Charles, the Prince of Wales : The Prince's Rainforests Project Awareness Campaign Video (Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama...)

The Prince's Rainforests Project launches it's global awareness campaign with a video featuring some well-known faces

HRH The Prince of Wales has embraced the power of digital media today to launch the public awareness campaign for his Prince’s Rainforests Project.

The focal point of the campaign is a 90 second public awareness film in which HRH The Prince of Wales appears alongside his sons and an array of well-known faces including Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Craig and Robin Williams.

Each person in the film expresses their support for the halting of tropical rainforest deforestation, and is joined on-camera by an animated Argentinean Horned Frog. The frog, created by the CGI experts behind The Golden Compass, serves as a symbol of the rainforest

The film was broadcast online for the first time today at 6pm (BST) / 1pm (EST) with a tailored message from The Prince of Wales being webcast on a variety of websites, including the social networking site MySpace. As the webcast was transmitted, the public awareness film was shown at The Prince’s Rainforests Project launch event, attended by the Prince of Wales at London’s National Geographic Store.

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Tropical forests may seem a long way away, but they play a vital role in our lives. They operate as the worlds natural air-conditioning and thermostat systems and produce much of the rainfall essential to the worlds growing population.

Rainforests absorb nearly a fifth of all man-made CO2 emissions but they are currently being destroyed at the rate of a football pitch every four seconds. When these forests are burnt -- for agriculture or mining, for example -- they release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere, pushing annual CO2 emissions from tropical deforestation above those of the global transport network.

It is for these reasons that HRH The Prince of Wales set up The Prince's Rainforests Project with the clear ambition of 'Making the trees worth more alive than dead.' On May 5th, the PRP launched a worldwide campaign to raise awareness of this issue. This is where you can play your part. We are looking for a global gathering to show this is something people care about.