Water Planet, w/ Leonardo DiCaprio

by Jon Bowermaster on


For ten years the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has funded social action, education and short films on environmental issues. The actor and environmentalist has a particular fondness – and concern — for the ocean as well as the global need for clean drinking water. Below, he speaks on his passion.

Consider this.

We live on a water planet.

Through the millennium the water cycle has supported all life.

Shaping weather, the seasons, and the climate, providing habitats for most of the world’s living things, and most of them including us are almost entirely made up of water.

Now consider this. Water is a finite source. A limited resource. Only a tiny fraction of the earth’s water is fresh.

It supports everything from agriculture and sanitation to aquatic ecosystems like rivers and streams. Water falls unevenly across the planet, while much of it is locked up in glaciers, permanent snow cover, ice and permafrost. Water is also stuck underground very deep in the earth and hard to reach.

To make matters worse, water is being threatened by pollution, overpopulation, climate change, mismanagement, and war.

Pollution is so severe that diseases are increasing in both humans and animals and habitats are being destroyed. Rain is turning into acid. So many chemicals flow into rivers and lakes that the actual composition of water in some places has been fundamentally changed.
Human encroachment is also drying out aquifers, diverting the natural flow of rivers and straining water supplies. Hidden in everyday consumption is the careless and unnecessary waste of water.

Dams displace millions of people and destroy whole ecosystems.

Global warming is altering the water cycle causing more severe and unpredictable flooding and droughts, ultimately shifting where water flows. Unregulated corporate privatization threatens access to water for the poor. Some governments fail to deliver water where it is needed most. These stresses have created military and political conflicts that will only get worse.

Ultimately, humanity is poisoning, squandering and overburdening water resources. The result is, that billions of people lack access to clean water. Millions of children die every year from preventable water-born diseases. Lack of clean water and basic sanitation cracks people in poverty. People are fighting and dying for it.

We are at a crisis point. We still have time to turn this around. We can conserve water and not waste it. Invest in smart water infrastructure and technologies. Increase environmental regulations from polluting industries. Tell government leaders to fulfill financial pledges for clean water Insure that water is not treated like a commodity.

But most important, we must recognize that access to clean water is a basic human right and the United Nations should adopt a global treaty for the right to water.

Water equals life, there is no separation. By protecting water, we can protect ourselves and this blue planet for future generations.

Message in a Bottle, w/ David de Rothschild

by Jon Bowermaster on

When Thor Heyerdahl sailed his balsa wood raft Kontiki across the Pacific Ocean, he was trying to prove that the settlement of the region emanated from South America; by contrast David de Rothschild’s boat the Plastiki – constructed solely from plastic bottles – is now a third of the way from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, attempting to draw the world’s attention to the fact that the same ocean is now home not to exploring people but vast acres of man’s detritus. Below, as excerpted from OCEANS, The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide he comments on his journey.

There has never been a better example of using adventure to inspire, engage and change perceptions of an existing reality than Thor Heyerdahl’s exploits in the South Pacific. In 1947 the Norwegian adventurer set out to prove that pre-Colombian indigenous people from South America could have populated the Polynesian islands by migrating- no fewer than 4,300 miles- by boat. Heyerdahl and his crew traveled to Peru, where they constructed a balsa wood raft using only those materials and knowledge that would have been available before European influence. Six adventurers clambered aboard the boat they called Kontiki and sailed it across the Pacific to test Heyerdahl’s theory of oceanic migration.

The raft made it; his theory did not. But the Kontiki’s storyline created one of the most compelling and captivating adventures of the last century. It danced across the imaginations of multiple generations, sowing the sense of excitement and freedom that comes with following one’s dreams.

Heyerdahl’s adventure was sitting foremost in my mind in late 2006 as I struggled to come up with a compelling method to illustrate one of the most significant and unnecessary manmade environmental, and now health, issues of our time. There had to be a way to stem this plastic plague, a plague that’s ultimately been driven by our over consumption, miss-use, lack of recapture and inefficient design.

As I walked to the Adventure Ecology offices one morning, I was pondering the question: what do we have in our time that’s readily available, as plentiful as balsa wood, and could be used to construct a craft for a journey that would both highlight all the messages above and test a theory a la the Kontiki in the open ocean? The answer was literally at my feet. Plastic bottles.

Modern society produces piles upon piles of plastic bottles. And while the United States leads the world in the consumption of bottled water, it is truly a global phenomenon. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, worldwide consumption reached forty-one billion gallons of water in 2004, an increase of fifty-seven percent in just five years. We chug and chuck, chug and chuck, day after day, month after month.

