
What if We Change
Communities in India, Bolivia, Mali, and Bonaire are working to restore the ecosystems they depend on, and video reporters for the initiative What if we change spent two years filming that work, producing over 1,000 video stories for the platform whatifwechange.org. This film compiles a selection of that footage into a single account of both the damage and the repair: eroded farmland being replanted, water systems rebuilt, degraded land brought back to production, told through the people doing the work rather than narration over statistics. Environmental filmmaker John D. Liu appears throughout to comment on what ecosystem restoration actually does for the people living on the land and for the wider planet, tying the four separate locations back to one argument. The project was initiated by the Dutch committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The film's underlying question is practical rather than abstract: what changes when nearly seven billion people start treating restoration as infrastructure instead of charity.