It's 5 o'clock in the morning. I'm wide-awake struggling with jetlag, but glad about it because it gives me time to reflect.
Since January this year I have been an active part of the Connect4Climate team at the World Bank, and what exciting months these have already been. In 2011 I was honoured to receive the special prize of the Connect4Climate Photo and Video competitions with my photograph Climate Theatre and my video The World Has Malaria. At the time my partner Astrid Westerlind Wigström and I were running a number of rural climate change communication interventions in South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya under the ClimateConsious Programme.
Working with local partner NGOs we engaged communities to tell their climate change experiences through photostories. These were re-worked into an educational climate change theatre or film script and participatory community productions were initiated. The theatre/film teams performed their shows in communities in the region and educational discussions followed the performances/screenings. Thinking back I am excited to see how far the climate message has progressed.
iChange – Connect4Climate’s latest
At Connect4Climate we are currently finalising the iChange student competition. After our Right Here Right Now and the Re-Think, Re-Design, Re-New events earlier this year we launched the iChange competition in April. It challenged university students worldwide to create powerful video messages about climate change issues and action. We were astounded by the global response in such a short time, with 248 entries received from students enrolled in 165 universities in 66 countries around the globe.
I am inspired by all the fantastic submissions, though what really made me realise the impact of the competition was when we eventually met the finalist students at the prize ceremony at the GrandPrix of Advertising Strategies. They reminded my of my student days and the excitement of being awarded a prize by Connect4Climate. I couldn't keep the smile off my face while I was filming their thank you messages. See the winning videos and thank you messages in the playlist below.
"It’s so great to hear all the students' voices, and to hear that they are eager to tackle climate change. I hope that we can all work together in the future in order to build a sustainable environment," emphasized Nadia Asfour, one of the grand prize winners. Below is a selection of the entries that will also be shown on MTV.
A Climate Movement
Indeed it is fantastic hearing the students' voices. It really feels like the world is asking for the climate movement that we so desperately need.
Last week the World Bank released the second Turn Down The Heat report. According to this report some of the likely impacts of a global temperature rise of 2°C in the next few decades that threatens to trap millions of people in poverty include: "Regular food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa…shifting rain patterns in South Asia leaving some parts under water and others without enough water for power generation, irrigation, or drinking…degradation and loss of reefs in South East Asia resulting in reduced fish stocks and coastal communities and cities more vulnerable to increasingly violent storms."
To me it seems that the World Bank, under Jim Yong Kim's leadership, has finally completely embraced the climate challenge. All the future activities of the Bank will be looked at through a "climate lens," and according to Kim, the Bank "can help cities grow clean and climate resilient, develop climate smart agriculture practices, and find innovative ways to improve both energy efficiency and the performance of renewable energies. We can work with countries to roll back harmful fossil fuel subsidies and help put the policies in place that will eventually lead to a stable price on carbon."
These are the strategies needed to deal with the climate challenge. Though time is short, we have only a few years to shift the global emissions trajectory. We need to learn to decouple growth from emissions as countries like Germany are doing, we need to encourage the exciting progress in renewable energy seen in China and we need to hold Obama to his word when he says "we have to all shoulder the responsibility of keeping the planet habitable, or we’re going to suffer the consequences."
Dr. Jim Kim in an interview with Reuters says, "the effort to combat climate change doesn't yet look like a movement." While this may be true, I feel that youth are building the climate movement that will define our future, see for example the Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline Campaign or the Divestment Campaign of 350.org. The movement is certainly picking up pace and I am in full support of it.
Join Connect4Climate – together we can turn the tide on climate change.
