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‘Climate Challenge’ marks turning point in Vietnam’s climate concerns

Climate Challenge TV series: Seeking local solutions for a global problem

Many media reports and documentaries on climate change tend to be scary. Even the most balanced and scientifically informed ones caution us about dire scenarios that can rapidly change the world as we know it.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Like every crisis, climate change too presents humanity with formidable challenges that can become opportunities to do things differently — and better.

Climate Challenge is a rare TV series that adopts this positive attitude. The 6-part series co-produced by One Planet Pictures in the UK and dev.tv in Switzerland, links the global climate crisis with location action for both mitigation (trying to reduce further aggravation) and adaptation (learning to cope with impacts).

It also makes the point: in the fight against global warming, developed and developing countries must work hand-in-hand to find viable solutions for all.

The film-makers of Climate Challenge focus on some of the most promising approaches to turning down the global thermostat. Climate Challenge goes in search for solutions that won’t put a break on economic growth.

The series had its original run on BBC World News in April – May 2007. Shortly afterwards, TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) started distributing it to TV channels, educational institutions and civil society groups across the Asia Pacific region. It has been one of the more popular items on our catalogue of international TV films on sustainable development and social justice.

Our deal with Asia Pacific broadcasters is a barter arrangement. TVEAP clears copyrights for developing countries in our region (more than 30 countries or territories) and offers films free of license fee that normally prevent many southern broadcasters from using this content.

We offer a new set of titles every two months to our broadcast partners – now numbering over 40 channels. They select and order what interests them, and often pay for the cost of copying on to professional tape and dispatch by courier.

When they receive the tapes, accompanied by time-coded scripts, many TV stations version the films into their local language/s using sub-titles or voice-dubbing. They do this at their expense, and then assign a good time slot for airing the films once or several times. They are free to re-run the films as often as they want. The only expectation is that they give us feedback on the broadcasts, so that we can report to the copyright owners once a year.

This arrangement works well, and bilateral relationships have developed between TVEAP’s distribution team and programme managers or acquisition staff at individual TV stations across Asia. Everything happens remotely — through an online ordering system and by email. It’s rarely that we at TVEAP get to meet and talk with our broadcast colleagues in person.

I was delighted, therefore, to meet one of our long-standing broadcast colleagues in Tokyo earlier this month when we ran a regional workshop on changing climate and moving images. Pham Thuy Trang, a reporter with news and current affairs department of Vietnam Television (VTV), was one of the participants. She turned out to be an ardent fan of our films.

She told the Tokyo workshop how the Climate Challenge series marked a turning point in Vietnam’s public discussion and understanding of climate change issues.

In mid 2007, VTV was one of many Asian broadcasters who ordered Climate Challenge. Having versioned it into Vietnamese, VTV broadcast the full series in December 2007 to coincide with the 13th UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia.

“This was the first time the issue received indepth coverage on TV,” Trang said. This was particularly significant because a 2007 survey had revealed low levels of interest in climate issues by the media in Vietnam.

“In fact, the World Bank has identified Vietnam, with its 3,000 km long coastline, as among the countries most vulnerable to climate change impact. Our media has been reporting some developments – such as increased coastal erosion – as purely local incidents without making the climate link,” she noted.

The series, originally broadcast in the foreign documentaries slot, was noticed by the VTV senior management who then arranged for its repeat broadcast in the long-established environmental slot. The latter slot, well established for a decade, commands a bigger audience.

“Our Director General was impressed by our receiving such a good series on an important global issue,” Trang recalled. She added: “We need more films like this – that explain the problem and help us to search for solutions.”

Trang kept on thanking TVEAP for Climate Challenge and other films that bring international environment and development concerns to millions of Vietnamese television viewers. I said we share the credit with generous producers like One Planet Pictures and dev.tv, who let go of the rights to their creations for the global South.

If only more producers of TV content on climate and other development issues think and act as they do. That was also the call we made at the end of our workshop: recognise climate change as a copyright free zone.

Related blog post: Climate in crisis and planet in peril – but we’re squabbling over copyrights!

Warning: Is climate change the new HIV of our times?

From www.sprattiart.com — From http://www.sprattiart.com

Is climate change the new HIV of our times?

