Sustainable Development – Page 34

The view from a Dhaka gutter: South Asia’s urban nightmare

There I was, coming out of a Dhaka gutter, badly shaken and splattered with the mega-city’s assorted muck.

A minute earlier, I had stepped right into it in the semi-darkness of the evening. I had no idea it was coming. One moment I was walked on the side of a busy but not-too-well-lit street in the Bangladeshi capital. The next, I was thigh-deep inside an open drain carrying municipal waste and drain water.

In the fading light, the blackness of the tarred road and the gutter water merged seamlessly, creating an illusion of solid surface.

My friend Shahidul Alam (below, right, with me in a happier moment), who was a few feet away, moved fast and pulled me out. As I felt my legs and feet, I realised how lucky I had been: in spite of falling two feet deep, I was unhurt – no cuts and bruises, not even a scrape (thank goodness I was wearing shoes).

Shahidul was taking me out for dinner, and then to the airport, but Dhaka’s evening traffic had wrecked our plans. We were caught in an enormous jam caused by Bashundhara City, the US Dollar 100 million shopping mall said to be South Asia’s largest (and 12th largest in the world). There was some incongruity in that, but we were keen to get to a restaurant where we had a rendezvous with some other friends.

In the event, we were too delayed and I was risking missing my flight. So Shahidul, the excellent host that he always is, decided to buy me some take-away food that I could eat on the way to the airport. He parked his car near a wayside eatery, and called me out to choose what I’d like.

I was walking a few steps behind him when I fell into the open, concealed gutter.

If I had to fall right down to Earth, I couldn’t have chosen a better date: it was Earth Day, 22 April 2006.

After I was pulled out of the gutter, we had to move quickly. I was three hours away from my flight to Singapore, and there was no way any airline would carry someone in my condition. I had already checked out of my Dhaka hotel, and in any case that was almost two hours behind us in another part of the city.

Shahidul approached the staff in a nearby restaurant – a very ordinary one – and explained what had happened. The Bengali hospitality and kindness snapped into action. I was given immediate access to their modest wash room, where I washed and changed into clothes pulled out of my travel bag.

I had to reluctantly dump my well-used pair of shoes. Shahidul lent me his sandals, and found a taxi to rush me to the airport while he’d team up with the others to join the belated dinner.

I made it to the airport – and the flight – in good time. And as far as I could tell, no one gave me strange looks as I winged my way to Singapore. After all that excitement, I even managed to get some sleep on the flight.

But I had no illusions about what happened. For one thing, I’d escaped with no injury of any kind. For another, I had merely glimpsed and only very slightly experienced a daily reality for millions of city dwellers across developing Asia.

I should know. I live in suburban Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, which has its own problems of waste disposal and cleanliness. The only difference is that in mega-cities like Dhaka (estimated population close to 12 million), the issues are multiplied and magnified.

We who live in middle class ‘oases’ within these cities tip-toe around the worst realities that the poorer citizens grapple with on a daily basis. They lack the choices that we have.

As a development journalist, I’ve written about urban sprawl, mega-cities and environmental challenges in developing Asia, where more people are now living in cities than ever before in history. UN Habitat says half of humanity has now become city dwellers. With their misleading image as centres of vast opportunity and prosperity, cities are a magnet to millions of rural poor. Like Dick Wittington, who thought the streets of London were paved with gold, they migrate to towns and cities in search of better lives. Most end up swelling the already burgeoning cities, exchanging their rural poverty for urban squalor.

Falling thigh-deep into a Dhaka gutter for a minute or two is no big deal when compared to the unsafe, unclean environments that they live in, every day and every night.

And they can’t just walk into a wayside restaurant, wash away the muck, and catch the next flight to clean, safe and landscaped Singapore.

Read my December 2006 essay, Grappling with Asia’s Tsunami of the Air

Photograph by Dhara Gunawardene

A hummingbird calls out to the world

Earth Day was observed worldwide on Sunday, April 22.

Among the many activities that took place that day was the premiere of a new documentary film, Call of the Hummingbird, at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival.

Its promotional material says the film picks up from where An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore’s Oscar-award winning film on climate change) left off: the film raises questions about what we need to change even about the way we make change.

The film, made by Alice Klein, a magazine editor and documentary filmmaker in Toronto, tracks the 13 days when some 1,000 teachers, eco-activists, farmers, Mayans, Rastafarians, holistic health-workers, non-governmental organisation executives and student leaders from all over Latin America and a few from Europe and North America camped out together in central Brazil in 2005.

