Global Citizens’ Climate Change and Water Film Festival

Organizers
Global Citizens for Sustainable Development (Bangalore, India), Beijing Eco-Group, (Beijing, China), China-India Forum and Asian Citizens Alliance

Supporting Organizations
Polis – International Network in Environmental Education (Greece), Charter of Human Responsibilities (US), Response Trust (New Zealand) and Pacific Asia Research Center (Japan)

Water Concerns

Water is essential for Life. The world’s water resources are our lifeline for survival. Water is crucial for sustainable development, including the preservation of our natural environment and the alleviation of poverty and hunger. Water is indispensable for human health and well-being.
Many millions of children die every year from water-borne diseases. And drought regularly afflicts some of the world’s poorest countries. The world needs to respond much better. We need to increase water efficiency, especially in agriculture. We need to free women and girls from the daily chore of hauling water, often over great distances. We must involve them in decision-making on water management. We need to make sanitation a priority. This is where progress is lagging most. And we must show that water resources need not be a source of conflict. Instead, they can be a catalyst for cooperation. This is an urgent matter of human development, and human dignity.

Climate Change

The Earth’s Climate has changed throughout history but recent Climate Change is alarming. Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have added to the heat-trapping of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels and biomass has also resulted in emissions of aerosols that absorb and emit heat, and reflect light.
The addition of greenhouse gases and aerosols has changed the composition of the atmosphere. The changes in the atmosphere have likely influenced temperature, precipitation, storms and sea level. These features of the climate also vary naturally, so determining what fraction of climate changes are due to natural variability versus human activities is challenging. Nevertheless it is time to rethink our model of Development and put brakes on the speeded Climate Change.

Climate Change and Water

Of the many social, economic and environmental impacts and vulnerabilities to climate change, the projected effects on the qualitative and quantitative status of world water resources is a critical area for people’s lives and the economy.

Even if emissions of greenhouse gases were stabilized today, increases in temperature and the associated impacts, including those on water availability and flooding will continue for decades

Water resource issues interact with a wide range of socio-economic and environmental sectors including health, agriculture, biodiversity, public safety, industry and navigation. Indeed, there are few activities that do not in some way depend on or interact with water resources.
The main climate change consequences related to water resources are increases in temperature, shifts in precipitation patterns and snow cover, an increase in the frequency of flooding and droughts, and the possible large impact of future sea-level rises. There is also a growing body of knowledge on the nature and scale of future impacts. This has led to an increasing urgency to adapt water resource management to meet the future challenges.

About this Film Festival

Today one-third of the world population comprises of youth and every nations hope is in youth. We believe as organizers of this Film festival that Youth have tremendous potential and can make a difference on alarming issues such as these. It is also true that youth cannot do it on their own thus youth will make Intergenerational partnership to bring this Change. But someone has to take a lead and this time it would be young people.

This festival will be hosted with the help of local universities, colleges and high school or Non-governmental Organizations addressing issues locally and globally. Youth from the institution/s which hosts this festival will be the joint coordinator/s for such a festival.

This film festival could be either a half a day to four days festival depending on the budget raised or resources mobilized by local institutions. We as organizers are not going to help financially but find different resources within the institution to mobilize such an event. Today quite few institutions have their own LCD projector, sound system and a classroom. That’s most of what we need, films and Speakers/Experts for a discussion after the film festival we will organize.

If you think this is not going to work, we would like to tell you it did work earlier with the World Youth Water Alliance Film festival (a program of the Global Citizens for Sustainable Development) successfully hosted in India, China, Philippines, Japan and USA. Please see the link : http://wateralliance.org/Events.html

The first film festival will be launched in Tokyo, Japan at the China-India-Japan Forum in July 2008. This film festival will then travel to countries such as India, China, Korea, USA, Greece, New Zealand and others up to December 2009.

If you are interested to host Global Citizens’ Climate Change and Water film festival at your institution or if you want to submit films for this Festival please contact us at filmfestival GRo globalcitizens.org.in

and regionally

Asia – Anugraha John

USA – Nina Gregg and charter.US GRo alliance21.org

Europe – Yolanda Ziaka

Pacific – Betsan Martin

Thank you

Yours sincerely

Anugraha John, Anabel Tonkovi, Nina Gregg, Pat Keeton, Ruma Sen, Zhao Baisheng, Yolanda Zaika and Betsan Martin.