Choose Earth (2025) s01e02 Episode Script
Wood Wide Web
1
There is this beautiful saying
of Estonian nature scientists,
that the swamps are the center of silence.
This is not water, this is not a land,
it's a world itself.
There is no owner of this place.
Estonians are silent people.
We have a lot of dialogue inside us
and I believe we identify ourselves
with swamps exactly because of that.
Everything is magnified
because there is not so much of it.
Historically, swamps have been also places
where Estonians have been hiding
from the wars, from the enemies.
You have to know how to navigate here,
because you step in the wrong place
and you sink through.
Maybe I also hide somehow here.
As human beings
we are mirroring things around us.
I think there is so much noise that
it is not so easy to find the silence
in us.
The silent places
are really necessary to mirror,
So you can create your music in that,
and then go out there and be a better
human being because of that silence.
I am Jared Cairuna Cauper,
from the Nuevo Saposoa Native Community.
My Shipibo name is Gushamani.
It means a strong and kind man.
My ancestors lived here,
generation after generation,
we've grown up on this land.
I was born to protect nature.
I am a park ranger
in Sierra del Divisor National Park.
For me, both things are important,
being a park ranger and being Indigenous,
I take care of the forest both ways.
Sometimes I sit under a tree,
looking at the trees, I wonder,
what will happen to them,
will they survive, will they disappear?
They stand there,
growing on their own,
years upon years,
thousands of years,
and they have
no way to defend themselves.
There is a theory in science that explains
that if we look close enough,
everything is composed
of strings of energy,
everything is made
of unbelievably tiny strings,
and that the fundamental
building-blocks of nature
are not particles but instead strings.
Imagine microscopic wiggling rubber bands,
connecting and interconnecting everything,
from one side of the planet to the other.
Behaving as one single organism is
something that trees seem to already do.
They all communicate through
an underground network of fungi
even if they are not related.
These intricate systems
consist in tiny threads of mycelium,
like a giant wood wide web
of communication and interdependence.
There is that world alongside ours,
vast and slow
that can be reciprocal or negotiable
and perhaps selfless.
It only seems to be visible
to some of us.
Pucallpa is a Shipibo city,
created by the Shipibo people.
Over time, the population grew and
now there's nothing left of the Shipibo.
- Of the Shipibo?
- Yes.
Pucallpa had a Shipibo name?
Mai Joshin, Pucallpa.
Colorful land.
Mostly, people come
from the Amazon region.
Drawn by the resources we have,
our rich flora and fauna.
It's very concerning,
the population keeps growing,
and human activities are hurting us a lot.
More people means more pollution,
more troubles,
more activities, legal or not.
It all impacts our environment.
- Is your mom here, in Pucallpa?
- Yes, she's here now.
- Your dad too?
- No, he lives in the native community.
Most people dream
of becoming something in life,
that's why they come to Pucallpa.
For a better life,
for education, for healthcare.
So, is Pucallpa a necessity?
It's partly a problem
and partly a solution.
We need to find a balance.
What was really shocking
is arriving into the city of Pucallpa,
which is a city inside the Amazon.
So you always imagine
this like incredible,
huge, green, vast, endless place.
And actually you've got
these cities that are really big
and have been built
with absolutely no urban vision.
It's all about trafficking,
whether it's wood,
whether it's humans, whether it's drugs.
But yet, in the same time,
it's also a place of opportunity
for a lot of these communities,
because they're so isolated
that they don't have access to education.
They don't have access to health.
They don't have access to a better life.
And Pucallpa in many,
many ways can give them that.
And so there's this extraordinary duality,
it's both an opportunity and a tragedy.
- How much?
- Only 50 sols.
Ready!
The river.
Sierra del Divisor
is one of the mothers of nature
where all flora and fauna
species reproduce.
Rainforest is alive,
with living organisms we often miss
but they're always there.
The insects and countless others,
all thriving in the forest.
In big countries
there's a lot of pollution,
and we act as a buffer against that.
The Shipibo
are the people of the Ucayali River,
they are the protectors of that river.
They think of the Amazon as a forest,
but it's vital as a river too, right?
It's vital to protect forests
and rivers as well,
people living near the river
depend on its water,
even though the rivers are polluted.
In Peru where some
300,000 mi² of forest exist,
illegal gold mining
has caused devastation of its own.
Here in the Amazon, pure 24 carat gold
is extracted by using barrels of mercury.
It's poisonous to human,
to wildlife, it lasts for centuries.
41% of the population have dangerous
levels of a neurotoxin in their bodies.
It's not just the miners
who handle mercury,
but also the people who eat the fish
from contaminated rivers.
We are 14 park rangers,
but with one million,
354 thousand, 485.10 hectares
of protected area.
MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT - NATIONAL
SERVICE FOR PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS
Navigating the Ucayali River
is very dangerous,
but we still do our work,
risking our lives every day.
Big logging companies
are destroying our forests.
Almost daily, we're fighting
cocaleros and deforestation.
Some Shipibo-Conibo people
have already been killed
because of drug trafficking.
Don't you have a gun?
We're not allowed to carry guns,
they're forbidden.
New Human Rights Watch
report suggests that deforestation
is being driven by criminal networks that
the government is failing to stop them.
So-called rainforest mafia groups
organizing illegal logging operations
that contribute to forest fires.
The world's biggest rainforest,
the Amazon,
has lost an area the size
of Germany and France combined.
Deforestation is destroying trees
and the species
who rely on them to sustain life.
Biodiversity is declining at an alarming
and unprecedented rate.
It's not just the loss of trees,
entire ecosystems and the countless
species that depend on them are at risk.
