From rainforest to Bush

Twenty-five years ago, Jacques Cousteau took his son with him while filming one of his classic Amazon series. Now, Jean-Michel Cousteau has made what he calls "a symbolic connection with Dad," by spending four months exploring the river and rainforest for a new documentary, Return to the Amazon.

Journeying from Iquitos in Peru to Manaus in Brazil, Cousteau says he saw with his own eyes the changes man has brought to the richest ecosystem on the planet. Most evidently, the population has increased by 10-15 million people, most of them incomers who are responsible for the illegal logging.

"I don't blame poor people for trying to feed their families," Cousteau says in his measured Franco-Californian accent, "but in the Amazon you really see how humans are changing the natural world in a disastrous way."

Jean-Michel is a zealous environmentalist, but he believes in the power of persuasion rather than in scare-mongering or political bullying. "People in the Amazon aren't any less clever than we are," he says. "If you make it worth their while to save the rainforest, they'll do it. But let's show people how much it's worth!"

Making films is just one of Jean-Michel's activities as president of Ocean Futures (oceanfutures.org), a non-profit foundation he runs from Santa Barbara in California. His mission, as he sees it, is to spread the word that the environmental problems of the Earth are not going to be met by individual nations. "National borders are irrelevant in today's world," he says emphatically. Brazil can't protect the Amazon on its own; the wealthier nations have to pay for it and help with expertise."

He also questions whether NGOs like Greenpeace or the WWF have the right approach: "These organisations do important work, but we don't see the concrete results too often. They don't get their message out to the mainstream enough.

Cousteau, like many other activists, believes that the environment can only be saved when it is seen to have a financial value. He uses his family name whenever he can to get access to decision makers. Last year, he was invited to the White House to have dinner with President Bush and screen a documentary he'd made about the remote northern Hawaiian islands. "Bush was amazed: he had no idea that the so-called marine park was being used for illegal fishing. Four months later, he invoked special presidential powers to declare the area the world's largest marine sanctuary - far bigger than the Great Barrier Reef."

Cousteau concedes that Bush isn't best known for his environmental awareness, calling the President's time in office "six years of lost time for the environment." But he adds that if George Bush can be so radically affected by a documentary there is real hope for other parts of the world. Tourism, he argues, has a crucial role to play in saving the Amazon, but he acknowledges that it hasn't worked as well as it might. He singles out eco lodges in the Mamiraua reserve as role models, but says Amazon tourism doesn't have the broad appeal of say, southern Africa.

The Amazon is only part of the general conservation crisis, but Cousteau believes human beings can solve the problems they've created. "We're a young species - only three million years old. Unlike other species we have this magnificent tool - our brains. But we tend to only use them fully when we are up against the odds."

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