By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 25 2023 – The announcement by Lucas film’s president, Kathleen Kennedy, about the upcoming three new live-action Star Wars films was enough for lawyer Maliha Zia to get euphoric.

But there is another reason for the excitement for many Pakistani Star Wars movie buffs like her. Among the three top-notch directors that Kennedy said her company would be helming the three films is Pakistan’s Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

“This is beyond phenomenal,” said an excited Zia, associate director at the Karachi-based Legal Aid Society, who, by her own unabashed admission, is a life-long Star Wars fan, watching the films since she was four.

Now a mother of three, she religiously watches the original three every year, coercing her 8-year-old to watch with her. “I never imagined that someone from Pakistan would ever get the chance to direct a film from this iconic series,” she added.

What is even more exciting for the lawyer is that she had not even in her wildest of dreams imagined she would actually know someone who would be directing them. “Something so iconic [as Star Wars films] seemed so far away, untouchable and amazing; it’s unbelievable that it seems so much closer now!” She and Chinoy have collaborated for a long time on an animated series on women’s right to property.

The Disney-owned studio may have selected “the best and most passionate filmmakers” in the three directors, including Dave Filoni and James Mangold, but with Chinoy overseeing the final new movie, there will be many firsts.

“She is the only Pakistani, the only South Asian, the only woman, and also the only woman of colour to be helming a Star Wars movie,” said Omair Alavi, a showbiz critic, and a huge Star Wars fan, excited by the news of the three films. Although for him, “the fabulous episodes of The Mandalorian” on the TV screen kept him well appeased during this interim period.

This year’s USC Annenberg (it examines specific demographics  — gender, race/ethnicity of directors across the 100 top domestic fictional films in North America) study, titled Inclusion in the Director’s Chair, looked at the gender, race and ethnicity of directors across 1600 top films from 2007 to 2022, found a mere 5.6 percent were women, and the ratio of men to women directors across 16 years 11 to 1. In 2022, it was 9 percent — down from 12.7 percent in 2021.

“Hollywood’s image of a woman director is white,” said the study and pointed out that the “think director, think male” phenomenon disregarding the “competence and experience of women and people of color” should be done away with. In addition, instituting checks in the evaluation process of potential directors was also critical.

In a way hiring Chinoy may open the doors for the unrepresented.

She is also the only among the trio to have won two Oscars (for her documentaries denouncing violence against women). In addition, Chinoy has seven Emmys under her belt, aside from being honoured Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s second-highest civilian award.

“So so proud of you, my friend. May the force be with you!” global actor Priyanka Chopra congratulated Chinoy on her Instagram Stories.

Although she is a seasoned documentary filmmaker, having directed and produced the first ever Pakistani 3D computer-animated adventure film Teen Bahadur in 2015 and directing two episodes of the 2022 TV series Ms Marvel, this will be Chinoy’s first stint in Hollywood. Will she be able to handle the big project?

“Sharmeen has a knack of doing things that other people only dream of,” said her former employee, Hussain Qaizar Yunus, a film editor, who, although awestruck, was “unsurprised” to learn of Chinoy’s being selected to direct the Hollywood movie.

And with the last few films not very well received, he said, “A fresh perspective from someone like Sharmeen is exactly what the franchise needs right now.”

Nevertheless, she was an “unusual choice” to be directing a Star Wars film. But her documentary background could work to her advantage, he said. “Her experience of telling real stories of real people would perhaps ground the story with a sense of realism to what is otherwise an epic space opera,” he added and hoped Chinoy would bring South Asian representation to Star Wars, both in front of and behind the camera, “the same way that she did with Ms Marvel”.

English actress Daisy Ridley (L), Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy (middle), and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (R) at Star Wars Celebration in London on April 7, 2023. Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

Chatting with IPS over WhatsApp, Chinoy said: “As a filmmaker who has championed heroes throughout her career, I think that Star Wars fits in with that mission of a hero’s journey of overcoming against all odds.”

“The story I will be bringing into the world is about the rebuilding of the new Jedi Order, the new Jedi academy,” said the newly appointed director, who seems to be a Star Wars fan, having named her dog Chewbacca (after the fictional character in the Star Wars). Set 15 years after the end of the last movie (2019), British actor Daisy Ridley will return to her role of Rey, the heroine of the last trilogy, as she fights to revive the Jedi order.

“She’ll be able to pull it off; she knows her job!” said Alvi confidently.

Kennedy also revealed that these films will take place across vast timelines from the very early days of the Jedi to a future beyond Rise of Skywalker. “Hopefully, this new series will attract both the older and the newer generation; my generation, who watched it as kids, can watch it with their kids or grandparents can take their grandchildren; it will be worth the wait,” anticipated journalist Muna Khan, who watched the first film as a kid back in the late 70s and the memory of which is “seared in my mind”. These films are not just for folks who watched it then; they’re “timeless, and each new instalment adds to the timelessness” she pointed out. The first of the three films are slated for release in 2025.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Srilata Kammila
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 2023 – Several years ago, on a visit to a village in rural Zimbabwe, I met a small group of women with a story to share.

