Efforts to improve the situation of indigenous peoples through restoration of the environment is one of the most intriguing stories to emerge from travel. One of the organizations doing important work in this field, the Environmental Educational Media Project, produced the documentary Hope In A Changing Climate, which promotes the enormous potential of restoration. Screened at the COP 15 climate change summit in Copenhagen last December and subsequently aired by the BBC, the film follows soil scientist John D. Liu, who for the past 15 years has been documenting changes on China’s remote Loess Plateau, where the local people have been transforming a barren plateau into a green and fertile one, reducing the effect of climate change. Liu explains:

“On the plateau, researchers realized that progressive degradation of the environment trapped the local population into a life of subsistence farming. It’s a process that has occurred across the globe, where poor agricultural communities find themselves overusing their land in order to survive, depleting its fertility and further impoverishing themselves. One thing that became apparent early on is the connection between damaged environments and human poverty. In many parts of the world there’s been a vicious cycle: continuous use of the land has led to subsistence agriculture and generation by generation, this has further degraded the soils.”

Shot on location in China, Rwanda and Ethiopia, Hope in a Changing Climate is a truly uplifting story of how ecosystem restoration helps stabilize climate, reduce poverty, and support sustainable agriculture.

Ah, India! Just saying the word conjures up images of the Taj Mahal in the soft light of dawn, camels trekking across deserts, worshipers bathing in the sacred Ganges, mountains of spices in marketplace stalls, and women wrapped in luscious silk saris. India also means being exposed to filth, poverty, masses of humanity, beggars on the streets, incessant touts, and bouts of “Delhi Belly.”

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Nowhere else in the world are these contrasts so evident as in Mother India, and many visitors arrive on the sub-continent wholly unprepared for these incongruities. I saw all this and more when I traveled to India a few years ago. In areas of Mumbai, shanty towns constructed with scraps of scavenged wood and cardboard stretched as far as I could see. Here, people lived in abject poverty, clad in rags and defecating by the side of the road. Garbage was strewn throughout the streets and the overwhelming stench of sewage permeated everything. Homeless wraiths curled along the edges of the sidewalks in front of my hotel each night, yet inside everything was luxury and staff in starched white uniforms. Fortunately, I was forewarned. I had a friend who had been to India and he Read the rest of this entry »