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00:11Life.
00:14The closer you look, the more mysterious it seems.
00:23We can't see the invisible forces at work.
00:30But what if we could?
00:34It's time to look at our home.
00:39In a whole new way.
00:47Imagine carbon cycling through nature.
00:53It's one of the building blocks of life.
00:58And it's stored in our forests, oceans, and grasslands on an incredible scale.
01:13But we've released too much of it into the atmosphere, risking our future.
01:20We can halt emissions and draw that carbon back down.
01:27And our best ally for that is nature.
01:35Restoring it to abundance is the biggest challenge of our time.
01:40But we can do it.
01:43If the future of nature looked brighter, so could the future for us all.
02:09Imagine a world where nature thrives.
02:30If we want to live here too, we must find ways to be a force for good throughout the natural
02:38world.
02:49Maple and Willow were found five days after their mom was found dead on a highway here on the peninsula
02:57in California.
02:59Dr. Alex Herman works at Oakland Zoo Veterinary Hospital.
03:04She's overseeing the arrival of a pair of orphaned mountain lions.
03:09When they came in, they were tiny, about four to six weeks old.
03:13They were very hungry, very dehydrated.
03:17Willow very soon after that developed pneumonia, just from the trauma of the whole situation.
03:22She was really, really sick.
03:24We were very concerned that we could lose her.
03:30Thanks to the team's expertise, Maple and Willow have both survived.
03:37It's really nice to see them moving around, climbing, playing.
03:46These kittens may be safe, but they're not the first the team has rescued.
03:51Here at the Oakland Zoo, we've treated 26 orphaned mountain lions since our program began in 2018.
03:58Mountain lions being hit by cars is a common big problem.
04:04The future for these youngsters is limited.
04:09None of the orphaned mountain lions that we've seen so far here at the Oakland Zoo have been able to
04:14be rewilded.
04:15They need to stay in captivity because they're just too young when they lose their mother.
04:20So normally, they'll hunt with their mom, be mentored, taught, protected by their mom until they're two years old.
04:27Because their mom was killed, they've lost that opportunity.
04:33In the wild, mountain lions are found from Canada to southern Chile.
04:41They're so widespread.
04:43They have different names.
04:46Pumas, cougars, even Florida panthers.
04:53But the more their range is overlapped with ours, the more they hit a dead end.
05:07So the freeways in our study area are extremely busy.
05:10Some of the busiest in the world.
05:13The 101 freeway sees over 350,000 vehicles a day.
05:20Roads in our area are definitely a death trap for our local mountain lions.
05:27Jeff Sikich and the National Park Service team have been studying mountain lions here in L.A. for over 20
05:34years.
05:37It's been a tough ride.
05:41Last year, we had 15 get struck and killed by vehicles.
05:46Some of our animals that we've been following, we mark as kittens.
05:50At three weeks of age, I have followed them their whole life.
05:54And to see these animals, you know, struck by a vehicle is just awful.
06:01L.A. may seem an unusual place to find North America's biggest cats.
06:06But they're smart and stealthy.
06:11We rarely get sightings of these animals.
06:15It really speaks to their elusive nature.
06:17In this environment we have here, they can be 20 meters in front of me and we won't see them.
06:24So we do a lot of looking for signs.
06:26So looking for tracks, scat.
06:30And then also our greatest tool, we use our remote cameras.
06:34And there is where we think we might get a mountain lion to walk by.
06:42And we have been studying them by capturing them, placing GPS radio collars on individuals.
06:52By charting the mountain lion's movements, Jeff can see the limits of their territory.
07:00So we're just north of the 101 freeway, right at Liberty Canyon.
07:04This is a natural pinch point for them, this natural habitat on either side, leading up to the freeway, right
07:10at Liberty Canyon.
07:12This human barrier is having a devastating impact on the population.
07:19These mount lions aren't crossing the freeways often.
07:21And this has led to very low genetic diversity in our population and also close inbreeding.
07:29And recently we started to see the physical effects of that low genetic diversity in our population.
