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00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30This is a time when our planet is under assault like never before
00:41and we are only beginning to realize how severe the consequences may be
00:46for the quality of our own lives and for the quality of our children's lives.
00:52And for me, the only good news in this picture is that we also see glimmers of the solution,
00:56that we can begin to see strategies that work, that it is possible to shift our economy
01:02so that it works for conservation instead of against it.
01:05I've always felt a kind of very deep, gut-wrenching sense of pain
01:11when I think about the speed with which we're laying waste of the planet.
01:16But I've always taken that kind of emotional pain and turned it into, I hope,
01:21more constructive approaches to trying to deal with these things
01:25because if all you can do is get stuck on your personal pain,
01:28you'll never turn that into campaigning passion
01:31to put the thing right that is going wrong at the moment.
01:33We've got to turn people's minds towards more positive images
01:39of the good that we can still do to help protect the natural world.
01:45How much longer can a growing, consuming, developing humanity
01:50coexist with wild animals, with raw nature?
01:54And what will happen to the animals, to nature and to us if we can't?
01:59What will happen to the animals, to nature and to the animals, to nature and to nature and to nature and to nature and to nature and to nature and to nature and to nature?
02:11Planet Earth has shown us some of the world's most spectacular inhabitants in their spectacular settings
02:17and few fit this description better than humpback whales.
02:21One of the greatest privileges I've ever had is to swim with humpback whales.
02:26These are 12-metre giants that could swat you with their flukes,
02:31but instead they accept you and enable you to just gently snorkel close up to them
02:38to get a very close and personal experience with them.
02:42You could almost say that the modern conservation movement was started by humpback whales.
02:55It was recordings of their songs in the 1960s that spearheaded the Save the Whale campaign.
03:01And that, combined with other new awareness, the dangers of pesticides, the threat to rainforests, soon grew into Save the Earth.
03:14The man who produced those humpback recordings is Roger Payne.
03:19Humpback whales are the whales that sing. I mean, imagine!
03:24And these songs, they change and they use rhyme in the most complicated ones.
03:29It's thrilling to hear.
03:31And this is why we were able to get whales into the culture of humanity. So important.
03:38Humpbacks not only sing, they also provide us with an annual spectacle, an event captured by planet Earth.
03:53The Humpbacks have finally arrived.
04:13The polar seas in summer are the most productive on the planet,
04:17and the whales gorge themselves round the clock.
04:23But it may not always be this way.
04:26Fish and krill stocks are declining so rapidly,
04:29that spectacles like this may soon be part of history.
04:38So the animals that inspired 40 years of conservation are themselves still not saved.
04:46Alas, humpbacks and other whales are not safe.
04:50We are not at this moment where we think we are.
04:53Everybody seems to think,
04:54oh, we've saved whales, you know, we have a moratorium.
04:56And the answer is wrong.
04:58It is being violated steadily by the whaling nations,
05:01by various loopholes which they are playing.
05:04And the result is that whaling is about to escape all meaningful international control.
05:11So I'm watching my life's work undone in front of my eyes, and it's a horrible thing to watch.
05:29Whales are not the only ones in the firing line.
05:39Many of the world's wilderness areas are under constant threat.
05:44We are now to the point that we have lost half of the world's forests,
05:50half of the world's wetlands, half of the world's grasslands.
05:54We are systematically eradicating many of the habitats that make up the world's ecosystems.
06:01Despite all the energy and the money that have been poured into conservation,
06:06the battles keep going on and on. Why?
06:11Has the conservation movement been getting its message wrong?
06:19The challenges have in some ways got bigger.
06:21Our consumption of natural resources, the pressure on land,
06:24the changes now taking place to the climate,
06:27pose far bigger challenges than those that have been solved.
06:30And I think we do have to look at ways in which we can start gearing up
06:33the environmental message to be something more than simply
06:36an add-on to the way we do development and run our countries,
06:39to make it something that's at the centre of the way in which governments and societies work.
06:43And we're still far from doing that.
06:45I'm not sure the conservation movement's got it wrong
06:47in terms of where their focus has been.
06:50It's just that their focus has been in one end of the spectrum.
06:55When we do campaigns that say save the tiger or save the whale
06:58and focus on a species, then it's clearly important.
07:02What happened is I think the conservation movement
07:04just stopped evolving after that.
07:13Early conservation was very stern,
07:16invariably casting humans as every wild animal's enemy.
07:19Conservation areas were fenced in and people were kept out.
07:24National parks, which were being set up all over the world,
07:29were typically seen as havens of protection
07:31and in some cases were fiercely guarded.
07:37The strategy appeared to work too.
07:40It's credited with saving the elephants.
07:47Richard Leakey was head of the Kenya Wildlife Service in the early 1990s.
07:51Elephants and rhinos were being heavily poached for their tusks and their horns
07:57and numbers were falling dramatically.
08:00Leakey's solution was to create a wildlife army.
08:04The rangers became the most effective fighting force in the country.
08:09But he also moved local tribes outside the fences,
08:20leaving the parks just for animals and tourists.
