“There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more – if more should be required – the future of human civilization is at stake.”
With these words, climate crusader Al Gore opened a powerful speech delivered in Washington DC on 17 July 2008, in which he issued what he called ‘A Generational Challenge to Repower America’ to take bold steps towards solving the climate crisis.
At one point he told fellow Americans:“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.”
Having outlined the environmental, security and economic implications of America’s addiction to oil, Gore challenged his nation “to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years”.
I was immediately reminded of President Kennedy’s pledge to Congress on 25 May 1961 where he said:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth.”
In fact, later on in his speech Gore referred to this saying: “When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.”
Al Gore’s full speech, according to a video recording posted on YouTube, lasted 27 minutes — but the We Campaign has released the highlights of the speech running for 5 minutes:
The We Campaign is a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection — a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore. Our ultimate aim is to halt global warming. Specifically we are educating people in the US and around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.
With these words, UNEP’s newly appointed Director of Communications and Public Information, Satinder Bindra (photo, above), engaged my attention at a meeting in Paris earlier this week.
I almost jumped up in total agreement — this is just what we’ve been saying for years, especially to those who support information, education and communication activities in UN agencies.
Unlike many career UN officials, Satinder knows what he’s talking about. He comes to UNEP with over two decades of wide and varied experience in journalism and broadcasting – the last 10 years spent as a Senior International Correspondent/South Asia Bureau Chief for CNN based in New Delhi, India.
In the hard headed and hard nosed world of international news and current affairs television, distribution and outreach can make or break any content provider. This is something that the two leading news channels BBC World and CNN International know very well — and the more recent entrant Al Jazeera English is still finding out.
Satinder’s remark, in this instance, was more to do with how to get information and analysis on sustainable development out to as many people as possible in all corners of the planet. This is part of UNEP’s core mission since its founding in 1972 — and as chief of communication and public information, Satinder now takes on this formidable challenge.
Com+ is a “partnership of international organizations and communications professionals from diverse sectors committed to using communications to advance a vision of sustainable development that integrates its three pillars: economic, social and environmental”. TVE Asia Pacific was admitted to the partnership a few months ago.
As I’m sure Satinder realises, at stake in his new assignment is a lot more than audience ratings, market share or revenue stream of a single broadcaster. Those are important too, but not in the same league as ensuring life on Earth – in all its diversity and complexity – continues and thrives.
Satinder struck me as a practical and pragmatic journalist who wants to get the job done efficiently. We can only hope the rest of UNEP will keep up with him — or at least they don’t get too much in his way!
As he finds his way around the globally spread, multidisciplinary and sometimes heavily bureaucratic UN organisation, Satinder will come across some incongruities, cynicism and institutional inertia all of which have held UNEP back from being the dynamic global leader in our pursuit of elusive sustainable development.
At the big picture level, communication at UNEP has often been defined narrowly as institutional promotion – delivering UNEP logo to the news media of the world, or boosting the image of its executive director and other senior officials. We don’t grudge anyone enjoying their 15 minutes of fame, but a technical agency like UNEP has so much more to offer — in terms of rigorous science, multiple perspectives, wide ranging consultation and bringing diverse players to a common platform.
The Nobel Peace Prize winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-supported by UNEP and World Meteorological Organisation, is a good recent example of how solid science, communicated through the media, can inspire governments, industry and rest of society to find solutions to a major global challenge.
There’s a lot more good science and tons of good stories lurking inside UNEP — if only its experts know how to get these out, and if only its bean-counters won’t stand in the way.
Then there is the whole scandalous situation where UNEP-funded environmental films are released with needlessly excessive copyright restrictions. As I have been saying, this is the big mismatch in environment and development film-making: many films are made using donor (i.e. public or tax payer) funds, but due to the ignorance or indifference of funders, the copyrights are retained by private individuals or companies involved in the production.
In UNEP’s case, for years it has been commissioning (and sometimes funding) a London-based production company, with a charitable arm, to produce environmental films. That’s certainly a choice for UNEP if the agency feels it continues to get value for its money. But tragically, the producers jealously guard all the copyrights, releasing these only under rigid conditions to a select few.