Their purpose was to live on the land and co-create a temporary peace eco-village in harmony with nature and each other. It wasn’t easy or harmonious. There were problems with garbage, sanitation and, not surprisingly given the diversity of their backgrounds, simply getting along with each other.

According to the film’s website:

It turns out that this is no easy task. Welcome to Survivor for social change addicts.

This verite journey documented in autumn 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, by a small crew of three Canadians, two Americans and one Mexican, was propelled by a sense of urgency that almost anyone reading the news feels these days.

In a story datelined 21 April 2007 filed from Toronto, Inter Press Service quoted Alice Klein as saying:
“This world is ending; we need to lay the foundations for a new world. We have a great opportunity to make a better world.”

The report added:
“There is very little training or study in our formal education systems about conflict resolution and how to get along with each other,” says Klein, noting that, instead, we are constantly exposed to violent and conflict-ridden programming in our media.

Watch clips from Call of the Hummingbird

Read Earth Day press release for Call of the Hummingbird

Can journalists save the planet?

Earth’s city lights at night: this is one of my favourite images. Without a single word, it says so much about resource and energy use disparities on our planet.

It also reminds us of the biggest challenge we face: to better manage our affairs so that life — and lights — are not snuffed out.

“The Earth is one, but the world is not.”

These perceptive words opened the final report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), published 20 years ago this month.

Titled Our Common Future, it was the outcome of over 900 days of worldwide consultations and deliberations by experts, activists, government officials, industrialists and a cross section of ordinary people from all walks of life.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, that report made a deep impression on myself just when I was getting started in journalism.

Two decades on, there’s much unfinished business. In an editorial just published by the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net), I take a closer look at the role of journalists in pursuit of that elusive goal of sustainable development.

Here’s a short excerpt:

But environmental journalists can, at best, only weave part of the multi-faceted tapestry of sustainable development. Grasping the bigger picture, and communicating it well, requires the active participation of the entire media industry — from reporters, producers and feature writers to editors, managers and media owners.

Climate change — rapidly emerging as today’s charismatic mega-issue — could provide the means for unifying media and communication industries for this purpose.

Already, there is recognition of climate change’s far-reaching impacts. Echoing the United Kingdom’s Stern Review on the economics of climate change, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is pushing for climate change to be ‘rebranded’ as a development, rather than an environmental, problem.

In this scenario, we urgently need more good journalism that covers sustainable development as an integral part of mainstream human affairs.

Read the full editorial on SciDev.Net

Note:
The composite image of Earth at night was created by NASA with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s surface.

MDG: A message from our spin doctors?

References to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are popping out of every UN document, speech and communication product these days. Each agency and official seem to be keen to outdo all others in living and swearing by this new ‘development mantra’ of our times.

MDGs are an international blueprint for human development, with eight major goals to be achieved by 2015. These goals are the means of implementing the Millennium Declaration — to which 189 governments committed at the UN Millennium Summit held in 2000.

But important as they are, the MDGs are only a means to an end, even if an extremely worthwhile one. If we lose sight of that, we risk allowing the MDG ‘dog’ to wag the development ‘dog’.

Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

Speaking at OUR Media 6 conference in Sydney this week, Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron, Managing Director – Programmes of the Communication for Social Change Consortium, cautioned about development agencies engaging in too much spin or public relations, and too little real communication.

Alfonso, a widely experienced and highly respected practitioner and thinker in development communication, lamented how institutional publicity is taking a much higher priority than communication as a social process that gives a voice to the communities and players involved.

Ah, finally a dev-com heavyweight echoes what I’ve been saying for some time! At every UN and media platform I could access in the past couple of years, I’ve stressed that catalysing wide ranging public discussion and debate on the MDGs’ core issues is far more important than simply enhancing ‘brand recognition’ for MDGs themselves. (That’s useful too, but as part of a wider process.)

On the eve of the MDG+5 Summit at UN Headquarters in September 2005, I wrote in an editorial published by SciDev.Net:

Today’s MDG promoters need to revisit some of the more successful development efforts of the past few decades — such as promoting universal human rights, eradicating smallpox, popularising oral rehydration salts, and wiping out Southern debt — and study the role good communication played in each.

