The Nature of Life review

I’ve seen many documentaries about climate change in my life and most of them have been quite depressing and leave one feeling a bit hopeless. Nature of Life is the first one I’ve seen which tackles this topic from a positive perspective. Not only that but it looks at the topic from an African perspective which is also interesting as a lot of other documentaries are Euro centric or US centric.

The first part of the documentary gives a brief overview of the problem of Climate Change, pointing out that people who have the smallest carbon footprints are the ones who, ironically, are going to be affected the most. They illustrate this point by interviewing an African tribe who are struggling to survive because of a lack of rain.

The balance of the documentary looks at solutions that have been developed around Africa to combat climate change. They briefly look at the electric car developed here in Cape Town, called the Joule and they look at wind farms and solar projects as well as others. Finally they spend some time delving into ‘biomimicry‘ which uses traits found in nature to solve current problems. It is a very interesting field which has already yielded some positive results but has much more potential.

It was great to see the many solutions being developed and exciting to see so much innovation coming out of Africa. Try and see this documentary if you can, unfortunately the Encounters festival is over but it will be shown on e-TV soon so keep an eye out for it.