Whatever outreach figures they might claim, these cannot match what the same films would achieve if the copyrights were not so restrictive. Freed from crushing rights, such environmental films – made with UNEP funding or blessings or both – could benefit thousands of groups engaged in awareness, advocacy, activism, education and training.
For sure, we’ve heard the arguments in favour of tight copyright regimes. Film-makers have every right to be acknowledged for their creative efforts, but public funded products must not be locked up by greedy lawyers and accountants — or even by selfish film-making charities. And millions of users around the world should be able to access such products without having to get through the eye of the copyright needle first. July 2007 blog post: Lawyers who locked up the butterfly tree
Can Satinder Bindra overcome these hurdles that have for so long inhibited UNEP from reaching its potential? We just have to wait and see.
When he talks about distribution being God, we have to readily agree. But he will soon find some elements within UNEP – or in crony partnerships with UNEP – that stand between him and this God.
To be fair, there’s only so much that an inter-governmental agency like UNEP – beholden to its member governments – can really accomplish. That’s why it needs partners from corporate, civil society, activist and academic spheres. Some of us can easily say and do things that UNEP would, in all sincerity, like to — but cannot.
Satinder sounds like he can forge broad alliances that go beyond monopolist partnerships. Here’s wishing him every success….for everyone’s sake!
That could well be a message from your local radio this weekend. Radio channels across Asia would be asking their listeners to turn off their lights for an hour or two today, 21 June 2008.
The Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (Abu), an alliance of (mostly government-owned) radio and television stations across Asia, has urged broadcasters to join a campaign to encourage listeners to “Turn off Your Lights” for one or two hours as a step to raise awareness of global warming.
According to Abu, the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) made the suggestion at a meeting in Tehran in November 2007. The Japanese broadcaster hopes that the event will encourage the public “to not only to save energy but to give consideration to wider global warming issues.”
Global warming and resulting climate change are such major concerns that every action counts. So we hope the Abu-inspired campaign, although hardly original, will be successful.
It might have made more sense for the broadcast alliance to be part of the more widely observed Earth Hour — an annual international event created by The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. It was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, and achieved worldwide participation in 2008.
As this composite NASA image of the Earth at night shows, energy use is proportionate to the level of economic activity and social development. Asia accounts for a good deal of the world’s lights at night.
But at the bigger picture level, broadcasters can and must do a great deal more than merely talk about the multi-faceted, rapidly-evolving issue. For a start, they need to take a closer look at their own industry, which is not known to be particularly efficient in its resource and energy use.
I’ve been writing and talking about the need for the TV broadcast and film-making industries to become more climate friendly (even if everybody can’t immediately become carbon-neutral). These industries are not particularly known for their energy or resource use efficiency.
We heard passionate and articulate views from radio and television managers in Asia on how the airwaves can carry various messages that would sensitise governments, industry and individuals on the climate crisis — and how to live with its many impacts. But I was frustrated that the session was entirely on broadcasters carrying climate change related news and content.
All that’s necessary – but not sufficient. Surely, carrying relevant content is only one part of what broadcasters can do. When it was question time, I asked the more than 400 media managers in the audience: how can our own industries reorient core operations to become more climate friendly?
I noted that a good deal of carbon dioxide – the principal gas that warms up the planet – is emitted by the radio and TV production and broadcast processes, through the use of lights, cameras, transportation and transmitters, etc. Broadcast Television, in particular, is on a high energy mode with a fondness for dazzling lights, super-cooled studios and heavy production gear. The digital revolution has helped bring down size and weight, but it’s not yet a particularly light-weight business.
And energy is consumed not just at the production and transmission end, but when signals are received too. News from that front is not very encouraging: new plasma screens for High-definition Television (HDTV), the trendy new wave, gobble up more power at the viewing end too.
Have Asia Pacific companies engaged in the broadcast industry addressed these integral issues? How many of them calculate carbon dioxide emissions from their day-to-day operations and offset it by comparable investments in renewable energy or support for community-operated greening efforts?
I didn’t get clear answers to any of these questions from the dozens of movers and shakers in Asian broadcasting in the audience — which indicated that these concerns have not been given sufficient thought.