I asked this question when addressing a group of television journalists and film-makers from the Asia Pacific last week. I was making introductory remarks to an Asia Pacific Workshop and Open Film Screening on ‘Changing Climate and Moving Pictures‘ held on 3 – 4 October 2008 in Tokyo, Japan. It was organised by TVE Japan in collaboration with TVE Asia Pacific, and supported by the Japan Fund for Global Environment.

I acknowledged that climate change was not just another environmental issue or even the latest planetary scare. “This time we’re in deep trouble – and still finding out how deep,” I said.

Climate change has brought into sharp focus the crisis in:
• how we grow economically;
• how we share natural resources and energy; and
• how we relate to each other in different parts of the world.

In that sense, I noted, climate change is acting like a prism — helping to split our worldly experience into individual issues, concerns and problems that combine to create it. Just like an ordinary prism splits sunlight into the seven colours (of the rainbow) that it’s made of.

“Climate shows up the enormous development disparities within our individual societies and also between them. When this happens, we realise that climate is not just a scientific or environmental problem, but one that also has social, political, security, ethical and human rights dimensions,” I added.

I then outlined some parallels between the current climate crisis and the HIV/AIDS pandemic that emerged some 25 years ago.

Consider these similarities:
• When HIV was first detected, it was considered a medical issue affecting specific sections of society.
• It took years for the wider societal, development and human rights aspects of HIV to be understood and then accepted.
• Some countries and cultures wasted precious years in HIV denial; a few are still in this mode.
• It took overwhelming impact evidence and mounting pressure from affected persons for states and international community to respond.
• Then…everybody jumped the bandwagon and HIV became a fundable, profitable enterprise.

I have been commenting in this blog about this ugly side of HIV/AIDS in my own country Sri Lanka, where 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’. Some have appropriated HIV as their own virus, and would rather not allow others to work in this area.

And it’s not just NGOs who are riding the HIV gravy train. The United Nations programme for AIDS, or UNAIDS, created by the UN system in response to the global crisis, has evolved into a behemoth whose efficacy and relevance are now being widely questioned.

UNAIDS “is obsolete and an obstacle to improving healthcare in developing countries” claims Roger England, an international health expert. Writing in the British Medical Journal in May 2008, England pointed out that HIV causes 3.7 per cent of mortality and kills fewer people than pneumonia or diabetes, yet it received 25 per cent of all international healthcare aid and a big chunk of domestic expenditure. This has resulted in wasting vast sums of funding on esoteric disciplines instead of beefing up public health capacity. Despite this criticism, UNAIDS is calling for huge increases in its funding — from its current US$9 billion to US$54 billion by 2015.

All this makes me wonder: is climate the new HIV of our times? This is the question I raised in Tokyo.

I added: “If so, I sincerely hope it does not evolve in the same manner that HIV crisis did. There are worrying signs that the drive towards a low carbon economy is being exploited by various groups – including some in civil society – for self gain.”

Certain development agencies and ‘think tanks’ are clearly exploiting climate change to make money. Suddenly, everybody is ‘climate-proofing’ their activities — meaning they are talking about climate change no matter what they do, whether it is teacher training or micro-credit.

In the run up to the Bali climate conference in late 2007, I wrote a blog post titled ‘Beware of bad weather friends’ about a London-based NGO engaging in some media training on climate issues, but deriving its legitimacy from a dubious survey. This post apparently irked the party concerned a great deal.

In Tokyo, a workshop participant confirmed that this was already happening in his country.

“Every crisis today is being turned into a business opportunity – and not just by the corporate sector,” said Pradip Saha, associate director of the Centre for Science and Environment in India.

He added: “Consultancy companies and some NGOs have realised there is big money to be made in climate related areas like carbon offsets and the Clean Development Mechanism. They are already riding the climate bandwagon!”.

Read the full text of my introductory remarks to the Tokyo workshop.changing-climate-moving-images-nalaka-gunawardene-intro-3-oct-2008

NHK: A public broadcaster that cares for its public

My regular readers know the disdain with which I hold the so-called public broadcasters in my part of the world. In developing Asia, which lacks sufficient checks and balances to ensure independence of state broadcasters, the only thing ‘public’ about such channels is that they are often a drain on public money collected through taxes. Their service and loyalties are entirely to whichever political party, coalition or military dictator heading the government in office. A few months ago, I described Burmese TV as a good example.

