With extreme weather wreaking havoc around the world, increasingly erratic rainfall related to climate change will pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, especially in Africa and Asia, warns a new scientific report.

This will require increased investment in many types of water storage as an effective remedy, says the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

“Millions of farmers in communities dependent on rainfed agriculture are at risk from decreasing and erratic availability of water,” says Dr Colin Chartres, IWMI’s Director General. “Climate change will hit these people hard, so we have to invest heavily and quickly in adaptation.”

The non-profit, research institute released the report to coincide with World Water Week in Stockholm this week. The platform of events, which runs from 5 to 11 September 2010, is the year’s largest gathering of researchers, policy makers and activists concerned with managing the world’s freshwater resources.

The IWMI report argues against over-reliance on single solutions like big dams. Instead, it proposes an integrated approach that combines large and small scale storage options, including the use of water from natural wetlands, water stored in the soil, groundwater beneath the earth’s surface and water collected in ponds, tanks and reservoirs.

Dr Chartres also reiterates the same point in the latest edition of his web video, Colin’s STRAIGHTtalk, released online on 3 September 2010. The video was produced by TVE Asia Pacific for IWMI.

IWMI and its research partners estimate that up to 499 million people in Africa and Asia can benefit from improved agricultural water management.

“Just as modern consumers diversify their financial holdings to reduce risk, smallholder farmers need a wide array of ‘water accounts’ to provide a buffer against climate change impacts,” says Matthew McCartney, the report’s lead author and a hydrologist at IWMI, which is supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “That way, if one water source goes dry, they’ll have others to fall back on.”

“For millions of people dependent on rain-fed agriculture, reliable access to water can make all the difference between chronic hunger and steady progress toward food security,” McCartney adds. “Even small amounts of stored water, by enabling crops and livestock to survive dry periods, can produce large gains in agricultural productivity and in the well-being of rural people.”

In Asia, where irrigation was greatly expanded in recent decades, rain-fed agriculture is still extensive, accounting for 66 per cent of the total cropped area, the IWMI study notes. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion is far greater, at 94 per cent. Yet, these are precisely the regions where water storage infrastructure is least developed.

“Unless we can reduce crippling uncertainty in rain-fed agriculture through better water storage, many farmers in developing countries will face a losing battle with a more hostile and unpredictable climate.”

In response to increased demand for food and power supplies, the governments of developing countries with fast-growing economies have invested heavily in large dams during the current decade, ending an earlier, 10-year lull in their construction. Many of the 50,000 large dams built worldwide since the 1950s are intended to store water for irrigation.

The positive effects of such infrastructure development, in terms of flood control and improved agricultural productivity, are well documented, the IWMI report explains. But so are the adverse social and environmental impacts, including displacement of up to 80 million people from their homes and disruption of the livelihoods of some 470 million people living downstream from dams as a result of altered river flows.

The polarised and often acrimonious debate about large dams continues. IWMI’s advice for governments: do a better job of analysing the potential benefits for economic development and poverty reduction and to pay more serious attention to the social and environmental consequences.

But the IWMI study also advocates giving more weight to a continuum of small-scale storage options. It cites strong evidence that when such measures are well planned, they can contribute importantly to local food security and economic growth.

Field studies in various semi-arid environments, for example, have proven the effectiveness of using small planting basins to “harvest” water, together with targeted application of organic or inorganic fertilizer. In Zimbabwe, such basins have been shown to boost maize yields, whether rainfall is abundant or scarce. In Niger, they have permitted three- or four-fold increases in millet yields.

In the northeast of India’s Rajasthan state, the construction of about 10,000 water harvesting structures -- intended mainly to recharge groundwater -- has made it possible to irrigate about 14,000 hectares, benefiting some 70,000 people. Earlier, farmers barely had enough water to produce grains; now they can also grow vegetables and other cash crops. Similarly, the construction of more than 90,000 underground water storage tanks in China is benefiting a million farmers.

