Architecture and Design

ResponsibleChina Podcast: Caroline Campbell of the Green Dragon Media Project

(Photo courtesy of Caroline Campbell)

Caroline Campbell first fell in love with nature while growing up on a pig farm in rural England. Since then, she has traveled the world, telling stories about the importance of the environment, climate change and sustainability. Originally trained as a zoologist at the University of Edinburgh, Campbell became fascinated by the power of media. As a self-taught journalist and producer, she began her career by working for the BBC, for which she still produces radio features. Her first film for the BBC, “Global Dimming,” won the prestigious Wildscreen Planet Earth award and was requested to be viewed privately by the British Parliament “to expose a misunderstood aspect of the climate change debate,” she says. Campbell also worked as associate producer with the Sea Studios Foundation, in cooperation with National Geographic, on the production of “Strange Days on Planet Earth,” hosted by Edward Norton.

Today, Campbell is the creative director and co-producer of the Green Dragon Media Project, a multimedia report about the green construction industry in China. (Read her full bio/resume here.)

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Listen to my podcast interview with her:

03-responsiblechina_-caroline-campbell-from-the-green-dragon-media-project.mp3

(Music credit: “Fresh,” byMadMaxXB from GarageBand.

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“The Green Dragon Media Project expands internationally-supported research initiated by the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the U.S. and sponsored by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The Media Project was born out of recognition of the need to facilitate expansion of sustainable construction efforts in China through an effective multimedia communication strategy. The immediate goal is therefore to create a multimedia online report highlighting the potential opportunities for acceleration of China’s movements towards sustainability. The audience for this report includes key international players who are in a position to respond to these opportunities.”

You can read more about the project here, where you will find a list of interviewees, an image gallery, and information about how to become a sponsor. Campbell recently edited a 20-minute film containing interviews with key players in China’s green building industry. “It will just open the ‘Pandora’s Box,’ if you like, to see what’s there,” she says of Green Dragon Media’s introduction to an international audience. (The film recently debuted at Chicago’s Green Build Expo on November 8th.)

Campbell says she believes in the potential for China to be a leader in the green building industry, but she acknowledges that there are a couple of barriers to the country’s success. The first is a general lack of understanding among Chinese developers about the green building industry, mainly because the country does not have trade associations to help disseminate information about sourcing new products and technology. “It gets left to the business people, who are very busy, so there’s very little understanding on how to get hold of products and how much they cost and who’s making them,” Campbell says.

The second barrier is a lack of education among local government officials about the central government’s energy efficiency policies. “If you’re putting these fairly ambitious energy saving codes on every building in China through the central government, and you’re not enforcing them, and your local government officials don’t really understand the reasoning, they see a much cheaper way of doing it,” Campbell says. “It’s not going to happen that easily unless the people are educated about the actual cost benefits and social benefits.”

The goal of the Green Dragon Media Project, then, is to educate people around the world about China’s unprecedented opportunity for green construction and to create a community of green building professionals and advocates who can share information with each other. Eventually, Campbell and her team hope to launch a new media production company that focuses specifically on the green building industry. People who might want to get involved in the initiative include people with technical media skills or English-Chinese translation experience, as well as business professionals, such as venture capitalists, who want to support the project’s goals.

Contact the Green Dragon Media Project team:

• Max Perelman
• Research Director / Producer
• +1.831.917.7641
• max@greendragonfilm.org

• Caroline Campbell
• Creative Director / Producer
• +1.831.224.6083
• caroline@greendragonfilm.org

• River Lu
• Localization Director / Interpreter
• +1.831.917.5187
• rivergreendragon@gmail.com

[tags]China, green construction, sustainable development, Green Dragon Media Project[/tags]

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