I was delighted, therefore, to visit the headquarters of Japan’s sole public broadcaster NHK this week and find out how exceptional they are in being a public broadcaster that really cares for its funding and viewing public.

Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, NHK. Started as a radio service in 1926, it added television in 1953. Today, NHK runs two terrestrial TV channels, three satellite channels and three radio services – and has started offering more content online and for mobile devices as well. It also has international offerings in TV, radio and web through NHK World.

This massive broadcast operation is financed primarily by a license fee (called ‘receiving fee’ in Japan) paid by each Japanese household that owns a television set. Its TV channels don’t carry any advertising, although the corporation exploits its massive archive and often repurposes its products for commercial gain.

As NHK’s website says, “This (license) system enables the Corporation to maintain independence from any governmental and private organisation, and ensures that the opinions of viewers and listeners are assigned top priority.”

NHK’s license fee system is not unanimously endorsed by the Japanese public, and I later found out that growing numbers of households are declining to pay what currently works out to around US$30 per month (or a dollar a day). This debate has been sustained for several years, with public calls for administrative reform at NHK.

But NHK’s eagerness to engage the public is clearly evident, even to a visitor like myself who spent only an afternoon at NHK’s Studio Park in Shibuya. This is where the corporation’s production facilities are opened to the public every week day from 10 am to 5.30 pm.

NHK Studio Park is a living exhibit – the corporation’s executives and technical staff carry on with their real work amidst (mostly Japanese public) visitors who get to see how TV content is made. Part of the attraction is a museum of TV 55 years of TV broadcasting in Japan.

Welcome to NHK: You're in our bigger picture!

Every visitor is welcomed by being captured by a TV camera with the image being projected live on to a giant screen at the reception. The camera zoomed in on each one in our tour party of ten – and gave us our 10 seconds of fame!

From then on, it offers various displays and interactive opportunities to find out how TV broadcasting has evolved, where it is today – and glimpses of where it is headed. NHK has been an industry leader in technological innovation. It launched digital satellite TV broadcasting in December 2000 and introduced digital terrestrial broadcasts in December 2003. The core technology is Hi-Vision (HDTV), which delivers clear, vivid pictures and CD-quality sound. More than 90% of the programming on NHK is now produced and aired in Hi-Vision.

In fact, Japan will be fully switching on to digital and switching off all analog TV transmissions on 24 July 2011. The countdown has already started and on the day I visited NHK (2 October 2008), it was 1,025 days away.

Studio Park makes good use of corridor space for varied displays of photos and archival videos on memorable moments in Japanese and world broadcasting history. Highlights of NHK’s most enduring productions in news, current affairs, culture programming and sports are also shared.

Some of NHK’s cultural and entertainment programmes have been exported successfully to other parts of Asia, offering some counterbalance to the western TV content. One that I recognised was Oshin, a serial drama of 297 episodes made in the early 1980s that has since been aired in close to 60 countries.

One of Studio Park’s star attractions offers to make a star of any visitor for a few minutes. It’s a newscasting studio where the visitor may sit and face the live camera and read a few lines suggested by the teleprompter – the device that enables news readers to look at their audience while sticking to a flowing text. The teleprompter text is available in Japanese and several other Asian languages.

Pham Thuy Trang from Vietnam reads NHK news

Two members of our tour party took this news challenge (photos above), and being broadcast professionals, they performed admirably! While it was fun and games for us who are familiar with the medium’s inner working, I can imagine the educational and public relations value of this for people who only consume what television delivers every day and night.

We were also treated to a screening of what was called the world’s first 3D television without special glasses. It was a breathtaking film of about 10 minutes showing underwater scenes. In the dimly lit theatre, the screen felt more like a fish tank – the 3D effect was very real. Not being a techie, I don’t know how to verify the claim of this being a world first, but when this catches on, watching television will never be the same again…

As visitors move in and out of these interesting offerings, it was another day at work for NHK’s staff who carried on with their real productions in studios we passed by. We were allowed to photograph everything except across the viewing glass inside a studio when a recording was underway (lest the camera flashlights disturb it). The freedom to explore and experience, helped by the eternally courteous tour guides, was refreshing.

And what a contrast to many so-called public broadcast stations elsewhere in Asia which are more like battle fortresses with armed guards firmly keeping the public out (I suppose they expect their irate public to attack the stations because of the truly dreadful content they carry?).