08:24They became guarded fortresses.
08:27But was he right to take such a hardline approach?
08:30Leakey was right.
08:31If you look at the 90s when the issue of poaching,
08:35especially for ivory and for the rhino horn,
08:39he was really right in the sense that who were poachers?
08:43The poachers were the communities and they were selling this to the middlemen.
08:48And the situation was so bad that the population of wildlife,
08:51especially the rhino and the elephant, depleted so fast
08:54that if drastic measures are not taken, they're going to lose them.
08:59But that was the 1990s.
09:02The elephants thrived and the tourists got their money's worth.
09:06But what was the effect on the local tribespeople cut off from their ancestral lands?
09:11The Maasai's were chased out of the park and never allowed in again.
09:19But to us the Maasai people, we look at it as very bad laws put in place,
09:28oppressing one side and giving one side a leeway to oppress the other
09:34because wildlife are not restricted inside the park alone.
09:37Unless the wildlife come out of the park and they came to mingle together with our livestock here,
09:44causing a lot of diseases and a lot of predations.
09:47And on the other side, we are not allowed to get into the park.
09:51That's why I insist we need to re-engineer the whole thing.
09:54And when we develop or design a program to protect wildlife in this country,
10:00it should be people sensitive.
10:02And if there are specific promises that are made from the government side,
10:06it should be one of the key areas that should be looked at is to make sure that these promises are fulfilled,
10:14so people don't get disillusioned, otherwise you're going to lose it.
10:17The old man says, if I am the director or the person in charge of conservation of wildlife in this country,
10:25one, I will no longer depend on the rangers with bullets to protect wildlife,
10:34but he's going to give the communities of this country who live with wildlife,
10:40he's going to make policies which allow the people themselves to be the protectors and the benefactors of wildlife.
10:48The World Bank was the main financial backer of Leakey's strategy.
10:55We must empower local communities to be totally involved in both the design and the management of protected areas.
11:02Obviously one of the key challenges in a protected area is indeed to keep out poachers, etc.
11:09But whether or not the bank would nowadays endorse the use of sort of a military style empowerment,
11:15I think is a real question.
11:17Nowadays, the trend is to involve people, local people, more and more.
11:22But is conservation going too far in that direction?
11:27Should there still be some fortresses?
11:30One of the biggest problems we have with protecting these last pockets of pristine environment now
11:37is who has the right to go in there.
11:40We have indigenous people who might have used that land and those animals as a resource for generations,
11:45and we'll have a situation where we have well-protected environmental areas so locked up
11:52that only an elite few can go in and visit these animals.
11:57I think there are some parts of the world where we probably have to do that for a moment in history.
12:05But it's not a long moment in history.
12:08It's at a time when there is particular stress.
12:11Because I think that after a few years, maybe a decade at the most,
12:17then you start to have softer boundaries.
12:20Because if it's just a fortress, it will never be able to be defended long enough to be a sustainable fortress.
12:28There are always going to be shifts of pressure around the boundaries
12:32that will make it more and more difficult to defend, both politically and practically.
12:37And it also turns out that 80% of the world's biodiversity doesn't actually exist in national parks.
12:44It actually exists outside of national parks.
12:47And so you're going to have to deal with the human element
12:51if you want to think about where conservation is going to go in the future.
12:54This is Raja Ampat, a coral reef in a remote corner of Indonesia.
13:10It was recently brought to the world's attention as the most diverse, the richest, coral reef on Earth.
13:18And the planet Earth crew were among the first to film there, discovering behaviour that had never been seen before.
13:24And there are snakes here too. Lots of them.
13:29These are banded sea crates. They lay their eggs on land, but they hunt here in the water.
13:46Now that the world knows about Raja Ampat, divers and snorkelers are bound to flock here, putting pressure on the reef system.
14:02Is this a case for fortress conservation, banning tourists and keeping the reef pristine?
14:08It's a wonderful reef and, you know, we went snorkeling there and visiting.
14:15A tremendous wealth of diversity of species and a great place.
14:21How was it able to maintain that status for so long?
14:26It was there. It was being protected without making a fortress, because nobody was putting pressure on it.
14:33The reason that it would need to be protected now is because people are beginning to put pressure onto that habitat.
14:52It may well be that there are places where we should keep people out.
14:55You know, if the people have been out for a long time, sure, why should they go in?
14:58Because if you look at the production of fisheries, the establishment of marine protected areas where people are not allowed to fish leads to greater production outside the protected area.
15:13Many of the fish that people eat, a good part of their life cycle takes place in coral reefs and in mangroves.
15:20So they absolutely should be conserved for the benefit of the fisheries outside.
15:26But why not to have some limited amount of tourism so that they provide also that economic benefit?
15:33And why not allow me to go snorkeling there? I greatly enjoyed that.
15:38And why shouldn't people have the pleasure of experiencing that?
15:42Why shouldn't the Indonesian people have the pleasure of experiencing that?
15:47As long as they don't spoil it.
15:50But tourism means development along the coast.
