Yann Arthus-Bertrand - Ecologic Involvement

Ecologic Involvement

On July 1, 2005, he founded the international environmental organisation GoodPlanet, and set up the program Action Carbone to offset his own greenhouse gas emissions generated by his helicopter transports. Since then this program has evolved to help people and companies to reduce and offset their climate impact by funding projects on renewable energies, energy efficiency and reforestation.

Since then, the organisation has been involved in several projects:

• School posters: posters are distributed for free in every French school on a different environmental theme each year (sustainable development in 2006, biodiversity in 2007 and energy in 2008).
• 6 billion Others: a video exhibition took place in early 2009 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Over 5,000 videos were shown. They were recorded around the globe showing women and men talking about universal themes such as happiness, sorrow, life, death, love, hatred and so on.
• Alive: a photography exhibition that travels around the world with a text display describing the impact of man on the environment
• Good Planet Info: international news website on the environment
• Good Planet Junior: some holiday trips in protected areas offered to children to teach them how to preserve the environment
• Good Planet Conso: a non profit website to help people adopting a more environmentally-friendly way of life

Yann Arthus-Bertrand was made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur (national order of the legion of honour) and a Knight of the Ordre du Mérite Agricole (national order of agricultural merit). He was also made Officer of the Ordre National du Mérite (national order of merit) by President Nicolas Sarkozy in June 2008. Moreover he was elected alongside Lucien Clergue at the Académie des Beaux Arts (academy of fine arts).

In 2006, he launched a series of documentaries called Vu du ciel (‘seen from above’) for the French public channels. The 5th episode was aired in December 2007 and was about agriculture.

In 2006 he published Algeria from above which he considers as one of his best works so far. This book offers a brand new view on this country.

In April 2007 he started directing a movie firstly called Boomerang. He later changed the title into Home. The movie is produced by Luc Besson and financed by the PPR group (a French multinational company). It was Yann Arthus-Bertrand's intention to show the state of our planet and the challenges humanity faces. The emissions of greenhouse gases produced by the movie's shooting were offset through Yann Arthus-Bertrand's organisation GoodPlanet and its 'Action Carbone' program. On Friday June 5, 2009 he released internationally the new movie, Home, a movie about the dangers human activities create to planet earth. On the night of the release many theaters offered screening for free and a giant open-air screening at the champ-de-mars in Paris drew 20 000 spectators. Beautiful aerial photography, an omnipresent music score and great post-production make this movie more emotional than most previous movies about the subject. The simultaneous TV broadcast of the movie on France 2 TV channel drew more than 8 million people. The following Sunday, at European Elections, ecologists made an unexpectedly high score and failed short of being France's second political party. Although the poll did predict that the ecologist would make a big score at these elections, they underestimated it widely. On the night of the elections, many political commentators expressed concerns that the movie screening may have had an immense effects on the results of the elections.

Today Home is available on DVDs and free, via streaming on the internet (Arthus-Bertrand gave up his author's rights).

On March 19, 2008, he was given the Georges Pompidou Award which rewards a cultural personality each year (2006: painter Pierre Soulages, 2005: orchestra conductor William Christie).

Since 2008, he has participated in the Board of Directors of the Fondation Chirac, a foundation launched in 2008 by former French President Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace through five advocacy programmes, two of which deal with environmental issues such as access to fresh water, desertification and deforestation.

A few schools have been named after Yann Arthus-Bertrand (primary schools of Cysoing, Noviant-aux-prés, Carentoir and Villaines sous bois, nursery schools of Cairanne and Saint-Aignan de Cramesnil as well as the Radinghem high school specialised in agriculture). He stated that it was one of the greatest honours he could receive. In 2008, he launched the project called 6 billion others. It is a video exhibition of people across the world answering the same questions.

On April 22, 2009 he was officially designated as the United Nations Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador (UNEP) and received the ‘Earth Champion’ award for his commitment towards the environment and his work on public environmental awareness.

He also supports the Zeitz Foundation, an organization focused on sustainable development and conservation.