People & Planet Calendar & Diary 2013 | Copywriting

For the second consecutive year, I penned 56 short stories for People & Planet’s Social Justice & Environment Calendar & Diary, which showcase the work of a slew of photojournalists and raise funds for 42 Australian charities including Friends of the Earth Australia, the United Nations Association of Australia, Oxfam and the Cambodian Kids Foundation. People & Planet requested a stand-alone story about each photograph, telling the tale of the images themselves and touching on any wider social, political or economic facts in under 110 words.

Pipe Dream – Dhaka, Bangladesh

Ismail Ferdous (Bangladesh)

Khaled, 13, drinks water from a train-cleaning pipe in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2012 the Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) warned of a severe water crisis in Dhaka owing to both the city’s inability to produce enough water and its over-reliance on groundwater. Although Bangladesh is facing both an urban and rural water crisis, the situation in Bangladesh’s cities has been accentuated by a trend of rural-to-urban-migration which began in the 1970s and has seen Dhaka’s population increase four-fold in 25 years. In late 2011 WaterAid launched a five-year programme in Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna, targeting 340,000 of Bangladesh’s urban poor with water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services.

The Great Migration – Maasai Mara, Kenya, Africa

Elaine Fox-Packer (United Kingdom)

More than 1,000,000 Wildebeest make a 500-kilometre journey around Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s Southern Serengeti each year in search of water and food in a spectacle known as ‘the Great Migration.’ The Great Migration is the largest mass migration of land mammals in the world and began in the 1960s when the local Wildebeest population blossomed from 260,000 to almost 1.5 million. In 2011 following fierce opposition from conservationists to the construction of a 50 kilometre asphalt road through Serengeti National Park, it was announced that an unpaved road would instead be built, with assurances that its construction would not have a detrimental effect on the region’s wildlife.

Walking Together – Piraeus, Greece

Michael Pappas (Greece)

Against the backdrop of Greece’s ongoing debt crisis one of Piraeus city’s many homeless people wanders the streets alone. An estimated 20,000 people have been made homeless since the beginning of the Greek recession, with the country’s Orthodox Church reportedly feeding 250,000 people a day and Athens’ homeless shelter Klimaka estimating that homelessness in Greece has increased by 25 percent in the last few years. But out of darkness comes hope: Klimaka has been humbled by an unprecedented outpouring of generosity since the recession’s onset, with around 50 people per day bringing donations to the shelter in an overwhelming show of solidarity with Greece’s new homeless.

Protected Citizen – Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

Svetlana Popova (Russia)

Birds flank a spotted deer as it searches for food in the Sri Lankan port city of Trincomalee. Sri Lanka is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, with 23 percent of its flowering plants and 16 percent of its mammals being endemic to the island. As a predominantly Buddhist country whose people observe the tenet of Ahimsa – or kindness and non-violence towards all living beings – Sri Lanka’s extraordinary array of wildlife is protected by a total ban on hunting and killing animals as game; an edict that has been around since the 3^rd Century B.C. when King Devanampiyathissa of Mihintale established the country’s first wildlife sanctuary.

Mother River – China

Zhang Kechun (China)

In the 1990s the crisis facing China’s Yellow River was so acute that it didn’t reach the sea for 226 days a year; a mixture of pollution and exploitation threatening to wipe China’s ‘Mother River’ out for good as demand for water surged in tandem with China’s economic boom. In the last decade however, a groundbreaking digital system has been implemented, allowing engineers control over the 5,464 kilometre long river’s downstream diversions for agriculture, industry and to mitigate pollution. Although conservationists warn that more could be done, this technology, along with numerous economic, policy and legal reforms, has seen the Yellow River’s water quality and quantity vastly improve.

Give Me Shelter – Kolkata, India

Mahfuzul Hasan Bhuiyan (Bangladesh)

Some of Kolkata’s 100,000 homeless people, who migrated to the city to find work, take shelter in a sewerage pipe having lost their riverside home. Kolkata is India’s third most populous city and one of its most deprived, with a 2003 UN Habitat study reporting that ‘1.5 million people, or one third of Kolkata’spopulation, live in 2011 registered and 3500 unregistered slums.’ ActionAid is currently campaigning to make Kolkata’s urban poor aware of their right to urban space, organizing ‘street-corner meetings to address slum-dwellers’ on issues such as registering to vote and obtaining identity cards and birth certificates, which are all vital in their plight to find permanent homes.

A New Dawn – Bana Village, West Hungary

Zoltan Sermesic (Hungary)

Dawn breaks over a wind farm in West Hungary on a cold winter morning. Wind farms are a vital component of the European Union’s drive to ensure its member states generate 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, also providing sustainable employment opportunities to an increasing number of people. 192,000 people work in Europe’s wind industry and by 2020 this figure is expected to balloon to 446,000 as the EU’s green energy efforts are redoubled. Promisingly, the European Commission has revealed that 12 of the EU’s 27 Member States are predicted to meet their renewable energy targets by 2020, with 10 more likely to surpass their goals.

Leaps and Bounds – Pariaman Beach, West Sumatra, Indonesia

Iggoy el Fitra (Indonesia)

Two boys play soccer on Pariaman Beach in West Sumatra at sunset. In September 2007 Sumatra endured a series of earthquakes in which at least 21 people died, 88 were injured and 45,000 buildings were damaged. Shortly after, not-for-profit organisation Build Change – which works to save lives and livelihoods endangered by housing collapses in developing countries during earthquakes – arrived in West Sumatra to offer assistance to locals. Sumatra endured another earthquake in September 2009 but none of Build Change’s houses sustained any damage. Since 2007 Build Change has trained 389 builders; built 11,993 houses and saved possibly scores of lives as part of its West Sumatra housing programme.

The Artist – Jakarta, Indonesia

Safir Makki (Indonesia)

A transvestite street artist performs at traffic lights in Jakarta, Indonesia where warias – or Muslim Indonesian transvestites – predominantly work as prostitutes or street performers due to their lowly status. Warias are widely persecuted in Indonesia, where roughly 88 percent of people identify as Muslim; a religion that strictly forbids cross-dressing. In Yogyakarta, however, Indonesia’s first Islamic school dedicated to educating waria was established in 2008, giving waria a place to study and practice their faith. Each week around 20 waria meet at the Senin-Kamis school, studying the Koran and learning skills such as cooking and beauty therapy which should enable them to find employment away from the streets.

From the Dust – Central Myanmar

Zaw Zaw Tun (Myanmar)

Boys play soccer in the dust in Central Myanmar, where the tale of the country’s national soccer team echoes the fortunes of Myanmar itself. Once known as the ‘Asian Powerhouse’ of soccer, Myanmar’s national soccer team witnessed a sad decline in its fortunes as the team fell from international favour owing to human rights abuses. News that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi had been elected to parliament in 2012 however, has seen the US removing sanctions on NGOs operating in Myanmar in sectors such as education and sport, creating an opportunity to use sport as a developmental tool in impoverished Myanmar after 50 years of military rule.

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