0:00:01.212,0:00:03.342 I'm not sure that every person here 0:00:03.342,0:00:06.079 is familiar with my pictures. 0:00:06.079,0:00:10.162 I want to start to show just a few pictures to you, 0:00:10.162,0:00:13.112 and after I'll speak. 0:00:45.884,0:00:49.836 I must speak to you a little bit of my history, 0:00:49.836,0:00:51.783 because we'll be speaking on this 0:00:51.783,0:00:54.764 during my speech here. 0:00:54.764,0:00:57.900 I was born in 1944 in Brazil, 0:00:57.900,0:01:01.655 in the times that Brazil was not yet a market economy. 0:01:01.655,0:01:03.538 I was born on a farm, 0:01:03.538,0:01:08.040 a farm that was more than 50 percent rainforest [still]. 0:01:08.040,0:01:09.660 A marvelous place. 0:01:09.660,0:01:13.972 I lived with incredible birds, incredible animals, 0:01:13.972,0:01:18.213 I swam in our small rivers with our caimans. 0:01:18.213,0:01:21.122 It was about 35 families that lived on this farm, 0:01:21.122,0:01:25.404 and everything that we produced on this farm, we consumed. 0:01:25.404,0:01:27.511 Very few things went to the market. 0:01:27.511,0:01:30.221 Once a year, the only thing that went to the market 0:01:30.221,0:01:31.941 was the cattle that we produced, 0:01:31.941,0:01:34.710 and we made trips of about 45 days 0:01:34.710,0:01:36.886 to reach the slaughterhouse, 0:01:36.886,0:01:39.180 bringing thousands of head of cattle, 0:01:39.180,0:01:41.712 and about 20 days traveling back 0:01:41.712,0:01:44.109 to reach our farm again. 0:01:44.109,0:01:46.486 When I was 15 years old, 0:01:46.486,0:01:49.991 it was necessary for me to leave this place 0:01:49.991,0:01:53.454 and go to a town a little bit bigger -- much bigger -- 0:01:53.454,0:01:56.885 where I did the second part of secondary school. 0:01:56.885,0:01:59.653 There I learned different things. 0:01:59.653,0:02:02.278 Brazil was starting to urbanize, industrialize, 0:02:02.278,0:02:06.693 and I knew the politics. I became a little bit radical, 0:02:06.693,0:02:09.535 I was a member of leftist parties, 0:02:09.535,0:02:12.641 and I became an activist. 0:02:12.641,0:02:15.733 I [went to] university to become an economist. 0:02:15.733,0:02:18.413 I [did] a master's degree in economics. 0:02:18.413,0:02:21.422 And the most important thing in my life 0:02:21.422,0:02:23.081 also happened in this time. 0:02:23.081,0:02:25.770 I met an incredible girl 0:02:25.770,0:02:29.908 who became my lifelong best friend, 0:02:29.908,0:02:33.676 and my associate in everything that I have done till now, 0:02:33.676,0:02:36.940 my wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado. 0:02:36.940,0:02:38.844 Brazil radicalized very strongly. 0:02:38.844,0:02:41.756 We fought very hard against the dictatorship, 0:02:41.756,0:02:43.542 in a moment it was necessary to us: 0:02:43.542,0:02:47.126 Either go into clandestinity with weapons in hand, 0:02:47.126,0:02:49.581 or leave Brazil. We were too young, 0:02:49.581,0:02:54.782 and our organization thought it was better for us to go out, 0:02:54.782,0:02:55.746 and we went to France, 0:02:55.746,0:02:57.765 where I did a PhD in economics, 0:02:57.765,0:02:59.761 Léila became an architect. 0:02:59.761,0:03:02.844 I worked after for an investment bank. 0:03:02.844,0:03:05.806 We made a lot of trips, financed development, 0:03:05.806,0:03:08.661 economic projects in Africa with the World Bank. 0:03:08.661,0:03:12.129 And one day photography made a total invasion in my life. 0:03:12.129,0:03:13.367 I became a photographer, 0:03:13.367,0:03:15.983 abandoned everything and became a photographer, 0:03:15.983,0:03:18.808 and I started to do the photography 0:03:18.808,0:03:21.804 that was important for me. 0:03:21.804,0:03:23.990 Many people tell me that you are a photojournalist, 0:03:23.990,0:03:26.566 that you are an anthropologist photographer, 0:03:26.566,0:03:29.327 that you are an activist photographer. 0:03:29.327,0:03:32.327 But I did much more than that. 0:03:32.327,0:03:35.009 I put photography as my life. 0:03:35.009,0:03:37.613 I lived totally inside photography 0:03:37.613,0:03:39.648 doing long term projects, 0:03:39.648,0:03:42.158 and I want to show you just a few pictures 0:03:42.158,0:03:48.055 of -- again, you'll see inside the social projects, 0:03:48.055,0:03:50.217 that I went to, I published many books 0:03:50.217,0:03:53.423 on these photographs, 0:03:53.423,0:03:57.178 but I'll just show you a few ones now. 0:04:42.949,0:04:46.724 In the '90s, from 1994 to 2000, 0:04:46.724,0:04:49.965 I photographed a story called Migrations. 