This year, World Humanitarian Day comes at a time when the international humanitarian community has been called upon to assist the countless number of people affected by the devastating floods in Pakistan, which some are calling the worst humanitarian disaster in recent history.

Below is The 2010 World Humanitarian Day project. It is a collaborative film shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks, on a shoestring budget – with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated.

The film “Climate Voices” is an extension of the 6 billion Others project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, director of Home. The film project not only features testimonials from people around the world who have witnessed change in their daily life because of global warming, but also by the scientific community. 600 people were interviewed in 17 countries. It was shown last December at the UN Climate Change Conference.

Segments of the 1 hour and 18 minute film are being uploaded to their YouTube Channel. Below is a 2 minute short where François Gemenne, researcher at the IDDRI, explains some of the psychological, social and cultural consequences of climate change. He says: “One must not forget that it is not just a territory that disappears, not just houses and the living environment, its also cultures, languages and sometimes even nationalities that disappear”. I can also reccommend this segment where climate witnesses and researchers talk about the consequences of displacment due to climate change.

While he was in Bangladesh, Cyclone Aila struck, killing roughly 200 people and leaving thousands homeless. Moller proceeded to document the devastation from that 2009 storm, as well the impact of subsiding land and rising seas on other Bangladeshis, many of whom earn less than $1 a day. In this Yale Environment 360 report, we present two videos by Moller – “Aila’s Victims” and “Wahidul’s Story.”

Moller says he will leave it up to scientists to determine how much of the suffering he portrays is related to a warming climate. “I am not a scientist and I know that global warming is a contentious issue,” he says. “I wanted to focus on the people who are suffering today. The point is that these people are vulnerable today, and will become even more vulnerable in the future.”

A Bangladeshi man who is the subject of one of his videos, Wahidul, lives in the town of Kuziartek, which was once home to 40,000 people. Now, the island on which Kuziartek was located is underwater. All that is left of Kuziartek is a small embankment rising from the sea, 2 ½ miles out in the Bay of Bengal. Seven families remain there, including Wahidul’s, clinging to a disappearing strip of earth.

“But what can we do,” asks Wahidul, fearful that abandoning his village would leave him homeless in a city slum. “We have an unfortunate fate. There are many people in the world, but I doubt that anyone must suffer as much as me. People shouldn’t live where we live, but we have no choice. We have to live here.”

Click here to view the video report »

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Reprinted from Yale Environment 360

(AFP) October 18, 2009 – MALE – Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, who staged the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting at the weekend, is emerging as the global stuntman in the battle against climate change.

Nasheed, 42, dived with his cabinet to the sea bottom Saturday in an effort to press December’s UN summit in Copenhagen to cap carbon emissions that cause global warming, threatening low-lying nations such as the Maldives.

“We should come out of Copenhagen with a deal that will ensure that everyone will survive,” said the president as he bobbed in the shimmering Indian Ocean after the meeting.

A presidential aide said the event, to highlight the threat facing the resort paradise — which scientists warn could be submerged by rising sea levels by the century’s end, was Nasheed’s idea.

He said a New York-based environmental group had wanted the president to hold a banner underwater to push for cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.

But Nasheed, the youngest leader in South Asia, went one better, with the 30-minute meeting intended to highlight a potentially watery future for the 1,192 coral islands that make up the Maldives.

It was only the latest in a series of eye-catching public relations moves by Nasheed, a former journalist, to focus the spotlight on climate change and how it could affect the archipelago, known as an idyllic getaway for the rich.

The president stunned the world last year when he announced he wanted to buy a new homeland to relocate the population of the Maldives in the event that damage from rising sea levels became too great.

The announcement had a major impact in India, Sri Lanka and Australia — all potential destinations cited by Nasheed for what could be some of the world’s first environmental refugees.

Nasheed has also been photographed at a submerged desk off the sandy white beaches of the Maldives.

The environmental activism of Nasheed, who came to power last year, follows efforts by his predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, to highlight the nation’s predicament.

“Gayoom had been a very vocal campaigner so there is a political compulsion for Nasheed to keep the Maldives at the forefront of the global warming issue,” said Ibrahim Ismail, for many years an independent member of parliament.

Gayoom, described by opponents as autocratic, ruled the islands unchallenged between 1978 and 2008 and repeatedly threw Nasheed in jail over a period of six years.

As a political activist, Nasheed was at one point an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

Educated in Sri Lanka and Britain, the president, a father of two young daughters and holder of a degree in maritime engineering, built a pro-democracy movement with local and foreign support, winning the country’s first multi-party elections a year ago.

His latest dive in scuba gear was preceded by interviews to foreign television networks to talk about what he called his “sinking feeling.”