Those in the UN system, in particular, have to find more creative ways of getting the MDG message across. In my view, MDG ‘branding’ is not what is important; it is the core set of issues that MDGs embody that need mass attention and aggressive promotion.

We should also invoke the memory of past visionary leaders who navigated the treacherous inter-governmental minefields to talk truth to power. One was James Grant, former executive director of the UN children’s agency, turned UNICEF into a formidable global brand.

One of Grant’s enduring remarks concerned the silent emergency of several thousand children (and adults) dying everyday from preventable diarrhoeal diseases. It was, he pointed out repeatedly, as if several jumbo jets full of children were crashing everyday — and nobody took any notice.

That metaphor might lack political correctness in the post-11 September era. But the message was loud and clear. Grants’ one time deputy at UNICEF, Tarzie Vittachi, was another master at summing up complex development issues in memorable ways. When he was head of information at the UN population agency, the former newspaper editor used to remind everyone: ‘Governments don’t have babies; people do.’

Read my full editorial in SciDev.Net in September 2005: Simpler words are needed to get MDG message across

Moving images moving heart first, mind next

“Film is a lousy medium to communicate information. It works best at the emotional level.”

Bruce Moir, one of Australia’s seniormost film professionals made this remark soon after I had presented TVE Asia Pacific’s Children of Tsunami experience to OUR Media 6 conference in Sydney last afternoon.

After more than 35 years in documentary and feature film production for both cinematic and broadcast industries, in different parts of the English speaking world, Bruce knows a thing or two about moving people with moving images.

I was delighted and privileged to have Bruce join my presentation. He’d come at my invitation to the conference happening in his city.

“We’ve got to remember that film appeals to people’s hearts more than their minds,” Bruce explained. “The way to people’s heads is through their hearts, from the chest upwards — and not the other way round.”

I hope this was an ‘Aha!’ moment to at least some in our audience. I’ve personally heard Bruce say this before, but it bears repetition – because many film professionals tend to overlook this. Especially those who are trying to ‘communicate messages’.

Even a few weeks ago, I quoted him in a review as saying: “Our fundamental job is to tell a story – one that holds an audience’s interest and moves their heart, regardless of language, cultural context or subject….I have always believed that film achieves its optimal impact by aiming to ‘get at the audience’s head via their heart’ rather than the other way around.”

Bruce Moir

Without Bruce’s involvement, Children of Tsunami would have turned out to be very different. He was our Supervising Producer for the entire effort, advising and guiding our national film production teams tracking the progress of Tsunami survivor families in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand for one year afer the Asian Tsunami.

As Bruce recalled, the four teams came with different backgrounds, skill levels and film-making traditions of their own – ranging from television news and current affairs to development film-making, the type usually commissioned by UN agencies. Bringing them to be ‘on the same page’ was no easy task.

Film-makers are not particularly known for their patience or people-skills. Many I know have a ‘just-get-on-with-it-never-mind-the-niceties’ attitude. Bruce is one of the most patient persons I know: he would spend days and weeks relating to our production teams – usually by email or phone – gently nudging them in certain directions.

For sure, there’s no one right way to make a film. But there are some tried and tested principles in good story telling, which is what Bruce excels in. And which he willingly shares with others.

The year-long, 4-country and 8-location Children of Tsunami project was the biggest logistical operation TVE Asia Pacific has mounted in its 11 years of existence. (We’re in no great hurry to top that one!). Our production teams – operating from Bangkok, Colombo, Ubud (Indonesia) and Chennai – related to our regional production team based in two cities: Colombo, where TVEAP office is currently anchored, and Sydney, where Bruce lives.

We only came together face to face just once, in Bangkok, early on in the process. That meeting agreed on styles and formats, and also helped build the human relationships.

The rest of the time it was all through communications technologies. As you can imagine, lots of tapes moved around, as did many Gigabytes of video over the web. (DHL should have become a sponsor – they had lots of business from us!)

As I explained in my talk, Children of Tsunami was not just a film project. We published a monthly video report online on each of the eight families we were tracking, plus maintained a dedicated website with growing volumes of text, images and links. The monthly videos were edited and post-produced in the countries of filming, by our production teams themselves. It was distributed film-making, even if everyone worked to a common format.

With all that frenzy now behind us, the products of Children of Tsunami continue to be distributed, showcased and discussed at film festivals and conferences like OUR Media.

As I said yesterday to my predominantly academic audience: we’ve got a story telling and journalistic practice, and we now need a theory for it.

