This week Arkive is celebrating the US premiere of the environmental documentary Tomorrow, (Demain le Film). We’ll be featuring a guest blog each day this week, with documentary contributors discussing the global issues featured in Tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s US premiere is in San Francisco this Friday, 14th April 2017. Find the Tomorrow Facebook or visit the website for a full run-down and trailer.

“Without question, this is absolutely the best and most creative film on the future of humanity and the environment.” – Paul Hawken, leading environmentalist

Tomorrow trailer

 Who are you?

Anthony D. Barnosky – Executive Director at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Stanford University and Professor at the Department of Integrative Biology, University of California-Berkeley

Please could you describe your connection with Tomorrow?

Along with my wife Elizabeth Hadly and several others, I was a co-author of the scientific report “Approaching a state-shift in the biosphere” (Nature 486:52-56) which inspired Cyril and Mélanie to make the movie.

What are the problems facing your field of expertise from an environmental perspective?

Most of my work has been on climate change, the ongoing extinction crisis, and the loss of ecosystems.  We know the causes of these crises, and we know most of the science and technology needed to fix them.  The biggest obstacle to solutions are the social ones: people need to be made aware of what is at stake, what the solutions are, and they need to be motivated to cooperate to emplace the solutions.

Do you have any suggested solutions to the problems Tomorrow confronts?

The solution to climate change is rapidly transitioning the global energy system from one based on fossil fuels to carbon-neutral technologies. For the stationary energy system (largely electricity generation), this can be done by a combination of solar, wind, wave, and hydro power and increasing energy efficiency in buildings.  For the transportation system, it can be done by transitioning to electric and hydrogen-fuel vehicles, and a shift to sustainable biofuels.

For increasing food production—necessary to feed an additional 2-3 billion people that will be on the planet by 2050—the answers lie in more efficient production in agricultural lands already under production rather than taking over new lands that other species need, wasting less food, and eating less meat.

Land conversion for agriculture is believed to be the world’s biggest driver of deforestation, especially in tropical areas.

We also must stabilise world population below 10 billion people – what works for this is providing educational opportunities and access to medical care (including contraceptives for those who want them) in parts of the world where they are now lacking, especially for women.

Urbanisation is the process by which human settlements expand into the natural areas that surround them, leading to the removal of forests, wetlands, grasslands and other ecosystems.

What are your personal feelings on the importance of conveying Tomorrow’s message, and what impact do you hope for it to have upon the audience?

Tomorrow shows us not only what the world can be, but what it already is in various parts of the planet – a society where people take local action to solve global issues and thereby make their own lives much more pleasurable.  Sometimes world problems seem so big that people lose sight of the fact that the only effective solutions start at home, in our own communities. Tomorrow reminds us of that, shows us the path forward, and makes us realise that the future can be as bright as we decide to make it.

We’d like to thank Tony for his words and speaking to us. If you’d like to know more about Rob’s work you can visit his blog, website or find him on Twitter.

Add Comment (0) Share

This week Arkive is celebrating the US premiere of the environmental documentary Tomorrow, (Demain le Film). We’ll be featuring a guest blog each day this week, with documentary contributors discussing the global issues featured in Tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s US premier is in San Francisco this Friday, 14th April 2017. Visit the website for a full run-down and trailer.

“Without question, this is absolutely the best and most creative film on the future of humanity and the environment.” – Paul Hawken, leading environmentalist

Tomorrow trailer

Who are you?

My name is Rob Hopkins. I am a blogger, writer and public speaker, and the founder of Transition Movement. I started the first Transition initiative here in Totnes, Devon, UK, and also Transition Network, which supports the people in over 50 countries who are now doing Transition. I have won several awards for my work, including 2 honorary PhDs. I am also a father to four sons, a gardener, the director of New Lion Brewery, and was delighted to be one of the people featured in Tomorrow – I’m the guy with the £21 note!

What is your field of work?

I was a teacher of permaculture for years, before starting the Transition Movement in 2005. The area of my work is around communities, and the potential they have to organise and make things happen. I was struck that climate change felt like such a vast, existential crisis and that people were overwhelmed, and had given all their power over to leaders to sort it out. But I also saw that there was so much that communities could do. They could move faster, they were nimbler, they could be more ambitious. And that the projects they were doing were building connection, were bringing people together, and were reviving local economies. So for me, Transition is a movement of communities reimagining and rebuilding our world, and they are doing so at a time that desperately needs that.

Rob Hopkins

Could you describe your connection with Tomorrow?

