FINDING COMMON GROUND / U.S.A. - Louisiana (SCREENING OUT OF COMPETITION)

Louisiana's delta estuary of the Mississippi River is the most productive in the United States. It is the womb to 30 per cent of America's natural seafood resources, accommodates a strategic percentage of oil and gas resources, is the site of the largest port in America, and protects the cultural gem of New Orleans, birthplace of Jazz. Yet through misuse by man, the rise of the world's oceans and subsidence of a sediment depleted base, this important resource is at critical risk.

Louisiana is the canary in the coal mine for the entire world in leading planning, mitigation and restoration efforts-- its discoveries and methods possibly the models for the burgeoning environmental crisis all over the world.

Can the voice of the people, many of whom have lived for several generations on an ethnically diverse coast of Cajuns, Native Americans, Asians, Croats, Canary Islanders, Filipinos and African Americans be heard in the planning? Or does political exploitation trump traditional ecological knowledge learned over generations of mentoring and handing on?

This documentary focuses on recent restoration planning and chronicles how valuable traditional knowledge can be to the process by exploring how people communicate across their silos and platforms of fishing, science, and government planning.

This is a lesson for the world as it deals with climate change issues, sea level rise and protecting the common people.