Right now, more than one million species
are in danger of extinction,
disappearing at a rate
not seen for 10 million years.
And humans are mostly to blame.
Sometimes it's a cultural object,
sometimes it's organic.
There is a search, there is a quest.
There's definitely a process in what I do.
I arrive on location and I have to get in
contact with it and understand it better.
A tree hug.
Its challenges.
The people who are there,
their challenges.
Their history.
The light, the wind.
The fauna, the flora.
There's so much diversity on our planet.
And every time it's a learning process,
because in my own way
I'm trying to put together
a symbolic representation
of that place through the TimeShrine.
What is this?
This is male Huayruru seeds.
They say it brings good luck.
- It's good luck?
- Yes.
- Ah, okay.
- Yes.
The installation is definitely
the result of, of a sincere communion
between the place and myself,
and the people I've met
and the people who helped me.
It was interesting, I was going out there
in nature around our planet to do art.
What is the girl's name?
But at the end of the day,
the whole story was about us,
about other human beings,
about our species, about our choices.
This is a thorn, be careful.
Primary forests are immense untouched
trees, which no one has cut down.
To see them, we need to journey
two or three days from the city.
To me, cutting down a primary forest,
is like killing a person.
If you press it just a little,
a little drop comes out
and you put that in your eye.
What is this?
This helps not to get lost in the forest.
If we are going that direction,
the plants show it's the wrong way,
so we turn back.
- This way?
- Yes, let's go this way.
Through nature,
I brought friends to visit from afar,
they admire your strength,
they're here to capture your image,
to share your wisdom with the world.
That's all.
It should hold.
I need something to elevate. Do we
have a little piece of wood or something?
Let's put it under.
This is one of my symbols.
A symbol of death?
No, of life, the choices we face.
A positive or negative life.
- Ah, positive or negative life.
- Yes.
They are so ugly.
Can we go back one second?
I just need to fix that flower.
Okay.
Everyone in Estonia sings,
like doesn't matter in which way,
but it is impossible not to sing,
we grow up singing with mother's milk.
Singing for us is also like
the form of our culture.
Our grandmothers have taught us,
our mothers have taught us.
We teach our children that singing
is something that is our identity
and forest is sacred.
We have this funny saying of like:
"If you don't behave well, you know, I'll
put you in a song and you never get out".
What an interesting experience!
This folklore song is from stone age.
Can you imagine?
There was no way of writing things down.
I think our cultural
legacy is connected to the fact
that we have been so many times
invaded by other neighbours and cultures.
We were called the pagans,
no religion really stuck on us,
like we keep on doing our things.
Songs was a very important way to transmit
a lot of things that were not written,
but in the same time create some sort
of a form of resistance, would you say?
Definitely,
because during Soviet time we couldn't,
you know, repeat or say that,
or be in a way like
a free nation could be.
But we became super smart and witty
about hiding the messages in the songs,
so we could spread and say to each other
what we wanted to say in a hidden way.
Wow! What is this place?
It's called Linnahall,
which means, the hall of the city.
It was created
for the Olympic Games of Moscow for 1980.
It's a piece of brutal architecture
of the Soviet era.
And there's the sea.
I brought you here because
this is the only
Soviet time public building
that has openness for the sea.
- You mean like an access to the sea?
- Yes.
Because during Soviet time,
although we are a sea Country,
we couldn't reach out to the sea.
You couldn't go to the sea,
to swim or to fish,
because the Soviet regime was afraid
that you would escape the paradise.
Are you saying that the most of the shore
of Estonia had barbed wire?
Yeah, there were fences, and there
were guards every four hours walking by
and they cleaned the beach
to make sure that no one set foot on it.
Camping next to the sea,
using the sea, making fire
or doing things
that you would do on a seaside,
it wasn't really in my vocabulary,
I didn't know that it's possible.
But I remember barbed wire everywhere,
around forests, around the places
that now I'm discovering.
- Are those vegetables?
- Yeah, that a vegetable garden.
This is pumpkin.
And those are strawberries,
tomatoes and
- Oregano!
- Oregano, yes.
Is this a store
or is it just for the community?
It's just for the community.
- So this is your world, Ettie.
- Yeah, it's like a creative neighborhood.
It's the first one that is created out
of this kind of a Soviet huge complex.
- This is my office.
- How many Start-Ups do you have in here?
60, 70, depends.
Like, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I work in Startup Estonia,
it's a governmental organization.
It's kind of a department
of innovation agency
that creates rich ecosystem for Start-ups.
We actually have to be
in forefront of innovation.
Where do you want to be in 30 years? And
in 50? What impulses does society need?
So we are creating impulses for more
deep technology companies to be created,
so that there would be Start-ups that the
scientists would come out of their labs
and create products and services
for the good of the community
quicker than maybe
they would otherwise do.
- This is a mushroom?
- Yeah, this is a mushroom.
- It's like a nature's 3D printing.
- Exactly.
So why is deep technology
so important to you?
The deep technology
is like creating of a bundle,
So under that, there's all kinds
of verticals like climate tech,
and green tech and clean tech
and, you know, we need all of it.
Tackling the really core problems
of the society.
Of the international society
or the national society?
Always international society,
it's from Estonia to the world.
- Hi!
- Hello, welcome.
- Nice to meet you!
- Nice to meet you!
Welcome to the Arbonics office.
We're sort of at the heart of the mixture
of the old and new Tallinn here.
Arbonics is a bridge between a landowner
who wants to do good for the planet,
and the big corporation
who wants to achieve net zero.