This was disappointing, but I can only hope it doesn’t stay that way for too long. Other players in the communication sector, such as telecom companies, have already started addressing industry-wide, smart contributions they can make in the pursuit of a more climate friendly society.
So here’s the challenge to radio and TV broadcasters across Asia: by all means, ask your audiences to turn unnecessary lights off every now and then, or even every day. But like charity, good climate conduct begins at home. It’s just not enough being a diligent distributor of climate messages or a mirror of contemporary society’s attempts to adopt climate-friendly lifestyles.
To confront climate change effectively and sincerely, broadcasters must turn those bright lights on to themselves — and adopt meaningful, lasting ways to contain and then reduce their own industry’s emissions.
That’s when they can switch from being part of the problem to part of the solution.
This is a view of what I see when I look out from the upstair back balcony of my home. And I’m so privileged to have this much of greenery in my backyard.
I live in Pagoda, Nugegoda, a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo. This is a crowded, urbanised area, but there still are a few pockets of greenery left. Like this one, that I clicked with my daughter Dhara’s camera on June 5, World Environment Day.
All this greenery is packed into an area no more than a few hundred square metres in extent – it’s really small. But at the same time, it has a concentration of larger trees like coconut, jak fruit and arecanut as well as a good deal of shrubs and undergrowth. And it attracts creatures who are looking for an oasis in a neighbourhood that is increasingly built up.
Last Christmas, I gifted a small, inexpensive digital camera to Dhara, who just turned 12. She has been having lots of fun in the past few months, shooting people and what little of Nature that she can find in our corner of suburbia.
It’s no rainforest for sure, but she’s captured images of several species of birds, snails, a lone monkey and even a couple of rabbits (Okay – these are being raised by a neighbour and aren’t exactly in the wild! But 30 years ago, we did find rabits in the wild in this same area…)
But this level of biodiversity might not last too long. In recent weeks, the little patch of suburban jungle in my backyard has come under siege. Apparently a change of ownership has taken place, and the new owners are drawing up plans to clear the land and build one or more houses. Already, some of the larger trees have been felled (they didn’t seem to value the timber either – they just chopped the trees and carried them away – for dumping?).
So in the near future, as the march of ‘progress’ claims yet another bit of unbuilt land, these photos may be all we are left with.
By happy coincidence, the same week my friend and eminent scientist Ray Wijewardene emailed me this poem which I first read many years ago. I’m very grateful to Ray for sharing this in the same week that I was lamenting the imminent demise of my wonderfully green backyard.
TREES…
A poem by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earths sweet flowing breast
A tree that looks art God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray.
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
The theme for this year’s World Environment Day (WED), being marked on 5 June 2008, is Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy.
Responding to worldwide concerns on climate change, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is asking countries, companies and communities to focus on greenhouse gas emissions and how to reduce them. UNEP says it plans to “highlight resources and initiatives that promote low carbon economies and life-styles, such as improved energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, forest conservation and eco-friendly consumption”.
All this is well and good — except that the United Nations does not practise what it preaches. UNEP or any other part of the UN system telling the world to kick the carbon habit is a bit like a heavily drunken person extolling the virtues of staying off liquor. It just doesn’t sound credible.
Let me explain. Having been a UN-watcher and critical cheer-leader of the UN system (though not always of individual agencies), I have personally seen how carbon thrift – or indeed, any kind of thrift – is not a strong point in that system.
Consider these well known facts.
The UN has long been known as a formidable ‘paper factory’ because of the millions of documents it cranks out every year. On an average, it produces over 700 million printed pages every year (2005 figures). The cost of printing documents in its New York and Geneva offices is over 250 million dollars annually. IPS May 2005 story: World’s celebrated paper factory tries to save forests
And despite recent claims of trying to become carbon neutral, the UN system – including specialised agencies – convene thousands of international meetings every year. Only a few of them produce tangible outputs (some merely agree to meet again!) and even fewer are covered in the public media. But beneath media’s radar and public scrutiny, the UN officials and their buddies (mostly) in governments continue to huddle together in key world cities and some exotic locations.