07:34We have documented mount lions with these physical abnormalities, a distal tail kink.
07:42And we've also seen some reproductive abnormalities as well.
07:49The longer they stay trapped, the bleaker their future.
07:55If inbreeding depression sets into our Santa Monica mountain lion population,
07:59there's pretty much a 99% chance of extinction within 50 years.
08:12We get asked often, well, what if we lose mount lions from this area?
08:16What will happen?
08:17And we like to say that's an experiment we don't want to conduct.
08:21You know, the mount lion being an umbrella species that if mount lions are doing good in an area,
08:28if that population is healthy, that equals healthy prey populations and a healthy ecosystem overall.
08:39The more nature there is, the more effective the ecosystem is at drawing down carbon.
08:49But remove the apex predator, and it can fail.
08:57Mountain lions are facing a disastrous future.
09:01They need a hero.
09:14Ten years ago, conservationist Beth Pratt was inspired by the tale of a mountain lion living in L.A.
09:25I read about P-22.
09:27A mountain lion shows up in Griffith Park, and I was like, is that true?
09:31You know, how, is there really a mountain lion in L.A.?
09:34He had to cross two of the busiest freeways in the nation.
09:37And then he ends up on a dead-end area of eight square miles, the smallest known home range ever
09:43recorded for a male mountain lion.
09:47And he makes it.
09:49In fact, he became a celebrity in a land of celebrities.
09:53We had the P-22 Day Festival, a festival for a mountain lion.
09:5715,000 people showed up to honor this cat.
10:00So I think P-22 really evoked something magical in us, that even in the second-largest city in the
10:07country, nature had not been fully banished.
10:11If a mountain lion could live under the Hollywood sign in the middle of L.A., what else was possible?
10:19Beth is part of a campaign that's aiming to change the fate of all mountain lions.
10:26It's launched a movement.
10:28The science has always been there.
10:30The public support is now there.
10:31It really got people to reconsider, like, okay, we can coexist with large predators.
10:38And indeed, it's not just that we can, we have to.
10:41We have to save these cats.
10:44It involves people having the will to do something visionary.
10:57All my work is about coexisting with wildlife.
11:00And there's lots of angles to that, but the biggest is infrastructure, right?
11:05The biggest is animals need to get across roads.
11:10Determined to help them, Beth has spent a decade raising nearly $90 million for a seriously ambitious project.
11:20This is where we're putting a wildlife crossing.
11:25Stretching 64 metres long and 50 metres wide, the Wallace-Anneberg Wildlife Crossing will be the world's biggest bridge for
11:35animals.
11:38This is science come to life.
11:40This is hope.
11:41I've stood here at 2 a.m. and I wouldn't even try to cross.
11:45So you can imagine an animal just isn't going to make it.
11:50You know, the Wallace-Anneberg Wildlife Crossing is truly one of the most significant conservation projects of our time.
11:57Not just because it's going to be the world's largest crossing, but because what it represents, that we are doing
12:03this.
12:03We are making way for wildlife in one of the most populated areas in the country.
12:13The wildlife crossing right at Liberty Canyon couldn't have come at a better time for our population.
12:20Once the wildlife crossing is built, we really only need one mountain lion every two years or so to come
12:27down and successfully breed to make a difference in our small population here.
12:35These are beautiful, iconic, important animals that are a part of California.
12:40The wildlife corridor is being recognized as a key to coexistence, I think, is the future that we should all
12:45work towards.
12:52Maintaining our ecosystems and fully functioning ecosystems are key to the climate crisis.
12:58That is what's going to save us.
13:02How can we stop with one?
13:08The more we build nature into our lives, the more carbon is drawn down.
13:24If we become ecosystem engineers, we can help nature thrive everywhere.
13:33Mangrove forests live along coastlines and can draw down 10 times more carbon than plants on land.
13:46But they're fragile and vulnerable to pollution.
13:54On Hainan Island, China, Donjai mangrove forest is an important nature reserve.
14:06Life's been flourishing here for millions of years, undisturbed.
