Three-minute harangue

A recent short-film contest in Kathmandu, featuring films of three minutes or less on the subject of climate change, put up by the British and organised by Himal Association, saw the showing of a staggering 124 entries. While the filmmakers, all of whom were Nepali, exhibited an impressive range and quality, it was a range obscured by the selection of some fairly typical public-service-announcement-type finalists. Hopefully, however, two sets among the entries will soon see the light of day: those documenting the effects of climate change on Nepali communities, and those exploring (and exploiting) anxieties and fears about the burgeoning climate crisis.

With crippling loadshedding, chronic water shortages, inflating food price and poor air quality, the Kathmandu Valley might be ahead of the curve in terms of a world that refuses to make any concession to the worsening environmental catastrophe towards which we are headed. In this sense, the Valley is the perfect home for a film contest on climate change. But considering how little Nepal actually contributes to greenhouse gases, and how much of the consequences it will eventually have to bear, it is somewhat disappointing to be treated to rehashes of rudimentary and sometimes dated sermonising. Undoubtedly, Nepal, and Kathmandu in particular, would indeed be a far more pleasant and healthy place to live if, for instance, its denizens agreed to compost and opted to walk; but it is difficult to see how any amount of recycling on the part of countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh or the Maldives would make a material difference to global climate change, other than to assuage the guilt of the middle classes of these countries and elsewhere. In the global nature of climate change, its causes and consequences, what is far more pressing are statements directed across the divide of the industrialised (and fast-industrialising) and the vulnerable.