Case studies suggest that combinations of different storage options can be particularly effective. In southern Sri Lanka, for example, the construction of a large water storage reservoir, which was then linked to five previously created small reservoirs, brought about a 400 per cent increase in crop production.

But in some places, the results of major water storage initiatives have been uneven. In Ethiopia, for example, one study showed that groundwater wells and small dams reduced poverty by 25 to 50 per cent. But another analysis in the country’s Amhara region found that most of the approximately 4,000 water harvesting ponds constructed from 2003 to 2008 were no longer functioning, mainly because of poor site selection, technical failures and weak community involvement in maintenance. 

“None of these options is a panacea,” says McCartney. “They all have pros and cons, which depend on their inherent characteristics, on the way they are planned and managed, and on the conditions at specific sites.”

A further hazard with any water storage option, the IWMI report notes, is that the practice itself will be subject to climate change impacts. In arid regions, for example, soil moisture may decline so rapidly as to reduce the effectiveness of practices like planting basins. Likewise, decreased rainfall could limit groundwater recharge, while rising sea levels will increase the risk of salt water intruding on coastal aquifers.

Another danger is that badly planned storage will not only waste money but actually worsen the negative affects of climate change, for example, by providing extra breeding habitats for malaria-infected mosquitoes.

To guard against such hazards, the report argues, governments need to assume greater responsibility for more integrated planning of water storage systems. In the past, storage schemes were often conceived in a piecemeal fashion at the local level, based more on political expediency than on evidence. An integrated approach would take into account the wide range of hydrological, economic, social and environmental factors that determine costs and benefits and would consider various storage options in combination. Well-planned water storage can help lift people out of poverty and provide them with an effective way to cope with climate change.  

“The more we study climate change, the more we realize that water is the principal medium by which its impacts will be manifested in agriculture,” says Dr Chartres. “We may not know exactly what those impacts will be, but we can be sure they will include greater rainfall variability. Water storage in all its forms offers a better way to manage risks during these times of increasingly uncertain weather.

IWMI is a non-profit, scientific research organisation focusing on the sustainable use of water and land resources in agriculture, to benefit poor people in developing countries. Its mission is “Improving the management of water and land resources for food, livelihoods and the environment.”

IWMI has its headquarters in Sri Lanka and regional offices in Africa and Asia. The Institute works in partnership with developing countries, international and national research institutes, universities and other organisations to develop tools and technologies that contribute to poverty reduction as well as food and livelihood security.

Colin’s STRAIGHTtalk is an online video commentary series by Dr Colin Chartres on topical, often controversial, global water issues. TVEAP is currently producing the series under contract from IWMI.

[Note: This story is largely based on an official press release from IWMI, issued from Stockholm on 6 September 2010.]

Photos by Amal Samaraweera, TVEAP Image Archive

TVE Asia Pacific's acclaimed climate film, Small Islands, Big Impact, was screened at a public gathering this week in the Maldives, where it was filmed nearly one year ago.

The 6-minute film was shown as part of a presentation by TVEAP Director Nalaka Gunawardene at a public event organised by Alliance Française on communicating climate and environmental issues using moving images.

Held at the Voice of Maldives auditorium on 12 July 2010, the event included presentations and film screenings by a four-member international team visiting the Indian Ocean nation to conduct media training for Maldivian TV broadcasters.

Nalaka’s presentation, titled ‘Moving images and changing climate’, looked at how television and video films have helped communicate two global environmental crises to the public: ozone layer depletion and man-made climate change.

Referring to the recently-marked 25th anniversary of discovering the Antarctic ‘ozone hole’, he said: “It was the global media that spread the news of that discovery far and wide. Indeed, the ‘ozone hole’ was a phrase coined by the media, not scientists. The accompanying images, especially those on TV news, helped galvanise the world’s political leaders and industry to take quick and decisive action”.

