Too Many Degrees: Human Security and Climate Change

Human security is defined as freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom from hazard impact. Too Many Degrees: Human Security and Climate change is a 26-minute documentary produced by OneWorld Sustainable Investments for the FCO’s Strategic Programme Fund. It examines how climate can turn into an adversary, threatening people and their livelihoods. Few regions exist where this is more evident than Southern Africa. Putting a human face to the issue, the film follows three groups of people, telling stories seldom heard.

  • What does a two-year drought really mean for a subsistence farmer in Tanzania?
  • What are the human costs of flooding in Zambia?
  • And what added burden does climate instability place on the economically beleaguered in Zimbabwe?

It illustrates the impacts climate can have on people’s economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security. And it asks the question: Is it good enough to achieve global commitment to keeping a mean temperature increase to within two degrees above pre-industrial levels? For the increase to average out at two degrees globally Southern Africa is likely to see a much higher increase, in places—some say as high as four degrees or even more.

Two workshops were held with regional experts in developing the story, and the production team then took to the field in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa in search of case studies that would illustrate conditions as mapped by experts. From August/September, conversations and meetings were held with BHC and DFID offices, NGOs (including the International Organisation for Migration and WaterAid), the World Health Organisation, tertiary education institutions and various government ministries.

In addition, the OneWorld production team engaged with institutions and organisations in the various regions—for example, the Institute for Resource Assessment at the University of Dar Es Salaam, the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) and the International Organisation for Migrants (IOM) in South Africa and Tanzania.

Too Many Degrees premiered at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) film festival at the COP15 international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December, 2009, and enjoyed three further screenings at the event.

Immediately after its Copenhagen outing, the documentary was presented to an expert group on natural resources, climate change and conflict in Africa at the Africa office of the United Nations Security Council. It contributed to a significant shift in the group’s attitude, which held climate change to be a passing fad. The documentary helped raise knowledge and balance discussion on climate change as an exacerbating factor in an already stressed environment, and that it strongly increases the need to proactively deal with conflict resolution, implement appropriate structures and address land and resource-based challenges in Africa.

As a result, climate change is now well integrated into the declaration put forward on behalf of the expert group to the UN Security Council and General Assembly by OneWorld CEO Belynda Petrie. Moreover, water, climate change and human security are now specifically included in the declaration.

It is currently garnering substantial acclaim on the international documentary film festival circuit.