A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

A fixture on public television for more than six decades, David Attenborough has produced, appeared in, and/or narrated dozens of programs on the natural world (see Further Reading & Resources for a list of his most acclaimed projects). He has received numerous awards, including the BAFTA fellowship and the Michael Faraday Prize, and has the unique honor of being knighted twice—once in 1985 and again in 2022—for drawing attention to the natural world and its need for protection. He is perhaps the most visible spokesperson for conservation and biodiversity working through the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. He has even had scientific research vessels and several animal and plant species named after him.

Attenborough forged a career at the BBC by traveling far and wide, capturing captivating images and iconic moments with living creatures across the globe. His influential series, Life on Earth, released in 1979, led to an extraordinary series of documentaries that span 30 years, all under the umbrella title, Life. He also participated in the groundbreaking series, The Blue Planet, as well as Planet Earth and Planet Earth II. His most recent endeavors, both released in 2022, are Prehistoric Planet and Frozen Planet II, where he serves as narrator.

In this book, Attenborough pens a brief memoir before providing his prescriptions for the preservation of the future. He warns his readers, “The natural world is fading. The evidence is all around. It has happened during my lifetime. I have seen it with my own eyes” (7). With this, he presents evidence for his credibility—an eye-witness to this unraveling—as an expert in providing potential solutions to the problems of biodiversity loss and climate change. This witnessing, alongside (and because of) his distinguished career, makes him uniquely positioned to reflect, predict, and propose answers. He notes that he was always drawn to this kind of work: “It never occurred to me to be anything other than fascinated when watching what was going on in the natural world around me” (13). This admission comes when he is talking about himself as a boy of eleven; the enthusiasm of youth still informs his most memorable discoveries.

He reflects that, at 94 (when the book was originally written), he “was born in another time. I don’t mean this metaphorically, but literally” (215). That is, Attenborough was born in the Holocene—a Golden Age for humanity, as he recalls it, with a sustainable balance between humanity and nature—though he will perish in the Anthropocene, the destructive age of humankind. He predicts that, without cooperation among nations and will among peoples, the Anthropocene will end, ironically, in the extinction of humanity. However, he remains an optimist, offering numerous informed solutions and analyses that will lead to the continuing success of humanity—one that exists in balance with the natural world. He proposes that, with “wisdom” and “harmony with nature,” humanity can “imagine a future and work towards achieving it” (220). After all, it is all of humanity—all of life on this unique planet Earth—that is ultimately at stake.