This year’s IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) is off and racing. For those interested in keeping abreast with documentary’s new media “genre”, check out their rich IDFA Doclab 2009.

Their blog says “IDFA’s Doc Lab investigates the relationship between documentary film-making and new media. The program is open to all media that can be used to tell a documentary story. During the festival, Doc Lab presents films, web documentaries, and installations that innovate the documentary genre.”

From the projects I’ve explored so far, I am impressed with multi-format, interactive “choose you own adventure” story of  The Big Issue (although the content is very graphic and confronting). The global film wiki idea behind Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake could definitely be applied to other globally themed topics. The beautiful serenade Waterlife, shows us an example of how tone can be achieved in new media. And, for documentary boffins, dig deep into a lively discussion about Capturing reality: the art of documentary.

TIAN SHAN MOUNTAINS, KYRGYZSTAN – Outside, the hot sun beats down. A flock of sheep, horses, and cows munch summer highland grasses. Inside our little felt yurt, it is cosy. Kyrgyz shepherd Dootkasy and his wife Anarkul, head our small circle. We sit crossed legged around a smorgasbord of fresh cream, butter, wild berry jams and homemade bread. Later, Anarkul brings the boiled goat’s head. The eyeball is a treat.

For over 2 months now, Russian filmmaker, Ivan Golovnev and I have been travelling through rural Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russian Altai. Working closely together with local storytellers, NGOs and scientists, we are recording and screening local people’s perspectives of climate change for the United Nations University and The Christensen Fund.

[Picture: An informal Our World 2.0 screening in Dootkasy and Anarkul’s Kyrgyz Yurt]

Grassroots perspectives on climate change are valuable and most importantly local. With deeply spiritualized and centuries old knowledge of the earth’s systems and cycles, local people guide livestock, plant crops, and shift winter camps. Often, none of this knowledge is written down. The traditional songs, carpet motifs, clothing, architectures, daily rituals and the mythological epics of these places are encoded with the survival information. Moreover, these cultural peculiarities provide an ancestral code of how to live harmoniously with and within the local nature.

Imagine, at minus 30, when the sacred mountain pass is blowing its blizzard and you’re bringing home the sheep, great-great grandpa’s knowledge of how to live is useful… you remember his pattern of conduct or perhaps sing his specific clan song.

Today, the national assessment reports flowing into the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention for Climate Change) website are chock full of statistic, long term modeling projections, and serious expert recommendations. The country’s leading scientists add their Institute’s research whilst Government’s task force committees implement achievable solutions and damage control.

Out in the fields and pastures where the livestock is born and dies, people are also talking and taking stock. Everybody has an opinion about the weather… as if they know life depends on it.

“The glaciers that provide all life are getting smaller or have disappeared completely.” “The rich sunny slope grasses are drying out and changing species variety”. “Dry highland animals like yaks, camels and horses are being incorporated into sheep flocks”. “Rain patterns are extreme and unreliable”. “Sacred totem animals, plants and geographic sites are taking on new behaviors”. “Sun’s radiation is increasing and damaging the children’s skin.” “Planting calendars and thanksgiving ceremonies are moving weeks later. Unseasonal heavy rains are eroding valuable time and soil… “.

Further towards the bigger villages and power lines, government built community housing and infrastructure is sinking into melting permafrost. River levels and their hydro-electric power outputs are decreasing. The fresh produce yield in the markets and bazaars is not as big or as juicy.

All the while, the old people try to remember and teach great-great grandpa’s language, whilst their young immerse themselves within foreign entertainment screens.

[Picture: Our World 2.0 climate change video festival screening where a big crowd gathered in Khorog Park, Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan]

After travelling many miles and sharing tea in many rural kitchens, it can be observed, those amongst us still living closely with nature, are consciously and rapidly participating in a process of short-term survival and climate change adaptation.

Remarkably, its can also be observed, swift local awareness and adaptation often correlates to how well a community has maintained its bio-cultural relationships. Noticeably, this ancestral survival knowledge also bestows the custodian with a guidebook to wise climate adaptation.