It would be worth investigating if the number and magnitude of numerous meetings convened by the UN system have shown any marked decrease since climate concerns rose to the top of the public agenda during the past couple of years.
Similarly, with the rise of electronic means of information storage and distribution, it would be interesting to find out if the UN’s endless churning out of paper-based documents has been reduced.
I doubt if either has happened, but we can keep looking for some evidence.
What I have noticed in recent months is the proliferation of meetings – convened or endorsed by the UN system – that address different aspects of climate change. That has become the latest excuse for the development set and its academic friends to have endless physical meetings.
The contradictions and incongruities reach dizzy heights when agencies like the International Telecommunications Union – keeping track of the world’s telecom and ICT developments – convene meeting after meeting to discuss how ICTs can help mitigate climate change.
On this World Environment Day, let’s turn things around — and ask the United Nations secretariat and its specialised agencies (especially UNEP) to heed their own clarion call. Let change begin with them, and let’s see how (and if) the UN sets an example for the rest of the world.
So here’s a modest proposal that can have far-reaching benefits for the planet. Adopt and strictly observe for a year or two a moratorium on all large UN gatherings (no matter what they are called – Summits, conferences, symposia, meetings, etc.) that involve more than 500 persons. In this day and age of advanced telecommunications, it is possible to consult widely without always bringing people physically together.
It’s not just the carbon emissions of air travel that I’m talking about (aviation accounts for less than 5% of worldwide carbon emissions). Much more important is the message such UN austerity would send out to the world. Practising what you preach has a strong moral persuasive power — even if it goes against addictive habits formed for over 60 years of the UN’s history.
After all, the UN wants everyone on the planet to ‘kick the habit’. So let the ladies and gentlemen of the UN Secretariat and agencies lead by personal and institutional example — kicking their own addiction for meetings, more meetings and more paper.
PS: Don’t be too shy to turn up at Hydrocarbons Anonymous.
Declaration of interest: I have attended my share of UN meetings in the past 20 years, but the last mega event I joined was WSSD in Johannesburg in mid 2002. In 2007, I declined three sponsored invitations to go to Bali, and now selectively attend very few small meetings that promise clear focus and output.
I’m just coming up for fresh air after two hectic weeks – this blog was silent during that time as I was deep immersed in doing something new and interesting.
With my team at TVE Asia Pacific, I’m involved in producing a new TV series started airing on May 22 on Sri Lanka’s ratings-leading, privately-owned, most popular channel, Sirasa TV.
Named Sri Lanka 2048, it is an innovative series of one-hour television debates that explore prospects for a sustainable future for Sri Lanka in the Twenty First Century.
Each debate will involves -– as panel and studio audience -– over two dozen Sri Lankans from academic, civil society, corporate and government backgrounds. They are recorded ‘as live’ and broadcast every Thursday at 10.45 pm, which, in Sri Lankan TV viewing patterns, is the favoured time for serious current affairs and political programmes.
The editorially independent series will accommodate a broad spectrum of expertise and opinion.
The debates are based on topics such as managing our waste, reducing air pollution, protecting biodiversity on land and in the seas, and buffering communities from disasters. Two debates in English will look at the nexus between business and the environment, and coping with climate change.
The series is based on the overall premise that Sri Lanka has abundant land and ocean resources that can be used to build such a future -– but it faces many challenges in taking the right action at the right time. We believe that public discussion and debate on issues, choices and alternatives is an essential part of this process. Read more on why this series.
Why 2048? For one thing, it’s the year Sri Lanka will mark 100 years of political independence. Being 40 years in the future, the year lies slightly more than a generation ahead, allowing ample time and opportunity to resolve deep-rooted problems of balancing development with conservation.
Sri Lanka 2048 follows an informal, talk show format that allows ample interaction between the panel and empowered audience. Although they take place within a clearly defined scope that enables some focus, all debates are unscripted.
Our amiable moderator Kingsly Rathnayaka (centre in the photo montage above), one of the most versatile presenters on Sri Lankan television today, keeps the panel and audience engaged. By design, we ask more questions than we are able to answer in a television hour (48 mins). But then, we don’t expect to resolve these burning issues in that time – all we can hope to do is to stretch the limits of public discussion.
