The Amazon rainforest burns. Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent. Rainwater contains “forever chemicals”. Women in global factories work under the threat of modern slavery. Around the world, people are displaced by war, injustice, famine and political unrest. It’s easy to imagine that the future faced by the next generation is as frightening as it is uncertain.
A new documentary supported by Monash University, The Endangered Generation? gathers experts in their fields – including academics, community leaders, artists and activists – to tackle the issue together. Narrated by Oscar winner Laura Dern, it captures the many human contributions to both the Earth’s decline and its rehabilitation.
Can we save future generations from extinction? The Endangered Generation? offers four key messages that can show us the right path.
This is not just about climate change
Climate change is a big-ticket item. Every day we see evidence of climate-related weather events such as flooding, landslides, unprecedented heatwaves and record-breaking storm activity. We are all aware of the targets that must be met to avoid a catastrophic extinction event.
But the issues facing the next generation are complex. Professor Tony Capon, a medical doctor who directs the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, says it’s vital to think beyond climate change alone. “[It] is just one of the big challenges that we’re all facing together, and that the next generation and future generations will grapple with,” he says. “Biodiversity loss is another example … [as are] pollution, ecosystem degradation, and social and economic dimensions.”
Creating a liveable and fair world isn’t solely about reducing carbon emissions – it must consider the diverse factors affecting populations worldwide, from habitat destruction to gender inequity, and from safe working conditions to disease control.
We must work together – and include everyone
Monash University’s deputy vice-chancellor (research) and senior vice-president, Professor Rebekah Brown, who features in The Endangered Generation?, says the documentary speaks to “the collaborative societal approach that is vital to affect change”.
It describes the multi-faceted approach required to create meaningful change. Individuals can’t do it alone, but they can work with larger organisations to shift behaviour. Corporations can’t fix the issues by themselves; they need engagement from government on better policy. Tangible, sustainable developments require input from everyone.
Communicating this in an inclusive way was the core challenge facing the documentary’s award-winning director, Celeste Geer. She saw an opportunity to take a different approach to simply lecturing.
“Rather than creating something that’s divisive or didactic, I wanted to do something that was really visceral,” she says. “If you just give somebody information, they respond from an academic or an intellectual place, which usually means that they can become defensive and closed out. Everything I’m trying to do in the film is to create an experience for the viewer where they’re immersed.”
When a viewer can imagine themselves in a situation, Geer says, they can come to their own conclusions about the importance of working together for change.
No one is immune from these impacts
In Australia, we are often protected from the impact of wider social issues. While we experience extreme weather events, we have proportionately low rates of violence, relatively equitable working conditions and good availability of fresh food and clean water.
But our apparent separation from them is an illusion. For example, Australian businesses have responsibilities not to engage with overseas modern slavery practices. People affected by civil unrest seek asylum on our shores. And, as time goes on and globalisation matures, the impact of an unsustainable future will become ever more apparent.
David Holmes, director of the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, says one of the challenges for communicating sustainability issues is how to make them feel local.
“Global warming is supposed to be about a global reality,” he says. “But [communicating about climate change] is about showing how something global can be very, very local. These issues are all our own struggles that people will have to live with in the future, and that current generations are committing them to. By taking steep enough actions now, change is within [our] power.”
The time to collaborate is now
It’s not your imagination – changes, including the global temperature increase, are accelerating. Our window is closing to create a tangible difference for the future of the next generation.
The Endangered Generation? hopes to accelerate change. With its message of the need to work across multiple industries, fields, governments and community groups, it drives a new type of conversation.
Professor John Carroll heads the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and is hopeful that collaboration will help to pick up speed. “It requires a great cross-disciplinary approach,” he says. “It comes down to places like universities being able to bring all the different skill sets together to be able to identify the problems and create solutions to problems.
“Then you will reach a tipping point, eventually, where it becomes absolutely imperative to change.”
With this documentary being screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival, there may be reason to hope the conversation can move a little faster, for all our sakes.
Geer says: “Humans have a capacity to repeat a lot. Time is running out for us to keep repeating things. We need to be enacting. We need to be looking as broadly as possible for different approaches to this existential threat we find ourselves in.”
Book your tickets now to the nationwide premiere of The Endangered Generation?
