From Anime to Biodiversity: Healthy Food, Healthy Soil and Water

I'm in love with Hayao Miyazaki. No, seriously. We own nearly all of the DVDs from this Japanese animator who is most famous in North America for his movie Spirited Away, about a young girl who gets trapped in a bathhouse for the spirits. Where else do you find luscious landscapes, wacky machines cobbled together from spare parts, young girls who are strong and deep-thinking main characters, and profound ecological and social messages, all in an animated movie so beautiful that it looks like a picture book? My daughter is growing up on his movies, and I'm so pleased.

We just finished watching his Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind for the umpteenth time. Like most of Miyazaki's movies, this 1980s anime has a strong environmental message about the foundations of biodiversity. In it, a young princess named Nausicaa is part of a group of human stragglers who have nearly been overcome by the toxic jungle. People have damaged the world, and the plants and animals that used to sustain them are now deadly to people. Gradually, Nausicaa discovers that people can continue to live in the world if they can sustain clean soil and water, because these sustain life.

This got me thinking about the cultural presence of eco-parables and how these relate to sustainable food. I must confess that I have not yet trundled out to watch Avatar, but I know that it contains vivid ecological and racial themes. So often, the imaginary worlds that children and adults watch seem to either take place in a desperate post-apocalyptic world or in a world in which nature is merely a backdrop to the real action, the human action. I value the fact that Miyazaki works both human struggles and natural parables into his films.

Nausicaa is a movie of the 1980s, but prescient in that global-scale change is happening, and it's going to affect all the biodiversity of the world, including humans. Changes to the climate and to soil and water and ecosystems around the world have ramifications for everyday people. These everyday people eat the food that they purchase in grocery stores. This food is grown in soil that may be contaminated by the refuse of industry and depleted by years of farming practices that do not work with the earth. Nausicaa has a very simple message, but it's one that many have not yet accepted: damage the foundations of life, and everything that relies on these foundations will be damaged. Heal what supports life, and everything will begin to heal.

Do you have favourite movies that are actually eco-parables? Do tell!