The Vienna Convention to protect the ozone layer was adopted within months in 1985, and two years later, the Montreal Protocol provided legally-binding targets for phasing out dozens of chemicals that were found to be destroying the ozone layer.

With a vast majority of scientists agreeing that man-made climate change is now underway, humanity is once again in a race against time to take action to contain the problem. Moving images have already helped raise the issue in the public and policy agendas, Nalaka said.

He added: “The climate crisis seems overwhelming and we’ve heard a good deal of climate alarmism in recent years. But many individuals, communities and countries are taking action to become more climate-friendly and to find ways to cope with a warmer world. We in the media have to amplify these stories!”

Referring to the just-concluded FIFA football World Cup 2010, Nalaka asked: “How can we make the ozone and climate stories as engaging and gripping as the football coverage on TV, web and mobile phones that preoccupied billions for a month?”

It was particularly gratifying to finally screen Small Islands, Big Impact to a Maldivian audience, Nalaka said. He mentioned how the film has taken the Maldives’ struggle against climate impact to audiences far and wide – from Rome and Copenhagen to Colorado and Bangkok.

Since it wasglobally released on 24 October 2009, the International Day of Climate Action, the film has been screened by TV stations around the world, and continues to be used by educators, climate activists and others.

The film is based on an exclusive interview with President Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected head of state of the Indian Ocean nation. In a wide-ranging interview (full text published on TVEAP website), he articulates his concerns and visions for his island nation.

Small Islands, Big Impact was part of a package of public media products supported by the COMplus Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development during the build-up to the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

As part of his talk, Nalaka also screened another short film TVEAP made in 2009: Mekong: Watch that river! Commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the film looks at how current and anticipated environmental changes – including climate change - could impact water users in the six countries of Southeast Asia which share the mighty Mekong River.

Photos by Ibrahim Yasir

TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) recently partnered with the  United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to train journalists and producers in the Maldives on ozone and climate related issues.

The training, part of TVEAP’s on-going media capacity building work in the region, was delivered through two workshops in June and July 2010. TVEAP Director Nalaka Gunawardene served a resource person at both events.

The first workshop, held in Male, the capital, on 9 June 2010 involved participants from print, broadcast and web media in the Maldives. It was part of a series of events to launch an ambitious plan by the Maldives to phase out HCFC, a group of industrial chemicals that both harm the ozone layer and cause global warming.

In early 2010, the Maldives made a historic decision to phase out HCFCs by 2020, a decade ahead of the international deadline set under the  Montreal Protocol. This is in line with the Indian Ocean island republic’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2020.

The half-day workshop explored the ozone-climate nexus, and discussed how such technical stories can be made relevant and engaging for media audiences.

Joining Nalaka for this training were veteran journalists Kunda Dixit, Chief Editor of The Nepali Times, and Feizal Samath, a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS).

The second occasion was a 10-day training workshop on covering climate and other environmental issues through news and current affairs formats for broadcast television. It provided hands-on training to two small teams of Maldivian TV professionals in several aspects of their craft: researching, filming, scripting and editing short TV films.

Held at the training centre of Maldivian National Broadcasting Corporation, MNBC from 5 to 15 July 2010, it was jointly organised by Canal France International (CFI) and Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) of France, in partnership with UNEP.

IRD is a French public research institute working for the development of Southern countries, while CFI also has partnerships with many developing countries to distribute French TV programmes and build capacity.

Nalaka Gunawardene joined part of the 10-day workshop on behalf of UNEP, and worked with the resource team that comprised Dr Pascale Chabanet, a marine biologist and science communicator, Luc Riolon, an award-winning producer of many scientific documentary films, and Brigitte Surugue, Productions Manager, IRD Audiovisual Division.

While in the Maldives for this second workshop, Nalaka also joined a public event organised by Alliance Française on communicating climate and environmental issues using moving images. Held at the Voice of Maldives auditorium on July 12, the event included presentations and film screenings.

