Fateful Footage From Across The Globe
Blog by Sterling Student, Josie Kahn with an Introduction by Director of Communications and Marketing, Julia Vallera, July 2025
Introduction
As part of her independent study this summer, Sterling student Josie Kahn explored the global impact of environmental justice issues through in-depth research. A key element of her study involved identifying and analyzing visually compelling documentary films that focus on critical concerns such as air pollution, textile waste, deforestation, and more.
In a culminating blog post reflecting on her research, Josie examines five documentaries to explore the wide-ranging scope of environmental justice issues around the world. Through each film review, she thoughtfully connects environmental degradation with our collective responsibility to make more informed and responsible personal choices that support a more just and sustainable future.
The use of film as a medium for communicating complex environmental challenges was a deliberate and meaningful part of Josie’s research approach. She reflects on this choice in her post, writing, “There are plenty of statistics outlining the depth and breadth of environmental justice issues, but visuals allow for a more memorable and impactful experience.”
Internships are one of the many distinctive course types that students experience at Sterling College. As demonstrated in Josie’s case, we firmly believe that the most meaningful learning occurs when students can integrate personal interests, academics, work, and community life. We’re thrilled to showcase Josie’s work as a shining example of this integration—and we can’t wait to see what she does next!
Fateful Footage From Across the Globe
Environmental justice is broadly defined as ensuring an equitable distribution of the environmental goods and consequences brought about by our current systems. This is generally found at the intersection of social justice and ecological justice, with a holistic approach for both humans and the environment.
Issues of environmental justice are important education for the average person because of personal contribution through day to day choices to the complexity of these issues. To call the United States home means assuming responsibility for a large amount of the world’s pollution and emissions, ranking second globally in carbon emissions (World Population Review). Some of our impacts are not physically emanating from within our borders, as we encourage systems that contribute to pollution or other environmental issues in other countries, as I saw in a number of the documentaries throughout this study. Understanding a breadth of environmental justice issues spanning the globe and different industries allows us to make more effective personal choices, to promote a more just and sustainable system.
My goal was to look into a diversity of environmental justice issues globally in order to gain a broad understanding of environmental justice issues in a variety of contexts and situations. There was a large focus within this study on marginalized communities, who play an outsized role in fighting environmental justice issues. Documentaries were useful for this independent study, due to the visual advantages of film as a medium. There are plenty of statistics outlining the depth and breadth of environmental justice issues, but visuals allow for a more memorable and impactful experience. Listening to people from frontline communities that are, in most cases, still actively fighting these consequences is important. Putting faces and names to these issues appeals to empathy, creating more impact.
Environmental Justice Documentary Reviews:
The Carbon Connection illuminates the plight of two separate communities on different sides of the world, connected by British Petroleum (BP). Grangemouth, Scotland houses the biggest oil refinery in Europe, causing much pollution and hazard to the people in the surrounding area while BP continues to expand their operations. In Brazil, the oil giant is planting eucalyptus monocultures which uptake a lot of the water in the area, drying up springs and wells and killing off a lot of local fauna. First the Brazilian communities filmed their experiences and sent it over to Scotland. The people in Scotland viewed it and filmed a response. Unfortunately on both ends of this issue are parts of communities that despise BP’s presence but also rely on it in some way. In Brazil, BP is digging new wells for locals and offering employment, in exchange asking for silence on their discontent with the situation. In Grangemouth, locals are also employed, but it seems as though there is more of an issue of transient employees who take the money out of the community.
What was most compelling was the interaction between the two communities and their reaction to each other's plight. Both communities were wildly empathetic and concerned for each other and frustrated with the negative impact of these carbon credits which are supposedly beneficial to the environment. This concept is a good way to frame your understanding of frontline communities and the underlying connection between them across the globe.