0:04:49.965,0:04:51.842 It became a book. It became a show. 0:04:51.842,0:04:54.600 But during the time that I was photographing this, 0:04:54.600,0:05:00.337 I lived through a very hard moment in my life, mostly in Rwanda. 0:05:00.337,0:05:04.648 I saw in Rwanda total brutality. 0:05:04.648,0:05:07.813 I saw deaths by thousands per day. 0:05:07.813,0:05:10.754 I lost my faith in our species. 0:05:10.754,0:05:14.945 I didn't believe that it was possible for us to live any longer, 0:05:14.945,0:05:20.492 and I started to be attacked by my own Staphylococcus. 0:05:20.492,0:05:23.476 I started to have infection everywhere. 0:05:23.476,0:05:27.888 When I made love with my wife, I had no sperm that came out of me; 0:05:27.888,0:05:30.715 I had blood. 0:05:30.715,0:05:33.596 I went to see a friend's doctor in Paris, 0:05:33.596,0:05:36.362 told him that I was completely sick. 0:05:36.362,0:05:39.216 He made a long examination, and told me, "Sebastian, 0:05:39.216,0:05:42.353 you are not sick, your prostate is perfect. 0:05:42.353,0:05:46.441 What happened is, you saw so many deaths that you are dying. 0:05:46.441,0:05:49.360 You must stop. Stop. 0:05:49.360,0:05:54.201 You must stop because on the contrary, you will be dead." 0:05:54.201,0:05:57.847 And I made the decision to stop. 0:05:57.847,0:06:00.140 I was really upset with photography, 0:06:00.140,0:06:02.161 with everything in the world, 0:06:02.161,0:06:06.001 and I made the decision to go back to where I was born. 0:06:06.001,0:06:07.605 It was a big coincidence. 0:06:07.605,0:06:11.016 It was the moment that my parents became very old. 0:06:11.016,0:06:14.577 I have seven sisters. I'm one of the only men in my family, 0:06:14.577,0:06:16.445 and they made together the decision 0:06:16.445,0:06:19.145 to transfer this land to Léila and myself. 0:06:19.145,0:06:24.761 When we received this land, this land was as dead as I was. 0:06:24.761,0:06:28.065 When I was a kid, it was more than 50 percent rainforest. 0:06:28.065,0:06:29.587 When we received the land, 0:06:29.587,0:06:33.362 it was less than half a percent rainforest, 0:06:33.362,0:06:35.007 as in all my region. 0:06:35.007,0:06:37.936 To build development, Brazilian development, 0:06:37.936,0:06:40.723 we destroyed a lot of our forest. 0:06:40.723,0:06:42.706 As you did here in the United States, 0:06:42.706,0:06:44.994 or you did in India, everywhere in this planet. 0:06:44.994,0:06:46.672 To build our development, 0:06:46.672,0:06:48.755 we come to a huge contradiction 0:06:48.755,0:06:52.490 that we destroy around us everything. 0:06:52.490,0:06:56.155 This farm that had thousands of head of cattle 0:06:56.155,0:06:58.322 had just a few hundreds, 0:06:58.322,0:07:00.727 and we didn't know how to deal with these. 0:07:00.727,0:07:04.627 And Léila came up with an incredible idea, a crazy idea. 0:07:04.627,0:07:09.274 She said, why don't you put back the rainforest that was here before? 0:07:09.274,0:07:10.780 You say that you were born in paradise. 0:07:10.780,0:07:13.706 Let's build the paradise again. 0:07:13.706,0:07:16.538 And I went to see a good friend 0:07:16.538,0:07:18.071 that was engineering forests 0:07:18.071,0:07:19.969 to prepare a project for us, 0:07:19.969,0:07:22.150 and we started. We started to plant, and this 0:07:22.150,0:07:26.407 first year we lost a lot of trees, second year less, 0:07:26.407,0:07:31.468 and slowly, slowly this dead land started to be born again. 0:07:31.468,0:07:34.831 We started to plant hundreds of thousands of trees, 0:07:34.831,0:07:38.271 only local species, only native species, 0:07:38.271,0:07:41.812 where we built an ecosystem identical to the one that was destroyed, 0:07:41.812,0:07:46.120 and the life started to come back in an incredible way. 0:07:46.120,0:07:48.919 It was necessary for us to transform our land 0:07:48.919,0:07:50.361 into a national park. 0:07:50.361,0:07:53.019 We transformed. We gave this land back to nature. 