Getty Images
Donating his megawatt celebrity and more than $30 million to date to help advance UN climate negotiations and protect coral reefs and endangered marine life (most notably sharks and rays), Leonardo DiCaprio’s commitment to and passion for protecting our planet has galvanised everyone from politicians to millennials. As a keynote speaker at the Our Ocean Conference in Washington DC last year, DiCaprio reported on his first-hand experience of the horrors of coral bleaching. “I saw this with my own eyes while filming my new documentary Before the Flood. Marine scientist Jeremy Jackson led me underwater in a submersible to observe the reefs off the coast of the Bahamas. What I saw took my breath away – not a fish in sight, colourless, ghost-like coral, a graveyard.”
DiCaprio is also focusing on using innovative solutions. Tackling the problem of overfishing, his foundation has partnered with Google, SkyTruth and Oceana to launch Global Fishing Watch, a website that invites the public to track fishing vessels, with data collected by satellites, thus making fishing practices transparent, and politicians and fisheries accountable to us all. “I am consumed by this,” DiCaprio has said of his work to protect the planet. “There isn’t a couple of hours a day where I’m not thinking about it.”