We put the companies together who want
to offset part of their kind of product
that they couldn't minimise
in terms of footprint
and landowners
who do the good for the forests.
One hectare of forest can do around
ten tons of carbon storage per year.
It's around one and half European
citizens per year how much they pollute.
So if a landowner decides
not to cut the forest down,
we will get financial rewards
for the landowner from the corporations.
And although the landowner might lose
on the timber revenue,
which are even more, would gain
an alternative that does not exist now.
So we need to create
alternatives for the landowners
to make them behave
in support of our planet.
- Can you look my land?
- Yeah!
So this is what we have here.
This is your land, you know it,
but now you see it from above.
And I will plant the forest.
What can I earn?
Landowners are very pragmatical.
So that means here
is your land area report,
you have less than one hectare to plant,
which is not a huge area, but still.
We also provide
them with like specific report
telling like where exactly based on soil
information to plant which tree type.
If the tree grows, it adds weight, and
that's a ratio of carbon that's stored.
So the bigger the tree, the more
carbon stored, the more money you get.
This makes sense.
For us, it starts with the technology.
Everything is transparent,
you can measure everything.
You can see every plot of the land,
what exactly happened in the past,
happens now, and estimates
what will happen in the future.
Our scientific team is working hard
on kind of building the models,
so I think it needs to be a combination
of nature and science.
All right.
Can I pour you a bit?
So, do you take this everywhere with you?
- Thank you, perfect.
- Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, going in the rain
with a technical stuff on you
and then the other moment going with,
I don't know, like
You want to come with your hat
or with a fancy dress or whatever.
I often do that.
Yeah, it's more like a celebration, right?
It's not like necessarily being there with
your gear and your technical stuff and so…
- Also just being in nature right?
- Yes, exactly.
I love that nature doesn't judge you.
You judge yourself,
but nature doesn't judge you.
You don't have to become someone
else in here. There are no conditions.
- Look at this pathway!
- Yes, it's perfect.
- It's incredibly well maintained.
- Yes.
It's everywhere to protect this fragile
ecosystem, because it's a primary forest.
And you have basically
50% of Estonia is forest, right?
It's actually not anymore 50%, it's
already less. We keep on saying it's 50.
But, on the other hand, there is like this
lobbying in European Union and Commission
of logging more,
and it's not just, you know, here,
it's about everywhere
in areas of a lot of forest.
So one hand we protect
and another hand we destroy.
There's a row developing
between EU countries
over the fate of the continent's
remaining ancient woodland.
The mortality of trees
in French forests,
has increased by 80%
in the past decade.
In the Carpathians, trees
are extracted illegally by criminal gangs.
In Poland, plans to log timber
Everything and I mean,
everything is felled and removed.
Arbonics, they just want
to reinvent the value of the forest.
Does it have more value,
dead or alive, right?
Through the help of science
and technology,
that we could keep those ecosystems
and we could develop solutions
that are creating materials or solutions
that we would need to take it from here.
That's why I'm working in deep tech,
and trying to replace this
economical necessity
to destroy something with one hand
to have this other hand of regenerating.
What are your hopes for you,
for the planet, for Arbonics?
Where do you see us in 2050?
If we continue on the path we are today,
it's going to look very bad.
But there is hope in how many new
projects and solutions are being formed.
Many of those will fail,
but many of them will succeed.
The good thing is that it's up to us
whether we're going
to join forces and change it.
I think it's the biggest challenge
humankind has ever faced.
And if you don't succeed,
then we don't deserve it.
The extent of the biodiversity crisis
is extremely serious,
and we have absolutely no time
to lose to start reversing it.
We sincerely hope
we can stay on the right side of history.
Estonia supports
the nature restoration law.
The law aims to restore at least 20%
of the bloc's land and sea areas by 2030.
In the long term, the law aims
to restore all ecosystems in need by 2050.
There are a lot of large Countries
with a lot of timber industry lobbying
who are very against this law
because they're worried
this might limit what they're able to do.
Concerns on the costs of implementation
make Hungary vote against.
We must avoid negative impacts
in the agriculture sector.
Italy will firmly vote against.
There are no jobs on a dead planet.
Sweden cannot stand behind the agreement.
The European Commission finally approved
a sort of biodiversity protection law.
The majority voted
for the adoption of the text,
so we have formally adopted it.
Thank you very much.
They needed 65%, they got 66%.
And it basically came down
to the vote of one person,
one woman,
a representative from Austria.
We buried for many decades intact nature.
We lost nature
on the concrete and asphalt.
But it doesn't have to be this way
with a sick biodiversity,
there is no healthy
and happy human living on this continent.
She, despite being explicitly told
that she should vote against it,
actually decided in her own words,
thinking of her nieces and nephews
that it was worth risking
her career to vote for it.
In 20 or 30 years
when I will talk to my two nieces
I want to be able to tell them
I tried to support as much as I could.
Drones help us identify
the forested plots.
So we're going to have to send
a drone to the part that is deforested
so we can see if there's no one dangerous
in there, so it's safe for us.
Okay, great. So we just send a drone,
if nobody's there, we can go.
- We can get in, yeah.
- Okay, perfect, great.
Drones help us identify deforested plots.
We work with satellite images
update twice a month.
Today we walked more than three miles.
We found a deforested plot
and the community is really concerned.
I believe traditions and technology
can unite.
When we join them together,
they form a higher kind of knowledge.
That is very important to me.
The rate of deforestation has increased
by a third over the last year
to almost 10,000 km².
That's an area equivalent to three
football pitches being lost every minute.
Narcotrafficking become
one of the main causes of deforestation.
A kind of delta, a kind of triangle
that connects Brazil,
Peru, and Colombia.
