Emily Hunter's Blog

1. Activism 2.0 – Interactive Documentary I directed, produced and wrote an interactive version of my short documentary “Activism 2.0” for Postmedia Network and their digital platforms. The story was distributed across mobile platforms of several newspapers, including the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, The Chronicle Herald and Calgary Herald. This project entailed the written story, […]

Activism 2.0
By Emily Hunter

I dreamed of a lush, green rainforest. The type you see in a Disney movie with an explosion of flora, orangutans climbing the heights of the jungle and a host of dangerous critters. But on the island of Borneo, where I was campaigning against deforestation, this is a fantasy.

I woke from my dream at 6 a.m. in the back of a pickup truck. Our activist group had arrived at a village in West Kalimantan. We walked a beaten path, banners and cameras in tow, to support a fight to protect the remaining local forest. The palm oil industry had been encroaching on the land of a Dayak community without consent. We thought if we could garner enough attention, we could save what was left of this 130 million-year-old rainforest. We were wrong.

Walking past the village, I looked through the haze of the dewy mist onto the land. A harsh reality sank in: The forest had already been taken. Nothing left but the stumps of fallen great giants and the buzzing of insects. In its place, crudely planted palm oil saplings in rows of a vast monoculture plantation. It was a ghost of a rainforest.

It became clear to me then that I was failing as an activist. Despite gaining media attention and banner-waving in solidarity with local activists during the autumn of 2011, it wasn’t enough. It was not just bad timing, but our inability to think outside our own activism box. This was a hard pill for me to swallow, as activism was literally my life.

I was born into the environmental movement. My father was the founding president of Greenpeace and my mother was the first woman to save a whale by using her body to block a harpoonist at sea. In the 1970s, my parents, along with a small group of Greenpeace co-founders, had won many battles – such as ending Russian and Australian whaling and the Canadian seal hunt (for a time).

But my parents also failed on occasion and had to reinvent themselves time and again. In fact, it was through failure that Greenpeace began – after the U.S. detonated a nuclear bomb on a vulnerable Alaskan island during underground testing. A small group of activists known as the Don’t Make a Wave Committee travelled by ship to put their bodies in harm’s way yet could not stop the blast. But with the attention their campaign stirred, they rebranded themselves as Greenpeace – now an international organization.

Perhaps now the entire environmental movement needs to be reinvented. Often we rely on the tried-and-true strategies of our parents (myself included), expecting similar victories. But in the face of climate change, we are at an impasse. Raising awareness isn’t enough. Today, it will take a new kind of activism appropriate for this generation if we are to effect significant change yet again. Call it Activism 2.0.

For me, Borneo proved this. Like my parents, I failed and had to reinvent myself. I decided to become a storyteller, focusing on a new narrative – how my own generation is redefining what environmental activism means. I wrote a book entitled The Next Eco-Warriors, and am now adapting it into the documentary Activist 2.0.

I’ve met women and men from around the world who aren’t your typical activists. More tech-savvy than their parents, they’re using online tools to mobilize on scales never seen before. For example, 350.org is a youth-led group that organized the Global Day of Action on climate change and used social media to spark 7,000 events held in 188 countries. And this past summer, a group called The Black Fish used drones armed with cameras, not guns, to track illegal drift-netting operations off the Mediterranean coast.

For me, what I have learned across two generations is that environmentalism needs to evolve, much like species. But will activism evolve in time to effect significant change yet again? I can only hope.

One thing is certain: failure creates a great opportunity for transformation.

Here’s a clip from my upcoming short documentary on the group The Black Fish, launching my “Activist 2.0″ series. A taste of what’s to come…

Here’s a clip from my upcoming short documentary on the group The Black Fish, launching my “Activist 2.0″ series. A taste of what’s to come…

Environmentalists have reason for hope in 2014:  As one who teaches environmental studies, I am sometimes tagged as a pessimist, a “prophet of gloom” cheerlessly sprinkling facts of species loss, rainforest destruction, water pollution and runaway climate change. In other words, a professional “wet blanket.” (Definitely someone you think twice about inviting to your next […]

Got a mention in the Toronto Star column today, read till the end….