Ismail said Nasheed’s underwater cabinet meeting had little impact locally in a country whose 300,000 Sunni Muslim population was more preoccupied with immediate bread and butter issues.

“I think this is a good action as far as publicity is concerned. Not locally, but internationally,” Ismail said.

Nasheed announced last month the Maldives had no money to pay for him to attend the Copenhagen summit, but Denmark has said it will fund him as his participation is considered essential.

Source: AFP

(Blog Action Day) “Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.

Why climate change? Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

From the smallest online journals to huge online magazines, Blog Action Day is about mass participation. Anyone is free to join in on Blog Action Day and there is no limit on the number of posts, the type of posts or the direction of thoughts and opinions.”

Get involved with Blog Action Day 2009 »

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Source: Blog Action Day

The current CCEMA members include:

• International Organization for Migration (IOM)
• Munich Re Foundation (MRF).
• The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) .
• United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
• United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
• University of Sussex – The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (DRC)
• World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

This alliance is the first ever of its kind and is reflective of the momentum that the climate change and human mobility discourse has gained over the past two years. The actions of the CCEMA will no doubt contribute in many ways to a better understanding of the size and characteristics of issue, leading to concrete and long-term solutions.

Click here to go the CCEMA website »

Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m, Eastern time (UTC/GMT -5 hours)
Venue: The Simon Wiesenthal Center/New York Tolerance Center, New York City
Webcast registration: Click here to register for the event to watch the live webcast. When you register for the event, you will receive a confirmation email with the online location of the webcast.

First Panel:
Emerging Policy Perspectives on Human Mobility in a Changing Climate
10:00am – 11:30am

Climate change and associated environmental degradation hold the potential to displace millions of people in coming decades. Estimates of the likely number of people who may be affected by environmental migration vary widely and there have been few efforts to date to systematically analyze the triggers, patterns and policy implications of such trends. An emerging body of inter-disciplinary research is beginning to look at key aspects of these issues with the aim of helping policy makers to make informed decisions on how to prepare for, prevent or respond to climate change related human mobility in an effective manner.

Second Panel:
Seal the Deal: How Risk Reduction and Insurance Strengthen the Adaptation Package in a Copenhagen Agreement
11:30am – 1:00pm

The Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) was launched by Munich Re in April 2005 in response to the growing realization that insurance-related solutions can play a role in adaptation to climate change, as advocated in the Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. This initiative brings together insurers, experts on climate change and adaptation, NGOs, and policy researchers intent on finding solutions to the risks posed by climate change. MCII provides a forum and gathering point for insurance-related expertise on climate change impact issues.

The session seeks to build a network among organizations and initiatives for insurance-related approaches, and to identify pilot projects for the application of insurance-related solutions. Finally, it should facilitate discussion of how to promote loss reduction measures in connection with climate-related events.

For more information and to register for the online event, please visit the UNU-ONY’s website.

‘Time to Click’ is an internet campaign calling on photographers around the world – professional and amateur alike – to help show the human face of climate change. Time to Click asks photographers to submit pictures that show how climate change affects their communities right now, and how it affects people in the places they’ve traveled to around the world. If you have any pictures to contribute to the campaign, learn how to add them by visiting the website.

Many of these images depict the causes of the mass displacement of human populations from the sudden and creeping effects of climate change. Click on the ‘fullscreen’ button and then ‘Show Info” on the slideshow above to see the description of each image. Alternatively, check out the Time to Click website or the campaign’s Flickr page.

The Time to Click campaign is part of ‘Tck Tck Tck’, an unprecedented global alliance of non-government organizations, trade unions, faith groups and people like you – all calling for an ambitious, fair and binding climate change agreement (timetoclick.org).

It is slowly becoming accepted that there is a direct link between the effects of climate change and people being driven from their homes. Given the recent momentum at the Bonn Climate Change Talks to recognize persons displaced by climate change (known by the wider public as “climate refugees” or “environmental refugees”), there is no doubt that many World Refugee Day events will be conveying the issue on some level of relevance. This day could be a time for reflection on not only the fear refugees face of being persecuted for reasons such as race, religion, and nationality, but also reasons of environmental persecution.

Angelina Jolie, who is a longtime advocate and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, has recorded a public service announcement (PSA) hoping to draw much needed attention from the general public to the plight of the millions of people around the world who have been forced to leave their homelands.

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World Refugee Day 2009 resources around the web:

World Refugee Day photo galleries »

Article which highlights World Refugee Day events in various countries around the world »

Refugee video series: A glimpse through the eyes of refugees »

Causes on Facebook – World Refugee Day 2009 »

World Refugee Day at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) »