Patagonia: Blue Heart Documentary

16^th of March, a very important date for the US brand: Patagonia speaks loud together with many activists who live in what is considered the largest unspoiled wilderness European area. Patagonia went out with his website Blue Heart together with a petition to push banks to do not invest into the rivers distruction in the Balkan region. The campaign aims to protect this area from more than 3,000 hydroelectric projects, which would cause a potential environmental disaster and wants to prevent that entire families, entire communities are forced to leave their homes, their culture, their history just to fuel this gold hydroelectric race.

Patagonia has decided to act and join the local communities and the ONG in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia to urge foreign banks to end investing over 700 million euros to finance the dams construction, of which 118 within national parks. In these countries, local activists along with very determined women struggle to protect their rivers, streams, deep canyons and extensive alluvial forests, which would risk to disappear, causing a huge environmental impact. If this opposition were to fail, local communities will be forced to leave their land and the last unspoiled rivers of the continent will be irreversibly damaged. The worrying thing is that the number of projects proposed in the Balkan region has doubled since 2015, despite the movement in the rest of the world to dismantle damming dams in favor of really clean energy sources. “I believe this unspoiled place requires and deserves protection,” said Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder. “Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have adopted this obsolete and exploitative technology and are funding new dams in some of the last unspoilt places in Europe. This is nothing but a waste of money and a moral farce. It’s a very important battle to be ignored.” It’s a secret paradise and deserves to be protected! Mostly unknown, this area has a rich wildlife and an immense natural beauty, it is a hidden treasure for those who love fly fishing, kayaking, climbing and all this is threatened in exchange for a few kilowatts of hydropower. Patagonia with his feature film explains the reasons why hydroelectric dams are nothing more than a polluting technology and is aimed at all the citizens of the world to collect the largest number of signatures to stop this project and to form a critical mass towards this argument, unfortunately underestimated by many.

It’s time to act!

“Our hope is that this film will draw an international attention to the local communities fighting to protect the rivers that freely flow and provide them with sustenance, and that educates people on why hydroelectric dams are an obsolete and unclean technology.” Ryan Gellert, general director, EMEA, Patagonia.