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Contact: or Keith Schneider press@circleofblue.org
AT THE CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE: New approach to world's water woes Top journalists, scholars to cover global freshwater crisis
TRAVERSE CITY, MI (Sept. 25, 2007) – At the Clinton Global Initiative in New York as 1,000 world leaders convene to solve the planet's most urgent problems, Circle of Blue will introduce its comprehensive three-year program of original multi-media journalism, research, and social organizing focused on solving the global freshwater crisis. “Circle of Blue brings the global water dialogue to a new level,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, Calif. “By documenting the human face of urgent water issues worldwide, and by connecting each one of us to the problems and possibilities we share, it promises to create the momentum for unprecedented public involvement and response.” Circle of Blue employs a staff of award-winning professionals, working from offices on the shores of this coastal city on Lake Michigan, to manage a network of reporters and academics around the world. It edits and produces penetrating, original multi-media journalism that is published online, and in other mainstream and new media outlets. Circle of Blue is an affiliate of the Pacific Institute, the non-profit independent, nonpartisan think-tank studying issues at the intersection of development, environment, and security. The Clinton Global Initiative is devoted to bringing untraditional allies together to develop new tools to solve urgent global problems. The three-day, invitation-only event in New York has emerged as one of the world’s premier gatherings of international business, government, philanthropic, and non-profit leaders. Along with alerting global leaders to the effectiveness of its novel program of multi-media journalism and online social organizing, Circle of Blue introduces at the Clinton Initiative eight new partner organizations that dramatically strengthen the project’s capacity to produce compelling reporting, events, art and museum exhibits, conferences, and educational components. The intent is to inform and sharply expand the number of people inspired to help solve an immense challenge: the diminishing supply of clean, fresh water. Like so many other problems tackled by Clinton Global Initiative members, the freshwater issue crosses myriad national boundaries. It is shaped by natural and manmade forces of immense complexity. New means are needed to organize governments, businesses, advocates and citizens, and new communications tools must be applied to global environmental crises. Better quality information, freshly reported and globally disseminated, is an essential ingredient to the solution. “Water is the axis issue that intersects most of the world's greatest challenges, from health, poverty and security to climate, immigration and environment,” said J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue's co-founder who is an invited guest at the Clinton event. “Global warming, for example, is inseparable from the water crisis. We're just beginning to comprehend its impacts on our world's water supplies. “Thankfully there are solutions and efficient responses to many of the water problems," Ganter added. "Our imperative mission as journalists, researchers and communicators is to understand where we are, where we're headed and what we need to do."
Both Circle of Blue and the Clinton Global Initiative share a similar view of the new conditions that are simultaneously impediments and opportunities to respond to the freshwater shortage and the other surpassingly dangerous environmental crises of the 21st century: 1. Information, globally disseminated, is the essential ingredient to teach, inspire, and motivate people to action. 2. Governments, businesses, and citizens acting separately and alone are not capable of developing, never mind executing, the scientific and political strategy to achieve solutions. 3. New means are needed to organize governments, businesses, advocates and citizens, and new communications tools must be applied to global environmental crises in order to achieve solutions. 4. Those new communications tools are now available and many more people recognize that the 21st century, unlike the 20th, prizes the sort of effective collaboration and new forms of organization that can solve the freshwater crisis, one of the most significant geopolitical challenges people have ever faced. In effect, solving the freshwater crisis demands that Circle of Blue think holistically in its journalism, strategy, and partnerships. Mindful of those lessons Circle of Blue arrives at the Clinton Global Initiative with eight new partners who add the capacity to attract millions more people to the project’s work. The new partners include: 1. London-based SustainAbility the internationally recognized global consulting firm that will expand, refine, and strengthen Circle of Blue's technical and research capacity, as well as the project's reach into the global businesses community. 2. Contact Press Images based in New York and London, which represents many of the world's finest photojournalists including Annie Leibovitz and Sebastiao Salgado, is helping Circle of Blue build its global network of journalists and photographers. Contact also is assisting in research and assignment development by identifying the most compelling, emblematic stories to illustrate the world's water challenges and solutions. 3. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, which will host an exhibit of Circle of Blue water-related reportage. The Center's China Environment Forum and Environmental Change and Security Program also will help strengthen Circle of Blue's water-issues research capacity. 4. Evergreen Exhibitions, the well-known museum and exhibit company based in San Antonio, which will assist in developing unique exhibits that reach audiences through traditional and non-traditional means. 5. Greg Mort, a renowned American artist who is producing a signature watercolor for Circle of Blue and is organizing an international network of artists to produce artistic expressions about the freshwater crisis and solutions. 6. Sea Studios Foundation,based in Monterey, is a non-profit team of filmmakers, scientists, entrepreneurs and strategic communicators who work together to raise public involvement in solving the major threats to our planet's health today. Through the use of integrated media, Sea Studios Foundation seeks to amplify and elevate the level of discourse around key social and environmental issues, and to provide tangible ways for individuals to create meaningful change. 7. The Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, a collaborative unit of Northwestern Michigan College and the Michigan university system, will host an international conference on the global freshwater crisis in Traverse City in the fall of 2008. 