The Evidence Project: A Book to Protect the Planet

There are eight billion people alive on Earth today, and we have the ability to live almost anywhere, travel everywhere, and consume everything within our sight.

But the Earth is suffering.

Our endless demand and consumption of fossil fuels, minerals, forests, wildlife, farmed animals, marine life, plants, and other life forms has left us exposed to one of Earth’s oldest biological entities – viruses.

To be published through a Kickstarter campaign, The Evidence Project brings together an unmatched collection of powerful images by leading photographers from around the globe.

The likes of Brian Skerry, Gregg Segal, Ami Vitale, Britta Jaschinski, and Steve Winter’s imagery will fill the pages of this book, which sets out to provide evidence to help implement changes for the betterment of the planet.

The evidence it plans to provide is needed to call upon governments, lawmakers, businesses, opinion leaders, and consumers to execute the urgent and necessary changes to ensure a safe and sustainable future for humans and animals.

Pairing fact and science together with emotive photography, the book will also strive to illustrate how all things on Earth are interconnected and interdependent.

The threat from viral spillovers

The way we produce and consume our food and other life essentials is creating the perfect circumstances for viral spillovers. With a collection of photographs by some of the world’s best storytellers, The Evidence Project will explain how and why this is happening.

Today, approximately 70 percent of all emerging infectious diseases contracted by humans are caused by pathogens of animal origin. COVID-19, HIV-1/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and Bird Flu are some of the well-known viruses to have infected us in recent decades.

The longer we continue to cut through wild forests and other vital ecosystems for cattle pasture, soya and oil palm plantations, new roads, mines, and towns, the more of these deadly novel viruses we can expect to encounter.

Rising seas and flooded coasts

Glaciers and ice sheets worldwide are melting due to global warming, adding water to the ocean. The volume of the ocean is expanding as the water warms, increasing the risk of rising sea levels flooding coastal cities and communities around the world.

Fortunately, many inspirational people across the globe work incredibly hard to protect vulnerable people, wildlife, and our wild spaces.

Whilst The Evidence Project acknowledges that we cannot remove our dependence on nature to thrive, it sets out to remind us that we can rapidly address the harm that we are causing the planet through our consumption and lifestyles. The team behind the book believes that factual education is the best motivation for creating change.

The book will “raise public awareness and inform key policymakers in government and business. Those decisions require protecting our wild spaces and oceans; creating a better environment in which to live, one that reduces the chances of viral spillovers,” said the book’s writer and editor Keith Wilson.

The Evidence Project aims to create a global campaign, based around a startling collection of photography, to explain the link between our destruction of wild ecosystems, the lethal consequences for wildlife and plants, and the outbreaks of deadly new diseases.

The Kickstarter campaign launched in May and will close in July, with the 160+ page book set to launch in Autumn 2022, followed by presentations and exhibitions later in the year and into the new year.

By pledging your support to this Kickstarter, you will help raise vital funds to pay for the book’s production, printing, and distribution.

With images from leading photographers who have been documenting environmental and conservation issues for over 20 years, the book will no doubt provoke debate and incite the need for urgent and positive change.

To get involved with the campaign, head over to its Kickstarter page.