2011 Year of Forests

Jungle Run has just been chosen to support WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN) with the production of a nine-month webcast series. The GFTN promotes legal and sustainable forest  practices with market-based incentives, including certification.

Jungle Run’s relationship with WWF and GFTN began back in 2003. We traveled three days deep into the “Heart of Borneo” to document WWF and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) joining forces with timber giant Sumalindo Lestari Jaya. A ground-breaking project tracking wood from stump to shelf helped the company achieve FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification and revealed to this crew some of the healthiest forest we’ve seen anywhere in Borneo – including the national parks! Indeed, there’s a lot to be said for forest management with vested long-term interests.

In 2006 we returned to Borneo to work on TIMBER FUTURES. This film, produced by Television Trust for the Environment and broadcast on BBC World’s Earth Report, asked the question, “Can the market save Indonesia’s forests?”

Cut to 2011, the UN’s International Year of Forests, and the jury’s still out. Embarking on our latest forest film series in Indonesia, we find destructive logging and wholesale forest conversion still very much the norm. But thanks to organizations like WWF, the push towards sustainable forest management remains strong. Coming years bring special hope in the run-up to the 2012 climate talks. That’s when the global community can deem trees worth more alive than dead. Here at Jungle Run, we hope that Indonesia’s vast stores of forest carbon will be valued in the fight against global warming, while conserving precious habitats and sustainable resources for humans and animals alike.

Indonesia forest photo by Djuna Ivereigh