Alambara. Both had suffered similar damage during the Tsunami: people lost their boats and nets, but there were no deaths.
Yet the people of Alambara – who belong to a supposedly higher caste of fishermen — received food items, boats and fishing nets from various outside sources.
In fact, they felt quite sorry for their neighbours in Kottaikkadu. “On the day of the tsunami we ran over 15 kilometers,” said Kuppuraj, a resident of Alambara. “Kottaikadu villagers, who live just 600 meters away…ran with us — but nobody has helped them to recover.”
There was another incident that showed up the caste-based discrimination, which my colleague Manori Wijesekera, production manager of Children of Tsunami, has just reminded me.
In March 2005, our India film crew found Mala’s father seriously ill with a lung infection (triggered by his near-drowning during the Tsunami) and his family so helpless that they were unable to even seek medical attention.
So the crew put their filming gear aside, and became good Samaritans: they rushed the sick man to a nearby government-run hospital. But once there, doctors refused to admit or treat him — all due to the patient’s supposedly low caste!
It was only when Satya and crew threatened to film the entire sorry episode, and have it broadcast on television later that day, that medical attention was finally provided. Discarding their production plans, our crew stayed with Mala’s family at the hospital through the night and next day to ensure the doctors gave her father the correct medical attention. The family believes that the production team saved her father’s life that day.
Read more about what happened at Children of Tsunami website
While their father was recovering, Mala’s mother toiled as a labourer to keep the home fires burning. Mala has one younger sister and two younger brothers.
Children of Tsunami: Rebuilding the Future was TVE Asia Pacific’s response to largely superficial media coverage of the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004. It tracked on TV, video and web the personal recovery stories of eight affected families in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand for a year after the disaster. Its many media products — distributed on broadcast, narrowcast and online platforms -– inspired public discussion on aid management and optimum rehabilitation choices.
In its own words, the 24/7 English language channel set out to ‘balance the information flow from (global) South to North, providing accurate, impartial and objective news for a global audience from a grass roots level, giving voice to different perspectives from under-reported regions around the world.’
I said: “In recent years, the self righteous arrogance and the not-so-subtle biases of BBC and CNN have become increasingly intolerable. But unless it’s very careful and thoughtful, AJI runs the risk of falling into the same cultural and commercial traps that its two older rivals are mired in.
“CNN can’t get out of its US-centric analysis even in its international broadcasts. And the BBC news team is like a hopelessly mixed up teenager: one moment they are deeply British or at least western European; the next moment they are more passionate about Africa than Africans themselves.
“Desperately seeking legitimacy and acceptance, these global channels have sometimes traded in their journalistic integrity for privileged access, exclusives or -– dare we say it? -– to be embedded.”
I admit that I haven’t been watching enough of AJI to come to any firm conclusions. One reason: the new channel is still not widely available in some countries that I visit and spend time in.
But going by what is on their YouTube channel, where some 1,300 video segments have been placed so far (as at 29 August 2007), I have a rough idea of AJI’s first few months of coverage.
I’m looking long and hard for the difference that they so emphatically promised. Instead, I find them a paler version of BBC World, at times trying oh-so-hard to be just like the BBC!
Take, for example, the coverage they have recently done on the bloody and protracted civil war in Sri Lanka. Being where I live and work, I take a particular interest in this topic.
In a 2-part edition of AJI’s People & Power programme, Juliana Ruhfus investigates the impact of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
People & Power: How the East was Won: Part 1 of 2
People & Power: How the East was Won: Part 2 of 2
I don’t have a problem with AJI’s analysis in this documentary, which tries hard to be balanced and fair in what I know is a very difficult subject to cover, with intolerant hardliners on both sides of the conflict.
But I have several issues with how it has been put together – the norms and ethics of their newsgathering.
* A white blond woman, so evidently a parachute journalist, is reporting and presenting the story. Why isn’t an Asian telling this story?
* She is repeatedly mispronouncing all the local names. Just like the BBC does as a matter of routine.
* She gestures, interviews and talks exactly like those know-all reporters from the BBC. At times I detect a faint condescension in her voice, but that may be my imagination.
* For part of the coverage, the intrepid AJI reporter becomes embedded with the Sri Lankan armed forces, and interviews civilians under the watchful eye of military men. This is hardly a credible way of eliciting any honest responses!