Illegal mining,
narcotrafficking, territorial control,
and foreign investment driven by profit,
threaten the Amazon
and are killing Indigenous leaders.
They warn of the risk
this poses to peace.
Amazon Rainforest
is on course to reach
a catastrophic tipping point
as soon as 2050.
How many hectares?
This is approximately
5 hectares of deforestation.
- This is incredible.
- Yes.
In how much time?
They destroyed it in one month.
- One month?
- In one month they cut it down.
- And this?
- This is a coca plant.
First, they make a fire.
They cut down the trees,
first then they burn them
to clear the land
and then they plant the coca.
- This is a
- This is
- A big big tree, right?
- A huge tree that they've cut down.
Then they've set it on fire.
Is this a primary forest?
A Primary forest that they've cut down.
This is the Amazon rainforest,
but it barely resembles its name.
Trees warped and blackened,
like burnt matchsticks.
Clouds not full of rain for the continent,
but smoke that is chocking it.
Known as the lungs of the planet,
the world relies on the Amazon
to absorb a lot of its carbon dioxide,
but these fires mean
it's now emitting record amounts itself.
On the front lines,
indigenous firefighters.
It's their land burning.
Rare images of members of uncontacted
indigenous tribe in the Peruvian forest,
Dozens of Mashco-Piro people on the
banks of a river close to logging sites.
Several logging companies hold timber
concessions in the area,
and one company has reportedly built over
200 km of roads for logging operations.
The reclusive Mashkopira tribe,
one of the world's most hidden,
has been sighted coming out
of the rainforest more often
to relocate further
away from loggers and find food.
So this is the other facet
of the Amazon, it's the deforestation.
So this image is what I had to do.
The other one is what I wanted to do
and this one is what I had to do.
It's like walking in a cemetery.
I mean, if you're coming
from that life and from that vitality
Because, you know, the forest
is also the home of so much biodiversity.
So, you're walking and it's everything
crackles through under your feet and,
and there's no more life,
you don't hear the birds.
You don't hear all the little insects.
It's like a dead silence, a dead nature.
You know, nature is never silent.
It's just really, really brutal
and it's not even like a burial ground,
it's just a dead zone.
We take the people and staff first,
then return for the boat.
We are going to do a little work there.
I will put this here.
Watch out, watch out!
Be careful with this!
My ancestors came to fish at this spot,
traveling from far away, from Pucallpa.
They fished abundantly
in waters full of life.
They chose to settle down
create villages and a community
We are the rightful guardians
of the Ucayali River.
Good morning to everybody and to all
the visiting friends of this community!
The Shipibo belief
is mainly about the plants
that our ancestors worshiped.
We had different kinds of guides
whether shamans,
healers, or spiritual guides.
Just like today
you have doctors or midwives.
Nature is pure connection.
My grandparents taught me
to sing in the afternoons.
The birds sing,
we too can offer a song to nature.
Each one within his Countries
is called to protect our environment.
They must continue
what we've always done.
Let them come
and see the truth from themselves,
how remote communities live.
Like you and me
sharing this with the world.
We all must protect our Planet.
For a long time with my boyfriend we have
been looking for an apartment for years.
We couldn't find anything
and at some point I saw a land
announcement coming that is sold.
I looked at it and I was like:
"This is my place",
and I told my boyfriend like:
"I think I found a place for us".
- An apartment.
- Yes, but it's not an apartment.
It's a land
and you can't actually build on that.
- This is your apartment.
- Yes, this is my apartment.
The living room, the kitchen
That's the kitchen.
- Are you hungry?
- Always hungry.
- Then I might offer you a healthy snack.
- Oh, wow!
- Are those wild strawberries?
- Yes.
- This is the season, right?
- Yes, exactly.
What is the reasoning behind buying
instead of apartment a land
where you cannot build on,
it's not very reasonable.
But then I realized that actually
I was going back to my home on that land.
A home where I can feel back in time
where I was a child
and it's like bringing my heritage
from there to here.
We can make our own sacred
places everywhere.
This surrounding is the way
that I transform or where I open up,
where my heart feels at rest
and I can be myself.
I'm a very science-oriented person,
but I'm also an emotions-oriented person
because it doesn't have to be
only this or only that.
I'm everything.
With all this AI and deep fake,
there will be a huge challenge to know
what is truth, what is not truth.
We're in an incredible turning point.
The world, as you said,
it's gonna be very different in two years.
It's really scary what you can do with it.
At the same time,
we could use it for a good purpose.
Do I use all this technology
and the possibilities
against the humanity or for the humanity?
There are like really important
tech people who are working against AI.
At the same time,
there is of course, you know, tech section
that is doing everything to use the AI
and to use the help of the intelligence.
So it's not so much about,
like, who's winning it,
but it's more
about what can we do with it.
Technology is just the tool.
It's not the mind, it is the tool.
So the mind comes from us,
the heart comes from us.
The midsummer festivity in that way is
very, very traditional, very particular,
like the dances
or the instruments or the singing.
This is your identity, so unconsciously
I think I log in with my ancestors,
with my grandmother, with my
grandmother's grandmother and so on,
and it makes me complete,
it makes me much more who I am.
This thing cannot die. It's incredible.
This is what I am. I want to do that.
It's the most beautiful part
of my history.
If we don't honor ourselves
and our culture and our personality
then those big ideologies
are just swallowing us.
Going back to our roots
is something that is valuable.
We want to save it.
We want others to save their roots.
And it will be like something
that we can use as a driving force
to save humanity intact.
Through the Ayahuasca,
and its energies,
I will heal your body and your Spirit.