15:53And up to now, coastal development anywhere around the world usually means environmental degradation.
16:02In the past 40 years, a lot of the development has been funded by a well-meaning World Bank.
16:09Backing projects designed to help countries make the most of their natural resources.
16:13The early assumptions about development were, let's have lots of projects, lots of roads, lots of dams.
16:24Infrastructure means development, means civilization.
16:28People were moved.
16:30All sorts of habitats were destroyed.
16:33People's livelihoods were destroyed.
16:34I think lots of that was enormously crass and destructive.
16:37And countries ended up with capacity to produce electricity they weren't using.
16:43And enormous debt out of the projects.
16:47There's been terrible errors.
16:48I think in the past one tried from a World Bank perspective to focus on big infrastructure projects.
16:55Roads, dams, power plants.
16:58And I think the evidence now suggests that many of those projects were not as successful as we would have liked.
17:04Too many of our big infrastructure projects did lead to the loss of biodiversity without even helping the local rural poor.
17:11I think we're now starting to design our projects in a much more holistic manner.
17:17That idea, developing while doing virtually no damage to the environment, is known as sustainable development.
17:25And it's controversial.
17:27For me, sustainable development is the most powerful idea ever invented.
17:31It's about protecting the Earth's natural capacities at the same time as meeting human needs.
17:35And that sounds quite a simple and straightforward idea, but it's incredible how difficult that is to get across into the mainstream policy-making process,
17:44where pretty much all the time it's not a question of bringing these things together and doing them as a single idea.
17:50They're traded off against each other.
17:52It's either the environment or people.
17:54And if we're going to solve these big problems, like the mass extinction that's taking place,
17:58and the climatic change that poses so many dangers to people, we have to do away with that false choice.
18:02It's not a question of the environment or people. It has to be both.
18:06And that's what sustainable development is all about.
18:09When talking about sustainable development, I think it's a very clever term that's been created by the environmentalists,
18:18particularly, well, internationally. It's sustainable. It's development. How could anybody be against it?
18:24But in reality, environmentalists or the folks who promote sustainable development, what they're really promoting is no development.
18:34And that's the key. It's very thinly veiled. They don't want any development that's of any worth to the developing nations of the world.
18:42They want to dictate the solar panels on top of huts, the wind turbines and fields, the inefficient things that aren't truly going to bring these people out of the energy dark ages and help them progress as a people.
19:00Sustainable development must mean that we develop in a way that we can thrive on this continent.
19:10And Africans have thrived on this continent for very many years without airplanes, without trains, without skyscrapers, without all the modern development that we think when we look at the West that that's what development means.
19:28To me, development means staying alive, having a quality of life, not so much a life that is surrounded by goods, things, but a life where you can live in a clean and healthy environment.
19:49As it is now, the term sustainable development is a contradiction in terms. We can have no kind of development. We've gone much too far. What we need is a sustainable retreat from the mess that we're now in.
20:03Solutions like renewable energy and so on are not really solutions at all. Perhaps 100 years ago, all would have been fine. It's much, much too late now.
20:18What kind of world is it in which there's going to be no development? Everything stops right now. It's a really stupid idea to talk about a world in which there's no development.
20:27But that development has got to be delivered in ways that are compatible with life support systems, ecosystems, with natural services and all the rest of it. That's what we mean by sustainability.
20:37What I know is what is unsustainable. When we effectively lose biodiversity, perturb the climate system, pollute our waters, degrade our land, that is clearly unsustainable in the long term.
20:50We need to integrate our national economic planning, sectoral planning, energy systems, transportation systems, agricultural systems, by taking into account what are we doing to the Earth's environment, both the biodiversity and the climate system and local air quality.
21:07So we must match our need for economic development with our need to protect ecological systems, because they in the long run underpin a more sustainable way of life.
21:18Sustainable development, the idea that people can live alongside and protect the natural world, yet still grow economically, has only been around for a few years.
21:30But in reality, what does it mean in countries where the wildlife is not that easy to live next to?
21:48Lions don't usually hunt elephants, but desperate times require desperate measures.
21:59This herd contains calves, easier targets.
22:07A few exhausted stragglers are still arriving.
22:14One of them is alone.
22:18A solitary lion stands no chance.
22:24But the whole pride is here.
22:30There are 30 of them, and they're specialist elephant hunters.
22:34The existence of man-eaters has always captured the imagination of people, but in southern Tanzania, we, in the year 2006, expect 100 people to be attacked by lions in this year alone.
22:59These are people that are being attacked and eaten as food by the lions.
23:04And it's shocking to think that that kind of conflict could still exist in the 21st century.
23:09But what we find is that people in southern Tanzania are so incredibly poor that they live in grass houses.
23:15They spend hours and hours each day in their fields where they're vulnerable to lions that have learned to eat people as food.
23:23This is the kind of situation that is obviously intolerable.
23:28It's unacceptable on any level that there should be that much cost in human life from direct animal conflict.
23:34It may prove impossible to find ways for people to live in such close proximity to an animal as dangerous as a lion.