In some places, traditional resource management systems, almost eradicated with the event of techno-industrialization are being discussed, revitalized and even systematized. From diversifying crops, flocks or architecture, an ancient encyclopedia of simple adaptations is being identified. For example, there is much to learn from traditions that understood and culturally enforced zones of environmental conservation centuries before today’s ecological movement.

[Picture: Interviewing Altaian Telengit leader and shaman, Slava Cheltuev about their knowledge of the inter-connectivity of natural systems, and human behaviour]

At such a time in history, the harmonic and responsible knowledge of our ancestors should not to be discarded or arrogantly overlooked as folklore. There is no used by date on age-old proven methodologies.

Today, traditional knowledge custodians are as diverse as all the spoken languages on the earth. With this and climate change adaptation in mind, a large challenge lies ahead. Can we globally recognize, nurture and enhance these diverse communities with disappearing traditional knowledge systems?

For the benefit of those generations ahead of us, we must responsibly act like those generations before us. Pay heed to great grandpa’s wisdoms, and re-energize it as a respected opinion and pillar of our globalized culture’s way of being, doing, and of knowing.

[Our World 2.0 climate change video screening to the young minds of Gorno-Altaisk State University, Russia where climate scientists, government officers and local television were also present.]

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

It has been a busy few weeks and a very hot summer.

The good news is that Our World 2.0 is now part of the Guardian Environment Network. The purpose of this network is to bring “together the world’s best websites focusing on green topics. The network connects sites from across the globe that provide high-quality news, opinion, advice, blogs, data and tools.”

This is a big step for the Our World 2.0 team and we are delighted to part of this network that includes GRIST, SciDevnet, the Ecologist and the World Resources Institute, amongst others.

The other news is that Our World 2.0 was listed on the Best Green Blogs website from 21 August 2009. Someone was kind enough to nominate us!

Finally, the other big news is that Our World 2.0 is now accessible via the newly redesigned “Gateway to the UN Systems Work on Climate Change.” Just go to the navigation menu on the right hand side and click on “blog.” That will bring you to Our World 2.0.

The First International Undergraduate Conference on Climate, Water, Weather and Society was held last week in Shanghai, China.  The conference was attended by about 50 talented students from countries including China, Korea, Indonesia, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Australia and the United States.

The students learned about climate systems and society’s responses, including positive ones, to environmental challenges, and also presented on their own initiatives such as Three Degrees.  They pledged to partner across borders to strengthen the student movement’s role in addressing climate change.

China, with 20% of the world’s population, is not just another country.  If China’s coal fired power plants continue to grow in number at the present rate, the world’s temperature will rise 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, regardless of what anyone else does.  So, in solving climate change, the Chinese dragon must be understood.  In short, history, culture and language do matter in international negotiations.

I attended this conference to seek out exciting stories from young leaders from all over the world.  Establishing a more even playing field in reporting of global affairs, especially the climate crisis, is critical.  The vast majority of scientists, writers, academics and policy makers are either from, or located in developed countries (yours truly included).  However, 80% of the world’s population is not.
Despite our best intentions, we cannot honestly address global problems without a truly global conversation that empowers the majority world, including those marginalized within South countries.

Likewise, despite immense good will and camaraderie, simulated international negotiations between the students demonstrated the depth of the challenge to democratize environmental advocacy, through the web and in international institutions and forums.

That is why, building upon this philosophy, I am eager to see creative communicators from the global south penetrate though the cyberspace mire and reach audiences consumed by happenings in their own backyards.

I am particularly inspired by the young and articulate Chinese undergraduates I met.  We should hope that these future leaders continue to champion real progress in the world, and are not lured by the comparatively better re-numeration in the corporate sector.

While these human distinctions are important, the planet does not care whether we are from Sweden or Swaziland as it goes on breathing under the stresses we place upon it.  It is tempting to feel helpless when people speak endlessly about the extent of the glacial melt or the predicted rises in global temperatures.

