Curaçao’s Coral Challenge – Reviving the Rain Forests of the Sea

“Curaçao’s Coral Challenge – Reviving the Rain Forests of the Sea,” is the fifth film in an award-winning series of Pace University student documentaries on environmental themes, each featured on The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog: http://j.mp/pacedocs.

As with all of the previous films, this documentary centers on a society seeking to enhance its economy without diminishing its environmental assets. In Curaçao’s case, the challenge is finding ways to move beyond an economy based for nearly 100 years on refining Venezuelan oil to a more diverse one including substantial tourism — but doing so without harming the still-vibrant reefs ringing parts of its coast.

In interviews, experts say plenty that can be done to boost prospects that Curaçao, with extraordinarily rich reefs on its east end (the area known as Oostpunt) and north shore can maintain this resource far into the future.

The course, created by Pace Professor Maria Trimarco Luskay some 15 years ago, has made films about efforts to conserve natural resources since 2011, when she was joined by the veteran New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin, the Pace University Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding.

This student made documentary has been on Curacao TV and TV in the Netherlands.