Insects are dying out and scientists and environmentalists are sounding the alarm. Our film team meets entomologists, farmers, scientists, chemical companies and politicians in a bid to lay bare the causes of insect mortality.
Insects aren’t really likeable. They sting, bite, transmit diseases and frighten children. But, on the other hand, they are also fascinating: 480 million years ago, insects were the first animals to learn to fly, and they took over the Earth. Even now, they are fundamental to life on Earth, and are at the beginning of the food chain on which all human beings are ultimately dependent.
But insect numbers worldwide are dropping, creating a rupture of the food chain. Environmentalists and scientists are now extremely worried. Landscape ecology professor Alexandra-Maria Klein from Freiburg, for example, has been researching the effects of human interventions in natural environments for decades and has launched an experiment in a fruit plantation on Lake Constance: What happens when insects disappear? An ominous silence is settling on places that were once humming and buzzing. Why are the insects dying? Author Christoph Würzburger takes a journey into the fascinating world of insects and meets entomologists, farmers, scientists, chemical companies and politicians in a search for the causes of insect mortality.
‘Our islands will be submerged.’ — President of the Marshall Islands Hilda Heine is doing everything in her power to save her country from the existential threat that the climate crisis poses.
Wildfires may grab headlines but indigenous peoples and local communities who depend the Amazon face many different threats. Not only are their territories targeted for illegal extractive activities such as gold mining and deforestation but without clear land titles their situation remains legally precarious.
But more than this – indigenous peoples and local communities offer a scalable, climate solution, as recently recognised in the UN IPCC Land Use report.
Protecting their rights will benefit communities, the Amazon itself and all of humanity.
In the Peruvian Amazon the community of Boca Parimanu, the Amahuaca peoples tread this difficult balance.
Madre de Dios, the most biodiverse region in the Peruvian Amazon, is home to 37 native communities. This southern region is also the most affected by illegal mining, more than 60 000 hectares of forest have been deforested by this activity.
Due to its high biodiversity and extension of Amazon forest, Madre de Dios is a key region for climate commitments and the fight against the climate crisis.
Made in partnership with FENAMAD, SPDA and Land Tenure Facility.
