The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 changed my life completely, turning me into an activist. From the air, you see things you can't see from the ground - you really understand the impact of man, even in a place you know well. My work is meant to convince people we can no longer live like this.

The whole world is determined by trade - which is really the blood of the world. The driving force is everyone's desire to have a better life. How? By consuming. For countries, the "Holy Grail" is economic growth.

The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.

No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.

I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.

It's time to come together. We all have the power to change, so what are we waiting for?

For nearly two years, I was flying above the planet with my camera. I knew straight away that this was something important to do, just at this moment, a portrait of the planet for the millennium year. I worked in 80 countries, fighting for money all the time.