However, I was encouraged by the face that despite their lack of experience, some members of the “eco-generation”, so-labeled by their professors, are ready for the fight for what they believe in.  They are armed with open minds and open eyes, and if the Chinese Government allows, open tools for communication.

Today’s 20 year olds, “digital natives”, can better visualise a world beyond the growth economy.  They are not responsible (yet) for the broken system we have.  I believe that they, and not the current generation of leaders who will meet at Copenhagen this December, will have the credibility and courage to stand up against the vested corporate interests of the fossil fuels, forestry, farming and fishing sectors.  Experienced scientists who presented at the conference (including Ilan Kelman – photo above) confessed that they had learned much from the students’ collective imagination and attitude – I certainly did.

Let’s not be complacent.  The potential leaders of tomorrow are already struggling against our biggest enemy: the apathy of the masses.  My Chinese colleagues tell me that this is as much a problem in their society as it is in Western democracies.  More climate education is needed at the school and university level to inculcate a progressive mindset about planet Earth into society.  This has been a longtime passion of Professor Michael Glantz from the University of Colorado’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), the brains behind the conference.  INSTAAR and the organizers from the East China Normal University deserve credit for enabling such a collaborative, intimate and activist vibe for the conference.

While the fruits of this conference will not be seen immediately, I don’t feel this was just another conference.  Keep an eye on Our World 2.0 in the upcoming weeks for more upbeat stories from conference attendees.  We also look forward to more of your positive tales about how our world responds to climate change, peak oil, food security and biodiversity challenges.

The UNU is delighted to announce that it has adopted Moodle as the online learning management system (LMS) to support the 2009 International Course. Moodle is one of the most popular open source LMSs with other 56,000 sites in 211 countries.

To access the UNU’s Moodle installation visit: learn.unu.edu

Currently four courses are being supported online with direct involvement from faculty at the UNU-Institute for Sustainability and Peace. It is hoped that other UNU institutes will utilize this resource to run their courses online.

The initial reaction to the use of Moodle has been very positive from the students and lecturers involved. The UNU International Course runs from 11 May to 19 June 2009.

The experience for the adoption of Moodle to support the IC2009 will provide useful insights for the implementation of the planned graduate degrees from 2010 onwards.

” 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.

Without doubt 2008 was a year that will be remembered for a very long time. It is the year that the financial crisis erupted on the global stage, triggered perhaps by high energy prices and decades of misguided financial practices. At the same time, leaders across the globe were proposing emergency measures to cope with a major food crisis.

At the end of 2008, we did not seem as rich as we once were. This is at a time when we need huge resources to cope with a growing list of global concerns related to freshwater scarcity, over fishing, shrinking biodiversity, compounded by climate change. Meanwhile wars and conflicts continue.

Everyone is affected by these changes and every institution needs to respond. It is in this context that a major re-thinking is on-going at the UNU and the initial results are presented in the UNU 2008 Annual Report.

With new vice Rectors Takeuchi and Parayil taking their posts in 2008, we have begun to see the research programmes shift in response to the new challenges facing the globe. Under Takeuchi’s leadership the new Institute for Sustainability and Peace has been established in Tokyo, while Vice Rector Parayil is now heading the Institute of Advanced Studies in Yokohama.

Download the UNU 2008 Annual Report to find out more.

The Collaborative Creativity Group (CCG), based at UNU-MERIT, together with the Wikimedia Foundation have just published the results of the first multilingual survey on the global use of Wikipedia.

More than 170,000 Wikipedia readers and contributors completed the extensive survey questionnaire, a figure that exceeded all expectations.

Since the questionnaire had been available in 20 languages and respondents came from over 200 countries, the survey had a true global character that gives the researchers a comprehensive and valuable insight in the Wikipedia community.

You can find a summary of the results at the Wikimedia Foundation Blog. Or download the online workbook.