23:43It may simply be the case that we're in the last stages of seeing animals such as the lion living outside any sort of protected area.
23:50To people in the West, that may seem like a shocking statement. How can there be an Africa without lions?
24:01I think that there's an incredible disconnect now between the forces in the developed nations and the realities on the ground.
24:09That people who claim to love animals so much are the ones that see beautiful pictures and beautiful light of a female lion playing with their cubs and the safety of their homes.
24:20And they have no idea what that lion can do to people that have to live next to it.
24:25They have no idea that these animals actually cause serious damage to people.
24:30Even hunting, trophy hunting, can be called sustainable development.
24:45In Tanzania, it's big business, bringing thousands of tourist dollars to poor areas.
24:54How do conservationists rationalize that?
24:57Hunting species in a sustainable way will continue to be part of conservation and should be.
25:06That in terrestrial systems, hunting has been a part of human management of those systems for millennia.
25:15And as long as that hunting is consistent with protecting the essential integrity of those systems, it ought to be allowed.
25:22I enjoy hunting because it's a challenge for me.
25:32I like the little, the risk involved.
25:35It's just like any other sport.
25:38People do dangerous sports because they get an adrenaline rush.
25:42It's what keeps me going, gives me a kick.
25:44Hunters, in my opinion, are very much conservationists.
25:51We're not trying to reduce numbers because it's our future.
25:54I do believe that the population of lions would increase if there was a value to them.
26:00The people would then look after them, turn around and say,
26:02that animal is worth 30, 40, whatever thousand dollars to us.
26:09You've got to look at it like that animal you've taken is now going to go back into the system to save the rest of them.
26:18There'll probably be no change at the end of the day out of 50 to 60 thousand dollars to get a big lion.
26:25By all of the legislation in this country, a proportion of the benefits of trophy hunting has to go into the local communities.
26:34Then the revenue that is sustained by that really is meaningful enough to have a big impact on people's lives,
26:41so that they really do care about the wildlife as a resource rather than a nuisance.
26:45Many people would see this as good business.
26:50And if it helps save lions while bringing in money, it also has to be sustainable development.
26:56But as conservation, isn't there something missing?
27:01The conservation ethic, maybe?
27:03Let's take a charismatic species like lions.
27:06There are people who are out there who say,
27:08well, look, I should be able to go out there and if I'm putting some money back into conservation to save the habitat,
27:13I should be able to shoot that lion, mount, you know, cut its head off and mount it on my office wall.
27:20And then other people would say, no, you know, these things, just the notion of going out and trophy hunting for a magnificent top predator like this
27:28is the, you know, antithesis of what conservation is all about.
27:34I don't have a clear answer to that dilemma.
27:37But it's the kind of argument, I think, that needs to happen because I think the ethics of conservation is being lost sometimes.
27:44We don't have that conversation enough.
27:46I think the people that worry about the ethics of any kind of consumptive or even non-consumptive tourism
27:53as a mechanism for preserving wildlife, I think they're going to have a hard time convincing local people that they can eat ethics.
28:01And when you're up against it like this, there's no point.
28:06I mean, it's just silly to talk about that.
28:09People who have these high ethics are going to have to speak with money.
28:13It's the cheap, easy option to be pointing their fingers at anybody trying to engage people economically
28:19because I don't think they want to contribute any money.
28:21Here's my challenge to the people who have got this high ethical standards.
28:24What are you doing? Where's your investment?
28:25I don't see any of those organizations working here in Tanzania.
28:29I don't see them doing anything positive in Botswana, South Africa, Kenya that's really making a difference,
28:35that's really going to help people to live with these kinds of species.
28:38Put your money where your mouth is. Get out here. This is where the action is.
28:42Otherwise, you're just wasting everybody's time.
28:55Trophy hunting happens outside of Africa, too. These are the mountains of Pakistan,
29:01where Western hunters pour huge amounts of money into local communities
29:05for the privilege of becoming another predator of an animal with an already precarious life.
29:14Markor gather for their annual route.
29:17Males must fight for the right to breed. But on these sheer cliffs, any slip by either animal could be fatal.
29:37On these treacherous slopes, no hunter other than a snow leopard would have a chance of catching such agile prey.
29:50Trophy hunting of Markor started about four, five years ago, in earnest.
29:55Right now, you get a trophy of a Markor for $50,000.
30:00The snow leopard, you can't hunt anymore.
30:02Drawing the locals into the conservation element by giving them some benefits,
30:10whether it's trophy hunting, whether it's tourism, whether it's basic services,
30:15when people go into the parks, made sense. It still does.
30:19The only issue with that is that if you're not going to look after the whole picture,
30:25and you're just picking up on trophies with Markor in it,
30:28you're inevitably causing the locals to protect one animal at the cost of another.
30:35Trophy hunting is one of the links.
30:38It isn't the answer to economic growth or creating that infrastructure through trophy hunting alone.
30:45That's just one element.
30:47You have education, you have relocation of villages, you have trophy hunting,
30:51you have villages, shops, schools, health units, ecotourism.
30:58They all have to come together before you find the economic solution.