* More importantly, she shows little regard for the personal safety of some people she interviews. At one point, she asks three muslim men if the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka is now any safer than before it was ‘liberated’ by the government forces. The men are clearly uncomfortable with this question. Honest answers can cost them dearly. But why should she care? She persists, showing close-ups of these individuals.
* Even when she interviews people who had explicitly asked for concealment of their identity, she leaves tell-tale signs for those identities to be easily guessed. A woman whose teen-aged son has been coerced into joining a paramilitary group is filmed in silhouette — not a good enough cover. Real voices have not been altered through a synthesizer.
These and other observations blur the difference between BBC and AJI in my mind. With a few notable exceptions, most BBC reporters don’t care one bit about the hapless, distressed people whom they interview. All they want is to get a ‘good story’ with dramatic visuals.
AJI is desperately trying to outdo the BBC in all the latter’s wrong aspects. Otherwise why should Juliana Ruhfus try so hard to get a damning comment from an interviewee evidently ill-at-ease of being ambushed by this western woman?
I still want to have an open mind about AJI’s promised difference, and keep hoping that it will emerge sooner rather than later. But this kind of newsgathering and film-making don’t augur well.
If this is the ethical standard of journalism that AJI aspires to, we who had high hopes of their becoming a real alternative to the dominant two are going to be disappointed.
It was good to see Rajiv Kafle again — even if only in this photograph, where he is the grown up surrounded by children. This was taken by my friend Shahidul Alam, whose latest photo exhibition, Portraits of Commitment, I’ve just seen.
I immediately recognised Rajiv because he was a key character in a documentary film we at TVE Asia Pacific commissioned five years ago, in 2002. Love for a Longer Life, directed by Nepali film-maker Dhurba Basnet, was part of a package of Truth Talking films that probed how Asia Pacific societies were coping with rapid change or crises.
At that time, there were 50,000 Nepalis living with HIV. But Rajiv was the very first among them to publicly announce that he had HIV — it created ripples in the conservative Nepali society.
He is a former injecting drug user who contracted HIV through unsafe needles.
“I injected drugs for two years. I got infected with HIV when I used a contaminated syringe belonging to one of my friends. He was HIV positive and I used his syringe without sterilising it properly,” Rajiv described his case history on our film.
After coming to terms with his own HIV status, Rajiv turned activist. For the past few years, he has been a crusader to educate Nepalese youth to prevent them from contracting HIV through ignorance. He gives talks at schools and colleges about his experiences of living with HIV.
It has not been easy: his revelation shook the conservative Nepali society, where most people are still reluctant to talk about HIV, associating it directly with illicit sex.
“Stigma, discrimination — then death.” That’s the bleak future that many HIV positive people in Nepal face according to Rajiv. “There is a great deal of stigma and discrimination against HIV/AIDS sufferers. Because there is so much negative publicity, an HIV-positive person finds it difficult to reveal his condition. He will have heard only about stigma, discrimination and death.”
“If we create a favourable environment, people will definitely come out and let others know,” he says, adding: “It took me a couple of years before I was able to publicly announce that I was HIV positive.”
Change was happening even five years ago when the camera crew from Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) followed him across Kathmandul Valley as he gave talks at schools and other public places.
“Now I see a change. Lots of young people understand the problem and are getting involved. The media and public are now more interested in this subject and they want to interact with people who have been through this.”
It wasn’t easy to produce Love for a Longer Life. As Dhurba Basnet (photo, above) reported at the time: “The major problem we faced during shooting, however, was that it was very difficult to get people living with HIV to talk naturally on camera. We had to first win their trust. This we achieved by behaving with them as normally as possible.”
After some shooting had been completed, Rajiv Kafle fell ill. “Since he was a major character in the film we had to wait a whole month while he recovered.”
Here are some depressing ‘lowlights’ from the book:
* Some medical professionals and para-medics simply refused to treat one of their own kind who was accidentally infected with HIV (fearing infection from casual contact!).
* A leading government hospital carelessly stocked and peddled blood contaminated with HIV. When discovered, it was quickly covered up, and the official investigation was suppressed.
* Some NGOs and charities have turned HIV activism into a self-serving, lucrative industry. There are fierce ‘turf wars’ to claim persons living with HIV as their institutional ‘property’.