Logistics and studio size limit the number of our audience to a two dozen. We’ve tried hard to ensure a good mix among them, drawn from all walks of life. To bring in additional voices and perspectives, we insert into each debate 2 or 3 short video reports produced in advance. These highlight solutions to environment or development problems that have been tried out by individuals, communities, NGOs, government agencies or private companies. Played at key points during debates, these help steer discussion in a particular direction.
Sri Lanka 2048 is the culmination of months of research, development and pre-production work carried out by TVE Asia Pacific’s production team in collaboration with IUCN Sri Lanka. Our preparatory work involved consultations with dozens of experts, activists, officials, entrepreneurs – and their various organisations or companies. We synthesize and package their information, opinions and experiences with the dynamic and creative production team at MTV Channel (Pvt) Limited.
The inspiration for this series came from my mentor Sir Arthur C Clarke, with whom I wrote an essay 10 years ago that outlined his personal vision for his adopted country in 2048. The celebrated futurist that he was, Sir Arthur often said that there is a range of possible futures, and our actions – and inaction – determine what kind of future actually happens. Desirable futures don’t just happen; they need to be worked on.
Sri Lanka 2048 is an attempt to discuss how Sri Lankans can pursue economic prosperity without trading off their good health, natural wealth and public order. This is not a series preaching narrowly focused green messages to a middle class audience. We want to rise above and beyond the shrill of green activists, and engage in informed, wide ranging discussions on the tight-rope balancing act that emerging economies like Sri Lanka have to perform between short term economic growth and long term health of people and ecosystems.
Contrary to popular perception, ‘sustainable development’ is not some utopian or technical ideal of environmental activists. It’s about creating a liveable society here and today – where everyone has an acceptable quality of life, ample opportunities to learn and earn, and the freedom to pursue their own dreams.
Doing good television takes a good deal of time, effort and money. This TV series is supported under the Raising Environmental Consciousness in Society (RECS) project of IUCN Sri Lanka, which is funded by the Government of the Netherlands. But neither is responsible for editorial content or analysis, which rests on my shoulders as the executive producer of the series.
And I, in turn, stand on the shoulders of dedicated, hard working production teams drawn from TVE Asia Pacific and MTV Channel (Pvt) Limited. Doing good television is all team work.
The leading Indian newspaper The Hindu has just published (on 4 May 2008) my article on the future of food, based on the views of Sir Arthur C Clarke. It can be found here.
I originally wrote this article in mid 2000, based on an interview with the late Sir Arthur Clarke. It was produced at the request of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which included it in an information pack to mark World Food Day in October that year. No doubt they circulated it among the charmed development circle, but as far as I know (or Google can find), it never appeared in a public media outlet – until now.
I came across this in the weeks following Sir Arthur’s death on March 19, when I was going through manuscripts of our collaborative essays and my interviews with him over the years. The Hindu‘s Sunday Magazine, which earlier printed my essay on Sir Arthur’s views on nuclear weapons in South Asia, agreed to publish it, which they did on 4 May 2008.
The essay, written in Sir Arthur’s first person narrative, makes a number of points that are very relevant to discussions on today’s global food crisis. In fact, these points are more valid today than when they were first made eight years ago.
An extract:
“Meeting everybody’s basic nutritional needs requires a combined approach of the mind and heart – of intellect and compassion. How can we explain the fact that one sixth of humanity goes to bed hungry every night, when the world already produces enough food for all?
“The short answer is that there are serious anomalies in the distribution of food. Capricious and uncaring market forces prevent millions of people from having at least one decent meal a day, while others have an abundance. For the first time in history, the number of severely malnourished persons now equals the number suffering from over-consumption: about a billion each!
“To adapt a remark that my late friend Buckminster Fuller once made about energy: there is no shortage of food on this planet; there is, however, a serious shortage of intelligence. And, I might add, compassion.
Sir Arthur then runs up his famous ‘crystal ball’ to gaze at the near and far future on how humanity can feed itself without damaging the planet. He offers some useful lateral thinking and suggests some unlikely new sources of food.