Children of Tsunami revisited two years later

Pacific ‘Voices from the Waves’ on climate change

Some of you have asked to share more information on Truth Talking: Voices from the Waves, the half-hour documentary on climate change and its impact on the South Pacific people that we produced in 2002.

It was the first-ever documentary on climate change and the South Pacific, made by a native Pacific islander (all films till then had been made by visiting foreign film crews). Directed and produced by Bernadette Masianini of Fiji (photo on extreme right below), its story was based on the experience and impressions of two teenagers growing up on two islands, a girl and boy, both facing uncertain futures.

Here’s what I wrote for the Truth Talking book that accompanied the film series.

Dilagi loves her village. Her parents and grandparents, and generations before them, were born and raised in this village. Her family has lived here for centuries, but by the time Dilagi has children of her own, her village might no longer exist.

In Fiji, where Dilagi lives, traditions and cultures are rooted in the home; the village is an integral part of a person’s identity. Like most of the eight million people who live in the Pacific island states, Dilagi’s village is located close to the sea. The bounty of the ocean has long sustained the islanders, but now the same waters have begun to threaten their future. Every year, the shoreline seems to move a little inland, and the beach gets a bit smaller. Before the current century ends, according to scientific projections, many low-lying Pacific islands will go under the rising seas either in part or full – and their histories, traditions and unique cultures will be lost forever.

Dilagi is somewhat aware of this perilous future, but can do nothing about it. The changes in global climate that are causing sea levels to rise and triggering severe storms and cyclones are the result of pollution and environmental degradation generated thousands of miles away in the industrialised world. Says Dilagi: “The villagers cannot understand why the waves are coming on to shore. They think these are signs that the end of the world is near.”

The Pacific contains 22 states, made up of thousands of small islands, with a multitude of cultures and traditions. Diverse as they are, they all share Dilagi and her neighbours’ concerns about the future.

Two thousand and five hundred kilometres north-east of Fiji, sitting on the island of Kiribati, Bernard stares at the same ocean that seems to be lashing out at his tiny island nation with increasing force every year. One of the lowest lying islands in the world, no place on Kiribati is higher than four metres (13 feet).

Building sea walls has provided only a temporary respite against the waves. Not even the grave yards or tombstones are spared. Bernard visits Mrs Saipolua’s house, which she has had to move twice to escape from rising seas. In her backyard, the gravestones of ancestors are being constantly battered by the waves. “Even the final resting places of our loved ones are not spared…the sea action had cracked the gravestones,” she says.

“With our islands being so small, the sea is our biggest resource,” says Bernard. “Over the years, the generations have perfected the ways to use the oceans respectfully for our survival. Ironically, it is the very ocean on which we depend that now threatens us.”

All Pacific islands – including Kiribati and Fiji — have their own unique culture and traditions. They may share the world’s largest ocean and sometimes common ethnicity, but no two island cultures are the same. From the way they collect their food to how they celebrate festivals, their traditions revolve around the geography and natural resources of the islands and the sea.

In this intricate tapestry weaving islands with humans, everything has a place and purpose. For example, the traditional dances entertain and also record the people’s history. Costumes for these dances are produced from plants unique to the Pacific and decorative garlands are made from the brightly coloured flowers. Extreme weather events and climate anomalies that now threaten the environment of these islands may soon drive many plants and animals into extinction. As Bernard asks, “If changes to the climate affect our environment, how long will these aspects of our culture survive?”

For a majority of Pacific island people, climate change is a very real concern that is already impacting them; it’s not a doomsday scenario sometime in the future. Closely linked as they are to their islands and the sea, they just cannot accept relocation in a far away land as a survival option.

“Everything I need in my life is here on this island — my elders, my parents, my friends,” says Bernard. “I cannot imagine life anywhere else, and I cannot imagine that I might have to go and live in another country if my islands are no longer habitable….”

From across the sea, Dilagi agrees: “Our villagers have lived here for hundreds of years. Their traditions and cultures are rooted in this area. They cannot imagine life anywhere else.”

Order this film on DVD or VHS from TVEAP e-shop

Wanted – Human face of climate change!

Now that scientists have spoken, loud and clear, things are beginning to happen on climate change — and not a moment too soon.

Venture capitalists, policy wonks, technology geeks, security analysts and social activists are all joining the conversation — thanks largely to the media’s increased coverage of the issue.