* The public health system mandated to care for those living with HIV reinforces stigma and discrimination against such persons.
That’s just for starters. The book packs more shocking details on mass-scale ignorance about basic facts, bureaucratic apathy and a nation in staunch denial about the human immunodeficiency virus.
And we understand why the merchants of misery detested Dr Mrs Kamalika Abeyaratne, who stood up and spoke out for the rights of those living with HIV in Sri Lanka.
She was an extraordinary Sri Lankan woman and a dedicated physician, and the book is her life’s story told by her family and friends. As the cover blurb says: “This is a sad but inspiring account of the joys, sorrows, achievements and disappointments in an all-too-brief but beautiful life, cut short by tragedy and a courageous battle with HIV.”
In 1994, Dr Kamalika was involved in a serious road accident while heading to a rural location where she was to conduct a free medical clinic. While being treated at a government hospital, she was administered HIV-contaminated blood. Media investigations later revealed how intravenous drug users had routinely sold their blood to this hospital, which had few checks in place. This created a major scandal in the public health system — ironically, the very system that she had served for many years.
Dr Kamalika (Kami to her friends) was one of the very few Sri Lankans who openly acknowledged their HIV status. She paid a dear price for this admission: she was shunned and maligned by many members of her own medical community. Undaunted, she spent the last few years of life as an activist campaigning for the rights of persons living with HIV. She waged an almost lone battle for access to anti retroviral (ARV) treatment.
As Sonam Yangchen Rana of UNDP’s Regional HIV and Devlopment Programme has noted: “As a champion for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, she had become an icon for PLWHA in the region. Spreading awareness about issues surrounding the epidemic had become the mission of her life. She campaigned vigorously against stigma and discrimination faced by people living with HIV/AIDS and exemplified that PLWHA can lead productive and meaningful lives. productive and meaningful lives.”
And here’s a revealing extract from her biography: “Paediatrician turned activist, here is the story of Kami’s involvement in the HIV/AIDS campaign. A story that suggests rather wryly that it is not only about People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), but also about those who have been called People Living off HIV/AIDS (PLOHA). Kami’s own statement on this issue was that the known number of both groups was about the same, with some of the latter, representing some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or other, living in five-star hotels, driving around in Toyota Land Cruisers, and using up sixty percent of their resources on ‘administrative costs’.”
So now we know why some organisers of ICAAP8 were so defensive and protective of ‘their’ virus: after all, it is their horn of plenty that they cannot share with anyone else. These PLOHA are the mandarins of HIV/AIDS, Incorporated.
On a personal note, I always admired Dr Kamalika but never got to meet her. Our paths almost crossed once in July 2000, when I had helped Panos South Asia to organise a media gatekeepers’ meeting on HIV which she addressed. But the night before, I was struck down by influenza, and didn’t get to participate in what had been a stimulating meeting.
Today, 15 August 2007, India marked its 60th anniversary of political independence from the British. Pakistan, which was created by the British partitioning of India at the time of independence, marked their 60th birthday yesterday.
So here’s wishing the Indo-Pak combine a meaningful 60th.
For human beings, 60 is a landmark age. In some cultures, it marks the beginning of senior citizen stage. Wisdom, maturity and exemplary conduct are assumed and expected of those reaching 60.
When it comes to nation states, however, things don’t quite work that way. India and Pakistan at 60 are a good example.
Yes, they have made significant advances on many fronts in the past six decades. But before that progress can be celebrated, we have to take note of the political and socio-economic turmoil that these two nations — harbouring close to 1.5 billion human beings between them — find themselves in.
Those tensions are exacerbated by the bitter nuclear arms race between these two still-impoverished nations.
When it comes to geopolitics of nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan behave worse than two sill school boys. This is how my friends at Himal Southasian magazine summed it up brilliantly:
And here’s another Himal cartoon which punctures the juvenile male obsession with weapons of mass destruction:
So let’s hope that the 60-year-olds will finally begin to act their age at least now!
On a positive note, I have vivid memories of my active involvement in the XV International AIDS Conference, held in Bangkok, which attracted over 17,000 delegates to the Thai capital for a week full of events and activities. One of them was the official 2004 International AIDS Film Festival, which TVE Asia Pacific organised at the invitation of the Thai Ministry of Public Health and the International AIDS Society.
