The tree of life

My four-years long documentary project on mangroves deforestation in Indonesia driven by the western hunger of cheap tropical shrimps (mostly for EU and USA markets),

If mangrove trees had blood, the 54,000 km of Indonesian coastline would be indelibly stained in red. In the last 25 years, this massacre has reduced this complex amphibious ecosystem by more than 50%.

Among many other unique qualities, mangroves are capable of storing four times more carbon than any other inland tropical forest and are home to a biodiversity that has few equals on the face of the earth.

Java island has already lost at least 70% of original mangroves forests. Until a century ago, coastlines of Indonesia were crowned by 4.2 million hectares of mangroves. Today they are about 3 million hectares. 40% of this loss is due to the blue revolution: the booming of aquaculture. But economic growth may come at expenses of the poorest who are exposed to loss of local resources, climate and environmental hazards increase.

Particularly in the coastal valley of Sawah Luhur, on West Java Island in Indonesia, the soil has been burned up, fishing nets are empty like barren wombs and the water has become a massive grave. Everywhere you look, strange signs of a sick Earth are appearing and fishermen no longer know how to decipher them.

In short, everything is upside down: the night sky shines golden from the perpetual dawn of villages lit and above, the stars have all but disappeared.

Below them, the tree(s) of life is dying under a fierce blood moon. The vital yet invisible network that inextricably links the life of every being on Earth has been torn apart. We all have lost.