0:07:53.019,0:07:54.394 It became a national park. 0:07:54.394,0:07:58.144 We created an institution called Instituto Terra, 0:07:58.144,0:08:03.123 and we built a big environmental project to raise money everywhere. 0:08:03.123,0:08:06.908 Here in Los Angeles, in the Bay Area in San Francisco, 0:08:06.908,0:08:09.059 it became tax deductible in the United States. 0:08:09.059,0:08:12.387 We raised money in Spain, in Italy, a lot in Brazil. 0:08:12.387,0:08:14.595 We worked with a lot of companies in Brazil 0:08:14.595,0:08:16.843 that put money into this project, the government. 0:08:16.843,0:08:21.027 And the life started to come, and I had a big wish 0:08:21.027,0:08:24.443 to come back to photography, to photograph again. 0:08:24.443,0:08:27.738 And this time, my wish was not to photograph anymore 0:08:27.738,0:08:32.321 just one animal that I had photographed all my life: us. 0:08:32.321,0:08:34.689 I wished to photograph the other animals, 0:08:34.689,0:08:36.681 to photograph the landscapes, 0:08:36.681,0:08:40.127 to photograph us, but us from the beginning, 0:08:40.127,0:08:42.657 the time we lived in equilibrium with nature. 0:08:42.657,0:08:47.210 And I went. I started in the beginning of 2004, 0:08:47.210,0:08:50.410 and I finished at the end of 2011. 0:08:50.410,0:08:53.103 We created an incredible amount of pictures, 0:08:53.103,0:08:56.673 and the result -- Lélia did the design of all my books, 0:08:56.673,0:08:59.737 the design of all my shows. She is the creator of the shows. 0:08:59.737,0:09:02.044 And what we want with these pictures 0:09:02.044,0:09:08.456 is to create a discussion about what we have that is pristine on the planet 0:09:08.456,0:09:10.979 and what we must hold on this planet 0:09:10.979,0:09:14.277 if we want to live, to have some equilibrium in our life. 0:09:14.277,0:09:16.788 And I wanted to see us 0:09:16.788,0:09:22.655 when we used, yes, our instruments in stone. 0:09:22.655,0:09:24.812 We exist yet. I was last week 0:09:24.812,0:09:27.708 at the Brazilian National Indian Foundation, 0:09:27.708,0:09:31.014 and only in the Amazon we have about 110 groups 0:09:31.014,0:09:33.945 of Indians that are not contacted yet. 0:09:33.945,0:09:36.478 We must protect the forest in this sense. 0:09:36.478,0:09:41.313 And with these pictures, I hope that we can create 0:09:41.313,0:09:43.542 information, a system of information. 0:09:43.542,0:09:47.288 We tried to do a new presentation of the planet, 0:09:47.288,0:09:49.214 and I want to show you now just a few pictures 0:09:49.214,0:09:52.483 of this project, please. 0:11:47.543,0:11:49.975 Well, this — (Applause) — 0:11:49.975,0:11:54.538 Thank you. Thank you very much. 0:11:57.142,0:12:00.228 This is what we must fight hard 0:12:00.228,0:12:02.119 to hold like it is now. 0:12:02.119,0:12:06.230 But there is another part that we must together rebuild, 0:12:06.230,0:12:10.247 to build our societies, our modern family of societies, 0:12:10.247,0:12:12.886 we are at a point where we cannot go back. 0:12:12.886,0:12:15.094 But we create an incredible contradiction. 0:12:15.094,0:12:17.390 To build all this, we destroy a lot. 0:12:17.390,0:12:19.600 Our forest in Brazil, that antique forest 0:12:19.600,0:12:22.486 that was the size of California, 0:12:22.486,0:12:25.160 is destroyed today 93 percent. 0:12:25.160,0:12:28.154 Here, on the West Coast, you've destroyed your forest. 0:12:28.154,0:12:31.391 Around here, no? The redwood forests are gone. 0:12:31.391,0:12:33.258 Gone very fast, disappeared. 0:12:33.258,0:12:35.927 Coming the other day from Atlanta, here, two days ago, 0:12:35.927,0:12:37.771 I was flying over deserts 0:12:37.771,0:12:40.631 that we made, we provoked with our own hands. 0:12:40.631,0:12:43.290 India has no more trees. Spain has no more trees. 0:12:43.290,0:12:46.799 And we must rebuild these forests. 0:12:46.799,0:12:50.447 That is the essence of our life, these forests. 0:12:50.447,0:12:54.689 We need to breathe. The only factory 0:12:54.689,0:12:58.265 capable to transform CO2 into oxygen, 0:12:58.265,0:13:00.009 are the forests. 