14:14Until recently.
14:17It's on the doorstep of Haikou City.
14:24In just four decades, it's grown from less than half a million to over two million people.
14:43For 20 years, the river got polluted and flooded and people complaining.
14:49And suddenly, the central television news exposes the bad situation of this polluted river with dead fish.
15:02Konjian Yu is an architect with a radical vision.
15:06In 2015, I was called by the municipal government to fix it.
15:18Overuse of chemicals, overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, you immediately pollute the river.
15:26Konjian believes modern engineering practices make the problem worse.
15:31The engineer came in and said, we can fix it by building concrete wall and by paving the river bed.
15:41Totally wrong.
15:44I keep fighting against the channelization of water waste.
15:52Konjian was inspired by his childhood on the rice terraces of central China.
16:00Konjian Yu is an architect.
16:00It is my cosmo.
16:02It is a holistic, natural basin system.
16:06It is a holistic, natural basin system.
16:07You have to recycle water.
16:09You have to take care of the land.
16:11You don't waste anything because it's a limited territory.
16:16And you must make sure that the whole village can sustain over thousands of years.
16:22and because of the monsoon climate you know how to slow down the water flow so
16:29it is sustainable relationship between mine and nature
16:34the rice paddy landscape is like a giant sponge not just slowing the water but
16:41filtering and cleaning it too and that's become my inspirations for today's
16:49landscape practice
16:59congen has a solution to high coast problem
17:06so the same principle of a sponge to retain water can be applied as a real
17:12landscape in this case you'll see here's a valley
17:17bearing without vegetation without a pond and this water will just blow quickly
17:26all the chemicals to run into the ocean so everything get messed up so in contrast
17:35here the valley is covered with vegetation so it had been transformed into a sponge and the vegetation will remove
17:46all the chemicals
17:47before they run into the ocean so the whole system will become healthy
17:58congen has taken this vision and supersized it
18:06he's turned heiko into a sponge city
18:11and build landscape along the river to give water more space
18:17we create terraces along the river so that there's a runoff
18:21from the rice paddy from the fields from the city from the sewage
18:27will be filtered before running into the river
18:32and we live vegetated or live wild as a river
18:37we introduce mangrove let the tide come in
18:42and because of salt water and the fresh water meet
18:45we create an ideal habitat for mangrove
18:49so the mangrove are very happy here
18:53the water gets clean the fish come back the birds come back
19:02there are even benefits for the city
19:05the mangrove become a filter it's like a sponge or a buffer
19:10mangrove will become a resilient solution to sea level rising and climate change
19:20for congien this is only the start
19:25you should not consider building sponge city as a cost
19:31but consider it as an investment investment for the lasting sustainable human environment
19:43a very dirty polluted concrete river has been transformed into a beautiful lush green corridor
19:56so i have a new term now beyond the sponge city
20:00i call it sponge planet
20:12re-engineering our cities is better for the future of nature
20:19it could even be better for us
20:26freetown in sierra leone west africa
20:29is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to the impacts of climate change
20:38in august 2017
20:41resident idrissa conte experienced just what that means
20:46it started at 2 o'clock
20:48the gun is sick 310
20:50then when the third one happened
20:52it not take five minutes
20:53now we are being stoned by this hill path
20:57so we are getting that sound
20:59by that end of the day now
21:00we are not
21:01it passed 5,000 of houses within this place
21:04where they all go
21:05there are people
21:06there are people
21:08past that front path
21:12there are people
21:12so that morning
21:13where this hill хотел
21:14what happens to cover
21:19the river
21:20the river
21:20the river
21:20the river
21:31many rivers
21:32give your
21:56I was getting ready to go off to the office in Mali when I heard about the landslide in
22:03August of 2017, and the immediate effect of 1,000 people losing their lives. And immediately
22:11there was thinking about how to support Sierra Leone. On hearing the tragic news, senior climate
22:18advisor Eric Hubbard was compelled to make a difference. A few months later, I was here.