Well, at least NHK seems to know who their masters are – the paying public. And as this image in one exhibit shows, NHK is aware of that little gadget in every viewer’s hand that can instantly nullify all the irinvestment, technology and creativity. If wielded for long enough by sufficient numbers, this can put mighty broadcasters out of business.

It’s a message that Asia’s other broadcasters – public and private – would do well to remember.

Note: My visit to Tokyo did not involve NHK funding in any manner. I was the guest of our partner TVE Japan, who paid for our admission tickets to enter NHK Studio Park.

Explore 50 years of NHK Television online

Oz challenge to Japanese whaling – on YouTube!

Who said YouTube is only for activists and video enthusiasts to share their content?

The above appeal is by Australia’s Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who’s using the popular new media platform to reach out to children and young adults in Japan in a campaign aimed at stopping Japan’s stubborn insistence on whaling.

The Australian Department of Environment has taken out a YouTube channel where this and several other videos are on offer.

This is very encouraging – to see a government putting aside diplomatic niceties and taking a campaign right to the heart of a society that is still culturally attached to whale meat. For sure, Australia is also active in inter-governmental negotiations to sustain the global ban on whaling, but addressing the issue from the demand side and future generation angle can make the anti-whaling positions stronger.

Here’s how Reuters reported the story this week:

CANBERRA, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Australia has taken its battle against Japanese whaling in the Antarctic to the Internet, with a new YouTube campaign unveiled on Tuesday that targets Japanese children.

“Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like without these magnificent creatures? Hundreds of years of whaling have nearly wiped them out,” Australia’s Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says in the video, subtitled in Japanese.

Japan plans for the first time to hunt 50 humpback whales in the Antarctic over the coming summer, with the endangered animals currently migrating south along the Australian coast. Japan also plans to hunt 935 minke whales for scientific research.

The Japanese whaling fleet, hampered by a fire on the factory processing ship Nisshin Maru last February which killed one crewman, was recently bolstered by the addition of a new chaser vessel.

Australia’s government, facing re-election in weeks, has dismissed as futile the opposition’s calls for legal action over Japanese whaling in Australia’s Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, which is not recognised by other nations.

Japan’s fisheries agency, confident its whaling rights will be confirmed, has challenged any country to take it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague

Turnbull said Canberra would fight in the court of public opinion.

Read the full story on Reuters AlertNet

Greenpeace anti-whaling website

Here’s an animated anti-whaling TV commercial I came across on YouTube that takes a different look at the same issue. It was produced by Saachi & Saachi Poland:

Memories of Toyama: Japan Wildlife Film Festival

Image courtesy JWFF

The Japan Wildlife Film Festival opens today – 23 August 2007 – in Toyama, in eastern Japan.

As their website says: “Established in 1993, the Festival is held biennially. It started in the hope that by screening moving images of the wonders of wildlife and the co-existence of nature and people, we could help to increase understanding and awareness of the urgent need to protect and care for the natural world.”

The last Festival, in August 2005, received 331 film entries from 35 countries and some 30,000 people, including many school children, attended the public screenings staged throughout the Toyama region. This level of public participation is exceptional for an international film festival — and shows how well the organisers, the Nature Film Network, have engaged the local people.

International film-makers and broadcasters now know the Festival as one of the biggest of its kind in Asia.

I’m missing Toyama this year. I participated in the last two festivals and have fond memories — of watching great films, having excellent company and enjoying outstanding Japanese hospitality in the salubrious holiday city of Toyama.

In 2003, I was part of the festival’s international jury. Then at the 2005 festival, I was invited to give a talk about our Children of Tsunami media project, which at the time was documenting the personal recovery stories of eight families affected by the Asian Tsunami in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

In both years, a highlight of my experience was the opening evening reception, held at a traditional Japanese farm house restored by NFN and located a half-hour’s drive outside the city. There, the local people hosted us to food and beverages prepared at home. An evening of simple, unpretentious cultural exchange — with nothing ‘official’ about it!

That’s the character of NFN chairman Hirohisa Ota: a man of few words who leads by example and brings together a small but dynamic team of staff and volunteers to run the 4-day festival with clockwork precision.

The photo below shows international participants at JWFF 2005.

Photo from JWFF website