A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future was published by Ebury Press in 2020, accompanied by a Netflix documentary. Attenborough frames the book as a “witness statement” — the testimony of someone who has watched the natural world change over seven decades of filmmaking and can now present the evidence of its decline with the authority of personal observation.
The first section is chronological: Attenborough presents key moments in his career alongside the environmental data for each decade. In the 1950s, when he began filming, the world population was 2.7 billion and 64% of wilderness remained. In the 2020s, the population is 7.8 billion and the wilderness has been reduced to 35%. The juxtaposition of personal memory and global statistics is devastatingly effective: each episode of wonder — filming mountain gorillas in Rwanda, diving on the Great Barrier Reef, encountering orangutans in Borneo — is shadowed by the data showing the destruction of the ecosystems in which those encounters took place.
The second section presents Attenborough’s vision for recovery: rewilding, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, population stabilization through education and healthcare, and a fundamental shift from economic models based on growth to models based on sustainability. The proposals are specific and practical rather than utopian, reflecting Attenborough’s lifelong preference for evidence over ideology.
Collecting A Life on Our Planet
First edition (Ebury Press, London, 2020): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Very good/very good: $5–$15
- Signed: $100–$300