Dorjee Sun, a young Australian Entrepreneur, believes there's money to be made from protecting rainforests in Indonesia, saving the orangutan from extinction and making a real impact on climate change. Armed with a laptop and a backpack, he sets out across the globe to find investors in his carbon trading scheme. It is a battle against time. Achmadi, the palm oil farmer is ready to set fire to his land to plant more palm oil, and Lone's orangutan centre has reached crisis point with over 600 orangutans rescued from the fires.
The Burning Season is an eco-thriller about a young man not afraid to confront the biggest challenge of our time. Watch the cinema trailer here!
Lone
In Borneo, Indonesia, Lone Droscher-Nielsen cares for over 600 injured and orphaned orangutans. The species is on the brink of extinction, and there's no end in sight to the runaway habitat destruction: the forests are being slashed and burned for crops such as palm oil. When they enter plantations looking for food, many orangutans are also killed by plantation workers. Lone's working around the clock - there are even sick orangutan babies being cared for in her living room - and exhaustion is her constant companion.
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Achmadi
Near Jambi, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Achmadi the farmer grows oil palms and sells the fruit to factories nearby. The palm oil is used for cooking, is an ingredient in cosmetics, soap and shampoo and is increasingly used for biofuel. To support his wife and young daughter, Achmadi needs to plant more palms on his new plot of land. It's covered in thick jungle, and, unable to hire heavy machinery, the best way for Achmadi to clear the trees is to burn them down. But when he finds out that deforestation is contributing 20% of global carbon emissions, and his fires are contributing to climate change, he also becomes interested in finding an alternative. Read more...
Orangutans
Sisil is an orphaned baby orangutan and is one of the last of her kind. There are less than 45,000 Borneo orangutans and 7,500 Sumatran orangutans left in the wild, and the animals are found only on these two islands. Illegal logging and palm oil plantations are destroying the primates' forest habitat, and the breeding populations are dwindling. Many orangutans are also killed every year in the deliberately lit forest fires. Can a solution be found before it's too late for the orangutans?
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Dorjee
Young Australian entrepreneur Dorjee Sun is a man on a mission - he wants to establish a cutting-edge carbon trading scheme which effectively re-values forests. In Indonesia, rainforest areas
equivalent to 300 football fields are cut down and burnt every hour to
clear land for crops such as palm oil. If Dorjee has his way, standing rainforest will be worth more in its native state than cut down for its component resources. Problem is, his groundbreaking scheme has never been tried before on such a large scale. He has to convince governors, NGOs, activists and financiers that his plan is feasible and viable.
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