Forests | Connect4Climate

Film4Climate Video Competition Aims to Inspire Climate Solutions

The Film4Climate Global Video Competition invites aspiring filmmakers from around the world to express their vision for a sustainable future by creating a short film or video about climate action

Winners will be honored at official awards ceremony at COP22 climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016.

With more than 170 countries signing the Paris Climate Change Agreement in April, the momentum for climate action is finally global and ambitious.

While to many the climate debate may seem remote from daily life, the small decisions that we all can make—how much water we use, the products we buy, how we vote—are personal and possible. And they become easier the more we are aware of the consequences.

Already much of society is choosing to engage in a climate-friendly economy, to invest in renewables, conserve energy, and promote climate-smart agriculture and resource conservation. Cities and the private sector are shifting their behavior, building resilience to climate impacts and putting a price on carbon pollution.

But the poorest in the world do not even have the luxury of choice. For them, climate change is an immediate, life-threatening danger. Striking images and personal stories help us understand the need for immediate action—by all of us, at all levels.

The World Bank Group’s Connect4Climate program, with the direct support of Vulcan Productions, the Italian energy company Enel and The Global Brain are offering filmmakers the chance to tell these stories and to create messaging that will impact us all and spur action. Partnering with the United Nations and the government of the Kingdom of Morocco, the climate solutions and actions depicted in these films will be celebrated at the United Nations COP22 Climate Summit in Marrakesh in November.

[video: youtu.be/b9B9l_XIRq0]

The Film4Climate Global Video Competition is open to all, between the ages of 14–35, to submit a short film up to 5 minutes in length, or a public service advertisement up to 60 seconds long anytime between June 20 and September 15, 2016. Submissions are accepted through film4climate.net or through Connect4Climate's Facebook page.

" Climate change is a real and global threat affecting people’s wellbeing, livelihoods, the environment and economies. Communication is a powerful tool in furthering understanding of its impact and inspiring action to tackle it. " - Sheila Redzepi, Vice President of External and Corporate Relations, World Bank Group

An elite panel of film industry producers, directors, and writers chaired by Bernardo Bertolucci will choose the winning entries. They will be distributed globally as examples of how society is embracing the climate challenge and taking actions to transition to a low-carbon resilient future.

[video: https://youtu.be/Iv1opp7Gsds]

Renowned film director Fernando Meirelles will again join the jury for this competition: “Climate change is the biggest challenge humankind will face in the next century and what has to be done to mitigate the effects of climate change must start with us, from bottom to top.”

Throughout history when young people have finally had enough of excuses and failure from the older generation, they have gathered together or voted together to demand change. It is often said that this generation is the first to end poverty and the last to tackle climate change. The Film4Climate Global Video Competition aims to show how that change will take place.

The competition is a chance for young filmmakers to let their voices be heard in an impactful way. To vividly illustrate the type of actions that need to be taken immediately and to show us the sort of world they want to be living in and to leave for their children.

Connect4Climate youth leader and filmmaker Slater Jewell-Kemker: “So often youth are sidelined or silenced or made into photo-ops. It is important to remember that we are more than just the smiling, happy youth of tomorrow. We are the inheritors of this planet, and we need to be listened to.”

The limiting factor of the climate decision-making process is not necessarily the unwillingness of policy makers, rather the lack of political and social capital. Leaders need to feel supported and empowered by citizens and the younger generation in order to make the right, bold climate decisions.

Youth have the ability to see beyond boundaries and into the heart of the matter, which is that we are all human, connected, and only together will we make the climate crisis into the greatest opportunity for this generation.

Films have the power to inspire. Young people have the energy. The Film4Climate competition aims to bring together these two vital ingredients to build the socio-political capital for climate action and highlight climate solutions around the world.

Lucia Grenna, Program Manager, Connect4Climate: "#Film4Climate Competition is a change for young people to tell the world a story that may change the world."

Find our more about the competition and download flyers and the social media kit in this article.

Protect Earth. Restore land. Engage people.

World Day to Combat Desertification 2016.This year, the world comes together to celebrate this day under the theme of “Protect Earth. Restore land. Engage people”.

Desertification, land degradation, drought and climate change are interconnected. As a result of land degradation and climate change, the severity and frequency of droughts have been increasing, along with floods and extreme temperatures. More than 50 per cent of agricultural land is moderately or severely degraded, with 12 million hectares lost to production each year.

Every June 17th, the global community celebrates World Day to Combat desertification (WDCD). In his annual message to mark the day, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged all actors to work together. “Without a long-term solution, desertification and land degradation will not only affect food supply but lead to increased migration and threaten the stability of many nations and regions. This is why world leaders made land degradation neutrality one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. That means rehabilitating at least 12 million hectares of degraded land a year,” he said. Last year, 193 countries pledged to strive to become land degradation neutral by 2030. This means that if one hectare of land is degraded, we should try to restore back to health an equal amount of degraded land.

“Ninety countries have already signed up to the challenge and are setting their national targets. This is admirable. But it is not enough when at least 169 countries are affected by land degradation or drought, and all countries are indirectly impacted by them,” said UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Executive Secretary Monique Barbut.“Actions to avoid, halt and reverse land degradation must begin now with everyone fully engaged. The prospect of a land degradation neutral world grows dimmer if we procrastinate. But it shines brighter each time a person or country joins the campaign to restore degraded land or the battle against the degradation of new land.”