Over 4 days, we screened close to 50 TV and video films at three venues, drawing a total of more than 8,000 visitors. These films came from all over the world, in response to an open call that we had issued. We received a rich mix of genres: documentaries, docu-drama, current affairs programming, short television spots as well as entertainment formats — animation, dramas and reality television.
Films at this festival captured the kaleidoscope of emotions, challenges and contradictions presented by the AIDS pandemic. They were evidence of how TV and film professionals are covering HIV as a major development concern of our times.
That formidable task — which we summed up as ‘AV against HIV’ — received a boost when movie industry heavyweights joined in. We had documentaries narrated by Angelina Jolie, Will Smith and Glenn Close.
And while we were organising the festival, actor-activist Richard Gere sent the word saying he was interested in being associated with it. Of course we seized the offer, and had him open the film festival — hugely raising its profile in the Thai and international media.
After three years, I can still remember the moving speech that Richard Gere made at the opening ceremony in the Scala cinema in downtown Bangkok. Talking to an audience packed with diplomats, businessmen, journalists, activists and government officials, he said his experience with persons living with HIV had changed his life even more than his study of Tibetan Buddhism.
He recalled how he had lost a very close friend to HIV. “I don’t want anyone else to die like that,” he said, adding: “It (AIDS) has gone on too long, way too long.”
Then he did something simple yet very effective. He asked everyone who knew at least one person living with HIV to put their hands up. A few dozen hands went up in an audience of around 500.
Next, he said: hands up everyone who has lost at least one person to HIV. Some hands went down while three dozen remained held up.
I did not put my hands up for either call.
That was a moment of truth for myself. Until then, I hadn’t really, closely known anyone who was living with HIV (and disclosed that fact to me). I also had not lost anyone to HIV. Not knowingly anyway.
As the event progressed, I sat there asking myself:
• What kind of little comfort zone or cocoon am I living in?
• What kind of society do I live in, where very few people – if anyone – would dare to acknowledge they are living with HIV?
• And how can I remain authentic, communicating HIV from such a detached standpoint?
I’ve been writing and speaking about HIV for almost two decades. In that time, I have touched on many aspects of HIV, including:
• The science of HIV/AIDS, as a science communicator;
• Public health aspects of the global pandemic as a feature writer;
• The human rights dimensions of HIV, as a development communicator; and
• Nexus between media and HIV, as a media watcher/researcher.
But I sat there in the Scala cinema wondering if it was sufficient for me to have done all that with the objectivity of a journalist, or the clinical detachment of a researcher.
I then realised that when it comes to HIV/AIDS, we have to suspend these ordinary frameworks and ‘conditioning’ of our training.
We have to:
• Stop thinking of it as someone else’s problem;
• Get away from the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mindset;
• Understand that no one is immune or buffered from the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV; and
• More than anything else — stop living in denial.
These apply to individuals, communities, society — and also governments.
Well, the nice lady on the phone didn’t actually say that. But that message was heard loud and clear.
And she is one at the forefront of fighting HIV/AIDS in my native Sri Lanka. My organisation had gone with an offer of help, in our own small way, to augment their good fight. But for reasons best known to her, she chose to brush us off.
It happens in the context of the 8th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, or ICAAP8. The year’s most important regional event on HIV is scheduled to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 19 to 23 August 2007. Several hundred members of our region’s HIV community — from activists and researchers to development aid officials and persons living with HIV — are expected to turn up.
TVE Asia Pacific has been involved in communicating about HIV for a few years. One highlight was when, at the invitation of the International AIDS Society and the Thai Ministry of Public Health, we organised the 2004 AIDS Film Festival in Bangkok. That was part of the XV International AIDS Conference.
We also distribute across Asia some outstanding factual films on HIV/AIDS produced in different parts of the world. Among them is the highly acclaimed Scenarios from Africa.
With these and other credentials, we had hoped that we could share our experience in using audio-visual media for communicating the HIV message in all its nuances and complexity.
Earlier this year, we responded to a call for skills building activities appearing on the Conference website. We didn’t know anyone involved, but we submitted a proposal to the website, outlining our offer to conduct a ‘Skills Building Workshop on Strategic use of moving images for HIV/AIDS Advocacy’. We didn’t ask for any money – our offer was to do it entirely at our cost. We planned to involve some Asian communicators who are regional leaders in this area.