Having participated in a UNDP-supported adaptation project – including drought-resistant seeds and education in climate-smart agricultural practices – the women had significantly increased the productiveness of their home gardens.

However, what really caught my attention was how the women, seeing an opportunity to help one another and scale up their returns, had set up a peer group to pool their savings and invest on a revolving basis in each other’s other livelihood ventures (some agricultural, some not).

In this way, they had essentially created an enterprising model to build on and sustain the investments of the project. Local innovations such as this are key to meeting the challenges of the climate crisis.

The innovations we need span technologies, practices, business models and behavioural changes. These innovations are to be found at all levels, from national research institutions in the world’s biggest cities to small villages, like the one I visited in Zimbabwe.

At UNDP, we are focused on scaling up and accelerating innovative adaptation approaches that have been proven to be effective. Many of the 220 projects we have implemented around the world since 2008 have broken, and are breaking, ground in numerous ways.

In Thailand, for instance, UNDP is supporting the government in transforming agricultural practices by harnessing the power of the Internet of Things. In Mongolia, we are collaborating with herders to track livestock products from source to end to ensure sustainability. In Cuba, we have supported the government in integrating ecosystem-based adaptation with inter-sector coastal planning.

Supported by the Adaptation Fund and European Union, and in partnership with the UN Environment Programme and the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA) aims to foster more innovation at the local level.

The AFCIA funding window, managed by UNDP, was launched in 2021 and supports communities that are already responding to climate stresses in innovative ways.

Through the learnings from AFCIA, we aim to share lessons learned and best practices through an open platform called the Adaptation Innovation Marketplace, in which the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Global Resilience Partnership, Climate-KIC, UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and Least Developed Countries Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC) are also founding members and key partners.

At UNDP, we are focused on scaling up and accelerating innovative adaptation approaches that have been proven to be effective.

With the first round of US$2.2 million grant funding, the programme is supporting 22 organizations in 19 countries to foster and accelerate their adaptation ideas.

The programme aims to develop more than 10 scalable innovative adaptation solutions, benefiting more than 175,000 people (at least 30 percent women), and supporting 2,200 hectares of land with restoration or regenerative agriculture.

Based on the progress reports from local partners, we are already seeing some impressive and scalable adaptation innovations.

For example, in Brazil, we are supporting a local partner to improve food security and protect the local ecosystem for indigenous people by introducing and expanding the production of acai berries. 115 hectares of land are now certified under sustainable agroforestry management, with 27 tonnes of acai berries processed and sold.

In Cambodia, 40 women are growing and selling crickets as an alternative food source, earning $2,600 for the first tonne of cricket farmed, a more adaptive product due to existing and future climate trends and one with year-round availability.

In Uganda, we are supporting a local partner that is teaching communities aquaponics technology through an innovative lease-to-own model to promote aquaponics and horticulture-related production. 2,600 aquaponic kits have been leased, and this local partner is now targeting an expansion plan of reaching $21 million of the local vegetable and fish market.

A second cohort of grantees is about to be announced, and we hope to provide another $2.5 million to local organizations across the globe, including approximately 10 micro grants of $60,000 and 13 small grants of $125,000.

Working with partners such as ICCCAD and the Global Resilience Partnership has allowed us to showcase the work of these AFCIA grantees and replicate their innovations in a broader network of networks.

For instance, at last month’s Global Gobeshona Conference, we had the opportunity to learn from four local organizations – from the first cohort of grantees from the Innovation Small Grant Aggregator Platform (ISGAP) Programme – that are implementing solutions to build the resilience of women, youth, refugees and Indigenous communities in India, the Philippines, Uganda and in the Sahel (West Africa).

These examples are instructive. By identifying successful innovation solutions, and then scaling up and replicating them in other parts of a country or region, governments can save valuable time and money.

By establishing or accelerating pilot projects and carefully monitoring their results, insights and best practices can be fed into policy processes, helping to scale up successful approaches.

Working together with partners, I am confident we will empower local communities and stakeholders to innovate and adapt, finding more solutions for resilience building.

We look forward to working with our current partners, and new ones, to scale the impact.

Srilata Kammila is Head of Climate Change Adaptation, UNDP

Source: UN Development Programme (UNDP)

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By External Source
Apr 25 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 
 
The UNDP has assisted cocoa farmers from the Peruvian Amazon to ensure the commodities meet European Parliament regulations. The regulation prohibits the placing of products on the market if their production has led to deforestation.