There is this beautiful saying
of Estonian nature scientists,
that the swamps are the center of silence.
This is not water, this is not a land,
it's a world itself.
There is no owner of this place.
Estonians are silent people.
We have a lot of dialogue inside us
and I believe we identify ourselves
with swamps exactly because of that.
Everything is magnified
because there is not so much of it.
Historically, swamps have been also places
where Estonians have been hiding
from the wars, from the enemies.
You have to know how to navigate here,
because you step in the wrong place
and you sink through.
Maybe I also hide somehow here.
As human beings
we are mirroring things around us.
I think there is so much noise that
it is not so easy to find the silence
in us.
The silent places
are really necessary to mirror,
So you can create your music in that,
and then go out there and be a better
human being because of that silence.
I am Jared Cairuna Cauper,
from the Nuevo Saposoa Native Community.
My Shipibo name is Gushamani.
It means a strong and kind man.
My ancestors lived here,
generation after generation,
we've grown up on this land.
I was born to protect nature.
I am a park ranger
in Sierra del Divisor National Park.
For me, both things are important,
being a park ranger and being Indigenous,
I take care of the forest both ways.
Sometimes I sit under a tree,
looking at the trees, I wonder,
what will happen to them,
will they survive, will they disappear?
They stand there,
growing on their own,
years upon years,
thousands of years,
and they have
no way to defend themselves.
There is a theory in science that explains
that if we look close enough,
everything is composed
of strings of energy,
everything is made
of unbelievably tiny strings,
and that the fundamental
building-blocks of nature
are not particles but instead strings.
Imagine microscopic wiggling rubber bands,
connecting and interconnecting everything,
from one side of the planet to the other.
Behaving as one single organism is
something that trees seem to already do.
They all communicate through
an underground network of fungi
even if they are not related.
These intricate systems
consist in tiny threads of mycelium,
like a giant wood wide web
of communication and interdependence.
There is that world alongside ours,
vast and slow
that can be reciprocal or negotiable
and perhaps selfless.
It only seems to be visible
to some of us.
Pucallpa is a Shipibo city,
created by the Shipibo people.
Over time, the population grew and
now there's nothing left of the Shipibo.
- Of the Shipibo?
- Yes.
Pucallpa had a Shipibo name?
Mai Joshin, Pucallpa.
Colorful land.
Mostly, people come
from the Amazon region.
Drawn by the resources we have,
our rich flora and fauna.
It's very concerning,
the population keeps growing,
and human activities are hurting us a lot.
More people means more pollution,
more troubles,
more activities, legal or not.
It all impacts our environment.
- Is your mom here, in Pucallpa?
- Yes, she's here now.
- Your dad too?
- No, he lives in the native community.
Most people dream
of becoming something in life,
that's why they come to Pucallpa.
For a better life,
for education, for healthcare.
So, is Pucallpa a necessity?
It's partly a problem
and partly a solution.
We need to find a balance.
What was really shocking
is arriving into the city of Pucallpa,
which is a city inside the Amazon.
So you always imagine
this like incredible,
huge, green, vast, endless place.
And actually you've got
these cities that are really big
and have been built
with absolutely no urban vision.
It's all about trafficking,
whether it's wood,
whether it's humans, whether it's drugs.
But yet, in the same time,
it's also a place of opportunity
for a lot of these communities,
because they're so isolated
that they don't have access to education.
They don't have access to health.
They don't have access to a better life.
And Pucallpa in many,
many ways can give them that.
And so there's this extraordinary duality,
it's both an opportunity and a tragedy.
- How much?
- Only 50 sols.
Ready!
The river.
Sierra del Divisor
is one of the mothers of nature
where all flora and fauna
species reproduce.
Rainforest is alive,
with living organisms we often miss
but they're always there.
The insects and countless others,
all thriving in the forest.
In big countries
there's a lot of pollution,
and we act as a buffer against that.
The Shipibo
are the people of the Ucayali River,
they are the protectors of that river.
They think of the Amazon as a forest,
but it's vital as a river too, right?
It's vital to protect forests
and rivers as well,
people living near the river
depend on its water,
even though the rivers are polluted.
In Peru where some
300,000 mi² of forest exist,
illegal gold mining
has caused devastation of its own.
Here in the Amazon, pure 24 carat gold
is extracted by using barrels of mercury.
It's poisonous to human,
to wildlife, it lasts for centuries.
41% of the population have dangerous
levels of a neurotoxin in their bodies.
It's not just the miners
who handle mercury,
but also the people who eat the fish
from contaminated rivers.
We are 14 park rangers,
but with one million,
354 thousand, 485.10 hectares
of protected area.
MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT - NATIONAL
SERVICE FOR PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS
Navigating the Ucayali River
is very dangerous,
but we still do our work,
risking our lives every day.
Big logging companies
are destroying our forests.
Almost daily, we're fighting
cocaleros and deforestation.
Some Shipibo-Conibo people
have already been killed
because of drug trafficking.
Don't you have a gun?
We're not allowed to carry guns,
they're forbidden.
New Human Rights Watch
report suggests that deforestation
is being driven by criminal networks that
the government is failing to stop them.
So-called rainforest mafia groups
organizing illegal logging operations
that contribute to forest fires.
The world's biggest rainforest,
the Amazon,
has lost an area the size
of Germany and France combined.
Deforestation is destroying trees
and the species
who rely on them to sustain life.
Biodiversity is declining at an alarming
and unprecedented rate.
It's not just the loss of trees,
entire ecosystems and the countless
species that depend on them are at risk.