I had met Cyril Dion once before, but in 2014 he and Melanie came to Totnes to interview me for the film. I hadn’t heard of her before although, as her crew pointed out, in France she is very famous! So they filmed an interview and then went home, and I didn’t hear anything for about a year and a half. Then in December 2015, I was invited to the premiere in Paris, and it blew me away. I thought it was amazing – it made me cry at least six times. It was such an honour to see myself in it alongside other such amazing people. Its rise and impact in France, Belgium and elsewhere has been stunning to see. In France, in particular, it has been a phenomenon. When I go there now, teenagers ask me for selfies on the Metro in Paris!

Being part of it has changed my life, but more importantly, it has changed the lives of so many of those who have seen it. I went to several screenings in Paris in December 2015 and was amazed at how many young people there were. I asked them “why do you like it so much?” They told me that after the terror attacks in Paris the month before, “we don’t know what our story is anymore. Now we have our story”. That’s very powerful.

Mass coral bleaching events are happening around the world due to climate change

What are the problems facing your field of work, from an environmental perspective?

We are in a race against time, a race that we are losing. We are now seeing a concerted war on climate science, a rolling back of climate action and the deletion of large sections of the evidence base. At the same time we are seeing warming accelerate, Arctic ice in its death throes, all the impacts scientists predicted coming to pass. We also see our communities becoming more isolated from each other, an “epidemic of loneliness”, and communities economically left behind. Tomorrow is a film that says “it doesn’t have to be like that. We can do better than that”. I can’t think of any film that has more to say about what’s happening in the US right now, and more potential to inspire people with a new, more inspiring and appropriate story.

Do you have any suggested solutions to the problems Tomorrow confronts?

This film is full of solutions. One of the things that is radical about this film is that it turns what I call the ‘happy chapter’ convention on its head. That’s the convention where films about green issues are relentlessly miserable until the last 5 minutes when they say “ah, but we could do this”. Tomorrow gets the problems out of the way in the first 2 minutes, then they give you 3 minutes to let that settle, and then they head off to find solutions. No-one really did that before, and I notice that quite a few people are doing so since.

For me, the future needs to be more local. Climate change makes a nonsense of moving goods around the world in order to boost economic growth figures. The UK exports to Germany every year the same amount of potatoes as it imports from Germany. Let’s just email each other the recipes and make our local economies more resilient. Our local economies need to move away from their current move towards monoculture, fewer and fewer more and more powerful businesses, to a complex ecosystem of businesses, rooted in place and in the community. That’s a solution that’s better for public health, community cohesion and for economic resilience, and it is growing now, in many places.

What are your personal feelings on the importance of conveying Tomorrow’s message, and what impact do you hope for it to have upon the audience?

I have seen, time and again, the impact this film has on people. It gives them hope. It gives them workable, tried-and-tested solutions they can draw on. It’s a film about climate change they leave feeling great. It touches people deeply. The music is great. It’s funny. I think everyone should see it. Increasingly in the media, it seems like there is a general consensus that the future is going to be awful. This film confronts that head-on, asking the questions, ‘why?’ and ‘who says?’. The future could still be amazing, but we need ideas, imagination and inspiration – all of which Tomorrow provides in huge doses.

What has been most powerful about Tomorrow in France and Belgium is how it has reached a whole new audience, beyond ‘the usual suspects’ and into mainstream society. No ‘green’ film ever did that before in the same way. I hope people who see it feel fired with possibilities. Anything could happen from here. In creating this film, Cyril and Melanie have created something extraordinary, something really powerful. In the US now, people are being told that addressing climate change means fewer jobs, so we have to not address it. This film powerfully and beautifully reveals that as the nonsense it is, arguing for more holistic approach. It shows that you can’t tackle the food system without also taking on the economic system, and you can’t do that without also looking at energy and transport, and all of that is going to struggle unless we also look afresh at how we educate our kids. It’s common sense. That joined-up, holistic approach is one that people understand even if politicians don’t. There can be no more important movie being release in the US right now.

Final words…

Just that I am so pleased that Under the Milky Way have decided to distribute this film. I hope it continues to have a huge impact around the world. I think people will love it.

We’d like to thank Rob for his words and speaking to us. If you’d like to know more about Rob’s work you can visit his blog, the Transition Network website or find him on Twitter.