The plastic water bottle epitomizes the absurdity of our throwaway society. Each and every day, Americans consume 70 million bottles of water. That adds up to nearly nine billion gallons of water annually at a cost of approximately $11 billion; despite the fact that both the purity and taste of water flowing from the taps in our homes and workplaces is of equal or better quality. An even crueler irony is that according to the nonprofit research organization Pacific Institute it takes two liters of water to manufacture a one-liter plastic bottle. And the energy used during the life cycle of a single-use plastic bottle – from making the bottle itself to filling, shipping, chilling, and finally disposing of it – is equivalent to filling it one-quarter full with oil. Far from being “natural” or even virtuous, as many consider it, bottled water is the poster child for wasteful indulgence.

So the next step in thinking was logical. We need to re-design, re-value, reduce, reuse, and ultimately rethink our use of plastic so that it can contribute to solutions rather than compounding the problems. And with a respectful nod to the Kontiki and its audacious, attention-grabbing voyage, the Plastiki expedition was born!

The goal started out as sailing across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Sydney, to bring a global spotlight on to the plight of our oceans and marine life at the hands of plastic debris. However realizing the enormity of the problem it became apparent that if our expedition was ever going to capture hearts and minds as well as foster the creation of solutions we couldn’t just sail on any old vessel.

To this end a simple yet compelling concept was developed: construct a boat entirely out of two-liter plastic bottles, recycled waste products and innovative materials. We thought that if Plastiki could showcase smart designs that rethink the waste polluting our seas as a resource, not only a la Heyerdahl, the vessel could garner media attention on behalf of our imperiled oceans but the project would be an opportunity to develop solutions that could help to revaluate waste materials, like how we use them, what we use them for, and most importantly our disposing of them. We were hoping for a good chance to finally stem the rising tide of plastics.

The World Is Blue, w/Sylvia Earle

by Jon Bowermaster on

Sylvia Earle’s ocean experiences span seven decades and have taken her to every corner of the ocean planet. She is the first to remind us that we know very little about ninety-five percent of the ocean and its undersea world. When she talks, all of the world’s ocean lovers listen.

A National Geographic Explorer in Residence, founder of the Deep Search Foundation, and former chief scientist of NOAA she was dubbed “Her Deepness” by the New Yorker, a living legend by the Library of Congress, and Time magazine’s first Hero for the Planet, Sylvia has led more than 100 expeditions and been awarded more than 100 national and international honors, including the 2009 TED Prize for her wish “to explore and protect the ocean, blue heart of the planet.”

This month she led Mission Blue, a TED-sponsored gathering of ocean experts in the Galapagos. In an excerpt from my new book, OCEANS, The Threats to the Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide, Sylvia discusses her love:

Diving into the ocean is rather like diving into the history of life on Earth. Nearly all of the major divisions of plants, animals, protists and other forms that have ever existed have at least some representation there, while only about half occur on the land. In a single gulp of plankton-filled water, a whale shark may swallow fifteen or so of the great wedges of animal life — fish, copepods, arrow worms, flatworms, jellyfish, comb jellies, salps, the larval stages of starfish, sponges, polychaete worms, peanut worms, ribbon worms, mollusks, brachiopods — and more.
Some think of the ocean as a great basin of sand, rocks and water, but it is really more like an enormous bowl of blue minestrone where all of the bits and pieces are alive. During thousands of hours suspended in the ocean’s embrace, I have been wreathed with jewel-like chains of luminous jellies, glided side by side with dozens of dolphins, been nose to nose with humpback whales, had close encounters with curious squids, and been followed around coral reefs by large, inquisitive groupers.

I have come to understand that every drop of ocean has carbon-based life in abundance, although most are too small to be seen without powerful magnification. Thousands of new kinds of microbes recently have been discovered thriving in each spoonful sample of what appears to be clear, lifeless seawater. Some miniscule blue-green bacteria are so abundant and productive that they generate the oxygen in one of every five breaths we take, but their existence was not detected until the 1990s.

More has been learned about the nature of the ocean – and its importance to all that we care about – in the past half century than during all preceding human history. A turning point came with the view — first seen by astronauts — of Earth as a blue sphere gleaming against the vastness of space. With increasing urgency, people wondered, “Are we alone? Is there life elsewhere in the universe?”

The quest begins by asking, “Where is the water?”

That’s the first question astrobiologist Chris McKay poses in his on-going search for life on Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and beyond. “Water,” he says, ” . . .is the single non-negotiable thing life requires. There is plenty of water without life . . .but nowhere is there life without water.”

No water, no life; no blue, no green or, as poet W. H. Auden points out, ” Thousands have lived without love – not one without water.”

