The Power of Film
Almost a year ago, in late spring 2006, the filmmaker and conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau was invited to the White House to show his film about the remote, untouched and as yet to be fully protected Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Shortly afterwards, in June 2006, President Bush declared the vast area of land and sea a “national monument”, making it, at 140,000 square miles (350,000 sq km), the largest highly protected marine protected area in the world. (For more information about this seminal event in the short history of marine protected areas, see http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june06/hawaii_06-15.html.)
The new Hawaiian MPA, to be called the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, was designated in response to the power of a film. It could have taken many scientists, conservationists, and national and international NGOs, decades of concerted research and campaigning to achieve similar results with such a high level of protection – if such results could even be achieved at all. Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming is another example of cinema that has the power to move audiences as well as, hopefully, lower world temperatures — including the hot air from the world’s politicians. All of these works, however, trace their lineage to a 1962 book— Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring.
To achieve conservation goals, we need not only to use the media, but to get involved ourselves, to inform and inspire, and to shape the message into a great film, book, play, DVD, or piece of music. For more about this amazing area, click here.
© 2007 Erich Hoyt. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, 28 March 2007