8. Lunchbox Lessons, an innovative curriculum development company in Jackson, Wyoming that is developing online school education materials. Next Steps The Initiative viewed Circle of Blue as easily fitting into that new space. It is entirely an information project of its age — online, digital, multi-media, technically savvy, socially conscious, and motivated to make a difference on a global issues connected to the environment, health, and poverty that has not attracted nearly enough public attention and interest. "Circle of Blue," Dr. Peter Gleick said, "offers an opportunity to use data and information and new Internet tools in a new way to raise awareness for a whole new set of people, to raise awareness in a whole new set of communities, to raise awareness about a whole new set of solutions for water that really raises the opportunity, that really raises the chance that we're going to come up with real answers." The Circle of Blue commitments announced at the Clinton Initiative are designed to inspire additional partners, from filmmakers to technology and communications support, to join the project. Circle of Blue received initial concept funding from the Edmund F. and Virginia B. Ball Foundation, Catto Charitable Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, The Ford Foundation, Herrington-Fitch Foundation, Symbiocycles Foundation and Linden Trust for Conservation. “We are seeking like-minded, make-it-happen partners who are willing to share talent and resources,” said Ganter. “We welcome research partners, government agencies and businesses. We are especially interested in developing partnerships that can help fund this work on the largest scale.” Available: Comments "Circle of Blue offers an opportunity to use data and information and new Internet tools in a new way to raise awareness for a whole new set of people, to raise awareness in a whole new set of communities, to raise awareness about a whole new set of solutions for water that really raises the opportunity, that really raises the chance that we're going to come up with real answers." “I could take you back to the Civil War. You name the time and I'll name you the image that changed the policy. And it is true throughout all generations. Because it's the image that resides in your brain and doesn't leave. It stays there with you and you don't forget it.” "Those photos and those stories are so important in making that personal link. They're so compelling. Circle of Blue – there are so many talented journalists and photojournalists there, and they can take their talents and they can make those connections. By doing that, you've taken it five steps forward for those organizations who are trying to implement it on the other end, because you've gotten the attention of the American public. And that's where Circle of Blue plays such an important part." “If there's a next commodity war in America, it'll be over water, fresh water. So there are these kinds of issues that we have to bring to the fore of the narratives in America.” “We've seen throughout history that exceptional narrative journalistic storytelling can engage large audiences on multiple levels. The need for front-line reporting and data collection on the freshwater crisis has never been greater. The ability to disseminate information widely has never been more keen. It's a rare point in history when we can reach out to large audiences with relevant, actionable information and when a global audience — from school children to scientists — can participate." "What Circle of Blue can do is connect the professional journalists, the citizens, the NGOs, and government leaders and those in industry and other forms of science who would be connected to the issue of water, in ways in which we can learn from each other." “From a journalistic standpoint, or certainly a reader's standpoint, feedback, especially on a subject that looks at water shortage, planetwide...You're going to find that there are people responding who are a lot smarter than you and who may have wonderful ideas and also may find kindred spirits. They establish a dialog between other viewers. So it's 'one to one,' if you will, the blog commenter to the producer. But it's also the 'one to all' by version of the web.” "Circle of Blue is creating, building, establishing the information, cultural, research, fact-based comfort zone to inform these collaborative conversations. And it's doing so through its journalism, and it's doing so through its research/outreach. And third, it's going to help build these conversations through its social media. It is a communications, social organizing research project of its time. It's as timely today, it's as much a part of its realm today as the printing press was in the 1600s." "I'm really intrigued by the Circle of Blue and how it provides an opportunity to give kids the freedom to see where they fit in that circle, and then how they develop a solution to a problem that will be their circle for life." "The insight of Circle of Blue is finding ways that these messages can be translated and brought to diverse audiences in formats that work for them. And so it is having a totally open mind about which media format or written format or photo format or video format is the way it will reach these audiences. And so it's taking the mountain to Mohammed rather than just assuming they're going to pick up some big book and figure it out on their own. They're not. We have to take it to them in different formats, in appealing formats that can be enjoyable as well as educational. To do that takes a big, diverse team of expertise and that's what Circle of Blue is putting together." "I think that water pollution could very well be the catalyst that will enable people to push for greater change in the political system, for getting a cleaner environment...When the water's gone, life's gone." "Reaching an audience today means reaching an audience that is participatory. An audience that will be in the mix with us as journalists. And learning to work with that is really a key element." "You collect data from multiple places and you draw conclusions from that data, but ultimately what's going to happen is that that data is going to push you to ask another set of questions that will then lead you to collecting more data. So there's a circle of data, questions and answers and solutions and their impact, that the metaphor of a circle is actually very appropriate.”
Links and Resources Clinton Global Initiative Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program, “Navigating Peace” Navigating Peace multimedia “Water Stories” China Environment Forum - Circle of Blue Great Lakes at risk
New high-speed visions of water
Renowned slow motion cinematographer Jim Matlosz has added his commitment to Circle of Blue. "I have seen people sit and stare at liquid pouring and dripping and moving with the awe of a child's first fireworks display." It's with that sense of passion, art and engagement that Matlosz will help bring water to people in the most visual, engrossing artistic senses using the most advanced high-speed cinematography technology. Matlosz was cinematographer for the acclaimed "Slow Dancing" exhibit at Lincoln Center in New York last summer, described by the New York Times as "an unforgetable dance-meets-film-technology evening." Click to see the poetry in motion here. MediaStorm wins Emmy for broadband We send our congratulations to our friends and colleagues at MediaStorm for capturing a coveted Emmy Monday night at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in New York. For the better part of ten years, MediaStorm and Circle of Blue team members have worked together to help define the emerging era of multimedia journalism. "Every traditional media is recognizing the role of the Internet and exceptional story telling," said Brian Storm, the firm's founder and member of the Circle of Blue advisory board. Way to go!
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Circle of Blue is funded by generous contributions, partnerships and individuals including Ford Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, SymbioCycles Foundation, Edmund F. and Virginia B. Ball Foundation, Catto Charitable Foundation, Linden Family Trust, Herrington-Fitch Foundation and many others. Circle of Blue is a non-profit affiliate of the Pacific Institute.
info@circleofblue.org
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