PRODUCERS' BLOG

If you get a chance make sure you get a chance to check out Janine Benyus and her talk about the huge store of ideas in nature that could revolutionise the way we produce goods. This is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for for the Nature Inc series. It really is amazing the possibilities for future technology that Benyus outlines – particularly exciting, I think, is a the potential for carbon free manufacturing by utilising ‘self-assembly’ methods prevalent at all levels of nature.

Barcelona was very much a success in relation to getting a full perspective on the important issues involved in the ideas we were looking at. For me it was also a strange experience; my late father once worked for IUCN and it was very weird to be meeting some of the people who once worked with him before I was born. He wrote a book called “A World Without Trees” at the beginning of the 80s which used the destruction of European forests to Dutch Elm Disease as a metaphor for the wider industrialisation of forestry and destruction of global woodlands. It has been a bizarre process reading his words back whilst researching the new REDD initiatives.

It is a very important time to be looking more deeply at REDD – something that has both the possibility to make a real difference to the global environment but also holds the prospect of accelerating its destruction. Paying communities to halt deforestation and manage their forests sustainably, whilst integrating the offsets generated by this into the global carbon trading market, could really help forests pay for themselves and safeguard their future. But if REDD ends up simply further institutionalising Western economism and the commoditisation of nature, marginalising local communities and businesses, then it will not only have negative effects on the environment but also further degrade cultural diversity and deepen poverty around the world.

Glenn Prickett, executive director of Conservation International, kindly stopped off for a brief interview with us about REDD. He had said earlier in the day that it felt like he had been in preparation for the growth of this issue for the last 20 years and it was like the starter’s gun had just gone off. It has indeed been surprising how quickly and fully people have come to back the initiative. What is important now is how the international community moulds this growing market in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the old capitalist system whilst ushering in a new model for valuing natural assets.

We are sifting through possible places to film and how to fund these programmes as I write this very blog. Watch this space for more insights into our work on the REDD issue and please feel free to send us any links or any of your ideas about how we can put the episode together.

One Planet Pictures went to Barcelona at the beginning of the month to follow the IUCN World Conservation Congress. Robert was moderating two events, one of which I was helping to film, and we also used the opportunity to research more ideas for the next series of Nature Inc.

This year was the first year that the private sector was welcomed into the IUCN fold, reflecting a wider move within the conservation movement to integrate with the market in an attempt to situate itself within mainstream policy discourse. Such a context obviously proved a very fertile environment for looking into topics about the economic value of nature.

We came away with lots of information on the rapidly ballooning area of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), as well as good leads on episodes about sustainable tourism, Biotrade and Biomimicry. At the moment we’re following these leads and the next series is shaping up nicely.

I think it is important for the shows to have a really positive spin – there is indeed a lot to be worried about out there but these new developments do offer real hope that the global system could change for the better. I can often be incredibly cynical about the capitalist market but I think that these initiatives are significant because, to work properly, they necessitate transformations within the market itself.

So all in all the Congress went very well for Nature Inc. Watch this space because soon we’ll be putting up some of the footage we shot when recording ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ talk that Robert moderated. This theoretical work underscores much of what we try to show in the series.