Water was the theme of yesterday’s Climate Cinema event where the Environment and Climate
Division (ECD), in collaboration with the Think Forward Film Festival, screened
three powerful films that highlighted the 800 million people worldwide who lack
access to fresh water.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Yarolsav Mysiak touched on the
increasing incidence of natural disasters as a result of climate change, with a
cumulative economic impact of about USD 300 billion each year. According to
Mysiak, these phenomena are undoing years’ worth of development work, thus new investments by governments and international funds should strive to conduct
robust risk analyses to avoid damages to economic infrastructure and productive
systems.
The first film, God is Water, documented the daily
struggles of the 500,000 rural Kenyans who rely on Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake, for the fresh
water essential to their livelihoods. Over the past 30 years, higher
temperatures and changing weather patterns have contributed to the lake’s
reduced water volume. But now, a new hydropower plant being built upstream in neighbouring
Ethiopia is exacerbating the situation for local farmers, pastoralists and fishers who live by the lake. Those who appeared in the film predicted widespread
conflict between ethnic groups when the Gibe III dam is finished construction.
The second film, Water Changes, focused on a German-Namibian research project, CuveWaters, that provided a water harvesting and drip irrigation
system to a community in rural Namibia. The arid environment traditionally limits small farmers to one planting season, however introducing a relatively simple
and low-cost technology meant that farmers could suddenly grow crops year round
for increased income generation. The film dealt with what Mysiak described as
the water-energy nexus, that is, the logistical question of providing fresh
water to communities where electricity is not readily available. The project
resolved this issue by an ingenuous bicycle-powered pump, which directed water
from a large reservoir through a network of tubes to the farmers’ vegetable
fields.
The third film on the bill, One in a Million, was an
emotionally gripping journey of one man, Duncan Goose, to locate a girl he had
seen in a photograph queuing by a fresh water pump. The photograph inspired
Goose to found the One Foundation, and donate all of the profits to water projects
in Africa. Goose’s journey spanned more than a decade and took him through the
expansive slums of Kibera, in Kenya, where sanitation is a major issue
leading to cholera outbreaks and other diseases.
To wrap up the quadruple feature, Recipes for Change:
Vietnam, an IFAD production illustrated the issue of salinity intrusion,
which affects small farmers and aqua culturists in the Mekong Delta. As sea
level rise leads to more saline water travelling up the Mekong river and its
tributaries, this vast crop-producing region is grappling with losses of economically
important rice crops as well as fresh water shrimp, prawns and other aqua
culture products. In response to this challenge, IFAD launched the Adaptation
in the Mekong Delta (AMD) project in 2014, which helps finance salinity
monitoring systems and support for income diversification.
The films each approached the subject of water and its
inextricable link to human development in different and interesting ways, and
after the lunchtime session the audience was certainly left with a lot to think
about. The next climate cinema event will be held on April 20th in
the Executive Dining room, where the theme will be on adaptation in
agriculture.