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MAP’s EPIC Mangrove video: A global success!

EPIC Project Advisory Committee meeting
By MAP Intern,
Amber Bowes & Jim Enright, Asia Coordinator
Back
in December we reported on the filming of a new
Ecosystems Protecting Infrastructure Communities
(EPIC) video by MAP’s visual communications consultant
Leo Thom, and Tim Plowden, a British wildlife photographer based in Singapore. The
two of them spent 6 days in the Krabi region of Southern Thailand gathering
footage, before a lengthy post-production process by Leo. The video entitled:
Mangroves:
Reducing the Risk of Disaster through Nature-Based Solutions
has since been completed and the fantastic
short documentary is available both in English and Thai while being shown at a
wide variety of events and locations.
The
video highlights the importance of restoring abandoned shrimp ponds of which there
are an estimated 250,000 hectares in Asia. Formerly, these ponds were healthy
mangrove ecosystems providing a long list of goods and services to their local
communities and locking up vast quantities of carbon.  MAP has been using the
Community-Based
Ecological Restoration
(CBEMR)
methodology to restore the full biodiversity of the mangroves to these
abandoned shrimp ponds and to allow the EPIC project to showcase the disaster
risk reduction (DRR) importance of mangroves. Many communities, such as those
in coastal Southern Thailand, are suffering from the intensification and increased
frequency of tropical storms. Additionally, climate change induced sea level
rise has resulted in serious erosion affecting infrastructure, salinization of
agriculture lands and loss of land. All these challenges facing local communities
have been exacerbated by the wide-scale destruction of local mangroves. With
resources like this short documentary, MAP is raising awareness and promoting IUCN’s
Eco-DRR concept of
Nature-based solutions of this issue
and able to disseminate information to a wide range of people from all over the
world.  




















EPIC mangrove video being displayed on large screen (lower
right) at the IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland
We are pleased to report that the video has received
a considerable amount of attention since its release and has been shown to a
number of government officials in Thailand to promote further mangrove
conservation and improve local livelihoods. Additionally, the film is showing
at a wide range of locations and events in 2016 with more to be confirmed:
EPIC mangrove video displayed (lower right) at the IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland

·      Muddy Mangrove Movie-fest” at
the
Australian
Mangrove & Saltmarsh Network Conference
, Darwin, Australia. May 5th, 2016

·      Reception of IUCN Headquarters, Gland, Switzerland.
2016.
·      The
Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) booth at the
IUCN World Conservation Congress, Hawaii, USA. September 1st
2016.
·      Wildlife Vaasa International Wildlife Film
Festival
, Vaasa,
Finland. September 28th to October 2nd 2016.
·     
Kuala Lumpur Eco Film Festival 2016, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
October 14th
to 16th 2016.
·     
International Festival of Sustainable Development Films – Ekotopfilm
2016 in Czech Republic,
Fall 2016.
MAP thanks our project holders and funders because
without the support of IUCN, the EPIC project holder, and funding from the German
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety’s
International Climate Initiative (BMUB-ICI) this project would not have been
possible.
If
you haven’t seen the 8 min. video you can find it on MAP’s YouTube channel here: 

Mangroves: Reducing the Risk of Disaster
through Nature-Based Solutions
(English)
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