“Engagement of the media to shape the public minds in a small island country like the Maldives is sine qua non for action,” said Rajendra Shende, Head OzonAction, UNEP. “At a time when we’re actively pursuing the climate benefits of ozone layer protection, the vital need of time is public awareness, people empowerment and mass participation. UNEP OzonAction is partnering with CFI and Maldives to spark such empowerment”.

The Maldives has now committed to phase-out the consumption of HCFCs, which are mainly used in the air conditioning in its nearly 100 tourist resorts spread over its more than 1,200 islands.

For nearly a decade, TVEAP has been working closely with UNEP offices in Paris and Bangkok in the public communication of messages related to saving the ozone layer.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive

TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) has recently established a presence on the online video platform DailyMotion.

The regionally operating media organization now showcases its development related video films on this online platform, in addition to its presence on YouTube and EngageMedia.

DailyMotion is a video sharing service website, anchored in Paris, France. The URL dailymotion.com was registered one month after youtube.com, and the service was launched on 15 March 2005.

According to an impartial comparison of video services, DailyMotion ranks second most popular in the world today: with over 60 million views per day, it is only behind YouTube, which gets a staggering 1,200 million views per day.

TVEAP will progressively place its wide range of development films on DailyMotion. Unlike with its YouTube channel, TVEAP will only place its own original content on DailyMotion.

“Such niche branding and promotion are increasingly important as more people are watching video online with the global roll-out of broadband internet,” says Nalaka Gunawardene, TVEAP’s Director and Chief Executive Officer.

He adds: “We were early adopters of this new outreach medium, having started publishing our new videos online from early 2005. We now have nearly five years of experience – and are still learning the ropes!”

“Videos hosted on DailyMotion can be easily embedded and shared on Facebook and Twitter,” says Nadeeja Abeyasekera, TVEAP’s web coordinator. “It also allows users to create interesting widgets such as Videowall and Jukebox that could be embedded into websites or blogs.”

DailyMotion allows users to browse and upload videos by searching tags, channels or user-created groups; the search system also introduces results based on things other users have searched for. The maximum size of a video file is 2 GigaBytes. The length of the video file is limited to 20 minutes, except for the MotionMakers and the Official Users.

TVEAP has already obtained MotionMaker status, a category for the original content creators.

Video hosting services are websites where users can upload and share their videos. They are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the explosion in popularity of blogs, forums, and other interactive pages. They offer many advantages over hosting video on individual websites, such as helping save on bandwidth costs, creating a common place to host all video output of an individual or organisation.

While uploading a video and streaming or embedding it normally requires advanced programming knowledge, the process is made simpler and easier on popular video sharing platforms. YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Metacafe and EngageMedia can be considered the top five video platforms.

All TVEAP Films are produced by top-ranking TV industry professionals drawn from the Asia Pacific region, and broadcast by the region’s terrestrial, cable and satellite channels. TVEAP works with over 40 such channels, which deliver this editorially independent to TV audiences across the region.

TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) is shocked and saddened by the sudden death of a long-standing partner and friend, Palitha Lakshman de Silva. He was 51.

Having started his career as a photojournalist, Palitha later moved on to the audio-visual medium where he blazed new trails in cartoon animation, puppetry and documentary making.

“He was part of Sri Lanka’s first generation of television and video professionals who experimented with the medium, and found new ways of combining education, information and entertainment,” says Nalaka Gunawardene, TVEAP Director, who knew and collaborated with Palitha for over a decade.

At the time of his death, Palitha was heading his own animation and video production house, Creata. Since 2004, this company has been co-managing Sri Lanka Environmental Television Project (SLETP), an educational media project initiated by TVEAP with Sri Lankan partners.

Palitha entered the world of television and video after working as a photojournalist with the Lankadeepa newspaper for several years, before entering the world of television.

As a co-director of Cartoon House, Sri Lanka’s pioneering company in this format, he pursued his interests in two-dimensional cartoons and puppet animation. Besides making animated TV commercials, which were essential for market survival, Palitha used his creativity and skills to communicate public interest messages on health, nutrition, child rights and environment. He continued and expanded this tradition after forming his own company.

