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UN Video library: Disaster prevention

2011

Ethiopia: Drought Lingers
UN in Action, October 2011
Place: Ethiopia
Duration: 3min56sec
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) recently trained pastoralists in Ethiopia to watch for warning signs of drought. Some 12 million pastoralists here travel great distance to find grazing land and water sources for their livestock daily. IFAD is counting on its investment in training to avert any future humanitarian crisis like the one unfolding now in the Horn of Africa.

Turning the tide on desertification in Africa
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Place: Senegal
Duration: 3min27sec
In Senegal, the Acacia project has involved the planting and managing of Acacia forests in arid lands helping combat desertification while providing life-changing benefits to local communities. With two thirds of the African continent now classified as desert or drylands and desertification affecting a quarter of the world's population, the breakthrough has the potential to transform the lives of vulnerable populations.

Brazil Drylands: The Promise of Water
UNTV 21st Century
Place: Brazil
Duration: 4min40sec
Desertification threatens almost half of the world's land. If left unchecked, its effects are disastrous. But in the drylands of Brazil, new hope is emerging: a project is educating farmers on a number of low cost time-proven methods of land cultivation and thus preventing desertification.

The Man Who Stopped the Desert
UNTV
Place: Burkina Faso
Duration: 1min
The story of Yacouba Sawadogo, an illiterate farmer from Burkina Faso, who managed to win the battle against the on-going desertification of the region. This is the clip of the winner of Special Jury Award in the International Forest Film Festival.

2009

At a Glance: Syrian Arab Republic
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Place: Syria
Duration: 1min57sec
In Syria, droughts are causing crop failure and reduced grazing pastures. Drought and climate change has depleted the Al Assi river in Salamieh, and communities now depend on wells for their water supply. This video shows how a new water station unit, partly funded by UNICEF, cleans the water which contains dangerous levels of sulphur, ensuring a clean, safe water supply.

Drought prevention in Sahel
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Place: Sahel (Mali, Senegal, Mauritania)
Duration: 4min11sec
How to prevent repeated crisis of drought, constantly menacing the people of the Sahel region? Progresses have been made to face such natural scarcity and to help bringing Sahel out of underdevelopment: construction of mini-dams or reservoirs, able to hold the water to the land; irrigation of market garden cultures, the surplus of which can be sold at the local market. As a consequence, living conditions are improving in the area and the society is getting more and more organized, so that a credit system managed by women has been successfully developing.

Haiti: From Storm Recovery to Sustainable Development
International Labour Organization (ILO)
Place: Haiti
Duration: 2min51sec
In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne swept through the historical port city of Gonaïves in Haiti, sending walls of water and mud down the surrounding slopes and changing the face of the city forever. A project managed by the International Labour Organization (ILO) has been helping local residents organize themselves to build erosion control networks to protect the city from future mudslides and heavy run-off.

2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Risk and poverty in a changing climate
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)
Duration: 6min07sec
Based on more than 30 years of disaster data, the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction highlights three main risk drivers that will be magnified by climate change and proposes 20 recommendations to help make the world safer. This video summarizes main issues covered by the report.

2008

(The) Gathering Storm - Africa: Chapter 8 Drip Irrigation
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Place: Senegal
Duration: 2min02sec
Part of a series exploring the human cost of climate change in Africa, this chapter shows how a project teaching drip irrigation techniques is helping farmers in Senegal to cope with increasing droughts.

(The) Gathering Storm - Africa: Chapter 6 Mountain Drought
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Place: Lesotho
Duration: 2min32sec
Part of a series exploring the human cost of climate change in Africa, this video shows how prolonged drought in a mountain village in Lesotho is having devastating impacts on livelihoods.