BIODIVERSITY - Our Planet

GISELE
“It’s dangerous, and its consequences are immediate.” Supermodel Gisele Bündchen
is describing the loss of biodiversity. “Species are becoming extinct at the fastest
rate known in geological history, and most of these extinctions are tied to
human activities.”
Reportedly the world’s highest paid model, Gisele is also a committed
environmentalist, who confesses to “being passionate about nature.” And this
goes right back to her childhood — as one of six daughters of a sociologist and
business consultant father and a bank clerk mother in the unremarkable small
Brazilian city of Horizontina, close to the border with Argentina.
“I have always been connected with nature,” she told Our Planet. “I grew up in a
small city and so had the opportunity of close contact with it. I understand we are
all connected and that we are all one.”
“I really got involved and became an activist,” she explains, “after visiting an Indian
tribe on the Xingu River in Amazonia and seeing up close the problems they were
facing from deforestation and water pollution. Ever since I have been working to
draw attention to environmental causes.” Last year she was appointed a UNEP
goodwill ambassador.
She believes she can “be most effective by raising awareness,” adding, “I am happy
to be able to use my image to bring attention to these important issues, and to
lend visibility to the socio-environmental cause, calling attention to the problems
the planet is facing and, hopefully, persuading people to take action.” But she has
done much more than that.
“We must fiind better ways to live in harmony with nature.”
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