31:02So it's possible to forget any qualms about trophy hunting,
31:14and see it as just one end of the burgeoning industry of ecotourism.
31:19Many countries poor in money are rich in natural spectacle,
31:24which attracts tourists and vast amounts of their dollars.
31:28I think you'd be a very pessimistic person today
31:33not to welcome the growing focus on ecotourism of one kind or another,
31:39because whichever way you cut it, it's got to be a damn sight better
31:43than the earth-trashing tourism that has dominated the global market up until now.
31:47Tourism is now one of the world's largest industries.
31:50It's one of the fastest growing industries worldwide.
31:52Therefore, the economic momentum behind it is absolutely huge.
31:56If we can find ways of turning tourism into a positive force for conservation,
32:01then I think that's all to the good.
32:03But it does embrace a very wide range of different activities
32:07from, for example, taking the bus and walking along the coast of England
32:10right through to flying on a jumbo jet to the other side of the world,
32:13going in a 4x4 vehicle, disturbing wild creatures, impinging on local communities.
32:18So there is an awful big spectrum in there in this idea of ecotourism.
32:22I don't think we should be too upset about that.
32:25This is a marketplace that is still forming itself.
32:29Definitions are being made, standards are being set, experience is being learned.
32:33I feel we will arrive at a point where genuinely sustainable tourism
32:38becomes a reality for a large number of people.
32:40In Kenya, the Maasai people may not be allowed to live in the parks,
32:47but some do profit from tourism.
32:50They run this new luxurious eco-lodge.
32:52In the morning you would see lions and other game walking around,
33:00and especially the view from the loo is brilliant.
33:07We are very lucky to have lions because that will attract more guests,
33:12and the more we get the guests, the more revenue we get from the tourism.
33:16Tourists pay a few hundred dollars a night to stay at the lodge.
33:22But 40% of this goes to the Maasai,
33:26who see it as worthwhile to protect wildlife.
33:29There is absolutely no question that people work in their own self-interest,
33:33and self-interest is often short-term and it's economic gain.
33:36So if we can demonstrate that a local park, a protected area,
33:41has value to local people as well as to the national government,
33:45it really is a major way forward.
33:47So what one wants to do is effectively embody the value of the national park,
33:51which has aesthetic, moral, ethical value,
33:54but to recognise that national park can be a source of income, ecotourism,
33:58but it can also have many other values.
34:00And if the local community can capture those values,
34:02they then actually help to protect that area.
34:03And the people should see how to conserve wildlife
34:08to benefit from it as a resource, like any other resource,
34:12like oil in Iraq, like oil in the Arabian countries.
34:16It's going to make sure that Kenyans will see as an oil of Kenya.
34:21Tourism is reaching some of the more remote places now, deep rainforest.
34:35This forest covers only 3% of the planet's surface, but it contains more than 50% of all its plants and animals.
34:52The canopy is particularly rich.
34:59There are monkeys, birds and millions of species of insects,
35:04exactly how many, we have no idea.
35:09The character of the forest changes as you descend,
35:13becoming ever darker and damper,
35:16favouring different kinds of animals and plants.
35:18Rainforest tourism is well and good,
35:22but it's usually more immediately profitable just to cut the forest down.
35:28The truth is that no matter what the conservation movement does,
35:30there are some huge forces that sometimes tend to line up
35:33against what conservation is trying to do.
35:36Massive agriculture, like the palm oil industry, for example, in Asia,
35:38where you can have a monoculture dominating a landscape,
35:41reducing the rainforest to essentially small chunks,
35:44is a huge challenge.
35:45I've seen a lot of those studies that talk about how fast the rainforest is disappearing,
36:08is disappearing, and they all differ from one another.
36:12It's always a different rate every year.
36:14And if you consider the time when these arguments...
36:17first started coming out and do the math,
36:19we should have no rainforest by now.
36:21So I raise an eyebrow and view, with a great deal of scepticism...
36:26some of the reports about how fast the rainforest is decreasing.
36:30Well, one of the most depressing things about going back to places...
36:34after you haven't been there for several years...
36:37is to see how some places change.
36:39And going back to Borneo was particularly difficult...
36:42because we were driving through countless miles of oil palm plantation.
36:47As far as you could see in every direction, there was oil palm.
36:50Just to see so much of it, and for so long, it's very depressing.
36:55And actually, it sort of almost brings tears to your eyes...
36:57to know what it once was and what you're looking at now.
37:03An oil palm plantation is the absolute antithesis...
37:06of a rainforest.
37:08In a rainforest, particularly in Borneo, you've got about 250 species of tree per hectare.
37:14That's more than the whole of the British Isles.
37:16And so you're replacing this wonderfully diverse environment...
37:20with a monoculture, all the same tree species.
37:23So when you take just one tree and mass-produce it...
37:26across, you know, three-quarters of an island the size of Borneo...
37:30you're obviously reducing your diversity enormously.
37:33The tropical rainforests are quite remarkable entities.
37:39There is a mix of species in them, great biodiversity...