22:26Listening, trying to understand how people that live in the community understand risks.
22:36Working with the city council, Eric learned that climate change caused crops to fail, forcing
22:43thousands of people to move here. And this had severe consequences.
22:52Urbanisation in itself is not a problem. But what we have is unsustainable and unplanned.
22:57And what that does is create a level of deforestation that is also unsustainable for the city.
23:05Over two square miles, or 500,000 trees, have been lost annually since 2011.
23:14When you remove trees systematically, you disturb the soil dynamics.
23:24So what happens to the loose soil? First of all, it becomes destabilized. The landslide of 2017 was
23:33directly caused by that level of removal and the destabilization of that slope.
23:41The Freetown tragedy highlights the dangers of removing trees.
23:47But the effects of deforestation spiral further.
23:52What we are probably even more concerned about are the rising temperatures.
24:01All across the city, people are feeling the heat.
24:06When the forest of the city, people are feeling the heat.
24:08Every way they think of safe.
24:10Food stuff, the upline markets, cassava leaf, potato leaf, potato leaf, grain, grain,
24:17fish, planti, cassava, potato, everything.
24:22I get here.
24:24Now this market is what we are seeing.
24:27My name is Aisha Mansaye.
24:30I am the chair lady of Bombay Street Market.
24:33I don't want to pass the idea of it.
24:36It's going to be a breeze, a breeze of heat.
24:39It's going to be a place of heat.
24:46I don't want to pass the food to the plant.
24:49It's the plant.
24:50It's the plant.
24:51It's the plant.
24:52When the plant is out, it's not going to be a little bit.
24:55They'll pass the food to the plant.
24:56They don't want to do this.
25:00It affects them bad.
25:01Some people don't have to pay for it.
25:03If it's not going to be,
25:04they can take it off the table.
25:07If it's not going to stop this heat like that,
25:12in the next five, six years,
25:15it will be worse for us.
25:18Outdoor work is a critical component of how we live.
25:22There will be a point at which it'll be biophysically impossible to do any of those things if we don't
25:29figure out a way, you know, to cool the environment.
25:37Eugenia Carbo is the chief heat officer for Freetown.
25:43Take me on.
25:49You can experience the heat, you can feel the change when you talk to communities and you talk to people,
25:56they can tell you that something has changed.
26:00But in terms of data, that's a challenge, and that's why we did the first heat mapping was conducted in
26:09January, which gave us a baseline of what the current situation is.
26:21Eugenia's data shows Freetown rarely cools down, and the forecast is worrying.
26:30Projection from different studies have predicted that if nothing is done about the situation, temperatures will rise to about 30,
26:4035 degrees by the end of 2030.
26:45This heat, combined with intense humidity, will be unbearable.
26:52A solution is urgently needed.
26:56In our approach, we want to cool the air scale and stabilize slopes.
27:02And what we have found is that trees have the propensity to do both.
27:08As well as preventing landslides, trees can reduce city temperatures by as much as 8 degrees Celsius.
27:17The solution may be to simply plant more, but wherever they grow, they need long-term care.
27:26A survey of 176 new plantations showed that after five years, half the saplings had failed.
27:36Growing trees in a fast-developing city like Freetown seems an impossible challenge.
27:46Freetown to Treetown is a community-led, community-owned, community-driven restoration process.
27:56The Treetown project pays residents like Sina Ture to not just plant trees, but also be their long-term guardians.
28:06Literally, pay to grow.
28:10With this tree planting, I'm able to do something for me and my family, becoming a family man.
28:15And my first payment that I get from this tree planting, I'm able to put my pick in school.
28:22Sina's planting a mix of 52 different species, chosen for their environmental and also economic benefits.
28:32And technology is ensuring as many of these saplings survive as possible.
28:38The corner where you can plant, till next month, the one for you, if you don't pass you, or you're
28:43still in at the same level.
28:45Because the corner where you can be able to know the trees and see the council itself able to monitor
28:53the trees.
28:54And that's not the app.
28:56For that we serve, able to identify the trees.