Environmentalists have reason for hope in 2014: Scharper


By: Stephen Bede Scharper
Published on Sun Dec 29 2013

 

As one who teaches environmental studies, I am sometimes tagged as a pessimist, a “prophet of gloom” cheerlessly sprinkling facts of species loss, rainforest destruction, water pollution and runaway climate change.

In other words, a professional “wet blanket.” (Definitely someone you think twice about inviting to your next party.)

When this happens, I wonder if environmental studies has displaced economics as the “dismal science,” the phrase coined by 19th-century polymath Thomas Carlyle.

Yet while there are certainly forbidding ecological facts and alarming environmental trends that need to be highlighted and confronted, there are also myriad positive developments that are equally deserving of attention.

As we progress toward the New Year, three such signs of hope on the creation front come to mind.

First, Bolivia is on the verge of passing one of the most far-reaching environmental bills in history. The “Mother Earth” or Pachamama law, approved by Bolivia’s majority governing party, draws deeply on indigenous concepts that view nature as a sacred home.

Blending native spirituality with contemporary biological insight, the new law states that “Mother Earth is a living dynamic system made up of the undivided community of all living beings, who are all interconnected, interdependent and complementary, sharing a common destiny.”

As Nick Buxton of the Transnational Institute observes, the law is among the first to give nature legal rights, specifically the rights to life, regeneration, biodiversity, water, clean air, balance and restoration.

The law will also fundamentally reorient Bolivia’s economy, mandating not an embrace of unfettered growth but a conforming to the limits of nature. It radically advocates a public policy of Sumaj Kawsay or Vivir Bien (an indigenous concept meaning “living well”), in contrast to policies focusing on producing more goods for increased consumerism.

While mining interests and other sectors of the economy have already expressed opposition to the initiative, such legislation is a sanguine sign of renewed legal understandings of the primordial importance of nature.

A second beacon of hope can be seen emanating from Vatican City in the humble, pastoral and compassionate smile of Pope Francis, Time magazine’s 2013 Person of the Year.

He is the first pope to take the name of St. Francis, the 13th-century patron saint of ecology, who, like the indigenous peoples of Bolivia and North America, saw a familial kinship with nature, speaking of “Brother Wolf” and “Sister Moon.”

Francis’s environmental musings have already been deeply compelling.

In his cogent World Environment Day address June 5, Pope Francis commented that “we are losing the attitude of wonder, contemplation, listening to creation.” In his November Apostolic Exhortation, he railed against an economic system marked by a limitless “thirst for power and possessions” that “tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits” leaving defenceless “whatever is fragile, like the environment.”

And, in his Christmas homily, before a throng of 70,000, he called on the world to protect the environment from “greed and rapacity.” (It has also been suggested that Francis is working on the Church’s first papal encyclical on the environment.)

In Francis, it appears, the environment at last may have a global spiritual defender from the heart of Western Christianity.

A third source of hope is the creative, dynamic youth who are embracing the environment as a focus of their studies, avocation and chosen careers.

From the over 2,000 students taking first and second year environmental studies courses at the University of Toronto, to the youth participating in dynamic environmental and aboriginal solidarity programs such as Alberta’s Future Leaders and Canada World Youth, there is an encouraging groundswell of interest and involvement by youth in environmental concerns.

Such interest is taking shape among a vibrant swath of under-30 environmental activists, documented in the book The New Eco-Warriors as well as a forthcoming film, both by Canadian environmentalist Emily Hunter.

The daughter of activist Bobbi Hunter and Greenpeace co-founder Robert Hunter, Emily features unconventional activists, such as Hannah Mermaid, a professional mermaid who helps protect marine ecosystems and wildlife.

Pachamama. Pope Francis. Passionate youth. Three hopeful signs as we head into the New Year that creation, and those who care for it, remain green and growing.

I dreamed of a lush, green rainforest. The type you see in a Disney movie with an explosion of flora, orangutans climbing the heights of the jungle and a host of dangerous critters. But on the island of Borneo, where I was campaigning against deforestation, this is a fantasy. I woke from my dream at […]

Activism 2.0
By Emily Hunter

I dreamed of a lush, green rainforest. The type you see in a Disney movie with an explosion of flora, orangutans climbing the heights of the jungle and a host of dangerous critters. But on the island of Borneo, where I was campaigning against deforestation, this is a fantasy.