37:44that has evolved to regulate the water flow of the whole system.
37:49And there are complex and detailed interactions...
37:52between the plants and animals of that great ecosystem...
37:56that cannot be replaced by a simple single plantation of trees.
38:01It just wouldn't work.
38:05Oil palm is a plantation crop that's being grown...
38:07across many tropical countries right now.
38:09And it produces large quantities of very cheap vegetable oil.
38:13This is then traded in global commodity markets...
38:16and finishes up in a wide range of products.
38:19Bread, soup, crisps, lipstick.
38:22A wide range of everyday goods that you'll buy contain palm oil.
38:26Now, the problem is, it's a very destructive trade...
38:29and yet there appears to be, as yet, very little being done to control it.
38:36I think your best bet in trying to move forward in terms of conservation...
38:40in that kind of environment is to engage with that industry in such a way...
38:46that the expansion of that activity is limited at least to the lands...
38:51that are least important for conservation.
38:53You know, you're not going to hold back the tide...
38:58but you might be able to direct it.
39:01In the past ten years, the palm oil industry has grown by 50%...
39:07and shows no sign of slowing down.
39:09So, in 2004, the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil was set up.
39:14It's a voluntary organisation that encourages the industry...
39:18to be as environmentally friendly as, under the circumstances...
39:22such an industry can be.
39:24Unilever, which uses palm oil in many of its products, is a founder member.
39:30The mission of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil...
39:33is to promote the use of sustainable palm oil.
39:37In order to do that, we needed to define what we mean with sustainable palm oil.
39:42And in order to do that, we need to balance the interests of those...
39:46who are interested in nature conservation...
39:48and the interests of those whose livelihoods depend on the production of palm oil...
39:52and the interests of those who use palm oil, put it in their products and sell it to consumers.
39:58Palm oil creates employment for millions of people in Malaysia and Indonesia.
40:02It's a big part of the local economy over there.
40:05And so there are clearly very large economic interests for the producers...
40:10to make sure that palm oil is an accepted product in consumer markets.
40:15Agriculture and biodiversity cannot live side by side by definition.
40:20Wherever there is agriculture now, there was biodiversity in the past.
40:24Wherever there is a wheat field in northern France, there was an oak forest once.
40:28Wherever there is a potato field in the UK, there was an oak forest once.
40:32That's how it is. That is the footprint mankind has on nature.
40:38The point is, we have six billion people on this planet.
40:41The number will grow to nine billion people on this planet.
40:43Those people need to be fed.
40:45In order to feed those people, we need to convert some nature to agriculture.
40:49We have no choice.
40:51Where we do have a choice is to decide where we do that.
40:54Not all regions are suitable for all crops.
40:57So within regions that are suitable for a certain crop, you need to look for those areas...
41:02where you destroy the least biodiversity, if you need to convert it to agriculture.
41:07But as a species, if we want to survive, if we want to feed the people on this planet...
41:12we need to grow crops. That's what we have to do.
41:15As the human population grows, countries grow and expand their industrial base.
41:29And more and more of the natural world inevitably disappears.
41:33Frustrated by the refusal of the world's governments to do much about this...
41:47some people are taking matters into their own hands.
41:51Johan Elias is one of the richest men in Britain.
41:54Rich enough to buy a piece of the Amazon the size of Greater London.
41:59I acquired a piece of the rainforest last year.
42:03I was fed up with politicians talking and I saw an opportunity to actually take action.
42:10And that's why I bought this piece of rainforest.
42:15Having followed the debate about the environment...
42:19I have become increasingly concerned because...
42:25if we look at changing weather patterns, if we look at how much of the rainforest...
42:31that has been deforested over the last 50 years, it's horrendous.
42:37The rainforest that I bought had basically a forestry operation.
42:42So I shut down the sawmill and stopped anything to do with cutting trees.
42:49The motive to save rainforest can be a good thing...
42:55as long as one does the proper cost-benefit analysis.
42:58Now, if you're talking about rich elites, you know, we in the United States...
43:03sometimes refer to them as armchair environmentalists.
43:06Going down, buying land, putting it off limits.
43:09In reality, these programs have the detrimental effect...
43:14of hindering economic and industrial growth in developing countries.
43:24Well, I think you have to look at the alternatives.
43:26The alternative is that somebody else owns the land who wants to log.
43:30And yes, that would create jobs.
43:33But then you have to weigh up.
43:36It's jobs, which is, in this case, very short-term in thinking.
43:44Or preserving the environment...
43:46and making sure that we don't get further climate change.
43:53It all depends on what the ultimate goal of what they're trying to do is.
43:56When you have an individual going to a foreign country and buying some land...
43:59and saying, look, I'm buying this because I think it's important...
44:02for the heritage of the country, and there is some plan down the road...
44:05to transition that ownership of the land into some local entity...
44:09that can manage it in perpetuity.
44:11I think that's a noble thing to do.
44:14What I would argue is that if, indeed, an entity in the North...
44:18wanted to buy land in a developing country...
44:20one would not only want to look at the importance...
44:23for biodiversity, conservation and protection...