Add Comment (0) Share

Patrick Rouxel is an environmental filmmaker and conservationist whose films include the multi award-winning Green and Alma. Patrick’s most recent film, Life Is One, was nominated for a 2016 Wildscreen Panda Award in the Creative Innovation category and has recently won the Best Wildlife Film Award at the New York Wild Film Festival.  It is the story of a return to life in the wild for three sun bear cubs in Indonesia. Patrick’s encounter with these three cubs has changed his life and he now focuses on improving the welfare of captive sun bears in Indonesia and raising awareness on their plight through his charity Sun Bear Outreach. This is his story.

Patrick Rouxel

I’ve been making films on conservation and animal welfare since 2014, specializing on the Indonesian rainforest, the Congo Basin and the Amazon. In my travels I would often come across animals kept in very bad conditions, I would usually film them and then move on. With the footage I helped raise awareness about animal suffering, but this did not change anything for those animals I had filmed. I had not altered their misery in any way.

In 2010, as I was making fundraising films for a small orangutan rescue centre based in Borneo, Indonesia, we received a small sun bear cub in a wooden box that villagers had brought in from their village. The mother bear must have been shot, but luckily the cub was brought to the rescue centre rather than sold as a pet to some private owner. She was a female that I named Bunbun and I took care of her for the several weeks. I grew very fond of her and I didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life in a cage, so this time, rather than move on, I decided to stay and give her back her freedom.

Sun bear in small cage

It took about nine months before I was actually able to bring Bunbun to the forest. The reintroduction took place in a national park with a remote camp serving as base. It was a progressive adaptation to life in the wild. I was going to stay in the forest with Bunbun until she grew fully independent. Every morning at dawn, I would let her out of her night cage and we would spend the whole day in the forest to play, explore and search for food. But she couldn’t find enough food to satisfy her appetite, and in the late afternoon, she would gladly go back to her night cage close to camp where food awaited her. She made no fuss at being locked in for the night as she knew that she would spend the whole next day in the forest again.

Bunbun

Unfortunately, after just 3 months in the forest, Bunbun disappeared, never to be seen again. She was not yet fully autonomous, so I fear for the worse. I then encountered another 2 sun bear cubs, Bernie and Wawang, in another rescue centre and decided to try another reintroduction with them. This time I had the cubs equipped with implant emitters to be able to track them down. All went very well at first and the cubs learnt a lot from one another, but after just 6 weeks, the male cub, Wawang, was killed in a fight with another wild bear. Luckily, Bernie had been spared. Wawang’s death was a blow but Bernie and I had no choice but to overcome his loss and pursued together her path to adulthood. We spent about a year together in the forest before Bernie was able to find enough food to sustain herself and gradually went off into the forest for longer and longer periods before not coming back to camp anymore.

Bernie and Wawang in the forest

From having spent so much time in the forest with the bears, I have learnt to appreciate how they belong to the tropical rainforest, how energetic and inquisitive they are and how they love to play. There was never a dull moment with the bears in the forest, they were active and on the move from dawn to dusk, and their favourite activity besides eating was playing. Besides a few dogs I know who are always happy, I had never seen an animal express so much joy at the simple fact of being alive. Through Bunbun, Bernie and Wawang, I discovered a magnificent expression of life on earth.

Bernie climbing a tree

There is something wrong about depriving any living creature of its freedom, but keeping a sun bear in a cage is something particularly cruel. I am sure that the degree of joy a sun bear feels when living a free life in the forest matches the extent of pain he feels when locked in a cage. Sun bears hate to be locked up, they’ll go crazy from not being able to express their energy. And in Indonesia there are many sun bears locked in cages. These bears have lost their mothers, their freedom and their habitat. They’ve been so deprived of everything that they wouldn’t even be able to survive in the wild if they were given the opportunity.

Bernie with her friend Bagor, a Bornean orangutan

Strangely, sun bears are mostly unheard of by the international public and there is not a single local or international organisation in Indonesia dedicated to rescuing sun bears and caring for them. So I founded my own charity called Sun Bear Outreach, and through this charity I raise funds that I use to improve the welfare of the bears I encounter, individual by individual. I go to the places where sun bears are kept in poor conditions and I construct bigger cages and large forest enclosures, so that the bears can at least feel the earth under their paws, dig, run and climb trees.

The Life is One film documents these early reintroductions and the trials and tribulations that Patrick endures to save these endangered bears.

Find out more about Patrick Rouxel and watch his films on his website.

Explore the Arkive sun bear species profile and learn more about these beautiful animals.

Add Comment (2) Share

We recently caught up with with our friends at Voices for Nature who were keen to tell us about the unique and innovative work that they are doing to save Brazil’s rainforests and what the future holds for their organisation.

