Restoring
The Balance

Open Planet
Studios x Tahi

Powerful stories can change the course of history.
In this crucial decade for action to address 
the planetary crisis, we need to supercharge storytelling on an unprecedented scale.

We need more stories told from new perspectives, to inspire change and optimism.

A powerful new documentary film, Restoring the Balance, by Open Planet Studios, is set to shine a global spotlight on Tahi as a global lighthouse project that is redefining how we value nature beyond carbon.

Produced by Open Planet Studios, the filmmakers behind documentaries such as Ocean with David Attenborough, Restoring the Balance tells the story of Tahi and through the 18 minute film explores a central question facing governments, businesses and communities worldwide: what is the true value of a forest? And, crucially, what happens when restoration efforts focus on speed and carbon metrics alone, rather than the complexity of whole ecosystems.

Restoring The Balance

What is the value of a forest? Explore our new film, in partnership with Open Planet Studios, free to view on YouTube.
WATCH NOW
WATCH NOW

The Forests We Forgot

In the global rush toward net zero, tree planting has been simplified into a carbon calculation. 
Yet nature is not a straight line.

Complex native forests are diverse, layered and alive. Too often, they have been replaced with monocultures that optimise for speed rather than resilience.


Restoring the Balance challenges the idea that carbon alone defines environmental success. Healthy ecosystems do more than capture emissions. They regulate water, protect soil, support biodiversity and strengthen climate resilience for generations.

Restoring Ecosystems Can Finance Our Future

Nature is not just an environmental priority.
It is one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.

More than half of the world’s GDP, around $44 trillion, depends on healthy ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and oceans¹. Yet these natural assets rarely appear on financial balance sheets.

Globally, investing in nature-positive solutions could generate $10 trillion in annual business opportunities and create nearly 400 million jobs by 2030², demonstrating the scale of economic value that can be unlocked when ecosystems are restored rather than simplified.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, protecting and restoring nature could deliver more than $270 billion in economic value over the next 50 years², showing how biodiversity restoration can strengthen both ecosystems and long-term prosperity.

When we measure the full performance of nature, restoring ecosystems becomes not just an environmental goal, but a pathway to financing our future.

¹ World Bank, The Economic Case for Nature

² WWF, Tackling Nature Loss Could Bring Major Economic Boost

Julia 
Marton-Lefevre

“Given Tahi’s results in such a short amount of time, my hope is that it will provide inspiration for others around the planet to do similar things.

People can learn from this science based, positive can-do attitude. This totally degraded land has become a rich ecosystem that is providing all the services that nature can provide if it's allowed to do so.”
Julia Marton-Lefevre, 

Environmentalist & Former Director General 

The International Union For Conservation Of Nature

Suzan Craig &
 John Craig

“When we first saw the land, it was totally degraded.  There was just over 200 acres of standing forest but there was no undergrowth - it was completely barren. It was a silent forest, it was a dying forest.”

“What you plant and how you plant it really matters. You have to start with the structure of the forest. You've got to put a whole ecosystem together to get everything to come in and participate.  
What we found here is that you create a habitat and a bird arrives. We started with 20 species.  
We've now got over 70.”
Suzan Craig, Tahi Founder & CEO 

Dr John Craig, Ecologist (ONZM, PhD, BSc)

Restoring 
The Balance

Restoring the Balance is a call to rethink what environmental success looks like. Not simplicity. Not speed. But living, measurable complexity.Because restoring ecosystems is not idealism. 
It is infrastructure for a stable future.

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Biological Diversity

Biological Diversity is a term used to capture the immense variety of life on our planet. It covers all plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and more, including not just microscopic organisms but entire ecosystems.