44:25but also what are the implications for the people that live on that land.
44:29One would want to look at the social issues as well as the environmental issues...
44:33before one would move ahead with such a project.
44:37The conservation vision is always struggling against another, more seductive vision...
44:42that of a world based on Western lifestyles.
44:45I go to other countries and start telling them about conservation.
44:48I'm always cognizant in the back of my mind...
44:51that they're thinking, well, that's great for you to say that...
44:54but, you know, you guys have all these things in the U.S. and you're well-developed and all that...
44:59and now you're trying to prevent us from doing the same thing.
45:02I mean, these are real human aspirations that there's no way you're going to stop or stem the tide.
45:09I just don't believe that you need to make the exact same mistakes we made...
45:13in getting people who are at a very poor standard of living to the next step.
45:19It is impossible and unacceptable and just won't work to say to the poor of China and India...
45:26you can't have what we've got.
45:28So the only way that we can get a deal with the people of the world...
45:32to preserve human civilisation is to say...
45:36it's not any longer going to be economic growth for economic growth's sake.
45:39It's a more equitable world where everyone has the basic things that human beings need...
45:45and then we cease to find the meaning of life out of more and more economic growth and more and more consumption.
45:50Because in our kind of society, where that's what's happening...
45:54it's not only plundering the world and unsustainable, it's making people miserable.
46:01I think we need a change of heart.
46:02I think we need to see ourselves in another kind of context.
46:07Instead of seeing ourselves as fundamentally...
46:10to use the old phrase, brains on stalks, living in this artificial world, in this bubble...
46:15we need to see ourselves as part of a system, answerable to other parts of that system...
46:20and I would say also, of course, answerable to God.
46:23Now...
46:25that's something which doesn't come easily in the Western world.
46:29I think it's absolutely imperative for anyone in a position of religious responsibility in the Western world...
46:35to hammer on that theme as loudly and consistently as they possibly can.
46:44Two forces that have guided human social development through the ages...
46:48has been, you know, economic growth, you know, how do you make yourself richer, and religion.
46:53I mean, these are the two big engines that have developed and forced us into where we are today...
46:58or shaped us into where we are today.
47:02You know, religion is starting to play a bigger and more vocal role...
47:07in talking about protecting God's creation.
47:11And I wholeheartedly welcome that engagement.
47:15Well, the way that religion can contribute to environment...
47:18is that it owns a lot of the planet to start with.
47:22We estimate that the 11 major religions we work with...
47:25own about 7% to 8% of the habitable surface of the planet.
47:29Forests, farms, urban sites, you name it.
47:34So, when we talk about religion, yes, at one level we can think about them preaching and teaching...
47:40because all the faiths have immensely profound statements and teachings...
47:45about how we should treat nature.
47:47But they also are in the business of the environment.
47:50They actually buy, they sell, they own, they control and they influence.
47:57And not only that, they carry authority.
48:00If they say, do this, they're going to be listened to in a way that no government...
48:05and certainly no NGO is going to be listened to.
48:09All it took was a plea by the Dalai Lama...
48:12to make a dramatic change in the attitude of Tibetan Buddhists.
48:15What happened is that tens of thousands of people, in response to the Dalai Lama's message...
48:35across Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, India, have ripped their furs off their robes...
48:41burnt their fox hats, burnt their fur blankets, burnt it.
48:46And these are extremely poor people.
48:48They have very little money.
48:50So it's a bit like us setting fire to our car, because we think it's wrong to drive cars...
48:54in terms of financial value.
48:58And they're doing it with a huge smile on their face.
49:00It is really seeing people at their very best.
49:04They embraced the responsibility, and I think their behaviour really sets the standard...
49:09for everybody else in the world.
49:14I have never seen anything like this happen before.
49:16It is absolutely staggering.
49:21I can't say what the Dalai Lama's influence in his areas.
49:26I don't think there is any influence in our areas.
49:29Religion doesn't play any part in any sort of superstition or otherwise with these animals.
49:35I think the religion of stomach is the essence here.
49:41I don't think religion has anything to do with conserving animals, at least in our part of the world.
49:46I'm intrigued to see the way now in which some of the world's major faiths and religions...
49:51are beginning to understand that they have a serious leadership role.
49:55to use their teaching, their holy texts, if you like, their authority, their inherent wisdom...
50:02to draw out better messages about the responsibility of humankind...
50:07in terms of acting as stewards and all the rest of it.
50:10Is it going to come in time? I don't know.
50:12I'm pretty critical looking back at how pathetically disengaged...
50:17the world's major religions have been.
50:20They've just stood by and watched as our industrial juggernaut...
50:25has laid waste this astonishingly beautiful, created world.
50:29And I'm glad they're going to be out there now raising their voice in defence of that...
50:35of our planet, our home, of God's Earth, if you like, in a Christian sense.
50:40But I think they've left it a bit late in the day, I must admit.
50:4325 years ago, as I remember very well, the World Wildlife Fund organised a big conference of multi-faiths...
50:51of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism.
