UN to Offer Green Stories and Projects at MIPTV

NEW YORK, April 5: At MIPTV, the
United Nations (UN) audiovisual family will offer green-themed documentaries
and series to international broadcasters, led by the monthly magazine 21st Century, which is now airing on BBC World, RTVE and
Zee TV.

The UN Department of
Public Information and nine UN agencies—IAEA, PAHO, UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, UNICEF,
UN-HABITAT, WHO and World Bank—will be present at MIPTV.

UN Television’s
language-adaptable 21st Century
provides "green" stories such as the effects of the shrinking of Lake
Chad on neighboring nations, the search for new malaria drugs based on natural
plants in Kenya, sustainable
development in the Amazon, saving the dolphins in the Black Sea, and the
effects of eco-tourism on the environment of the Galagapos Islands.
Meanwhile, also available at the market is the long-running UN in Action series, which provides
short features on subjects such as the water shortage in Jordan, producing "green" power from
pigs, biofuel in Haiti, and
replanting forests in Kazakhstan.
The UN's Department of Public Information also provides stories from field missions through the UNiFEED satellite transmission distributed via APTN's Global Video
Wire, and soon through Internet download in broadcast quality.

Last month, the UN
partnered with YouTube and Google to reach out to new audiences through a
dedicated YouTube channel that will offer the full range of programs produced
by UN Television, including 21st Century
and UN in Action, as well as material
from the UN audio-visual archives.

Among the other new
"green" projects to be featured is the seven-minute
documentary based on the annual Human Development Report from UNDP,
which this year focuses on climate change. The film
shows how climate change is already affecting the world's poor and how they
will suffer from the effects of global warming. 
There is also Eco-tips for Jeans,
a TV spot from UNEP with advice on how to wash and wear your jeans in an
eco-friendly way. Aside from “green” programming, UN-HABITAT has produced a
documentary, Playing Between
Elephants, on post-tsunami reconstruction in Aceh and Nias in Indonesia.

The UN
audiovisual family at MIPTV will also be seeking co-production partners on
various projects, with the World Bank inviting interested co-producers to
discuss working on the documentary feature The
Three D's—Density, Distance, Division. The documentary will examine how the
economic forces of urbanization, migration and specialization are shaping our
future and what we need to do to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor
and to increase the choices and opportunities for all for a better quality of
life.

"We invite TV
broadcasters to discover the wealth of material and media services which exist
within the United Nations system, that they can use to produce human interest
stories in a variety of formats from the small screen to mobile devices,"
said Caroline Petit, who will represent the UN Department of Public Information
at MIPTV.

—By Irene Lew