Right now, more than one million species
are in danger of extinction,
disappearing at a rate
not seen for 10 million years.
And humans are mostly to blame.
Sometimes it's a cultural object,
sometimes it's organic.
There is a search, there is a quest.
There's definitely a process in what I do.
I arrive on location and I have to get in
contact with it and understand it better.
A tree hug.
Its challenges.
The people who are there,
their challenges.
Their history.
The light, the wind.
The fauna, the flora.
There's so much diversity on our planet.
And every time it's a learning process,
because in my own way
I'm trying to put together
a symbolic representation
of that place through the TimeShrine.
What is this?
This is male Huayruru seeds.
They say it brings good luck.
- It's good luck?
- Yes.
- Ah, okay.
- Yes.
The installation is definitely
the result of, of a sincere communion
between the place and myself,
and the people I've met
and the people who helped me.
It was interesting, I was going out there
in nature around our planet to do art.
What is the girl's name?
But at the end of the day,
the whole story was about us,
about other human beings,
about our species, about our choices.
This is a thorn, be careful.
Primary forests are immense untouched
trees, which no one has cut down.
To see them, we need to journey
two or three days from the city.
To me, cutting down a primary forest,
is like killing a person.
If you press it just a little,
a little drop comes out
and you put that in your eye.
What is this?
This helps not to get lost in the forest.
If we are going that direction,
the plants show it's the wrong way,
so we turn back.
- This way?
- Yes, let's go this way.
Through nature,
I brought friends to visit from afar,
they admire your strength,
they're here to capture your image,
to share your wisdom with the world.
That's all.
It should hold.
I need something to elevate. Do we
have a little piece of wood or something?
Let's put it under.
This is one of my symbols.
A symbol of death?
No, of life, the choices we face.
A positive or negative life.
- Ah, positive or negative life.
- Yes.
They are so ugly.
Can we go back one second?
I just need to fix that flower.
Okay.
Everyone in Estonia sings,
like doesn't matter in which way,
but it is impossible not to sing,
we grow up singing with mother's milk.
Singing for us is also like
the form of our culture.
Our grandmothers have taught us,
our mothers have taught us.
We teach our children that singing
is something that is our identity
and forest is sacred.
We have this funny saying of like:
"If you don't behave well, you know, I'll
put you in a song and you never get out".
What an interesting experience!
This folklore song is from stone age.
Can you imagine?
There was no way of writing things down.
I think our cultural
legacy is connected to the fact
that we have been so many times
invaded by other neighbours and cultures.
We were called the pagans,
no religion really stuck on us,
like we keep on doing our things.
Songs was a very important way to transmit
a lot of things that were not written,
but in the same time create some sort
of a form of resistance, would you say?
Definitely,
because during Soviet time we couldn't,
you know, repeat or say that,
or be in a way like
a free nation could be.
But we became super smart and witty
about hiding the messages in the songs,
so we could spread and say to each other
what we wanted to say in a hidden way.
Wow! What is this place?
It's called Linnahall,
which means, the hall of the city.
It was created
for the Olympic Games of Moscow for 1980.
It's a piece of brutal architecture
of the Soviet era.
And there's the sea.
I brought you here because
this is the only
Soviet time public building
that has openness for the sea.
- You mean like an access to the sea?
- Yes.
Because during Soviet time,
although we are a sea Country,
we couldn't reach out to the sea.
You couldn't go to the sea,
to swim or to fish,
because the Soviet regime was afraid
that you would escape the paradise.
Are you saying that the most of the shore
of Estonia had barbed wire?
Yeah, there were fences, and there
were guards every four hours walking by
and they cleaned the beach
to make sure that no one set foot on it.
Camping next to the sea,
using the sea, making fire
or doing things
that you would do on a seaside,
it wasn't really in my vocabulary,
I didn't know that it's possible.
But I remember barbed wire everywhere,
around forests, around the places
that now I'm discovering.
- Are those vegetables?
- Yeah, that a vegetable garden.
This is pumpkin.
And those are strawberries,
tomatoes and
- Oregano!
- Oregano, yes.
Is this a store
or is it just for the community?
It's just for the community.
- So this is your world, Ettie.
- Yeah, it's like a creative neighborhood.
It's the first one that is created out
of this kind of a Soviet huge complex.
- This is my office.
- How many Start-Ups do you have in here?
60, 70, depends.
Like, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I work in Startup Estonia,
it's a governmental organization.
It's kind of a department
of innovation agency
that creates rich ecosystem for Start-ups.
We actually have to be
in forefront of innovation.
Where do you want to be in 30 years? And
in 50? What impulses does society need?
So we are creating impulses for more
deep technology companies to be created,
so that there would be Start-ups that the
scientists would come out of their labs
and create products and services
for the good of the community
quicker than maybe
they would otherwise do.
- This is a mushroom?
- Yeah, this is a mushroom.
- It's like a nature's 3D printing.
- Exactly.
So why is deep technology
so important to you?
The deep technology
is like creating of a bundle,
So under that, there's all kinds
of verticals like climate tech,
and green tech and clean tech
and, you know, we need all of it.
Tackling the really core problems
of the society.
Of the international society
or the national society?
Always international society,
it's from Estonia to the world.
- Hi!
- Hello, welcome.
- Nice to meet you!
- Nice to meet you!
Welcome to the Arbonics office.
We're sort of at the heart of the mixture
of the old and new Tallinn here.
Arbonics is a bridge between a landowner
who wants to do good for the planet,
and the big corporation
who wants to achieve net zero.
We put the companies together who want
to offset part of their kind of product
that they couldn't minimise
in terms of footprint
and landowners
who do the good for the forests.