Riverblue focuses on the environmental impacts of the fashion industry in which Mark Angelo, a river conservationist, travels to China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and India to document some of the most polluted rivers in the world. He shows how poorly the waste from these factories is being handled, if at all. There are a variety of concerns brought up, most revolving around the environmental impact of this pollution, with a few rivers shown unable to support any life at the time of filming. It is also mentioned that these rivers may be utilized as drinking and bathing water for large populations therefore creating risk to human health as well as wildlife.
A persistent theme is that countries like the United States are offloading both production and the environmental cost of such. The magnitude with which Americans consume fashion products has furthered the ability of companies to expand these harmful practices. It is a large part of the economy in the places that supply these clothes, but they are both poisoning their environment and themselves in the process. For the consumers, there exists a lot of out of sight out of mind mentality, with the thought that those things occurring millions of miles away do not personally affect us. However Greenpeace claims that heavy metals released from the production of blue jeans in China can make it halfway across the globe to Alaska.
The importance of our personal decisions as consumers was apparent throughout. As much as one can blame the corporations for acting irresponsibly, they may also be supporting these industries with our own money. No one can entirely absolve responsibility for these systems that are continuously harming others and our planet. It could act as a reality check for those of us who may be suffering from good fashion sense.
Virunga focuses on the plight of the mountain gorillas in the Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been in political turmoil for a long time, beginning with the Belgian colonization of the land for exploitation of rubber. There are many rebel groups that fight for control of territory within the country. Virunga National Park was established in 1925, and continues to this day although they face challenges due to the area being controlled by rebel forces as of 2012. There is a focus on the conservation of the mountain gorillas as a means to protect the land encompassed by the park leading to mass killing of the gorillas in hopes to redact the protection of that land. There was an organized killing of an entire family of gorillas which got a lot of attention in 2007, and created a want for protection of them. The young ones that survived were taken into captivity to be rehabilitated in the hopes that they would eventually be able to return to the wild.
A large part of this issue is oil companies that want to disobey international law in terms of conservation of this land in order to investigate the potential for mining oil in the park. SOCO, the company specifically involving themselves in Virunga, are very clearly supporting the rebel groups financially which is contributing to the instability of the region in a tangible way.
After viewing, there is a hard conversation to be had about the necessity of energy and gas consumption. This was the most hard hitting emotionally of all the documentaries watched through this study. Although the film revolves around the gorillas, the portrayal of the experience of the local people was extremely hard to watch.
The Ivory Game closely follows the use of the legal ivory market in China to move illegal ivory products, from the initial act of poaching to the final product on the market. The documentary focuses on Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, all bordering each other on the eastern coast of Africa. There is an infamous poacher who had been systematically poaching ivory from these countries, and a portion of the film focuses on what eventually leads to an arrest of this man.
The legal market in China allows for continued and increased demand for this product. Extinction of the elephant is the ultimate goal of this industry, as the less available ivory is the more they can charge for it. There are journalists and activists working to expose the ivory industry and their blatant disregard for the law as well as to make people aware of the importance of making the trade of ivory illegal entirely.
Looking at illegal industries and the loopholes in regulation that allow for continued illegal activity is an interesting framework through which to observe environmental issues. There is an importance to understanding how exactly the system is failing us so that we can rework it for better outcomes in the future.
Mossville: When Great Trees Fall focuses on what used to be a flourishing black community in Mossville, Louisiana. Originally settled by freed slaves, there are deep roots for the residents who are shown to be pushed out of their homes by Sasol’s new petrochemical plant, through buyouts and other tactics. In South Africa (where Sasol is based) and Mossville, people are presenting increased levels of health issues. Mossville’s last resident at the time of filming, Stacy Ryan, fights against giving up his property, although the city cuts off his water and electricity. He lists the members of his family, all dying before the age of 60 to cancer and eventually has to accept the buyout for his property due to his own declining health.
The story of Mossville is a good lens through which to witness how domestic these issues can be. Though there is a theme of the West offloading environmental consequences to other countries that are dependent on the income that is intertwined, this highlights the reality that this kind of stuff happens here as well. It is happening in marginalized communities all over the country within our own grasp.