Addressing the UNCCD COP12 in Ankara, Turkey, last year, the GEF CEO Naoko Ishii announced a contribution of USD 3 million for countries to support their target setting under the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) concept. Using set-aside resources of the 6th replenishment allocations for the Land Degradation Focal Area (LDFA), this enabling activity should enhance capacity of recipient countries to speed up target setting in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the original post at the GEF website.

Trees 4 The Earth

On April 22, the world celebrated the Earth Day with a common goal - to plant more trees. Driven by this idea, its relevance and a very opportune time to take action on climate change, we joined the Earth Day celebration by initiating a “Plant a Tree for the Earth” initiative as our initial advocacy action to save Mother Earth.

We - a group of visual artists alongside with the youth and community from Marinduque (an island in the Philippines) – worked together to celebrate this moment with the world, by planting mangrove trees at the Botilao Mangrove Forestry situated in the Botilao Island in Marinduque - the well-known "Heart of the Philippines", due to its heart-shaped form.

Photo Credit: Trees for The Earth

Our commitment to plant trees, together with some friends, fellow artists, and fellow environmentalists, went beyond expected, and our movement to plant mangrove trees become an inspiration to people of Marinduque Island to partake in saving, not only their Mangrove Forestry, but also the environment of the island. To join us on this quest, we had the help of volunteers from Sining Karaban, a Free-Art Learning Education that promotes leveraging creativity to help and inspire the young people and the participation of the Dream Favor Travel & Tours, a private company who also promulgates a good environment in the island through Eco-Tourism initiatives.

The day started early, and together hand-in-hand, we hit the road leading to the Mangrove Forestry. As we initiated a remarkable and unforgettable celebration of Earth Day in the Island of Marinduque, we felt a strong and positive support from the community, willing to help mitigate the effects of Climate Change by creating a new green “blanket” of trees to “cover” our Mother Earth.

Photo Credit: Trees for The Earth

Find out more here.

13th Green Film Festival in Seoul

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Running for 13 years, the Green Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea, seeks to share the hope for a better world where all the lives can live in harmony with environment and nature. Through cinema, the festival hopes to promote ideas of environmental protection and life respect to encourage public awareness and action for positive changes. The 13th edition happens on 6-12 May 2016 in Seoul, South Korea.

Transition to a low-emissions economy in Poland

This study on Poland is part of the World Bank’s series of low-carbon growth studies. It poses the question of how Poland, an EU member state, an industrialized ‘Annex I’ country for the purposes of international climate discussions,1 and an OECD member, can transition to a low emissions economy as successfully as it underwent transition to a market economy in the early 1990s.

Change Pallets for Climate Benefit

Background

Imagine that the average U.S. dishwasher is only 65% full when run, but you had the power to ensure that all dishwasher loads were filled to capacity. Massive water savings and reduced energy consumption come to mind, but what about less detergent use, and scaling back on the substantial resources needed to produce and transport detergent?

By replacing wood and plastic pallets with lightweight corrugated cardboard pallets, we can ensure that U.S. truck shipments are much closer to 100% than currently is the case. And yet we don’t.

Let’s change that, starting with some directional numbers:

• Wood pallets weighing approximately 50 pounds each are loaded with product and shipped on semi-trailer trucks (“semi’s”)
• An estimated 5 billion such loaded wood pallets are shipped in the U.S. each year (based on 2 billion pallets in circulation, used 5 times or less)
• Assuming an average of 20 pallets per truck equates to 250 million truck shipments
• Applying the conservative assumption of only 400 miles per trip takes us to 100 billion truck miles per year

How much is 100 billion truck miles? The equivalent of driving to Mars and back...more than seventy (70) times.

These 250 million trucks, each traveling 400 miles -- and hypothetically weighing 65,000 per truck -- will use over 1.66 billion gallons of diesel and emit nearly 170 million metric tons of CO2e(carbon dioxide equivalent) annually.

Lightweight corrugated cardboard pallets are as effective as other pallets. Photo Credit: Change the Pallet

Corrugated pallets weigh only ~10 pounds, so “changing the pallet” would lower the amount of pallet weight alone shipped each year in the U.S. by ~200 billion pounds. Doing so would theoretically save 205 million gallons of diesel and emit some 21 million fewer metric tons of CO2e annually (based on a 10% drop in fuel consumption).

While intuitive, this model does not hold in the real world, where vast CO2e reductions are driven by filling space, not reducing weight.

Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 Degree Warmer World Must Be Avoided

This report provides a snapshot of recent scientific literature and new analyses of likely impacts and risks that would be associated with a 4° Celsius warming within this century. It is a rigorous attempt to outline a range of risks, focusing on developing countries and especially the poor. A 4°C world would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on ecosystems and associated services. But with action, a 4°C world can be avoided and we can likely hold warming below 2°C.

Building resilience : integrating climate and disaster risk into development

This report presents the World Bank Group's experience in climate and disaster resilient development and contends that it is essential to eliminate extreme poverty and achieve shared prosperity by 2030. The report argues for closer collaboration between the climate resilience and disaster risk management communities through the incorporation of climate and disaster resilience into broader development processes.