0:13:00.009,0:13:04.363 The only machine capable to capture the carbon 0:13:04.363,0:13:07.214 that we are producing, always, 0:13:07.214,0:13:11.379 even if we reduce them, everything that we do, we produce CO2, 0:13:11.379,0:13:12.878 are the trees. 0:13:12.878,0:13:17.244 I put the question -- three or four weeks ago, 0:13:17.244,0:13:18.933 we saw in the newspapers 0:13:18.933,0:13:21.825 millions of fish that die in Norway. 0:13:21.825,0:13:24.841 A lack of oxygen in the water. 0:13:24.841,0:13:27.073 I put to myself the question, if for a moment, 0:13:27.073,0:13:31.060 we will not lack oxygen for all animal species, 0:13:31.060,0:13:34.498 ours included -- that would be very complicated for us. 0:13:34.498,0:13:38.802 For the water system, the trees are essential. 0:13:38.802,0:13:42.474 I'll give you a small example that you'll understand very easily. 0:13:42.474,0:13:46.400 You happy people that have a lot of hair on your head, 0:13:46.400,0:13:49.565 if you take a shower, it takes you 0:13:49.565,0:13:53.089 two or three hours to dry your hair 0:13:53.089,0:13:55.410 if you don't use a dryer machine. 0:13:55.410,0:14:00.191 Me, one minute, it's dry. The same with the trees. 0:14:00.191,0:14:02.893 The trees are the hair of our planet. 0:14:02.893,0:14:06.682 When you have rain in a place that has no trees, 0:14:06.682,0:14:10.110 in just a few minutes, the water arrives in the stream, 0:14:10.110,0:14:12.693 brings soil, destroying our water source, 0:14:12.693,0:14:14.600 destroying the rivers, 0:14:14.600,0:14:16.010 and no humidity to retain. 0:14:16.010,0:14:20.301 When you have trees, the root system holds the water. 0:14:20.301,0:14:23.029 All the branches of the trees, the leaves that come down 0:14:23.029,0:14:25.091 create a humid area, 0:14:25.091,0:14:29.811 and they take months and months under the water, go to the rivers, 0:14:29.811,0:14:33.011 and maintain our source, maintain our rivers. 0:14:33.011,0:14:35.015 This is the most important thing, 0:14:35.015,0:14:39.478 when we imagine that we need water for every activity in life. 0:14:39.478,0:14:41.666 I want to show you now, to finish, 0:14:41.666,0:14:44.366 just a few pictures that for me 0:14:44.366,0:14:47.305 are very important in that direction. 0:14:47.305,0:14:49.455 You remember that I told you, 0:14:49.455,0:14:51.558 when I received the farm from my parents 0:14:51.558,0:14:54.358 that was my paradise, that was the farm. 0:14:54.358,0:14:59.868 Land completely destroyed, the erosion there, the land had dried. 0:14:59.868,0:15:02.424 But you can see in this picture, 0:15:02.424,0:15:06.439 we were starting to construct an educational center 0:15:06.439,0:15:11.403 that became quite a large environmental center in Brazil. 0:15:11.403,0:15:15.741 But you see a lot of small spots in this picture. 0:15:15.741,0:15:19.318 In each point of those spots, we had planted a tree. 0:15:19.318,0:15:20.893 There are thousands of trees. 0:15:20.893,0:15:24.101 Now I'll show you the pictures made exactly in the same point 0:15:24.101,0:15:26.178 two months ago. 0:15:27.807,0:15:35.154 (Applause) 0:15:36.857,0:15:38.615 I told you in the beginning that it was necessary 0:15:38.615,0:15:43.415 for us to plant about 2.5 million trees 0:15:43.415,0:15:45.854 of about 200 different species 0:15:45.854,0:15:49.094 in order to rebuild the ecosystem. 0:15:49.094,0:15:51.629 And I'll show you the last picture. 0:15:51.629,0:15:54.798 We are with two million trees in the ground now. 0:15:54.798,0:15:56.447 We are doing the sequestration 0:15:56.447,0:16:00.901 of about 100,000 tons of carbon with these trees. 0:16:00.901,0:16:05.445 My friends, it's very easy to do. We did it, no? 0:16:05.445,0:16:07.757 By an accident that happened to me, 0:16:07.757,0:16:11.157 we went back, we built an ecosystem. 0:16:11.157,0:16:13.824 We here inside the room, 0:16:13.824,0:16:17.360 I believe that we have the same concern, 0:16:17.360,0:16:19.796 and the model that we created in Brazil, 0:16:19.796,0:16:21.141 we can transplant it here. 0:16:21.141,0:16:24.164 We can apply it everywhere around the world, no? 0:16:24.164,0:16:27.112 And I believe that we can do it together. 0:16:27.112,0:16:28.741 Thank you very much. 0:16:28.741,0:16:33.388 (Applause)