One hectare of forest can do around
ten tons of carbon storage per year.
It's around one and half European
citizens per year how much they pollute.
So if a landowner decides
not to cut the forest down,
we will get financial rewards
for the landowner from the corporations.
And although the landowner might lose
on the timber revenue,
which are even more, would gain
an alternative that does not exist now.
So we need to create
alternatives for the landowners
to make them behave
in support of our planet.
- Can you look my land?
- Yeah!
So this is what we have here.
This is your land, you know it,
but now you see it from above.
And I will plant the forest.
What can I earn?
Landowners are very pragmatical.
So that means here
is your land area report,
you have less than one hectare to plant,
which is not a huge area, but still.
We also provide
them with like specific report
telling like where exactly based on soil
information to plant which tree type.
If the tree grows, it adds weight, and
that's a ratio of carbon that's stored.
So the bigger the tree, the more
carbon stored, the more money you get.
This makes sense.
For us, it starts with the technology.
Everything is transparent,
you can measure everything.
You can see every plot of the land,
what exactly happened in the past,
happens now, and estimates
what will happen in the future.
Our scientific team is working hard
on kind of building the models,
so I think it needs to be a combination
of nature and science.
All right.
Can I pour you a bit?
So, do you take this everywhere with you?
- Thank you, perfect.
- Yeah.
Sometimes, you know, going in the rain
with a technical stuff on you
and then the other moment going with,
I don't know, like
You want to come with your hat
or with a fancy dress or whatever.
I often do that.
Yeah, it's more like a celebration, right?
It's not like necessarily being there with
your gear and your technical stuff and so…
- Also just being in nature right?
- Yes, exactly.
I love that nature doesn't judge you.
You judge yourself,
but nature doesn't judge you.
You don't have to become someone
else in here. There are no conditions.
- Look at this pathway!
- Yes, it's perfect.
- It's incredibly well maintained.
- Yes.
It's everywhere to protect this fragile
ecosystem, because it's a primary forest.
And you have basically
50% of Estonia is forest, right?
It's actually not anymore 50%, it's
already less. We keep on saying it's 50.
But, on the other hand, there is like this
lobbying in European Union and Commission
of logging more,
and it's not just, you know, here,
it's about everywhere
in areas of a lot of forest.
So one hand we protect
and another hand we destroy.
There's a row developing
between EU countries
over the fate of the continent's
remaining ancient woodland.
The mortality of trees
in French forests,
has increased by 80%
in the past decade.
In the Carpathians, trees
are extracted illegally by criminal gangs.
In Poland, plans to log timber
Everything and I mean,
everything is felled and removed.
Arbonics, they just want
to reinvent the value of the forest.
Does it have more value,
dead or alive, right?
Through the help of science
and technology,
that we could keep those ecosystems
and we could develop solutions
that are creating materials or solutions
that we would need to take it from here.
That's why I'm working in deep tech,
and trying to replace this
economical necessity
to destroy something with one hand
to have this other hand of regenerating.
What are your hopes for you,
for the planet, for Arbonics?
Where do you see us in 2050?
If we continue on the path we are today,
it's going to look very bad.
But there is hope in how many new
projects and solutions are being formed.
Many of those will fail,
but many of them will succeed.
The good thing is that it's up to us
whether we're going
to join forces and change it.
I think it's the biggest challenge
humankind has ever faced.
And if you don't succeed,
then we don't deserve it.
The extent of the biodiversity crisis
is extremely serious,
and we have absolutely no time
to lose to start reversing it.
We sincerely hope
we can stay on the right side of history.
Estonia supports
the nature restoration law.
The law aims to restore at least 20%
of the bloc's land and sea areas by 2030.
In the long term, the law aims
to restore all ecosystems in need by 2050.
There are a lot of large Countries
with a lot of timber industry lobbying
who are very against this law
because they're worried
this might limit what they're able to do.
Concerns on the costs of implementation
make Hungary vote against.
We must avoid negative impacts
in the agriculture sector.
Italy will firmly vote against.
There are no jobs on a dead planet.
Sweden cannot stand behind the agreement.
The European Commission finally approved
a sort of biodiversity protection law.
The majority voted
for the adoption of the text,
so we have formally adopted it.
Thank you very much.
They needed 65%, they got 66%.
And it basically came down
to the vote of one person,
one woman,
a representative from Austria.
We buried for many decades intact nature.
We lost nature
on the concrete and asphalt.
But it doesn't have to be this way
with a sick biodiversity,
there is no healthy
and happy human living on this continent.
She, despite being explicitly told
that she should vote against it,
actually decided in her own words,
thinking of her nieces and nephews
that it was worth risking
her career to vote for it.
In 20 or 30 years
when I will talk to my two nieces
I want to be able to tell them
I tried to support as much as I could.
Drones help us identify
the forested plots.
So we're going to have to send
a drone to the part that is deforested
so we can see if there's no one dangerous
in there, so it's safe for us.
Okay, great. So we just send a drone,
if nobody's there, we can go.
- We can get in, yeah.
- Okay, perfect, great.
Drones help us identify deforested plots.
We work with satellite images
update twice a month.
Today we walked more than three miles.
We found a deforested plot
and the community is really concerned.
I believe traditions and technology
can unite.
When we join them together,
they form a higher kind of knowledge.
That is very important to me.
The rate of deforestation has increased
by a third over the last year
to almost 10,000 km².
That's an area equivalent to three
football pitches being lost every minute.
Narcotrafficking become
one of the main causes of deforestation.
A kind of delta, a kind of triangle
that connects Brazil,
Peru, and Colombia.