An early success was a series of 15 one-minute animation spots focused on child's rights, produced in 2000. Made on behalf of the Sarvodaya Legal Service Movement, a leading NGO, these illustrated key rights as expressed in the UN convention on the Rights of the Child. Their broadcast and narrowcast use formed part of a wider campaign to raise awareness that children have specific, legally enshrined rights.

In fact, Palitha’s special interest was in creating quality TV content for children and youth. Himself the father of two, he produced or inspired the creation of a large number of cartoon, puppet and muppet shows on a variety of themes.

These included the first television cartoon series in Sri Lanka, called Ahasin Vetunu Kumaraya (Prince who fell from the sky, 2001). At Creata, he produced a 40-part series of muppet animations based on timeless stories adapted from the Indian animal fables Panchatantra in 2007. As Palitha said at the time, this was partly inspired by the world famous Sesame Street children’s series.

Both at Cartoon House and Creata, Palitha conceptualized and produced a number of educational TV and video programmes for the Sri Lankan government’s Health Education Bureau. Covering different aspects of primary health care, preventive health, hygiene and nutrition, these were widely used by TV channels and health educators in small group sessions. Some of these remain in use.

Given this track record, Palitha and Creata were natural partners for relaunching the SLETP in 2004. In five years of collaboration, a number of international environmental films were versioned into Sinhala and Tamil, and distributed widely for awareness, education and training purposes.

Among the early joint ventures was the first national festival and competition of short films in Colombo in July 2005. The following year, SLETP versioned the complete series of The Greenbelt Reports, which revisited the Asian Tsunami’s environmental lessons in South and Southeast Asia. Palitha and his team not only voice-dubbed these films into the two local languages, but organised a roadshow in 2007 that took these films to be screened at 10 coastal locations.

In late 2009, Palitha and Creata completed the versioning of TVE Japan’s latest documentaries in Japan's Pollution Experience series: Island of Waste, and Bringing Water Back to Life. Their outreach work is taking place during 2010.

Photographs by TVEAP Image Archive

TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) collaborated with the British Council Colombo to screen a collection of outstanding environmental films to mark World Environment Day on 5 June 2010.

The films, drawn from across Asia, were all on topics related to biodiversity and natural history. This reflected the theme for WED 2010: Many Species, One Planet, One Future.

The theme echoes the urgent call to conserve the diversity of life on our planet. “A world without biodiversity is a very bleak prospect. Millions of people and millions of species all share the same planet, and only together can we enjoy a safer and more prosperous future,” said the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The UN has also declared 2010 as the Year of Biodiversity.

Some films screened were TVEAP’s own productions on environment and sustainable development. These included all six episodes of Saving the Planet, which looks at how Asian communities, schools and activist groups are using education for sustainable development.

This was the first time that Saving the Planet films were screened in Sri Lanka, where they were post-produced in mid 2009. The stories themselves come from Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand.

TVEAP also screened Armed by Nature, a 2006 investigative documentary looking at the 2004 Asian Tsunami’s environmental lessons in South and Southeast Asia.

The screening included films by veteran films makers as well as some by young film makers – all looking at challenges of humans sharing the planet with millions of other species.

A highlight was the acclaimed Indian documentary Tiger - The Death Chronicles. Directed by veteran wildlife film maker Krishnendu Bose, it encapsulates 30 years of conservation attitude in India. For the first time ever, a film joins diverse voices, from tiger scientists and conservationists to ordinary citizens, to attempt a brutal and an honest assessment of the present and the future of the Indian tiger and its habitat.

Another collection of short films offered further glimpses on challenges in conserving biodiversity in India. Preserve The Future - Conserving the India's Wild Heritage is a series of short films made by young Indian film makers under the UK Environment Film Fellowship Project (UKEFF) in 2007.

