Banking Nature: Earth for Sale

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Nature, Sociopolitical Documentary hosted by Lisa Jacobs, published by Arte in 2014 - English narration

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"Buying landscapes, protecting landscapes, accumulating new landscapes-it's a phenomenal opportunity." -Steve Morgan, CEO, Wildlands Inc. Respected economists believe the best way to protect nature is to put a price on it. But can a market in nature lead to companies having a financial interest in species' extinction? This film investigates nature's relationship with economics, and the commercialisation of the natural world. Protecting our planet has become a big business--with companies promoting new environmental markets. We investigate the commercialization of the natural world. Protecting our planet has become big business with companies promoting new environmental markets. This involves species banking, where investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell 'nature credits'. Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specializing in this trade. Many respected economists believe that the best way to protect nature is to put a price on it. But others fear that this market in nature could lead to companies having a financial interest in a species' extinction. There are also concerns that – like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 – the market in nature credits is bound to crash. And there are wider issues at stake. What guarantees do we have that our natural inheritance will be protected? And should our ecological heritage be for sale? 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. In the film, we meet economist and former banker Pavan Sukhdev, a leading authority on the valuation of nature (one square kilometre of Hawaiian coral reef: S600,000). In his view, the best way to protect endangered species and ecosystems is to assign them a value-because if we can't measure the services nature provides, we can't recognize them within our current models. 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? Directed by Sandrine Feydel and Denis Delestrac ; ARTE France and Via Decouvertes Co-Production with Java Films, Ushuaia TV, Al Arabiya TV, ORF Weltjournal, ICI Explara, RTS, SBS, SVT and YLE

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[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: x264 CABAC High@L4
Video Bitrate: 2 933 Kbps
Video Resolution: 1920x1080
Display Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: E-AC3
Audio Bitrate: 224 kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 1 h 27 min
Number Of Parts: 1
Part Size: 1.92 GB
Source: WEB DL
Encoded by: DocFreak08