Minecraft

“Rooted Together”

I helped make a documentary about real AND fake mangrove trees! What's a fake mangrove tree? They're the ones that were added to Minecraft to inspire players around the world to learn about and, hopefully, protect real mangroves. Real mangroves super trees that do so much for us and our world – like sucking up and storing carbon from our air, protecting us from storms, and filtering pollution out of the ocean. Mangroves are But mangroves have a PR problem: unlike better-known environmental causes such as coral reefs and bees, most people have never even heard of them. Mangroves are the unsung heroes of our coastlines, but they'll only continue to protect us if we protect them.

Enter Minecraft: They wanted to turn Minecraft enthusiasts into mangrove enthusiasts. Using the stage of the best-selling video game of all time, we created Rooted Together, a documentary nature series shot half in the real world and half inside a video game.

To complement the documentary, a free-to-download, custom Minecraft map was developed. The map allows players to experience the wonder of a restored mangrove forest by helping them visualize 50 years of environmental progress in just 50 minutes. The more mangroves players plant in the game, the lower the CO2 levels get thanks to mangroves’ ability to sequester up to 3X more carbon than rainforests. Gradually, players’ efforts encourage wildlife to return and displaced villagers to come back home.

Custom Map

Players loved the map and the first doc so much that they donated over $227,000 to The Nature Conservancy and their mangrove restoration efforts all over the world. So...we naturally had to make a doc about how insanely cool that was—the Minecraft and conservation communities were rooting themselves together.

If the first doc was educational, then this next one is sure to get ya in the mangrove feels.