Among the other activities at the British Council marking WED was a tree planting session. Environmental scientist turned campaigner Dr Ajantha Perera showed several dozen children how to plant a tree properly – and then allowed them to apply their newly learnt skills.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive

The fast-growing and evolving social media present many opportunities for communicating in the public interest.

Participants at an Asian regional media gathering agreed that social media can be a great boon to social activists, development professionals and aid workers.

However, they acknowledged that engaging social media requires a change of old attitudes and practices. For those who get it right, the many and varied social media offer not just outreach, but sustained engagement of communities and audiences.

This was the consensus emerging from a session on social media during the Asia Media Summit 2010 held in Beijing, China from 24 to 26 May 2010.

“The development community has long wished for more interactive and participatory communications tools. The social media do precisely this,” said Nalaka Gunawardene, Director of TVE Asia Pacific, who introduced and moderated the session.

His pragmatic advice to mainstream journalists as well as development professionals was: just do it, and see what works.

He added: “The biggest challenges are not inside our computers or networks at all; they are in our minds!”

“To face the many challenges of web 2.0 and social media, the development community has to reorient itself. In other words, they need to evolve into development 2.0!”

Nalaka was speaking at the Asia-Pacific Media Seminar on Ozone Protection and Climate Benefit, one of several pre-Summit events held on the eve of the main Summit.

“Social media started with the geeks, but they have now spilled over to involve the rest of us,” Nalaka noted. His open question to the panel was: “How can we -- the non-geeks -- come to terms with this new realm? How do we find our niche that makes us more effective communicators and agents of social change?”

The session on social media explored how the web-based, interactive tools and platforms can help communicate ozone and climate messages.

Ms Chutharat Thanapaisarnkit, Consultant to Ogilvy and Mather Thailand, said many of the intrinsic values of the ‘old media’ still matters. This includes offering relevant content, strategic positioning and the right timing. Additionally, the new social media make it easier to build and sustain communities of interest or practice, she said.

Minna Epps, Regional Communications Officer with IUCN Asia, likened the social media to a wide-spread and fast-evolving ecosystem. She described her organisation’s attempts to harness the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ through social media to promote environmental conservation. As an example, she cited Connect2Earth, a joint effort by IUCN, WWF and Nokia to create a green online community with focus on young people all over the planet.

“Proper context is an essential attribute when using social media to communicate and engage,” Minna said. “This is also something that the mainstream media are traditionally good at providing.”

She added that every organisation needs to develop its own social media strategy.

Zhang Hong, Director, Global Village of Beijing, described his organisation’s work in promoting environmental awareness and stewardship in China. In the early days, during the mid 1990s, much emphasis was on using broadcast television to reach out to large numbers of people quickly. As the internet expanded coverage in China, it has now become possible to use the web for education and networking, he said.

Hong emphasized: “Online or offline, we have to be ready to tedious work!”

Pauline Couture, journalist, broadcast and author from Canada, sees the social media platforms and networks offering great opportunities for communications professionals to engage in new kinds of story telling. She described how, six years ago, online ‘crowd-sourcing’ of images was done for a video promoting her book, Ice.

Social media have increased the speed and complexity of sharing ideas, information and images, but relationships still matter – they are the foundation of credibility for all communicators, she said.

She added: “Social media is an amplification device – it can be used to do good, or to promote evil. It can also peddle as many rumours as the real (offline) world. In using social media, we simply have to learn to discern.”

Asia Media Summit 2010 was organised by the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and hosted by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of China.

Started in 2004, Asia Media Summit is now the largest gathering of policy-makers, managers, media professionals, researchers and activists working in broadcast media sector. While delegates come mainly from the Asia Pacific, it also attracts participation from Africa, Europe, Middle East and North America.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive

Related TVEAP news:
Ozone and Climate treaties exploring the common ground

In combating climate change, reducing carbon emissions is necessary – but not sufficient.

While Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas warming the planet, there are several other gases that together make up almost half of the problem. Tackling reductions in these gases can be faster, cheaper and less politically controversial.