50:56They all got together and determined that all those religions carried within them the moral precept...
51:05that they ought to care for the environment and the creatures with which we share the world.
51:09I suppose, in a way, the problem is that the world, by and large, has turned away from religions...
51:15and they are having less effect than they did.
51:18I'd hope that, in relation to the whole question about the environment and ecology...
51:23I could help to keep open some of the really big questions, the questions about what is human nature in this.
51:31It's not just a practical problem about how do we avoid disaster...
51:33but how do we imagine our humanity freshly, and I think religion has a unique perspective to offer there.
51:47Up until now, science has ruled the roost in terms of what takes place in conservation around the world.
51:52We need to expand that.
51:54We need to bring in the humanities, poetry, art, music, dance, everything, anything...
52:00that will make a difference in how people view this problem, because this problem matters.
52:04It matters to their lives, it matters to their hearts, it matters in every way.
52:12What we need is more responsible media...
52:16and then I think this makes it possible for people to become interested in something...
52:20to become passionately concerned and then to do something.
52:24If they get interested and passionately concerned and don't do anything...
52:29then they are falling back and down, and my feeling is they have to move, we have to move.
52:35I think the media has a really important role in conserving wildlife in the future.
52:39I mean, if you look back at the history of wildlife filmmaking from the very beginning...
52:44undoubtedly the awareness that has risen over the years...
52:48and introducing animals to people is phenomenal.
52:50And every generation, there is a new generation.
52:53And every time, we are showing people new animals.
53:01This series will take you to the last wildernesses...
53:05and show you the planet and its wildlife as you have never seen them before.
53:18I don't have any doubt at all in my own mind that all the programmes, radio, TV programmes...
53:26that have been made about the natural world over the last 30 years...
53:29have had an incredible impact on people, they really have.
53:32And they've helped people to understand our part in the natural world...
53:36to get a feel for its beauty, its diversity and so on.
53:38So, a big tick in that box, a very positive impact, if you like.
53:43But there's also a downside to that.
53:46I think people have been turned into passive voyeurs of nature...
53:50rather than engage participants in cohabiting with nature.
53:54I sometimes think that the natural history programming...
53:58has left people with the sense that it's all okay out there.
54:01And, look, if it's on the box, it must be fine and it'll be fine tomorrow.
54:04When, in fact, even as the programme makers have been out there...
54:07capturing this stuff on film...
54:09they know that it's disappearing under their very eyes.
54:12But, luckily, we're not just making programmes like Planet Earth.
54:15There are a range of different programmes dealing with the problems as well.
54:18And the combination, I think, is vital, vital in conservation globally.
54:2450 years ago...
54:27nobody cared twopence about whaling, for example.
54:31And it was only the underwater pioneers, people like Gusto and so on,
54:36who started the movement,
54:38that suddenly, people having seen those things...
54:40they could only have seen it on television, there's nowhere else.
54:43They don't see it in the cinema.
54:44Where else are they going to see it?
54:46Suddenly, there's a worldwide movement that says, Save the Whale.
54:50Had it not been for people like Gusto...
54:54I don't think there would be such a movement.
54:57So, that's the justification of doing those sort of films.
55:02Throughout the world, awareness of environmental issues has grown immensely.
55:11A lot of people now know what the problems are.
55:13And what's more, most of them know about the solutions.
55:17So, can we, after all, be optimistic?
55:22I have to be optimistic about the future.
55:24I have to believe that my daughter, and if she has children,
55:27her daughters or sons will actually live in a world
55:30at least as good as the world we have today.
55:33But I have to be equally honest, business as usual will not realise that world.
55:37If we continue with the energy policies and energy practices today,
55:42if we continue with our deforestation policies that we have today,
55:46if we carry on in the way we are today,
55:49the world tomorrow will be a worse place for our children and our grandchildren.
55:53I have two sons who are 17 and 19, and I worry about their future.
55:59I worry about the planet that we are leaving to them.
56:04And I am a conservationist, so I am by nature an optimist,
56:09because you have to believe it's possible to turn around the trends
56:12that you see on this planet.
56:15And I think we can, but we need to get going.
56:17I would definitely say I'm optimistic about what I can do
56:21and what I can stimulate other people to do on this issue.
56:26I don't think anyone has ever created a revolution or a movement who's a pessimist.
56:33You just don't get very far.
56:35And I truly believe that we can live in a world that is better than it is today
56:41and that our individual contributions can add up to something better.
56:46We're constantly told that our planet is a very small one, but it isn't.
56:56And I think you learn that when you work on a series like Planet Earth.
57:00Sure, when we went to a lot of the places, we did see destroyed areas,
57:04we did see fragmentation, environmental damage.
57:07But we also saw incredible wildernesses, species that, while they may be threatened, are still there.
57:11I mean, when you've got wild bactrian camels still surviving in a place like the Gobi Desert in Mongolia,
57:17there is still hope.
57:18And everywhere you go, there are people that care about these places and care about the species.
57:22And while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places.
57:29And while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places.
57:35and while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places.
58:05And while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places.
58:35And while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places.