But all these are short term solutions, he says, because “eventually, the matter will be resolved when we are able to synthesise all the food we ever need, thus no longer depending on other animals to satisfy our hunger.”
Towards the end of the essay, he takes the big picture view:
“Improved communications and the free flow of information will not, by themselves, eradicate either hunger or poverty — but they can be instrumental in the struggle to create a world without these. And when the world’s collective conscience finally succeeds in mobilising sufficient political will and resources to banish those twin scourges, we will be left with another, far more insatiable but far less destructive substitute — the hunger for knowledge and wisdom.”
I just wrote a blog post titled Children of Heaven: Appreciating the sound of silence. Reviewing the 1997 movie by Majid Majidi, I remarked about his strategic use of silences in his soundtrack – we must never underestimate its power in the right place.
Other creators of moving images do their magic with a good sound track – but sometimes without using a word of dialog. Here’s a clever example I’ve found on YouTube – it is by Italy’s leading animator, Bruno Bozzetto (photos below, courtesy Bruno Bozzetto website).
Bruno Bozzetto
Titled Femminile & Maschile (Feminine and Masculine), this 2-D animation was made in 2004. I can’t find a synopsis online, but one website introduced it simply as follows: Some situations that show the difference of behaviour between men and women in the everyday life.
Anyone with a sense of humour can appreciate this piece – and I hope that includes die-hard feminists…
Here’s the intro from Wikipedia:
Bruno Bozzetto (born March 3, 1938 in Milan, Italy) is an Italian cartoon animator, creator of many short pieces, mainly of a political or satirical nature. He created his first animated short “Tapum! the weapons’ story” in 1958 at the age of 20. His most famous character, a hapless little man named “Signor Rossi” (Mr. Rossi), has been featured in many animated shorts as well as starring in three feature films: “Mr. Rossi Looks for Happiness” (1976), “Mr. Rossi’s Dreams” (1977), and “Mr. Rossi’s Vacation” (1977). Read the rest of his profile on Wikipedia
Earlier this week, to mark Earth Day on 22 April 2008, I took part in a half hour, live interview with Sri Lanka’s highest rated, most popular channel, Sirasa TV. I wanted to relate the global to not just the local but also to the individual and family level. To discuss how our lifestyle choices and consumer decisions affect that planet, I used a series of brilliant cartoon animations that Bruno Bozzetto had done some years ago for WWF.
Again, without having his characters utter a single word, Bozzetto gives out profound messages through images and musical sound track. This is why I keep saying that when it comes to the sheer economy of words, we writers just can’t beat cartoonists.
Sorry, I can’t locate these anywhere online (YouTube lists dozens of his other creations, but not this series — which I can’t even find on his own website.) It’s time for someone to revive this series, for their message is even more relevant for today’s climate-challenged world…
I seem to be writing many obituaries and tributes these days. Following the several I wrote on Sir Arthur C Clarke and the blog post I did on Cambidian photojournalist Dith Pran, I want to share this tribute I wrote today on a senior Sri Lankan journalist who embarked on her final voyage this weekend.
Mallika Wanigasundara:
Trail-blazer in issue-based journalism
Mallika Wanigasundara, who passed away on 4 April 2008 aged 81, was a talented and sensitive Sri Lankan journalist who went in search of causes and process that shape the everyday news headlines. In doing so, she blazed new trails in issue-based journalism, covering topics ranging from health and environment to children, women and social justice.
It was only last year that the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Press Institute presented her the Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal for Excellence in Journalism.
Mallika was associated with the Sri Lankan media in one capacity or another for over half a century. Starting her professional career in 1956 with the Sinhala evening daily Janatha, she later moved on to English language journalism at Lake House where she worked first in The Observer and then at Daily News. It was as Features Editor of this oldest English daily that she played a key role in practising and nurturing development journalism. She helped evolve the genre to new levels of professionalism, liberating it from the typecast of politically motivated, sometimes fabricated ‘sunshine’ stories that had been forced on the state-owned Lake House newspapers during the 1970s.