Since global warming is caused by greenhouse gases originating from a variety of sources, it makes sense to find mitigation solutions with not just one but all these gases.

Such fast-action, smart options for mitigating climate change deserve more coverage and discussion in the media, a regional media gathering was told this week.

Over 700 journalists, TV producers and broadcast managers from across the Asia Pacific and other regions participated in the Asia Media Summit 2010 held in Beijing, China from 24 to 26 May 2010.

“The media played a major role in placing ozone and climate issues on the public and political agenda,” said Rajendra Shende, head of UNEP’s OzonAction Programme. “Once again, we need to work closely with journalists and broadcasters in highlighting that there is not one, but a large number of ways in which we can address the challenge of global climate change.”

The ‘forgotten half of climate action’ was a key topic of the Asia-Pacific Media Seminar on Ozone Protection and Climate Benefit, one of several pre-Summit events.

Another topic was forging more common ground between the climate and ozone treaties that most nations of the world have signed up to. These inter-governmental processes, which started and evolved separately, have recently begun to look at how they can reinforce and support each other.

With abrupt climate change approaching faster than predicted according to climate scientists, fast-action mitigation strategies are essential in order to avoid passing the ‘tipping points’, said Rajendra Shende.

He added: “This is where we have to look beyond CO₂, and consider the rest of the basket of greenhouse gases. Reducing emissions in some of these gases is well within current knowledge, capability and most importantly, existing international treaties that are working well.”

Frustrated by delays in achieving tangible CO2 reductions through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), some climate researchers and activists are now promoting other “fast-action” climate mitigation campaign.

Their aim: to promote non-CO2 strategies that will result in significant emissions reductions in the near-term, to complement cuts in CO2 emissions essential for the long-term (see box for details).

The non-CO2 climate forcing agents, when taken together, make up as much as 40 – 50 per cent of man-made climate change.

“We have been fixated with CO2, which is only half the problem, said Durwood Zaelke, a leading environmental lawyer and President of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington DC, USA. “Aggressively reducing CO2 pollution is essential for a safe climate system, but it is not sufficient.”

He added: “Indeed, it is not only just half of the problem, but the slow half. Carbon dioxide emissions remain the atmosphere for centuries…so reducing them won’t lead to cooling for at least a thousand years. We need to reduce CO2 -- but we need to do more as well.”

Zaelke described climate change as a package of problems. When these are disaggregated, it becomes easier to see where multiple solutions may be attempted at the same time.

In other words, don’t put all climate hopes in the Carbon dioxide basket.

Small island nations worldwide have already called for ‘fast action’ mitigation strategies to avoid sea level rise that threaten their survival.

“If we focus on the ‘forgotten half’ of climate mitigation action, we can move ahead now and here, with available tools, regulatory frameworks and resources,” said Romina Picolotti, former environment minister of Argentina. “We don’t need any new international treaties for this. The Montreal Protocol already provides the framework and has existing networks and experience too.”

Durwood Zaelke agreed. “The Montreal Protocol has already done at least 10 times more for climate change mitigation than the Kyoto Protocol (of the UNFCCC) has,” he said. “This is why I say the Montreal Protocol is the world’s best climate treaty!”

Since the late 1980s, Montreal Protocol has successfully phased-out most of the 100 chemicals that damage the upper atmospheric protective shield that filters out harmful ultra violet rays to the Earth.

In recent years, research has outlined that global efforts to protect the ozone layer has also delivered climate benefits as many of the chemicals that damage the ozone layer – such as chloroflurocarbons or CFCs – also cause global warming.

The ozone climate media seminar was organised by the UNEP OzonAction Programme, UNESCO, Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) and the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD).

Asia Media Summit 2010 was organised by the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and hosted by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of China.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive

TVE Asia Pacific  (TVEAP) has just released the findings of a multi-country evaluation of its Saving the Planet TV series. The exercise covers distribution and outreach activities carried out from October 2009 to March 2010.