A few weeks later we had a phone and email exchange with a Sri Lankan member of the secretariat
about our proposal. We don’t know this lady at all, but relating to her was not a pleasant experience. In fact, she was very dismissive and almost rude. She found fault with us for submitting our proposal late, when in fact we’d done so well within deadline!
We felt rebuffed and put off by her attitude. Although she said she was going to get back to us, it never happened. Evidently, our offer had touched on somebody’s raw nerve.
We still don’t know what irked this lady — it’s possible that my outspoken public views on HIV/AIDS in Sri Lanka may have been taken personally by a small mind. This is the problem with some people: they take evidence-based criticism personally.
Whatever was responsible, we won’t be at ICAAP8. Our friends who are part of the media team at the conference belatedly tried to involve us. But by then, our spirits were shattered.
A missed opportunity. And there’s some irony that while the Thai Ministry of Health invited us to run an entire film festival in their capital, the Sri Lankan Health Ministry (organisers of ICAAP8) would actually keep us out of this event!
Such are the politics of HIV, which I’m only just beginning to understand. And I thought we needed to unite against the common, invisible enemy…
He is a Programme Coordinator with the Thai Education Foundation (TEF), a non-profit organisation working to improve education in Thailand at all levels, especially using non-formal methods.
Saving the Planet will feature remarkable initiatives from South and Southeast Asia by educational, civil society and community groups engaged in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).
Mong was a live wire during our 5-day workshop in Khao Lak, Thailand. We encouraged everyone to share experiences in communicating with their respective audiences, using whatever communication methods and means (media or non-media).
At one point, Mong started describing how he and his team have been using a video film called Toxic Trail that takes a critical look at the use of pesticides in crop cultivation in Thailand and neighbouring countries.
He described how they’d found the film’s Thai version very useful in their work with farmers, housewives and other community members.
This was a fine coincidence: he didn’t know until then that we at TVE Asia Pacific had been involved in versioning Toxic Trails, originally produced in English, into half a dozen Asian languages including Thai. That was back in 2002.
Toxic Trail is a two part documentary that was produced in early 2001, directed by a long-time friend and colleague Janet Boston (who today heads the Thomson Foundation, which has a 40-year track record in training journalists in the developing world). It was first broadcast on BBC World in April 2001.
It followed Russell Dilts, an expert working with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as he investigated the pesticide industry in South East Asia. The trail begins in Thailand, moving to Cambodia and ending in Indonesia. The main focus, however, is on Cambodia, where Dilts uncovers major problems in the misuse of pesticides.
Dilts makes stark and horrifying findings: the mass use of pesticides is progressively destroying delicate local ecosystems, as well as causing many health problems to farmers and their families involved. Eventually, everybody is affected by consuming agricultural produce with high levels of pesticide residues.
Interesting things happened following the release of Toxic Trail in 2001. First, the FAO came under intense pressure from pesticide companies for having supported an investigative film that probed the reality of product stewardship that these companies claimed existed.
Stated simply, Product Stewardship is when companies take the responsibility for their products. It includes the monitoring of the distribution of products with regard to choice of outlet and method of sale. Toxic Trail questioned how this concept was being practised in developing countries such as Thailand and Cambodia.
Clearly, the companies didn’t like what was disclosed with tangible, visual evidence. In the weeks that followed the film’s release, and its high profile broadcast on BBC World, at least three heads rolled at FAO’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programme for Asia.
But by then the genie was out of the bottle. The BBC broadcast may have been watched by a handful of officials, diplomats and businessmen who walk the corridors of power. But a much larger Asian audience was reached by our versioning the films into Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Khmer, Mandarin, Sinhala and Thai — which, between them, are spoken by close to two billion people. These versions have been broadcast and narrowcast through numerous outlets ever since.
And as Mong reminded us earlier this month, the films are still in good use, several years after their production and versioning.
One clear lesson: it’s not just enough to produce a good TV film. How much it is seen and used depends on the amount of promotion, local adaptation and subsidised or free distribution that goes with it.
In the case of Toxic Trail, there was a network of promoters for IPM and sustainable agriculture who picked it up and ran with it — and continue to spread the word.
I’ve been silent on this blog for over 20 days. I like to think that was for a good cause.