The threat of climate change is being taken seriously. The past few weeks have seen evidence of this. For example:

– The latest report from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, released on April 6, said greenhouse gas emissions are at least partly responsible for the warmer climate, which will pose a host of environmental and health challenges, ranging from more diseases to floods and droughts.

– In March 2007, an international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan to combat climate change, warning that failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displacing coastal populations.

And for the first time ever, the U.N. Security Council will discuss potential threats to international security from climate change.

These conversations will be richer and more meaningful if the ordinary people — who are most at direct risk from climate change’s multiple impacts — were heard in the corridors of power, money and deal-making.

We in the media must see beyond the important scientific projections, policy debates and UN talks — we must look for the human faces, voices and dimensions of climate change.

That’s the point I made in a recent essay published on TVE Asia Pacific website a few weeks ago. Here’s an extract:

A healthy mix of rational thinking and emotional appeal will stand a better chance of moving people to kick their addition to oil.

Allowing real people to tell their own personal experiences can also be very effective. I realised this five years ago, when we commissioned the first-ever documentary on climate change and the South Pacific, made by a native Pacific islander. Voices from the Waves, directed and produced by Bernadette Masianini of Fiji, was narrated by two teenagers growing up on two islands, each facing an uncertain future.

At one point we meet Mrs Saipolua, an ordinary woman who lives on the island of Kiribati, where no place is higher than a few feet above the sea. She is distressed having had to move her home twice in a past decade due to the receding shoreline.
For Kiribati’s 82,000 inhabitants, climate change is not theory; it’s already lashing on their beaches.

“Our house used to be in that spot,” Mrs Saipolua points to a place that’s now permanently submerged. “This is where we relocated to the second time.”

She points to several tombstones that are on the verge of being washed away. “Even the final resting places of our loved ones are not spared…..The sea action had cracked the gravestones.”

I’ve covered climate change for years as a science writer. But it was Mrs Saipolua who made me realise the impact climate change is having on millions of ordinary people who have never heard that term.

Fossil fuels and fossil fools in India

‘‘People in India, unlike the West, don’t understand the seriousness of climate change….They think global warming is a fantasy. Indians are using fossil fuel like never before. We have constructed oven-like buildings and spend enormous energy cooling them.’’

I came across these words by the well known Indian environmental film-maker Mike Pandey in an article in NewIndPress that surveyed how Indian documentary film-makers are rising to the challenge of communicating climate change.

The article, ‘Meltdown on Film’ published on 15 March 2007 highlights the formidable task of raising awareness in India, now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, consuming larger volumes of fossil fuels every year.

Mike knows what he’s talking about: his film Global Warming went largely unnoticed when it was released in India three years ago.

And he is one of India’s top notch film makers on environment, wildlife and natural history. He has won three Panda Awards — also known as the ‘Green Oscar’ — at the Wildscreen Film Festival held every other year in Bristol, UK — and considered to be the most important festival of its kind in the world. (Modest cough: I was on the jury of Wildscreen 2000, when we gave Mike one of his three Green Oscars.)

Viewer apathy is not the only problem that India’s environmental film-makers have to contend with. Here’s an extract from the article:

Like any environmentalist, our documentary filmmakers are “concerned” about issues like global warming. But the lacklustre reactions of research agencies (who ‘‘support” the cause but don’t really come forward to fund documentaries), zero interest from broadcasters who, according to one filmmaker, prefer ‘‘sexy environmental stories’’, together with viewer apathy, are the reasons why the few impressive documentary films on climate change vanish after a few screenings at festivals. Take the Public Service Broadcast Trust’s (PSBT) Open Frame, for instance, the annual documentary film festival held in Delhi. Or the roving environmental and wildlife film festival CMS Vatavaran, where open discussions are held after every screening. Barely a couple of films are chosen by the public broadcaster Doordarshan after they are screened at these two festivals, which is why most of the documentaries don’t ever reach the masses.

‘‘Public interest stories and documentaries are the last thing broadcasters want to show,’’ quips Pandey. ‘‘People like me are lucky to have found space on DD. Value-based programmes are nudged out so easily by broadcasters these days.”

The article continues:

A few years ago, when Mike Pandey returned to his favourite spot in Austria to capture a snowcap for one of his films, he was shocked to see it had melted. He says, ‘‘I had seen the ice cap the previous year. I had to go deeper into the area to get my shots. It’s common in Austria to see ice caps vanishing. You see blossoms and splendid crops in many areas.’’ After Earth Matters, which is being shown on Doordarshan, Pandey is coming up with a series of six films on global warming, which will talk about ‘‘using alternative energy for the future.’’