Mallika also helped put Sri Lanka on the world map of development journalism. Beginning in the early 1980s, she contributed Sri Lankan stories to Depthnews, published by the Press Foundation of Asia based in Manila, and to Panos Features, syndicated globally by the Panos Institute in London. In those pre-web days, these services – when printed in newspapers and magazines – were among the most dependable sources for ground level reporting from far corners of the world. (Alas, both services have since gone the way of the Dodo – not to mention Asiaweek, South and Gemini.)
Although I grew up in the 1980s reading her writing in Daily News, my own contacts with Mallika were few and far between. The first was indirect and happened in the late 1980s, when as an eager young reporter I started contributing to Panos Features, syndicated from London to several hundred newspapers around the world. Mallika remained the Panos Sri Lanka correspondent and I was merely a stringer. Donatus de Silva, then head of programmes at Panos London, somehow found a clear niche for both of us. At the time, Mallika and I exchanged occasional communications.
As a novice, I studied Mallika’s approach and style, and emulated them both. Hers was an easy, reader-friendly prose: it brought in both expert views and grassroots insights, but with none of the technicality or pomposity – and very little editorialising. Although she was fully supportive of the various social and environmental causes, she didn’t allow activist rhetoric to dominate her journalism. She also ventured beyond the predictable ‘green’ issues to cover many ‘brown’ issues. Two decades after the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development (1987) that thrust sustainable development into the global agenda, it’s precisely this kind of journalism that’s needed to make sense of our fast-moving, slowly-baking, topsy-turvy world.
Mallika continued to be an active freelancer after she retired from Lake House. She seemed more prolific in retirement – she continued to chronicle the rise of the environmental movement in Sri Lanka, which emerged from citizen campaigns to save the Sinharaja rain forest from state-sponsored logging and evolved through crises and protests in the 1980s and beyond.
In 1990, she was selected by the United Nations Environment Programme for the Global 500 award that recognised environmental achievements of individuals and organisations. She was the first Sri Lankan journalist to be thus honoured, and one of only four Sri Lankans to be inducted into this global roll of honour that eventually included over 600 persons or entities worldwide.
At the time, I was hosting a weekly TV quiz show on Rupavahini (national TV) and decided to set one of my questions on Mallika receiving the Global 500. I phoned her to offer my congratulations and asked for a photo that we may use on the TV show. She was happy to be the basis of a question, but declined giving a photo, saying: ‘I don’t look good in photos or on TV’.
It was characteristic of many accomplished journalists of her generation that they remained mostly in the background, shaping news coverage and analysis. Some even didn’t nurture a personal by-line, writing under pseudonyms or simply not signing their names on their work. What a contrast with the image-conscious, in-your-face radio and TV journalism of today, where even respected newspaper editors eagerly pursue parallel careers as talk show hosts or TV pundits.
Author and underwater explorer Arthur C Clarke, who died last week aged 90, may not have been a placard-carrying, greener-than-green environmental activist. But in his own unique style, he supported a range of environmental concerns – from the conservation of gorillas, whales and dolphins (among his favourite species) to the search for cleaner energy sources that would enable humanity to kick its addiction to oil.
This interest was sustained to the very end. In his last public speech delivered a month before his demise, he stressed: “There has never been a greater urgency to restore our strained relationship with the Earth.”
In that address, which he had recorded from his sick bed in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in early February, Sir Arthur said:
“The International Year of Planet Earth is being observed at a crucial juncture in our relationship with the planet. There are now clear signs that our growing numbers and our many activities are impacting the Earth’s natural systems, causing planetary stress.”
He added: “We have had local or regional indicators of this stress for decades, and more recently we have confirmed our unmistakable role in climate change. If we’re looking for the smoking gun, we only need to look in the mirror…”
He outlined his wish for the ambitious IYPE, which is led by geoscientists around the world to raise more awareness and inspire action on understanding how our planet works. “I sincerely hope that the Year of Planet Earth would mark a turning point in how we listen to Earth’s distress call — and how we respond to it with knowledge, understanding and imagination.”
The full text of Sir Arthur’s greeting is found as a pdf on IYPE’s official website, which also offers the actual greeting as an audio file – but only in Apple Quicktime. For those who are not part of that limited universe, I reproduce Sir Arthur’s speaking text in full below.
