90 minutes / Color
English; French / English subtitles
Closed Captioned
Release: 2015
Copyright: 2014
"Buying landscapes, protecting landscapes, accumulating new landscapes-it's a phenomenal opportunity." -Steve Morgan, CEO, Wildlands Inc.
BANKING NATURE is a film about the growing movement to monetize the natural world: to turn endangered species and threatened areas into instruments of profit.
It's a worldview that posits capital and markets as the planet's salvation-turning nature into "natural capital." In this view, the best way to protect endangered species and habitats is to assign them dollar values and measure the "ecosystem services" they provide. These services can then be converted into securitized financial products.
The results can be grotesque. In Uganda, we meet men who measure trees to determine how much carbon they store-and a banker from the German firm that sells the resulting carbon credits. Meanwhile, in Brazil, steel giant Vale destroys rainforest, replaces it with tree plantations, and reaps the benefits of environmental credits.
Can we trust the same people whose mismanagement of the mortgage market led to a global economic meltdown to safeguard nature, by turning it into financial instruments for speculators?
"Successfully outlines the theory behind 'financializing nature'… making this complex aspect of the modern market system comprehensible… Does a real service. Recommended."—Video Librarian
"This is a fascinating work, investigating an inventive plan to protect nature... The portrayal of both sides of this impalpable concept is laudable. Huge assembly of opponents gives this film a distinct objectivity. The work has brilliant foresight into the issues, turning points, dangers, and ethical dilemmas of the proposal. Highly recommended."—Educational Media Reviews Online
"A beautiful and very challenging and provocative treatment of the current effort to save nature and the planet by applying market economics, models, and tools to global environmental crises such as species extinction, the loss of biodiversity, degradation and loss of whole ecosystems like the world's rainforests, and global warming."—Science Books and Films
"How much are the rainforests of the Amazon, the coral reefs of Hawaii, and the world's bees worth?"—Le Figaro
"Inspiring; analysis with detail and foresight."—L'Humanite
Select Accolades
A global survey of the impacts on cultures, economies, and the environment of the most powerful globalizing force of our time: tourism.
Pegi Vail | 2014 | 79 minutes / Color
What do tech and agri-business innovations mean for the fight against malnutrition?
Yves Billy | 2014 | 55 minutes / Color
Deep inside a mountain, the Global Seed Vault preserves the seeds of the world. But to whom do they belong?
Kees Brouwer | 2014 | 50 minutes / Color | English; Dutch / English subtitles
