In the last months the Media Studio team has been exploring the mountains and valleys of Central Asia to produce a series of videobriefs dealing with energy, land management and climate change issues.

Two of the videobriefs are part of the activities of the Sustainable Land Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountains (PALM) project, a United Nations initiative to support the communities of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the conservation of their environment during their  difficult transition from the Soviet Union into the globalized economy.

The videobrief on Tajikistan traces the problems people face to access energy on the Eastern Pamir mountains after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The high cost of heating and cooking fuel has prompted people here to massively uproot the few shrubs that grow in this high altitude environment, severely degrading the land and drastically reducing its capacity to feed domestic and wild animals.

The videobrief on Kyrgyzstan show the changes in the use of land of Kyrgyz herders after Independence in 1991, which have led to increasing numbers of livestock which in turn is degrading the land, threatening its ability to feed the animals the people here depends on.
It also shows Kyrgyz, Tajik and UN experts and officials  as they try to bring in solutions to the situation.

The videobriefs were shown on October 5 in a PALM project meeting to a group of Kyrgyz, Tajik and UN researchers and officials in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where they were well received. The videobrief on Tajikistan was particularly shocking to participants, as although they were aware of the situation they did not know to what extent the lives of people were being affected by lack of access to energy sources.

The two videobriefs will be soon published in UNU’s webmagazine Our World 2.0

” We cannot think of having a stable society on this planet, if the biological matrix that sustains us is broken.”

Last week, we had a visit from distinguished Mexican Professor José Sarukhán Kermez from the Institute of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and also the Co-ordinator of the National Committee on the Study and Conservation of Biodiversity [Mexico].

In a down-to-earth manner, the professor helped us understand the incredible importance of biodiversity regarding sustenance, climate change, current agricultural systems and the future. After our interview, Professor Sarukhan visited GEIC where he met with several of our specialist researchers and then later delivered a lecture at the UNU entitled “Mexico: The Privileges and Challenges of a Megadiverse Country.”

For more information, please visit UNU’s biodiversity page.

Over the last couple of months we have been doing quite a lot of work on Climate Change. A recent UNU symposium “Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Time of Climate Change” brought together some of the world’s leading scientists and writers on environmental issues, including ground breaking thinkers whose work and research are at the intersection of science, policy making and communications. The symposium invited them to examine how our thinking needs to change if we are to collectively take on the myriad challenges presented by global warming.

The Media Studio was lucky enough to interview several of the speakers throughout the day and the resulting videos offer an insightful, and at times confronting, perspective on current Climate Change dialogues.
The below interviews embedded in the neat new vimeo gallery player include:

Dr. James E. Hansen from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA
Prof. Gwyn Prins, Director of the Mackinder Centre at the London Schools of Economic and Political Science, UK
Prof David Sanborn Scott, from the University of Victoria, Canada
Dr. Alex Evans, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University, USA
Ted Nordhaus, Chairman, Breakthrough Institute, USA
Prof. Shuzo Nishioka, Senior Advisor, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
David Steven, Managing Director, River Path Associates, UK

With global warming and climate change currently generating one of the most vigourous of global debates, there are a lot of mixed messages and information out there to digest.

Somehow cutting through the clutter, we came across this simple non-verbal animation from 350.org. We hope you’ll agree 350 is a number really worth spreading.

There have been some big developments over the past couple of weeks. First of all, we have set up a YouTube Channel that can be used by anyone in the UNU to share their video content. Second, we have set up an account with Tube Mogul that enable the UNU to distribute videos to a number of video portals. The idea is to place UNU videos where the audience actually is, rather than hoping people will discover them on our websites.

Third, Citt and Koari have just completed a series of seven podcasts for the UNU Priority Africa project. You can see them on the UNU Youtube Channel and they will be accessible via the UNU main website. An sample video, hosted on Vimoe, is included below to give you a better idea of the themes covered.

PRIORITY AFRICA – Climate Change from UNUChannel on Vimeo.

Here is the 2008 presentation by Al Gore at TED. Lots of new data and some surprises. He points out that we are missing a sense of urgency. How do we start changing this? This is a must see video. Tell us what you think about it.

You may be wondering why the UNU Media Studio is blogging about the Prius Plug-in Hybrid. Well, yesterday morning on the way into work, we discovered this car sitting on the front court of the UNU. The car is still in development and wont be on the market until 2010.
A senior engineer from Toyota was in the UNU giving a presentation on the vehicle and I have to say I was impressed. Plug-in hybrids will offer better mileage and will help reduce CO2. If the main forms of electricity production in your country are renewable, then the potential CO2 reductions are even greater. Also, if more and more countries switch to a mix of biofuels and oil, then that means further CO2 reductions!
Here in the UNU Media Studio, as blogged earlier, we are focusing this year on the links between Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Security and it is innovations like the Prius Plug-in Hybrid that will help overcome this problems – we hope.

And if you like the plug-in hybrid, then you may find the video below interesting. In it, the Brookings Institution expert David Sandalow demonstrates his plug in hybrid electric car and talks about his book, Freedom from Oil.

Photo by Sean Wood (aka motionid on Flickr).

Happy New Year from the UNU Media Studio team!
We have some new activities planned for this year and next. We are currently brainstorming on a project that looks at the interaction between climate change, peak oil and food security (to name some key issues). It draws lessons over the next few years on how societies like Japan are coping with these powerful trends and, for instance, how it may be possible to meet the targets set out under the Kyoto Protocol. We will tell you more about this as we further elaborate our ideas. By the way, the photo is from Grant Neufeld and covered by a Creative Commons license.
In the early part of this year, we will be working with the World Health Organization to produce an advocacy documentary on aging happily and healthily. We did some scouting at the end of last year and the production team will be doing some filming this month in Kobe (the case study site).
A lot of projects will remain as before. We will continue to support the UNU-Global Virtual University based in Norway and also UNU Opencourseware (a cross the UNU collaboration). The video conference based classes under the Asia Pacific Initiative will continue and grow. Our collaboration with REDMESO and the development of e-case studies (using Fieldtrip) and documentaries will also develop further over the next two years.

Promoting learning on social and environmental issues is a key component of what we do. We are exploring further the role of documentaries in raising awareness on issues and prompting action. Openness is a central facet of how we approach our work and of how we share what we do through open content, open educational resources and Creatives Commons, etc.
But we are also really excited about the prospect of using various web services (Web 2.0) and social media in order to promote more effective communication with our audience and partners. These are just some of the activities, with other new collaborations gradually emerging, for instance with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the University of Sydney. We will talk more on this later.