I had the privilege of once again working on this text with Sir Arthur as I did for many years on various other video/audio greetings and essays. This was originally going to be a video greeting, but we decided to just capture it in audio as Sir Arthur was confined to bed with a back injury since early 2008.
Audio greeting by Sir Arthur C Clarke
to the global launch event of International Year of Planet Earth 2008
UNESCO Headquarters, Paris: 12 – 13 February 2008
Hello! This is Arthur Clarke, speaking from my home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
I’m very happy to join you on this occasion, when the International Year of Planet Earth is being inaugurated at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
I’m sorry that my health does not permit me to join you in person.
I have fond memories of attending major international conferences at UNESCO over the years. I’ve always cherished my close association with the organisation, especially since I received the UNESCO-Kalinga prize for popularisation of science in 1961 – a date that now seems to belong to the Jurassic era!
The International Year of Planet Earth is being observed at a crucial juncture in our relationship with the planet. There are now clear signs that our growing numbers and our many activities are impacting the Earth’s natural systems, causing planetary stress. We’ve had local or regional indicators of this stress for decades, and more recently we’ve confirmed our unmistakable role in climate change. If we’re looking for the smoking gun, we’ve only got to look in the mirror…
So there has never been a greater urgency to restore our strained relationship with the Earth.
In such a conversation, who speaks for the Earth?
Almost 30 years ago, my late friend astronomer Carl Sagan posed this question in his trail-blazing television series Cosmos. And this is how he answered it:
“Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring!”
I sincerely hope that the Year of Planet Earth would mark a turning point in how we listen to Earth’s distress call — and how we respond to it with knowledge, understanding and imagination.
My mind goes back to the International Geophysical Year, which was observed in 1957 – 58. Both the former Soviet Union and the United States launched artificial satellites during that period, thus ushering in the Space Age. Going to space was an important evolutionary step for our species – one that distinguishes our period in history from all the preceding ones. For the first time, we could look back on our home planet from a vantage point in space, and that gave us a totally new perspective.
The beautiful images of Earth from space inspired much public interest that led to the Earth Day and the global environmental movement in the 1970s.
Of course, I’ve suggested that ‘Earth’ is a complete misnomer for our planet when three quarters of it is covered by ocean. But I guess it’s a bit too late now to change the name to planet Ocean!
Fifty years after the IGY and the dawn of the Space Age, do we know enough about how our planet operates?
Thanks to advances in earth sciences and space sciences, we have unravelled many mysteries that baffled scientists for generations. We now monitor the land, atmosphere and ocean from ground-based and space-based platforms. Armies of scientists are pouring over tera-bytes of data routinely gathered by our many sentinels keeping watch over our planet.
We don’t yet fully understand certain phenomena, and there are still gaps in how we process and disseminate scientific knowledge. This is why, for example, the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 arrived without public warnings in Sri Lanka and many other coastal regions. Within minutes of the undersea quake off Sumatra, geologists and oceanographers around the world knew what was happening. But they lacked the means of reaching authorities who could evacuate people to safety.
For this reason, I’m very glad to hear that the Year of Planet Earth is placing equal emphasis on creating new knowledge and its public outreach. Today, more than ever, we need the public understanding and engagement of science. As UNESCO has been advocating for 60 years, public engagement is essential for
science to influence policy and improve lives.
In fact, with our planet under stress, we often have to act before we fully understand some natural processes. That is where we have to combine our best judgement and imagination.
We also need to change the way our resources and energy are used. Our modern civilisation depends on energy, but we can’t allow oil and coal to slowly bake all life on our planet. In my 90th birthday reflections a few weeks ago, I listed three wishes I dearly want to see happen. One of them is to kick our current addiction to oil, and instead adopt clean energy sources. For over a decade, I’ve been monitoring various new energy experiments, which have yet to produce commercial scale results. Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency to this quest.
So we face many challenges as we embark on the International Year of Planet Earth. I hope this year’s many activities will help us to better listen to our home planet, and then to act with knowledge and imagination.
This is Arthur Clarke, wishing you every success in this endeavour.
Open Minds! 