On the Front Line of Rising Sea Levels, A Conversation with President Mohammed Nasheed, the Maldives

by Jon Bowermaster on

Forty-two-year-old President Mohammed Nasheed is the first democratically elected president in the island nation of the Maldives, home to 375,000 people in the Indian Ocean off the tip of Sri Lanka. A former human rights activist and journalist, he was jailed and tortured by his predecessor. Today he is one of the most outspoken politicians in the world on the impact of climate change and its impact on all coastal areas, especially the Maldives. I interviewed him for our new book OCEANS, The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide.

Jon Bowermaster: How immediate is the problem of climate change and rising seas in the Maldives today? What evidence are you seeing?

President Nasheed: Climate change is not a distant or abstract phenomenon in the Maldives. The affects of climate change are being felt today. One third of inhabited islands in the Maldives are suffering from coastal erosion, which is exacerbated by climate change. Fishermen are complaining that weather patterns have become unpredictable and warmer and more acidic seas threaten our coral reefs. If the world fails to curb carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures continue to soar, these problems will worsen over the coming decades.

JB: Have sea levels risen already?

PN: The Environment Ministry calculates that sea levels in the Maldives are rising by 0.7 mm per year, which is around the global average. The big fear, however, is that this rise in sea level accelerates as climate change starts to rise even more towards the end of this century. This is a concern not just to the Maldives, but all low-lying areas around the world.

A one-meter rise in sea levels, which some climate scientists warn will happen if nothing is done to reduce carbon pollution, would be devastating for the Maldives. Such a rise would also inundate other low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands and seriously threaten many of the world’s coastal cities. We must not allow this to happen. JB: Soon after your election you announced plans to look for higher ground to move your people to. Where are you looking and how is the search going?

PN: Nobody in the Maldives wants to leave home. The government is doing everything we possibly can to remain here. We are improving sea defenses, such as sea walls, revetments and embankments. We are working to improve the coral reefs and coastal vegetation, which are our islands’ natural defense mechanisms. And we are exploring new building designs, such as building houses on stilts so they withstand storm surges and floods.

The bottom line, however, is dry land and if the world allows the climate crisis to turn into a catastrophe, then future generations of Maldivians will have no choice but to seek new homes on higher ground. I believe it is right to have this conversation today so we can start to plan for the problems tomorrow may bring.

Last year, I suggested we should start saving a portion of our tourism revenues in a Sovereign Wealth Fund, to help future generations cope with climate change. Ultimately, this fund could be used to help people leave. Again, I stress that this is not a problem unique to the Maldives. We are merely the first people who are talking out loud about these issues. If we ignore the warning signs and continue blindly down a ‘business as usual’ polluting path, then it will not just be Maldivians looking for a new home but also the good people of London, New York and Hong Kong.

JB: In your travels around the Maldives do you find that most people understand the seriousness of climate change and its potential impact on them?

PN: People living in Male’ and other urban areas are quite knowledgeable about the environment, particularly young people. In more remote parts of the country, people see that erosion is increasingly. They know that the fish catch is more irregular and they understand that coral reefs are stressed. Maldivians know there are environment problems which affect their daily lives and that these problems are linked to global climate change.

JB: You’ve also proposed that the Maldives will become the first carbon neutral country in the planet. How is that going and have you set a timeline?

PN: We have a plan to make the Maldives carbon neutral in ten years. At the heart of this plan lies a commitment to renewable energy. 155 1.5MW wind turbines, coupled with half a square kilometer of solar panels and a back-up biomass plant would produce enough green energy to power the country. Aviation is trickier. Until airlines can switch to biofuels, there is little the Maldives can do other than offset the pollution caused by international tourist flights, by investing in carbon reduction schemes elsewhere.

Our carbon neutral plan is on track. This year, the government has started working with a number of international energy companies to build wind farms, which we hope will provide the bulk of our electricity. We are also working with the Government of Japan on a $10 million solar project, to install photovoltaic panels on schools and government buildings in and around the capital.

JB: You recently convened an underwater meeting of your entire cabinet. Whose idea was that? Some in the press called it a ‘stunt’ – which is not always a bad thing, when you’re trying to draw attention to important issues.

PN: It was a cabinet decision to conduct the underwater meeting. We estimate that over one billion people watched, heard or read about the underwater cabinet meeting. While it was a bit of fun, it underscored a serious message. I hope the meeting raised people’s awareness about the dangers climate change poses to the Maldives and the rest of the world. I hope that some of those people go on to ask their own politicians what they are doing to help solve the climate crisis. It is only when people start holding leaders to account, when politicians start losing elections over environmental issues, that they will treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves.

JB: How many feet above sea level is your bedroom? Office?

PN: The President’s office is about six feet above sea level.