What is Voices for Nature?

We are a not-for-profit organisation based in Oxford, UK. Our aim is to inspire and engage people to protect and conserve Brazil’s rainforests through conservation story-telling. We believe that stories are powerful tools for learning and catalysts for change. We use literature, theatre and film to engage people in conservation and give a voice to nature.

Aerial view of a tree in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest

Voices for Nature was formed in 2014 by Sigrid Shreeve, an environmentalist and campaigner who has worked in Brazil over many years. Voices for Nature employs students and young graduates offering them the opportunity to be creative and engage with conservation.

Sigrid Shreeve

Sigrid is the author of the novel ‘Jabujicaba’ which was written as an engagement tool under the penname ‘Rosa da Silva’. In the novel, Brazil is bankrupt due to the effects of climate change and the Amazon is up for auction. The royalties from ‘Jabujicaba’ support rainforest conservation through Voices for Nature’s partners the World Land Trust, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Isle of Wight Zoo.

What does Voices for Nature do?

Voices for Nature is an arts organisation which connects people with conservation. Our work is based on the eco-thriller ‘Jabujicaba’, which forms the basis of various initiatives. These include:

The Jabuji debates – a national debating competition for sixth formers in the UK. The competition is run by Voices for Nature and the debates are hosted by Eton College. The First Jabuji Debates final was in March 2016 with participating schools from London, Berkshire and Kent. The event consists of workshops, mini-debates and a public final debates.

Debaters with Sigrid Shreeve

Forum theatre – we are producing a play entitled ‘The Amazon Auction’ with pupils from Wheatley Park School near Oxford, which will will be performed in Oxford Botanic Gardens in June 2016. As part of the performance two teams will ‘pitch’ to the audience to convince them to support their bid in a mock auction of the Amazon Rainforest. Performers will play roles of characters from the novel ‘Jabujicaba’.

Documentary film – Voices for Nature supports original conservation documentary filmmaking. We were executive producers of the documentary Uncharted Amazon, which was shot in an endangered part of Peru’s Amazon. We will be screening Uncharted Amazon as part of the Oxford Festival of the Arts in June 2016 and also running campaign film workshops for young people together with the charity Film Oxford.

Voices for Nature workshop

Rainforest Movie – we have a big screen movie under development based on the novel ‘Jabujicaba’. The movie is a cross over between Apocalypse Now and a rainforest Erin Brockovich. The lead role with be played by the actress Yrsa Daley-Ward and the movie is part of our outreach and educational work, linking to the Jabuji Debates. The movie has been entered into Richard Branson’s #VOOM2016 to raise profile and help fund development.

View over REGUA site in Brazil

Find out more about Voices for Nature

Visit the Voices for Nature website

Watch the Jabujicaba trailer

Vote for Jabujicaba to win #VOOM2016

Follow Voices for Nature on Twitter or Facebook

Visit the Arts Festival Oxford website to attend a free film workshop or attend a screening of ‘Uncharted Amazon’

Add Comment (0) Share

Jamie Unwin is a conservation photographer, Wildscreen Exchange contributor and zoology student at the University of Exeter. After creating a highly successful film on elephant poaching in Malawi, Jamie enlisted the help of coursemate Hannah Pollock to create their own conservation organisation, Stand Up for Nature (SUN). SUN’s aim is to use education to bring about cultural evolution to conserve wildlife. Their first mission was to use a bicycle-powered cinema designed and constructed by Jamie to take this film to communities that had not yet seen the film.

The pair have just finished their first and very successful bicycle powered cinema project in Malawi, and over 6 weeks they reached over 14,000 people with the film and took 336 children into 6 protected areas to see their country’s wildlife for the very first time.

Malawian children watching poaching education video

Jamie and Hannah have now returned to England and were keen to share their amazing experience with us.

Jamie – what was it like to return to Malawi?

J – Meeting all those people that I had spent many memorable moments with a year ago was special for me, last year was an eye opening experience and it provided me with an introduction as to what was really happening to Africa’s elephants. Tears of joy as well as moments of great sadness were shared with some incredibly inspirational people.

Hannah – what was it like seeing an elephant in the wild for the first time?

H – Having never seen an elephant in the wild before I was somewhat on a similar playing field to the children that we brought into the parks. Unfortunately, my first experience with a wild elephant was under the worst of circumstances, on Christmas day we received word that a poached elephant had been found and so we joined the ranger patrol as they went off to find it and establish a cause of death. As I witnessed my first wild elephant dead at the hands of a poacher it simply reinforced in my mind how important the project was and the true severity of the problem.