I woke from my dream at 6 a.m. in the back of a pickup truck. Our activist group had arrived at a village in West Kalimantan. We walked a beaten path, banners and cameras in tow, to support a fight to protect the remaining local forest. The palm oil industry had been encroaching on the land of a Dayak community without consent. We thought if we could garner enough attention, we could save what was left of this 130 million-year-old rainforest. We were wrong.

Walking past the village, I looked through the haze of the dewy mist onto the land. A harsh reality sank in: The forest had already been taken. Nothing left but the stumps of fallen great giants and the buzzing of insects. In its place, crudely planted palm oil saplings in rows of a vast monoculture plantation. It was a ghost of a rainforest.

It became clear to me then that I was failing as an activist. Despite gaining media attention and banner-waving in solidarity with local activists during the autumn of 2011, it wasn’t enough. It was not just bad timing, but our inability to think outside our own activism box. This was a hard pill for me to swallow, as activism was literally my life.

I was born into the environmental movement. My father was the founding president of Greenpeace and my mother was the first woman to save a whale by using her body to block a harpoonist at sea. In the 1970s, my parents, along with a small group of Greenpeace co-founders, had won many battles – such as ending Russian and Australian whaling and the Canadian seal hunt (for a time).

But my parents also failed on occasion and had to reinvent themselves time and again. In fact, it was through failure that Greenpeace began – after the U.S. detonated a nuclear bomb on a vulnerable Alaskan island during underground testing. A small group of activists known as the Don’t Make a Wave Committee travelled by ship to put their bodies in harm’s way yet could not stop the blast. But with the attention their campaign stirred, they rebranded themselves as Greenpeace – now an international organization.

Perhaps now the entire environmental movement needs to be reinvented. Often we rely on the tried-and-true strategies of our parents (myself included), expecting similar victories. But in the face of climate change, we are at an impasse. Raising awareness isn’t enough. Today, it will take a new kind of activism appropriate for this generation if we are to effect significant change yet again. Call it Activism 2.0.

For me, Borneo proved this. Like my parents, I failed and had to reinvent myself. I decided to become a storyteller, focusing on a new narrative – how my own generation is redefining what environmental activism means. I wrote a book entitled The Next Eco-Warriors, and am now adapting it into the documentary Activist 2.0.

I’ve met women and men from around the world who aren’t your typical activists. More tech-savvy than their parents, they’re using online tools to mobilize on scales never seen before. For example, 350.org is a youth-led group that organized the Global Day of Action on climate change and used social media to spark 7,000 events held in 188 countries. And this past summer, a group called The Black Fish used drones armed with cameras, not guns, to track illegal drift-netting operations off the Mediterranean coast.

For me, what I have learned across two generations is that environmentalism needs to evolve, much like species. But will activism evolve in time to effect significant change yet again? I can only hope.

One thing is certain: failure creates a great opportunity for transformation.

Just last month I filmed them campaign of The Black Fish against driftnetting off the Mediterranean coast. Today, they have released a new animation video on the issue. I offered my voice & narrated this film.

This weekend I’m attending reRoute in New York City, a youth convergence for the “new economy.” Why does this matter to an environmentalist like me? Quite simply: it’s Activism 2.0 in the making.

For my documentary series, I’ve been following the next generation fighting ocean and climate related issues. But for a another component of our generation’s fight, I’m looking at how youth are challenging the very system we live in – the economy.

Traditionally the system we’ve been fighting in the environmental movement is the political one. But the economic system is a missing piece in our activism. I’m not the only one that thinks so.

Today, more and more young people are affected by a failing economic model than politics. One could argue that the post Cold-War era and Vietnam affected the Youth Revolt in the 60’s and 70’s, making their activism political in nature. While the youth culture today has been stunted by economic recession and the impacts of our fossil fuel economy (i.e. climate change).  It’s becoming abundantly clear that status-quo economic growth not only hurts people, our planet, but the entire future of our generation.

Here at reRoute over 300 youth across North America are gathering to start building towards what they call a “new economy” – alternative economic models to the status quo.  For many here, a core element of this new economy is one that is in line with our ecological limits and boundaries of our planet.

This is the Economy 2.0.