Where blue meets blue

by Jon Bowermaster on

The upcoming Earth Day (April 22) will be the 40th; I’ve been lobbying, quietly, that this time-round the day be labeled Ocean Day instead. In part because this is without statistical question more of an ocean planet than a continental one, and because I think right now around the world there is a tsunami wave of interest in all things “ocean,” particularly the threats to its health and its fisheries.

(To that end, my new book is called simply OCEANS, Threats to the Sea and What You Can Do To Turn the Tide. Companion book to the new Jacques Perrin/DisneyNature film of the same name (OCEANS), both are officially out on Earth Day/Ocean Day. )

Who isn’t made blissful sitting at water’s edge staring at the horizon, hypnotized by that delicate, nearly imperceptible-yet-somehow-distinct line where blue meets blue? Who among us doesn’t count those solitary, sun-washed moments – whether afloat on a boat or feet dug deep into the sand — as among the favorites of a lifetime?

Cliché? Perhaps. But if the views off land’s edges are not the most soothing, the most renewing on the planet, why do so many of us flock there to live, to work, to rejuvenate? Which raises the issue of why is it that this planet is called Earth, when seventy five percent of it is Ocean? That this is not known as Planet Ocean speaks only to the ego of man, since it has nothing to do with reality. It also raises the question of exactly how many oceans there are. Go get your atlas. Inside you’ll find five mildly distinct bodies with labels (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern). I, like most whose writing graces these pages, believe there are no real distinctions, that this big body of water encircling the planet is just one ocean.

Put me on the edge, on or in the ocean at sunrise, sunset, under a blazing midday sun or even a small storm and I am content. For the past twenty years I’ve managed just that countless times. A wide variety of explorations have given me a unique perspective on both the health of the ocean and the lives of people who depend on it, a meandering route leading me from remote Bering Sea and Pacific islands, down the coasts of Vietnam and all of South America, around the various seas that surround Europe, parallel long sandy beaches in Gabon and India and rocky ones in Croatia, Tasmania and Kamchatka. At each stop I have spent time with the people whose days are most defined and shaped by the ocean.For all the differences each place offers – from browsing forest elephants and surfing hippos along the beaches of Gabon to eighty-mile-an-hour winds raking the Aleutian Islands, from horrifically-polluted bays off the South China Sea to centuries-old ritual celebrations still practiced on remote South Pacific atolls — similarities link them all. The same is true for ocean people. Though their cultures may differ – dress, food, religions and more – the people who live along coastlines have far more in common than they have differences. Instinctively, the very first thing each does in the morning is scan the horizon line, the seascape, checking the morning sky for what it might portend. Increasingly too, each is impacted by a handful of environmental risks now impacting the ocean, its coastlines and both its marine and human populations.

As the human population grows, headed fast towards nine billion, the planet’s coastlines grow ever more crowded. Fourteen of the planet’s seventeen largest cities are built on the edge of the ocean. Nearly half the world’s population – more than three billion – lives within an hour’s drive of a coast. The rich go for the views and refreshing salt air; the poor for jobs and big dreams; holiday-goers for a brief respite. But we humans are a rapacious species, seemingly incapable of taking good care of any place; over the past five centuries or so we’ve done a very good job of taking from the ocean without pause to consider its fragility and the damage we’ve done to it by our indifference.

How many of those billions who glimpse a sea with frequency, I wonder, stop to ask, How is this big, beautiful ocean of ours doing? While it has long seemed limitless, its resources infinite, there are myriad signs that we’ve now abused the ocean to the point of no return. The list of harms is long and includes threats from climate change (rising sea levels and acidification), various pollutions and over fishing. Eat fish? If so, you have to be concerned about the ocean; experts predict that by 2050 all of the fish species we currently survive on will be gone. Like tuna sashimi? Get it now since all of the world’s bluefin is anticipated to be gone by 2012. Forever. Fresh water supplies are endangered globally, with new reports suggesting that even in the wealthiest of nations (the U.S.) twenty million people drink polluted water every day.

There is some room for hope and optimism, with marine reserves and both national and international laws in the works that may help make a difference. Let’s hope they are enacted and enforced quickly enough that they can have an effect rather than just preceding an inevitable demise; around the globe, for example, far too often marine reserves have been set up only after the last fish was taken.

At each of my coastal stops during the past twenty years I have paused for long minutes, sometimes an hour and occasionally more, often far off the coast in the middle of the vast ocean, to ponder the horizon line, to watch the sun fall into the sea, or rise again. In each of those scenes I have found an incredible renewing energy. And it is the memories of those horizon lines – and the people I’ve met along the ocean’s edges — that keeps me going back for more.