Illegal mining,
narcotrafficking, territorial control,
and foreign investment driven by profit,
threaten the Amazon
and are killing Indigenous leaders.
They warn of the risk
this poses to peace.
Amazon Rainforest
is on course to reach
a catastrophic tipping point
as soon as 2050.
How many hectares?
This is approximately
5 hectares of deforestation.
- This is incredible.
- Yes.
In how much time?
They destroyed it in one month.
- One month?
- In one month they cut it down.
- And this?
- This is a coca plant.
First, they make a fire.
They cut down the trees,
first then they burn them
to clear the land
and then they plant the coca.
- This is a
- This is
- A big big tree, right?
- A huge tree that they've cut down.
Then they've set it on fire.
Is this a primary forest?
A Primary forest that they've cut down.
This is the Amazon rainforest,
but it barely resembles its name.
Trees warped and blackened,
like burnt matchsticks.
Clouds not full of rain for the continent,
but smoke that is chocking it.
Known as the lungs of the planet,
the world relies on the Amazon
to absorb a lot of its carbon dioxide,
but these fires mean
it's now emitting record amounts itself.
On the front lines,
indigenous firefighters.
It's their land burning.
Rare images of members of uncontacted
indigenous tribe in the Peruvian forest,
Dozens of Mashco-Piro people on the
banks of a river close to logging sites.
Several logging companies hold timber
concessions in the area,
and one company has reportedly built over
200 km of roads for logging operations.
The reclusive Mashkopira tribe,
one of the world's most hidden,
has been sighted coming out
of the rainforest more often
to relocate further
away from loggers and find food.
So this is the other facet
of the Amazon, it's the deforestation.
So this image is what I had to do.
The other one is what I wanted to do
and this one is what I had to do.
It's like walking in a cemetery.
I mean, if you're coming
from that life and from that vitality
Because, you know, the forest
is also the home of so much biodiversity.
So, you're walking and it's everything
crackles through under your feet and,
and there's no more life,
you don't hear the birds.
You don't hear all the little insects.
It's like a dead silence, a dead nature.
You know, nature is never silent.
It's just really, really brutal
and it's not even like a burial ground,
it's just a dead zone.
We take the people and staff first,
then return for the boat.
We are going to do a little work there.
I will put this here.
Watch out, watch out!
Be careful with this!
My ancestors came to fish at this spot,
traveling from far away, from Pucallpa.
They fished abundantly
in waters full of life.
They chose to settle down
create villages and a community
We are the rightful guardians
of the Ucayali River.
Good morning to everybody and to all
the visiting friends of this community!
The Shipibo belief
is mainly about the plants
that our ancestors worshiped.
We had different kinds of guides
whether shamans,
healers, or spiritual guides.
Just like today
you have doctors or midwives.
Nature is pure connection.
My grandparents taught me
to sing in the afternoons.
The birds sing,
we too can offer a song to nature.
Each one within his Countries
is called to protect our environment.
They must continue
what we've always done.
Let them come
and see the truth from themselves,
how remote communities live.
Like you and me
sharing this with the world.
We all must protect our Planet.
For a long time with my boyfriend we have
been looking for an apartment for years.
We couldn't find anything
and at some point I saw a land
announcement coming that is sold.
I looked at it and I was like:
"This is my place",
and I told my boyfriend like:
"I think I found a place for us".
- An apartment.
- Yes, but it's not an apartment.
It's a land
and you can't actually build on that.
- This is your apartment.
- Yes, this is my apartment.
The living room, the kitchen
That's the kitchen.
- Are you hungry?
- Always hungry.
- Then I might offer you a healthy snack.
- Oh, wow!
- Are those wild strawberries?
- Yes.
- This is the season, right?
- Yes, exactly.
What is the reasoning behind buying
instead of apartment a land
where you cannot build on,
it's not very reasonable.
But then I realized that actually
I was going back to my home on that land.
A home where I can feel back in time
where I was a child
and it's like bringing my heritage
from there to here.
We can make our own sacred
places everywhere.
This surrounding is the way
that I transform or where I open up,
where my heart feels at rest
and I can be myself.
I'm a very science-oriented person,
but I'm also an emotions-oriented person
because it doesn't have to be
only this or only that.
I'm everything.
With all this AI and deep fake,
there will be a huge challenge to know
what is truth, what is not truth.
We're in an incredible turning point.
The world, as you said,
it's gonna be very different in two years.
It's really scary what you can do with it.
At the same time,
we could use it for a good purpose.
Do I use all this technology
and the possibilities
against the humanity or for the humanity?
There are like really important
tech people who are working against AI.
At the same time,
there is of course, you know, tech section
that is doing everything to use the AI
and to use the help of the intelligence.
So it's not so much about,
like, who's winning it,
but it's more
about what can we do with it.
Technology is just the tool.
It's not the mind, it is the tool.
So the mind comes from us,
the heart comes from us.
The midsummer festivity in that way is
very, very traditional, very particular,
like the dances
or the instruments or the singing.
This is your identity, so unconsciously
I think I log in with my ancestors,
with my grandmother, with my
grandmother's grandmother and so on,
and it makes me complete,
it makes me much more who I am.
This thing cannot die. It's incredible.
This is what I am. I want to do that.
It's the most beautiful part
of my history.
If we don't honor ourselves
and our culture and our personality
then those big ideologies
are just swallowing us.
Going back to our roots
is something that is valuable.
We want to save it.
We want others to save their roots.
And it will be like something
that we can use as a driving force
to save humanity intact.
Through the Ayahuasca,
and its energies,
I will heal your body and your Spirit.