Bismarck Sea - Building Capacity for Sustainable Development

Video

'Building Capacity for Sustainable and Responsible Development in the Bismarck Sea' is a collaborative program aiming to protect a hugely biodiverse region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), while boosting livelihoods and food security.

The project partners - PNG’s Conservation Environmental Protection Authority, CSIRO and The Nature Conservancy – required a video demonstrating its model of evidence-based, inclusive decision-making, a model that could cope with future uncertainty and rapid change. 

The video would be a resource for stakeholders and decision-makers in the target provinces of East and West New Britain, as well as elsewhere in the Coral Triangle, a region including many of PNG’s neighbours.

Generally, my work focuses on people – human stories that speak as much to the heart as to the head. This was rather different. The challenge was to communicate a relatively complex, multi-layered governance process as clearly, concisely – and colourfully – as possible. 

I was lucky enough to travel to New Britain three times, shooting project workshops and getting out and about with my drone. A land of jungles, volcanos and coral reefs, it is a truly awesome place.

Seeing the project firsthand brought it to life. After working on a script with CSIRO’s Dr James Butler, I was able to develop graphics that helped distil the concepts. With a voice over and a stack of B-roll, the story came together.

As an off-shoot of the project I produced two Pidgin-language social media clips, explaining the issues of population growth and climate change to a local audience. This meant developing snappy scripts which spoke directly to young New Britons. 

I then hired the excellent Enos Gagua to translate and present them in front of the camera. Roto-scoping (whereby I isolated Enos from the background and projected images and footage behind him) is a handy skill I picked up along the way.

"Tom was able to translate our complex and abstract concepts into simple info-graphics, which clearly resonated with all PNG and Australian stakeholders. Also, the short videos on population growth and climate change were a novel departure from our more usual technical focus, and were ideally tailored for use on social media in PNG."

Dr. James Butler
Adaptive Urban and Social Systems Program
CSIRO Land and Water

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