Hot Cities

Jakarta June 2009

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:44:36 +0000

If a city can be defined by a means of transport, then Jakarta is the motor scooter; they are a cheap, quick way to get around the city. It’s not unusual to see a whole family on one scooter; there must be a million of them on Jakarta’s roads.
There’s also a kind of mini people mover or APV. These are small on the outside but still can carry seven adults inside. Their compact size means you can fit more of them on the roads, and they can squeeze down the city’s narrow winding streets.
In the rush hour these small mass movers vie for space. The cars nudge their way into the paths of the scooters, which then swerve around them, filling every available space.
Congestion is a big problem here. It can take an hour to move two kilometres – if it rains even longer.
Rain is the reason we are in Jakarta. Normally there are only two seasons here, the wet and the dry. However now there can be rain all year. This can be a little uncomfortable if you get about on a scooter, but good news for the Dengue transmitting mosquitoes, whose larvae mature in pools of clean, fresh water.
Dengue fever, sometimes a killer, used to be a seasonal disease, coming and going with the rains. Now Jakarta’s hospitals have cases all year.
We are here in the “dry season” to film dengue patients, and to show how rain patterns have changed here.
The rain is still falling, and the number of dengue patients is rising.

Geoff Ward

Rebranding Lagos

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:27:45 +0000

Well after nearly two weeks filming in Lagos I think I am getting closer to understanding this city a bit. It may no longer be the capital of Nigeria but it is most definitely the heartbeat of the country. Yesterday’s filming was broken in to two halves. During the morning we filmed the Eyo festival, this typically Lagosian festival has returned to the city after a ten-year absence. Known for its violence and chaos the festival has been rebranded – corporate sponsors and all – and moved off the streets and into a vast venue called TBS. TBS is a huge stadium that was built to announce Nigeria’s independence in 1960, yesterday packed with tens of thousands of people, it was presenting a statement of intent to turn Lagos into a global city.

One of the traditions of Eyo festival is the compulsory removal of all shoes and hats for the duration, failure to do so resulting in a serious whack on the head from one of the many stick wielding youths. Not the easiest conditions for filming. So off came my shoes, when in Rome and all that. However what I failed to find out was that the previous day there had been a radio announcement urging all festival goers to wear their footwear. I think I was the only person in the city not to hear this announcement, much to the amusement of the rest of Lagos!

In stark contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the morning, the afternoon’s filming took place on the landfill site that consumes sixty percent of Lagos’s waste, whoever said telly was glamorous? And for a city of around 15 million people that is a whole lot of rubbish! The amazing thing here was to witness recycling Nigerian style. The authorities call the site an open dump, meaning any private individual is free to enter and scavenge for any reusable items. The dump is a source of employment for 2000 scavengers. The scavengers sort the metal, plastics etc. into huge piles ready for resale. The dump is also home to many of these scavengers who build houses among the rubbish. This may be a very harsh existence but it was a clear example of how wasteful we have become in the west, here recycling comes naturally not because of some green ideology but simply because it is the most efficient thing to do.

Some more of Geoff Ward’s great pics bellow, including a school in Makoko built on stilts – another amazing location.

Joe Loncraine – Director Climate Cities

The cameraman’s view

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:23:55 +0000

Lagos 19 April 2009
This is a city with amazing energy. The constant movement of people and traffic, combined with heat and dust, create an atmosphere unlike any other city I have filmed in. Everyone is working hard; labourers on building sites work from 6am to 6pm. The fishermen’s wives leave for the markets at 5am to sell the fish caught by their husbands smoked by them the day before.

Some have made fortunes here. They drive around in expensive cars on terrible roads and sit in the same traffic jams as everyone else. The poor do whatever they can to earn a living. But everyone believes they can make it in this city, it’s like an African dream. Here they think they can make something of their lives.

One of the highlights for me so far has been filming in Makoko, the fishing quarter, a large slum built on stilts over the shallow, black water of the lagoon. It’s the quality of light created by reflections on the water and smoke from a hundred wood fires which make this place so good for photography.

