Films are part of the “What matters” project and were produced by UNICEF and Alana and developed by Fbiz
The meetings of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change will have a different participation this year. In addition to the traditional suited representatives of UN member states, the organization also presented the testimony of 25 children from 12 countries.
According to UN data, children are the most impacted by the climate emergency and represent a third of the world’s population (around 2.2 billion people), with half of them (more than 1 billion) living in places exposed to severe climate risks. , especially in the Global South.
Currently, in the world, more than 1 in every 4 deaths of children under 5 years of age are attributable to unhealthy environments and, despite this, children do not participate or are taken into account in COP agendas and negotiations.
With this in mind, the organization presented a video where they talk about how their lives are being impacted by extreme weather events and demand effective action from the authorities. The films were produced by UNICEF and Alana, and developed by Fbiz.
In the films, which are part of the project “What matters” (“The important Stuff, in English), children from Madagascar, Somalia, Serbia, Australia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, United States, Barbados, Egypt, Arab Emirates and Brazil express their concerns and call for immediate solutions from the planet’s main leaders.
“When we talk about climate change, we are talking about children. We need to protect their future, it’s as simple as that. The powerful testimonies of these children need to be the last thing negotiators hear before they enter the negotiations that will determine what kind of world they will grow up in. We can only hope they listen,” said Gautam Narasimhan, UNICEF’s global climate change lead.
The images were captured in collaboration with local UNICEF offices. In the case of Brazil, the direction was led by Gabriela Brigago and Dyego Barbosa Figueiredo, with support from Estdio Dead Pixel. There was filming both in Jardim Pantanal, a neighborhood in the far east of So Paulo, and in Alter do Cho, in Pará. The general sound producer is Mission Music.
“The challenge was to actually translate the purpose of giving children a voice. This involved not providing a script for them to memorize and reproduce, but transforming their own reflections into original films. In addition to being able to make the necessary seams to obtain representative narratives of regions and realities around the world, uniting them in a final result that makes sense”, added Carla Cancellara, executive director of Creation at Fbiz.