An overwhelming 88 per cent of individuals providing the feedback have said that they would like to learn more about the issues and initiatives featured in Saving the Planet. They also want to make their action count.

The report was compiled with feedback gathered from several countries in South and South East Asia over a period of six months.

Structured small group screenings and information gathering were done in Laos, Nepal and the Philippines. Individual responders came from several more countries. Feedback forms were also placed online.

Of the responders, 77 per cent were individuals and 19 per cent were group responses. The balance 4 per cent feedback was received online.

Analysis of this feedback reveals that 82 per cent of the individual viewers of the Saving the Planet series found out about it through local NGOs. 

The six-part Asian regional TV series, released in October 2009, has been well received by broadcasters, civil society groups and educators across Asia Pacific. The series has been broadcast in a number of countries, and distribution continues on DVD. All films are also placed online for free public viewing (see box).

The report reveals that viewers so far consisted of diverse groups of people from different cultures who reacted to the content in different ways. However, they all agreed in one area: the need to take action and make change happen!

Feedback was gathered through project partners and regional networks that included the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic & Adult Education (ASPBAE), and the University of the South Pacific (USP).

Acknowledging the support received from many and varied individuals and groups, TVEAP says at the end of the report: “Making video films and then distributing them are inherently collaborative enterprises. Even in this digital age, these efforts involve the technical and creative contributions of many individuals and organisations. That is certainly the case with Saving the Planet.”

Saving the Planet is an educational media project dedicated to the United Nations Decade on ducation for Sustainable Development, 2005 – 2014. It is implemented by TVE Asia Pacific in collaboration with the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU),Tokyo, Japan, under the framework of ACCU-UNESCO Asia-Pacific Programme with support from the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust for the Promotion of Education for Sustainable Development.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive

A film-maker from Haryana, India, has won the first ever Asia Pacific Rice Film Award (APRFA), covering the period 2008-2009.

Gautam Chintamani’s winning entry, titled SRI – Challenging Traditions, Transforming Lives, is a 10 minute short film. It focuses on the benefits that a new method of rice cultivation – called the system of rice intensification (SRI) - has brought to the lives of rural Indian women in the hill state of Uttarakhand in India.

The second place goes to Shahjahan Siraj of Bangladesh, for his film Saving Rice, Saving Seed - grassroots movement of Bangladeshi Farmers, while Dede Ariwibowo of Indonesia wins the third place for Kisruh Benih Padi “Supertoy HL2”: Rice Seed from the Palace.

The winners were selected by an independent regional panel of judges comprising journalists, film makers and development professionals from China, India, Korea, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and a rice farmer-leader from the Philippines. TVE Asia Pacific’s Director and CEO Nalaka Gunawardene headed the regional jury.

The rice award was launched in 2008 jointly by Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP), TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) and Public Media Agency (PMA) of Malaysia to recognise excellence in audio-visual creations on rice-related issues in Asia, where most of the world's rice is grown and consumed.

The competition was open to everyone in the eligible countries in the Asia Pacific region with no age limit. The thematic scope of the award was Asia's rice heritage, based on the Five Pillars of Rice Wisdom, and the threats it faces in this era of globalization.

The first prize winner Chintamani received USD 2,000, a certificate and plaque, which will be presented soon at a ceremony to be held in India.

PAN-AP launched the Save Our Rice Heritage Campaign with its network partners in Asia in recognition of the critical role of rice, the world’s most important and political crop and the staple food of half its population. The Campaign is dedicated to saving traditional local rice, small rice farmers, rice lands and the rice heritage of Asia through defending and advancing the cultural and food sovereignty of the grassroots and opposing the powerful threats to rice.

PAN-AP spearheaded the Asia Pacific Rice Journalist Award (APRJA) in 2007 with the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ) and the APRFA in 2008-2009 with PMA and TVEAP.

Photos from TVEAP Image Archive