Steve Chao

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Steve Chao
Correspondent | Malaysia
Biography

Steve Chao is an award-winning correspondent who first began his journalism career 15 years ago in Canada. 

He's been on the frontlines of historic and sometimes tragic events such as the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, to the Asian tsunami, to the 2008 ethnic riots in Tibet.  A veteran of covering conflict zones, he's spent much of his time in Afghanistan since 2001.

Latest posts by Steve Chao

By Steve Chao in Asia on October 26th, 2010
  • I have begun an experiment of sorts. Having devoted the past month to learning about the loss of the world's biodiversity (and frankly chilled by the prospects), I set out to gauge public opinion on the matter.

The lab work was carried out in various restaurants, with family and friends, the test subjects. Talking about the issue, as I quickly learned, almost always requires a quick briefer. 

Despite the fact the UN has designated 2010 as the international year of biodiversity, most people only have a rough inkling as to what exactly it means. 

And so, over appetizers, I begin with the typical yarn about the huge variety of animals and plants, how we are all co-dependent in this "web of life", and how that web is unravelling.

What alarms virtually every person is when I start rattling off the figures:
That there are now some 17,291 life forms threatened with extinction - more than one-third of the total 47,677 recognised.

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 18th, 2010

According to popular lore, during one of Captain Robert F. Scott's famed expeditions to the Antarctic in 1912, his weather man - a genius known to give amazingly precise predictions - walked out of camp one night and got caught in a sudden storm.

He trudged endlessly on until morning when, desperate and tired, he managed to catch site of the base. 

As the storm passed, his footprints revealed that he had been going around in circles only 30m from the rest of Scott's men. 

There are many other examples of explorers who never made it back, their bodies later found to have been within a stone's throw of their travel companions. 

These were the types of tales Catlin's Ice Base staff shared with us on our first days in the high Canadian arctic.

"The thing about polar regions is that you can't take anything for granted," says Paul Ramsden, the Ice Base Manager. 

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 17th, 2010
Holes were dug into the ice to study the acidity of the waters beneath

"So what were you guys in the arctic filming?" asked the check-in lady at the hotel.

"We were following scientists doing research on climate change," I replied.

"Oh. How boring," she said, her momentary interest at our northern adventure having peaked and evaporated on the mere mention of the environment.

My cameramen, Manu Leus and I had just returned to Toronto from a couple of weeks of living with researchers from the Catlin Arctic Survey on a base plopped on floating sea ice, not far from the North Pole. 

We thought the project sounded interesting enough to us, but the hotel employee's reaction seemed very much a barometer of how people in general are feeling about the topic of the environment. 

She wasn't the first. We watched the eyes of many others we had met along the way glaze over when we began to explain the story we were filming.

"How interesting," was the common reply.

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 16th, 2010
Photos by Steve Chao

There was a time when Russell Atagootak would first look to the sky as he prepared to hunt seal.

"The clouds told us the weather," he says, "then we would know if it was a good day to hunt." 

Forecasting the weather through cloud formations was once a reliable Inuit tradition, passed down through generations. 

"It was elders in my community that first noticed the clouds were changing," says the 23-year-old hunter and guide.

"The patterns were no longer the same … they became more and more unpredictable. Now they're impossible to read."

About 10km out into the bay from his town of Resolute are other reminders of how the Arctic environment is fast changing. Fields of broken ice stretch as far as the eye can see, and beyond is open water. Not long ago, Inuit and their dog sled teams could count on smooth ice to roam and hunt. 

Not any longer.

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 9th, 2010
Photos by Steve Chao

The days go by quickly here in the Canadian Arctic.

One minute you're struggling to get out of your warm sleeping bag in -20C weather, the next, you're looking at your watch and seeing it's already midnight and time again for bed.

"It must be because we're on the top of the world and here it spins faster," jokes our cameraperson, Manu Leus.

Well, nine days have already spun by, and it's a wonder where time goes.

It likely has something to do with the fact it's impossible to tell how late it is here.

The winter's long darkness is turning into spring's long periods of daylight. Even at 2am, the sun maintains a presence on the horizon.

For the scientists we've been following, the added light has turned their camp into a busy hive of activity.

By Steve Chao in Americas on April 2nd, 2010
Al Jazeera photo

The wait was over. Four days. Five nights. A total whiteout blizzard.

Seemingly unending high winds, and finally, a perfect day for flying in the Arctic.

"Okay guys, let's go, I'll drive you," said Ozzie, short for The Wizard of Oz, as many call him in the northern town of Resolute Bay. 

His real name is Aziz Kheraj.

Kheraj is a business baron and the epitome of the Russian proverb, "who doesn’t risk, doesn’t drink champagne".

Following in the far north's tradition of people who've braved the extreme conditions to find fortune, he came to Canada from Tanzania in 1974 with only fifty dollars to his name, and worked his way northwards to Resolute.

Polar entrepreneur

The hotel, the South Camp Inn, where we had spent our last week trying to kill time, was his - along with several other ventures.

The cost for one night's stay? Two hundred and fifty dollars.

By Steve Chao in Americas on March 27th, 2010

ArcticSuna.jpg

“Don’t worry, by the time you get there, it will be nearing the end of winter and the temperature will only be around -25 degrees Celsius.”

They were meant to be reassuring words from Catlin Arctic Expedition Director Pen Hadow.

But as I put the phone down in my apartment in plus 30 degree Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it was still somewhat hard to imagine enduring such extreme conditions, while reporting on the work of Catlin’s scientists.

The international team of researchers have already spent the past month enduring even colder conditions living and working on floating sea ice, some 750 miles from the North Pole. 

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