Whenever out for shoots at Lakshwadeep, Kochi and Gujarat, Mike has been noticing ‘‘visible changes’’ in ‘‘ocean ferocity’’ and where the sea neighbours the land. ‘‘The water has come in a bit more into the land over the years,’’ he observes.

‘‘You don’t have to be a scientist to notice these changes; you can see it all happening now. Unfortunately, people living along the Indian coastline will be the first ones to face any kind of major impact,’’ he adds.

On my visit to Hyderabad last week, I was told that there are now close to 50 TV channels that cover news and current affairs on a 24/7 basis (in English and other Indian languages). Yet this kind of news hardly seems to make the headlines….it’s probably moving too slowly.

Mike Pandey and other environmental film-makers have their work cut out for them.

“If (Indian cricketer) Sachin Tendulkar or (Bollywood star) Shah Rukh Khan loses his cell phone, the news will reach every nook and corner of the country, but the fact that iodine is essential for the human body is still not known widely,” Mike told India’s Frontline news magazine in 2004. Read full article: Nature’s film-maker in Frontline of 18-31 Dec 2004

Read TVE Asia Pacific website feature on Mike Pandey’s 2003 film on the whale shark in India

Anita Roddick, Angkor Wat and ‘development pill’

Dame Anita Roddick would have been proud of her mastery of Khmer.

There she was on a large screen, speaking in fluent Khmer, watched by over a thousand Cambodians women, children and men.

Time: One evening in December 2005
Place: A village temple close to the historic city of Siem Reap, Cambodia

There we were, practically in the shadow of the massive Angkor Wat temple complex, and trying to reach out to rural Cambodians on practical ways to live more sustainable lives.

The event was an evening of variety entertainment laced with some information and education. Colleagues at Action IEC, our Cambodian partner, knew exactly how to get this mix right. Amidst songs, drama, comedy and live competitions, they screened Hands On video films versioned into Khmer.

As the loudspeakers boomed and (Hands On host) Anita Roddick appeared on screen speaking in a strange tongue, I watched the audience closely. They were spell-bound: especially the children belied a sense of wonder.

But sustaining their attention is a big challenge. That evening’s 4-hr programme was the result of over a dozen Cambodian colleagues planning and working for days. It was part of the public outreach activity for Hands On films that we versioned into Khmer under a 4-country, Asian project called Localising Hands On in Asia.

The young and not-so-young in our audience that evening were there mainly for the fun and games. Rolling out Anita and Hands On was a clever ploy by Kosal, Cedric and other Cambodian colleagues. Call it ‘sugar-coating’ the development pill.

Oh yes, we also had the Khmer versioned programmes broadcast on Cambodia’s most popular TV channel (CTN). That engaged a different kind of audience. A passive broadcast can never really produce the kind of audience engagement we saw that evening.

In our efforts to engage Asia’s eyeballs and minds, we’ve made modest progress by proceeding parallely on broadcast and narrowcast fronts — but there is a great deal of unfinished business.

For details, visit Localising Hands On in Asia website

Added on 11 Sep 2007: Anita Roddick:We shall always remember you

Changing climate and moving images

Climate change is suddenly popping out of everywhere. Media outlets that couldn’t discern climate from weather not too long ago are covering the politics, technology, economics — and sometimes, science — of climate change.

We have to thank Al Gore and his Oscar-award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, for helping climate change to reach that tipping point. For sure, it has been building up for years, but it took moving images to really push it up the agenda.

While the political stature of its ‘star’ — and now, the Oscar – takes this film to a league of its own, it’s not the only global documentary about this important topic. In recent years, a number of factual and make-belief films have been made with climate change as their principal theme.

No wonder Hollywood is attracted to this subject – it offers the ultimate planetary disaster, even if it unfolds slowly over decades. That’s not a major constraint in the land of make-belief: in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), director Roland Emmerich just accelerated natural climatic processes to happen within weeks – with dramatic results for his story (and box office).

It may be convenient to take such liberties with the truth in fiction, but delivering factual and credible content involves bigger challenges. That requires balancing facts, opinions and interpretations while engaging today’s easily distracted audiences. The task becomes harder when the subject is as technical as climate change.