Been There, Done That.

Malaysia Star - Malaysia
Friday December 12, 2008

Action on nature

By Niki Cheong

Planet in Peril is back. This time, Anderson Cooper and colleagues highlight the impact of human actions on natural resources.

IF THERE is one person who truly embodies the phrase “been there, done that”, it has to be Anderson Cooper.

The CNN anchor of the popular new show Anderson Cooper 360° has seen it all in his illustrious career – he has reported from war-torn countries, been on-ground at catastrophic disasters and was a major part of the team which covered the election of the United States’ first black president.

The Bosnian civil war? Check. Hurricane Katrina? Check. Iraq, the London bombings and Pope John Paul II’s funeral? Check, check and check.

Last year, Cooper added another feather to his cap. As part of the award-winning special Planet in Peril, he travelled, together with chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta and Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin, to remote areas of the world to investigate stories on the environment.

Tonight, the series continues with its second edition, Planet in Peril: Battle Lines. Cooper, Gupta and National Geographic host Lisa Ling travel to Nigeria, Peru and Taiwan, among other places, to examine the conflict between growing populations and the world’s natural resources.

Zooming in on the conflicts

Unlike last year’s edition, this time round Battle Lines will address specific conflicts.

“We wanted to focus on places where conflict was happening now,” Cooper explained in a phone interview from New York.

One of the places Cooper visited – and reported on – was Central Africa, where dwindling food supplies are forcing its people to hunt for bush meat, thus putting them at risk of being infected by zoonotic diseases (diseases that are transferred from animals to humans).

Cooper also went diving among the great white sharks off the coasts of South Africa – without a cage.

“(This was something) I had not planned to do … it was terrifying,” Cooper said, adding that he was never previously a diver, and had to be certified just to cover this assignment.

Still, ever the professional, he took it all in his stride. And despite the many problems a journalist could face in the line of duty, he insists that it is just another day at work and research is all the preparation that’s needed.

“After having spent 15 to 16 years travelling extensively – from Africa to the Middle East to South-East Asia – you know a fair amount about what to expect,” Copper said.

“Most of the preparation is in the researching. We look into issues in various parts of the world and decide who are the best people to talk to and profile.

“There’s not much preparation for myself as a reporter.”

Cooper does admit, however, that this production took him to places more remote than where one would traditionally go for stories.

“These places are hard to get to; it not only costs a lot to get there but requires a lot of time too,” he shared. He added that Battle Lines itself took almost a year to get ready to air.

Still, Cooper said that working on a show like this isn’t much different from regular on-ground news reporting. What it does allow, however, is for them to present environmental issues in a different light.

Stark images

“There is (usually) a lot of theoretical discussion, and people don’t see the reality of things happening,” he opined.

And this is where shows like Planet in Peril: Battle Lines is so important. It shows people – many of whom need to take responsibility for these conflicts which Cooper and his colleagues are highlighting – first-hand the impact of their action on nature.

Even a journalist like Cooper, who believes in the principle of objectivity, found himself affected by some of the things he saw.

“It is always difficult dealing with people in life-threatening situations. It is natural to sympathise,” he said. For example, he cited, when he visited a small hospital in Africa, and looked at people suffering from a variety of viruses, whose sources are still a mystery to doctors.

But if it takes such images to tug at the heartstrings of billions around the world to play a more active role in protecting the environment, so be it. After all, mankind has to take responsibility for many of the environment-related conflicts around the world.

As an example, Gupta travels in Peru to investigate a company owned by an American believed to be poisoning an entire community there. Then there is also Ling’s trips to Costa Rica and Taiwan which reveals how the population of sharks has decreased by more than 15% in the past 15 years due to finning – the process of cutting off the fin of a shark and discarding the rest of the still-living body – for the most important ingredient in shark’s fin soup.

“A lot of the things we’re looking at, people can have an impact in making change,” Cooper said.

“The key is, we really have to figure out how we’re going to protect the dwindling resources we have left.”

■ Examine the clash between population growth and natural resources in Planet in Peril: Battle Lines at 10am (repeat at 6pm) today on CNN. The show will be repeated at 1am and 8pm tomorrow, and at 9am and 2pm on Sunday. Log on to www.cnn.com/planetinperil for a special accompanying report.