Jamie’s last visit to Malawi alerted him to the extreme poaching problem in the country

Thankfully I had further encounters which were incredible, the most memorable was when we were observing a herd of elephants playing in a lake. As we sat watching, 3 males decided to come and investigate us, we remained quiet and still as they approached so that they wouldn’t be startled. Deciding that we posed no threat and also that in fact we weren’t that interesting they went about stripping the nearby trees of their leaves and had lunch right in front of us.

Jamie – how did you feel when you joined the rangers during a night raid to catch a poacher?

J – No one will ever understand the real brutality of the situation in Africa unless you have worked with one of the rangers. They put their lives at risk day in and day out, to keep Africa’s wildlife safe.

Late one night we had a call from an informer that a poacher had been seen carving up bush meet. The land cruiser was quickly assembled with 10 rangers in full camouflage, I was placed in the back and told to make sure I had nothing that would omit light. I set to work duct taping all parts of my camera to make sure none of the dials or the screen would give any light signal which would alert the poacher of our position. We were dropped a couple miles from the poacher’s location, this is where our back up stayed in case we encountered trouble. We walked quickly and silently with nothing but moonlight guiding the way until Richard, the head ranger, signalled that we were nearly there, he discussed a quick plan with the rest of the men. I joined Richard’s group and we proceeded to walk quickly towards the suspect’s location (a small mud hut with a grass roof), one ranger had unclipped hand cuffs from his belt and held them open and ready.

Sat by a fire was a man cooking the legs of a bush pig, before anyone had time to react and with no exchange of words, the handcuffs were placed on the individual and he was lifted onto his feet and walked back the way we came. The rangers had already called for backup and as we reached the main track the land cruiser arrived and we swiftly piled into the back, poacher and evidence included. We then drove back to camp the interrogation began the following morning.

Hannah – due to the time constraints incurred by running the project over your Christmas holidays, was it fun to have a 19hour working day? Describe what an average day would involve?

H – We certainly worked long hours out in Malawi but this was essential as there was a lot to get done. A typical day would involve us waking up around 5am so that we arose with the sun ready to start the day. Daily activities included visiting schools to show the film and leading discussions, meetings and interviews with a variety of organisation representatives and figureheads, bringing the children into the parks, shadowing individuals and learning what work was being done by those at the forefront of wildlife protection and of course lots and lots of driving as we covered an extraordinary distance, most of which was off-road.

Evening film showing in Malawian village

Most of our evenings over the six weeks were spent showing the film to communities – we would arrive around 6pm as the sun was setting and set up the bicycle powered projector then begin as soon as it became dark. The community showings tended to last longer as more people got involved and we kept them going for as long as there were questions/comments. By the time we returned to wherever we were staying that night and had cooked and eaten dinner it was usually nearing midnight.

From the second we arrived in Malawi we had every moment scheduled, we had one afternoon scheduled off in Mzuzu for travelling but upon being asked by a school student to show the film at his youth club we couldn’t say no. Seeing the response we got, the smiles on the children’s faces as they saw the wildlife and experiencing first-hand the warmth of the Malawian people was incredible. Malawi truly is the ‘warm heart of Africa’. I can safely say we all slept very well on the aeroplane home!

Malawian school children during trip to national park to see local wildlife

Hannah and Jamie – it’s sad to see so many conservation projects end once the project leaders have left the country, was this the case with yours?

H & J – The last thing we wanted was to just turn up in Malawi, stay for six weeks and then just disappear again with no long term plan in place, that wouldn’t have helped anything. In order to avoid this, we worked with local educators throughout Malawi, giving the communities a lasting figure head once we had gone. A wildlife guardian network was established, a proportion of which is being managed by ‘Children in the Wilderness’ and various ‘Wildlife Clubs’ of the Department of Parks. The story book ‘The Elephant and the Mountain’ was also given out to children to remind them of the wildlife they had seen. Most importantly the project has now been handed over to Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, the British High Commission have funded a similar bicycle powered cinema to stay in Malawi and the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust will be continuing to visit communities and schools to show the film alongside their outreach work. We hope to return in the future to see the project flourishing.

So what’s next?

H – Kenya! Jamie is already in Kenya filming for the next project and we aim to run the bicycle powered cinema across Kenya in August 2016!

Jamie and Hannah – founders of Stand Up for Nature

The film can be viewed here.

Find out more about Stand Up for Nature on their website.

Comments Off on Stand Up for Nature – guest blog Share