The Burning Season
Written & directed by Cathy Henkel
Limited screenings nationally through July. Visit
Along with 400 other people, I went to the Wrest Point Casino to attend the premiere of The Burning Season in Hobart on June 1. I had the film's headline: "As inspiring as The Inconvenient Truth was frightening" in the back of my mind, hoping for a good-news story.
Instead I sat through a well-orchestrated promotion for a carbon trading company, set up by a young Australian-based millionaire, whose message was that it was possible to make money and save the environment at the same time.
By setting up a carbon trading company called Carbon Conservation and brokering high level deals between big banks and provincial Indonesian governors, the film's "star", young entrepreneur Dorjee Sun, was able to secure the protection of large areas of forests that may otherwise have been logged or burned.
The plight of orangutans that are dying through loss of habitat was a heart-wrenching sideline.
The audience was invited to join in the panel discussion at the end with a request for positive comments and an appeal to go beyond the standard, divisive "two-sided forestry debate".
We were implored to see that greenies and woodchippers could find a win-win solution in Tasmania if only we embraced the innovative new world of carbon trading.
In April 2007 in Bali, Sun obtained the support of the provincial governors of Aceh, Papua and Papua Barat, who signed an agreement giving him the rights to trade the carbon credits represented by their forests.
The main project showcased in the film is the protection of 1.9 million acres of the Ulu Masen forest in Indonesia's Aceh province with a scheme whereby companies and individuals can buy credits from the protected forest to offset their emissions.
The project forecasts that the preservation of the Ulu Masen forest will avoid 100 million tons of CO2 emissions over 30 years.
In the film, Sun tries to sell his scheme to managers of Starbucks, eBay and other companies, finally clinching a deal with the huge investment bank, Merrill Lynch (now taken over by the Bank of America).
Deforestation is responsible for between 18 to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and there is no doubt that Indonesia has a problem with large-scale logging and burning of forests.
In 2007, Greenpeace announced Indonesia had "won" the dubious distinction of having the world's highest rate of deforestation, then up to around 1.8 million hectares a year. Across the archipelago, 72% of forest has been lost due to legal and illegal clearing, and agriculture-related burning.
The film portrays local farmers talking to the Indonesian environment organisation WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia) and points out that WALHI produces public information leaflets about the destructive impact of illegal forest burning as part of an education campaign for farmers.
Ellen Roberts, member of the Friends of the Earth (FoE) climate justice collective in Melbourne, spoke to Green Left Weekly about the film.
She said WALHI, along with FoE International, is opposed to any market-based Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) scheme.
"We are concerned that by including WALHI activists in a film which is promoting market-based REDD schemes without making their opposition clear, the film-makers have misrepresented WALHI's stance on the issue, implying that they support the scheme", Roberts said.
"In fact WALHI have released a document called REDD Wrong Path: Pathetic Ecobusiness"
Roberts pointed out: "Unless you deal with demands that have been driving the deforestation, (in Indonesia's case massive demand for timber and pulp from the USA, Japan and China) then locking up one forest may just mean that another forest gets logged whether this is in another part of the same county, or a different country."
The WALHI report warns that carbon markets are complex and volatile and if the price of carbon collapsed, payments to local forest-dependent communities could plunge below subsistence levels.
It also expresses concern that "both at the national and community levels we may see a loss of autonomy over natural resources as third parties gain increasing influence over natural resource decisions.
Also as REDD increases the value of forests, governments may be discouraged from conceding customary land rights to Indonesia's indigenous forest-dependent peoples."
By making a one-sided film on such a controversial issue, the film-makers have attempted to hide the debate, and instead try to convince us that a simplistic solution is possible — pay the locals to protect rather than log their forests.
The film included just one short acknowledgement of the widespread concern among environmentalists about carbon trading and carbon offsetting, in the form of a statement from an environmentalist based in Indonesia.
He pointed out the major flaw in such schemes: they allow big polluting companies in the developed world to continue polluting by simply paying to reduce emissions elsewhere.
Roberts pointed out: "Australia is pushing the scheme because it's an easy way of making emissions reductions." But if by helping to stop deforestation in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia Australian companies are not doing anything about their own emissions, it's a farce.
"The more time and energy we spend on offset schemes the more we delay the transformation to a low-carbon society", Roberts said.
Burning Season plugs a website called Ten Things You Can Do, which claims that sustainability and abundance can co-exist and "the businessman and the environmentalist can join forces".
It promotes many actions related to changing our own lifestyles or donating money, such as using your car less, choosing energy-efficient appliances and donating to various rainforest conservation or orangutan protection schemes.
Fortunately, it also promotes broader action such as becoming "a visionary leader in your community", signing Greenpeace's petition for a 100% renewable energy future, taking part in debates around the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference and joining the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
However the film promotes the idea the whole way through that one person can make a difference. While this is true to a certain extent, collective political action is necessary if we are going to avert climate disaster, yet this wasn't hinted at in the film.
[A longer version of this article can be found atLinks, international journal of socialist renewal.]