By External Source
Apr 25 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 
New European Union regulations mean only “deforestation-free” products can be sold there. Forests cover 31% of the globe’s land surface, with most of the Earth’s biodiversity, and play an essential role in mitigating climate change.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 25 2023 – Apologies to those Western politicians and media who continue to say that Ukraine’s brutal proxy war stands behind whatever catastrophes, disasters or crises occur in the Planet.

Is this accurate?

Scientific evidence confirms that, much earlier than that war, Europe, like many other regions, was already walking closer to the edge of extreme weather consequences.

Europe’s worst drought in 500 years?

“The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years,” reports Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme which “looks at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens and offers information services.”

The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values

This European service further explains that the 2022 drought episode “is attributable to a severe and persistent lack of precipitation, combined with a sequence of repeated heat waves that have affected Europe from May to October.”

Put simply, the reported climate extremes in Europe are not the consequence of the Ukraine war, and they were already there many years earlier to when it started in February 2022.

Anyway, European citizens now hear the devastating impacts of climate extremes in their own rich continent, which is one of the major global contributors to the ongoing climate emergency.

Are climate emergencies just an impoverished regions’ problem?

So far, the severe impacts of climate extremes in Africa and other impoverished regions, would jump to the news every now and then, by showing short videos of errant human beings and deserts… before analysing in-depth the latest soccer games or reporting on the new friend of a reality-show star. And highway accidents or a fight between young gangs.

Western citizens are also used to hearing that the horrifying numbers of hungry people (more than one billion human beings), in particular in East Africa due to long years of record droughts, is either caused by the war in Ukraine or that their situation was exacerbated by it.

Now European citizens wake up to the upsetting fact that they also fall under the heavy impact of the steadily rising human, economic, and environmental toll of climate change.

How come those impacts are now becoming news?

A swift answer is that such climate extremes, heat waves, severe droughts, water and food production shortages have been causing increasing damage to private businesses, as well as to medium-to-small-size agriculture activities. In short, damaging their pockets.

See what the very same European Union officially says at the macro level:

– Weather- and climate-related hazards, such as temperature extremes, heavy precipitation and droughts, pose risks to human health and the environment and can lead to substantial economic losses.

— Between 1980 and 2021, weather- and climate-related extremes amounted to an estimated EUR 560 billion (2021 values).

– Hydrological events (floods) account for over 45% and meteorological events (storms including lightning and hail, together with mass movements) for almost one-third of the total.

– When it comes to climatological events, heat waves are responsible for over 13% of the total losses while the remaining +/-8% are caused by droughts, forest fires and cold waves.

– The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values.

– A relatively small number of events is responsible for a large proportion of the economic losses: 5% of the weather- and climate-related events with the biggest losses is responsible for 57% of losses and 1% of the events cause 26% of losses (EEA’s own calculations based on the original dataset).

– This results in high variability from year to year and makes it difficult to identify trends. Nevertheless, the average annual (constant prices, 2021 euros) losses were around EUR 9.7 billion in 1981-1990, 11.2 billion in 1991-2000, 13.5 billion in 2001-2010 and 15.3 billion in 2011-2020.

– The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that climate-related extreme events will become more frequent and severe worldwide. This could affect multiple sectors and cause systemic failures across Europe, leading to greater economic losses.

– Only 30% of the total losses were insured, although this varied considerably among countries, from less than 2% in Hungary, Lithuania and Romania to over 75% in Slovenia and the Netherlands.

Also at the medium-to-micro level

Most medium-to-small agricultural cooperatives, unions and associations in those European countries more stricken by droughts, have been rising their public protests, demanding their governments to compensate them for the big losses of their harvests.

In the specific case of Spain, farmers’ unions and agri-food cooperatives report crop losses of up to two-thirds of the expected harvest.

Back to Copernicus

The “historical drought” affected Europe as evidenced by the Combined Drought Indicator of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service European Drought Observatory for the first ten-day period of September 2022.

On this, Copernicus reports the following findings:

– Heatwaves: 2022 was also characterised by intense, and in some areas prolonged, heatwaves which affected Europe and the rest of the world, breaking several surface air temperature records.

– As reported in the July 2022 Climate Bulletin published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service July 2022 was the sixth warmest July in Europe.

– Temperature anomalies reached peaks of +4ºC in Italy, France, and Spain.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus:

– The prolonged drought that has affected various parts of the globe together with the record temperatures were contributing forces that have certainly caused an increased wildfire risk, which peaked during the summer season both in Europe, in the Mediterranean region, and in the north-west of the United States.

– The Combined Drought Indicator (which is published by the European Drought Observatory as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service) reported that more than one-fourth of the EU territory was in “Alert” conditions in early September.

– Another extreme phenomenon of 2022 was the marine heatwave that affected the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 2022.

European countries are highly dependent on the Mediterranean Sea for shipping goods, including oil tankers; tourism (one country – Spain receives more than 80 million tourists a year, double its total population); industrial fishing; refineries; harbours, and a long etcetera.