Last evening as I was waiting for my turn to see the doctor, and flipped a magazine on the corner table, this very interesting article"the earth from above," by Yann Arthus-Betrand a French photographer caught my attention. It brings a new prespective not only to photography but to the plight of the planet which truely say's, "People are willing to save for their old age and for their children's education, but no one wants to save for the planet." The way developed nations use the earth's resources-water, air and electricity-there will be nothing left for future generations. A wide range of photographs were displayed along Marine Drive as part of French festival,'bojour India' This show was a series of events and talks held all over India, with the intention to highlight French culture, science, education and environmental concerns and contributions.
'Earth from above' was the result of a 14 year research during which he flew to 76 countries to shoot vastly different landscapes. Most of these were shot from hot air balloons and from helicopters. Yann's photographs deal with the huge problems of environmental degradation:global warming, deforestation, the extinction of animal species and climatic upheavals. A fifth of the worlds population lives in industrialized countries, consuming and producing excess and generating massive pollution. The remaining four-fifths lives in developing countries and, for most part, in poverty.Over exploitation of resources has led to the constant degradation of the planet's ecosystem and limited supplies of fresh water, ocean water, forests, air and arable land. If every person living on the planet consumes as much as a persom living in the Western world, we would need three planets to satisfy everybody's needs.
An American, for example uses 30 times more water than someone in Tanzania, where six inhabitants do not even have access to water.
Ironically, he say's we have pension funds and children's education funds, but when it comes to climate change no one really cares and nothing is done to prevent ecological diaster. He also says that, twenty years from now, there will be no more oil- it will turn our world upside down in ways we cannot even begin to imagine."we only have few more years left to learn how to consume differently, to use more environment-friendly products.
In photographing the earth as he has since 1990, Yann say's he wants to record for future generation the state of the planet at the begining of the millennium. the changes that are happening because of thoughtless usage of earth's resources and the effects on the lives of the people in the underdeveloped nations. As an exmaple his moving photographs of children and women in Africa who have to walk miles to fetch water, and children abandon school becaues of this. Then a photograph of Las Vegas and its casinos, of its glitz and lights with a caption that speaks while Americans waste water and electricity, 86 per cent of the world's rural population does not even have access to electricity!
Where does he hope to go from here, you wonder, as you read on,Yann believes, and we well know that future will see more people moving to big cities and putting pressure on its scarce resources. But if they all remember to turn off the electricity and close a dripping tap, the cause is validated. "Today, many plant and animal species are disappearing 1000 to 10,000 times faster than their natural rate of extinction. This is the 6th massive wave of extinction, for which, this time humans are responsible"
As Antonie Saint Exupery, French writer and avaitor said,
"We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children,"By M2 (Margaret & Meena)