As well as being the cameraman on the shoot I like to take still photographs when I have a spare moment. Here are a few I have taken so far.
Geoff Ward

Tokyo

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:14:25 +0000

We’ve recently returned from Tokyo, one of the most iconic megacities in the world. Vast areas of Tokyo lie below sea level. Huge embankments protect all of the rivers that flow through it and they have built three hundred meter wide levees to protect the city from flooding. Climate change will bring increased torrential rainfall to Japan. No country on earth as invested as much in flood defence. We filmed at the Tokyo Outer Metropolitan Flood Defence Project, a truly breathtaking construction designed to keep the people and buildings below safe.
Later in the year I head to Dhaka in Bangladesh to film another city also at risk from flooding. Per capita Bangladesh has made a negligible contribution to climate change but unfortunately Dhaka is a city which is likely to suffer the consequences of climate change more than any other.

Nathan Harrison

Assistant Producer

Lagos: Africa's Megacity

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:08:49 +0000

Jessica and I have just returned from a recce trip to Lagos, Nigeria, the fastest growing city in the world. Lagos is Africa’s only Megacity and it is expanding at an alarming rate. We had heard no end of talk about the chaos that awaited us, but what we found included some pleasant surprises. Improved roads and reduced crime are just some of the changes attributed to the city’s new governor, Babatunde Fashola. However, we also saw a city bursting at the seams, with as many as a million new inhabitants every year. The infrastructure is at breaking point.

The slum of Makoko, home to over five hundred thousand inhabitants, clearly shows the desperate need for space and housing as the slum’s inhabitants build ever deeper into the lagoon.

One memorable incident we witnessed was the monthly sanitation day. During three hours on the last Saturday of the month the entire city is shut down, no shops are allowed to open and no cars are allowed on the roads. Across the city Lagosians are required to clean the areas surrounding their homes, including the open sewers. Lead by the State Commissioner for Environment, teams of officers descend on local communities to ensure the cleaning is done.

We will soon be returning to Lagos to film for the first episode in our the series.

Joe Loncraine
Producer/Director

Filming Australia's Drought

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:10:17 +0000

Flying into Adelaide it is all too easy to see how 8 years of drought is ravaging South Australia. Muddy rivers, parched parks and dead trees scar the landscape, all tell tale signs of a city that is dying of thirst.

The 5 days in Adelaide kicked off with Lesley and Mick Fischer, farmers on the lower lakes, south of the city. This is where the mouth of the Murray River lies. Lack of rain and overuse of the river have left the lakes in a dire situation where dairy farmers such as Lesley and Mick can no longer use the water for irrigation because it has become acidic as a result of it’s low level. Lesley and Mick have been forced to sell their dairy cattle and turn to alternative livestock.

With the River Murray choking, water is a serious cause for concern in the city. It is on the front cover of the papers almost every day. Water restrictions have been enforced, which have left people going to seemingly bizarre extremes to get water to their precious gardens. Buckets in the shower and the sink and using water from the washing machine are all common practices in most households here. We visited the site where they are building a desalination plant, which is due to be finished by the end of next year and spoke to Karlene Maywald, Minister for water and the River Murray, and Professor Mike Young, who suggested that for Adelaide to survive the city’s people will need to change their lives considerably.

From Adelaide we headed north-east to the Murray Valley. This area is considered the bread-basket of Australia, and given that Australia is a large exporter of agricultural products such as wheat and rice, the region normally would feed many people around the world. We spent a few days filming with Laurie Arthur, a farmer in Moulamein, who grows wheat and rice when there is water. A few years ago Laurie described the land as looking like a ‘patchwork quilt”. Now it looks brown and dusty, not a green field in sight.

In nearby Deniliquin, the rice mill has been mothballed. The mill is the largest in the southern hemisphere and feeds 40 million people a day

Zero rice production in Australia has contributed to rising food prices around the world, which last year caused food riots in cities such as Dhaka and Port au Prince, who’s growing population is heavily reliant on food imports.

Finally in Melbourne we interviewed environmental expert Tim Flannery who believes that climate change is to blame for this drought in Australia, and that it is here to stay.

Victoria Balfour, Assistant Producer