Well, I was frightfully busy organising and running a small Asian regional workshop in Khao Lak, Thailand – it was part of TVE Asia Pacific’s Saving the Planet project.
Saving the Planet is telling real life stories to save our planet in peril. It was inspired by the Arabian Nights.
Remember how the clever and beautiful Shahrazad saved herself and other women in her kingdom from the murderous King Shahriyar? Once betrayed by a wife, the wicked ruler had embarked on a killing spree where he would wed a virgin bride everyday, and have her beheaded the day after the wedding. All girls and women in his kingdom were threatened.
That is, until, beautiful and clever Sharrazard volunteered to be the next bride. Facing an assured death, she starts telling the king engaging stories that holds him spell-bound. Her story, or stories, since many tales are interwoven and imbedded into the first, lasts for 1001 consecutive nights.
This story-telling captivated the king’s attention and held his patience with its fantastic and mysterious tales, its vivid descriptions and breath-taking heroism. Shahrazad’s story-telling is in itself a heroic and life-saving device, which finally forced the king to spare the wise and courageous girl’s life. Apparently he gave up his killing ways after that experience (if only some of our modern day rulers were so easily reformed!).
Story telling is more an art than a science. Shahrazad used it to save her life, and lives of all other women in her kingdom. Mythical as it may be, we can draw a few lessons from the Arabian Nights on what kind of stories to tell — with visible effects.
Good journalism is all about telling stories — real life stories about what happens to real world men, women and children. Mixing journalistic skills with development stories as we do, Saving the Planet is an attempt to tell a few good stories from the Asia Pacific — about individuals and organisations who are engaged in education for sustainable development, or ESD.
As we introduce the project on its dedicated website: Confronted with a range of environment and development problems, the world is looking for bright ideas to sustain life on the planet. Education at all levels can shape the world of tomorrow, equipping individuals and societies with the skills, perspectives, knowledge and values to live and work in a sustainable manner. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a vision of education that seeks to balance human and economic well-being with cultural traditions and respect for the earth’s natural resources.
Saving the Planet started with an open competition – we asked people to nominate projects or activities in developing countries of Asia that are communicating or educating their communities on any aspect of sustainable development. Not just ‘green’ issues (e.g. recycling, conservation) or scarey issues like climate change and ozone depletion, but also ‘brown’ issues (e.g. sanitation, cleaner production) and what I call ‘black and white issues’ – human rights and social justice.
We received dozens of nominations, which we turned over to a regional selection panel. Their final selection was announced in mid May 2007 – see my blog post on the winners.
The idea is for us to go out and film each of these winning projects for an Asian regional TV series. But ahead of that, we brought to Khao Lak, Thailand, two representatives of each project/organisation for a week-long workshop, 2 to 6 July 2007.
That workshop sought to strengthen the communication skills and capacity of the six organisations. Not just in moving images, which we dabble in, but in new media and older media as well. In short, how to use media and other communication tools to reach out to different audiences and, hopefully, influence them in positive ways that help them — and the planet.
This is why Saving the Planet is also story telling for survival – and here we are talking about the survival of not just one individual, but of all life on the planet. And instead of one evil king, our story tellers are confronted with a multitude of threats to our survival, many of them of our own making.
The analogy with the Arabian Nights is not as far-fetched as it might seem. The success of the Arabian Nights stories over many other forgotten folk tales may be due to their blend of popular themes: heroic and romantic adventures are littered with mystery, old wisdom and exciting struggles between good and evil. Almost all tales have three main elements or notions. Firstly, if there is a problem, there is a solution. Secondly, endurance can enable a crisis to reach a resolution. And finally, fantastic elements help the protagonists to maintain their endurance.
So one thing we kept probing and discussing was how to package serious (and often perceived as ‘boring’) development messages in ways that engage and entertain groups or communities we are trying to reach.
I’ll write more about the workshop when I have a chance. The official report of the workshop will go up on TVEAP and Saving the Planet websites within a few weeks.
For now, here’s the photo of our participants, together with the resource team and my colleagues from TVE Asia Pacific.
Saving the Planet is implemented by TVE Asia Pacific in collaboration with the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU),Tokyo, Japan, within the framework of ACCU-UNESCO Asia-Pacific Programme under the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust for the Promotion of Education for Sustainable Development.
Open Minds! 