28:59We said that there is no more job to plant that we left there.
29:03And inside the app, we get the first step.
29:06We said you put your own detail, you the individual, you know the grower.
29:16We've integrated digital technology into the process to ensure that we get a digital footprint of every tree.
29:23And that way we can use the digital space to track the life and the health of the tree.
29:31And so that creates the ability for the city to do something that most cities have never been able to
29:37do.
29:38And that is to guarantee an 80% tree survival rate.
29:43The tracking happens four times a year.
29:46But the critical piece is that we have created a care economy.
29:53Whenever a tree is tagged and in the database, its digital footprint can be traded on the worldwide carbon market.
30:05And thanks to the ongoing monitoring, companies that need to offset their carbon footprint can guarantee the tree's continued health
30:14and lasting value.
30:18So we have built a natural capital investment strategy with corporate and institutional partners that are looking for carbon offsets
30:27that have made net zero pledges, right?
30:31That have supply chains into Sierra Leone.
30:35Carbon offsetting is not a license to emit.
30:39But it could be a short-term solution to some urgent challenges.
30:45The ecosystem services from those trees will really manifest around 2030.
30:53But they have already begun to sequester carbon.
31:07Such big ideas could make a real difference to the people living here.
31:12But that stick can always see, so plant it, plant it, plant it, plant it, it will make sure to
31:16let it go safe.
31:18That stick there, so where they are, that will make the hill, it will get foundation.
31:24So they make, they can plant the trees there, we make on a decision, so, to protect this place.
31:44The legacy of the project could extend far beyond this land, but it will be a protection for the environment.
31:54The legacy of the project could extend far beyond this city.
32:00The thinking was Freetown the Tree Town, and what we like to call Tree Town Africa.
32:05And so we've been doing a lot of work to build out our model.
32:11We've got two more, yeah.
32:12Let's see it.
32:13This has created a context for us to share broadly, step-by-step with cities across Africa and across the
32:20global south, what we've been doing and how we've been doing it.
32:32If we can embrace nature, carbon can reinvigorate our livelihoods.
32:41CHIRPING
32:42MEG
32:45MEG
32:47Come by, come by.
32:49MEG
32:50Away, away, away!
32:52I've been farming here all my lifetime.
32:56MEG
32:57No, Meg, Meg!
32:59MEG
32:59MEG
32:59MEG
33:00Some days you have a lucky day, and other days, you know, it falls apart, like, so...
33:06You could blame it on the man, not the dog.
33:13MEG
33:13My name is John Moran. We're in County Leitrim, Ireland.
33:17Yes, yes.
33:22MEG
33:23I've been farming here all my lifetime.
33:26We have such beauty here on the farm.
33:31When we were young, everything came from the land.
33:38MEG
33:39For farming families like John's, one particular gift from the land made the difference between survival or failure.
33:48MEG
33:48This is me and my dad here in the field with the horse and raker.
33:52Just up there, we cut the peat.
33:54PEAT
33:55It's an area called the Black Mountain. It's on the peak of the mountain.
34:05PEAT is waterlogged, oxygen-depleted soil, filled with slowly decomposing plant material.
34:14PEAT
34:15We had to use the peat for the winter fire.
34:18PEAT was survival in the wintertime to heat the house.
34:22PEAT
34:23It boiled the cicle, it boiled the spuds, it done everything.
34:26There was no gas, there was no oil.
34:28So that was their heat.
34:31PEAT
34:32It was nearly next to food, like, it was so valuable.
34:40PEAT
34:41Small-scale cutting for families has never been the problem.
34:46But large-scale commercial peat extraction has had devastating consequences.
35:03Dr. Gwardenath Chico works with Waterlands, an EU environmental initiative aiming to restore the peatland.
35:13We are going this way.
35:15I think this is the best option available.
35:19No, we're going this way.
35:21No.
35:23No, not that way.
35:27On top of the Black Mountain, Gwardenath can see why degraded peatland is such a problem.
35:33When you start to go into detail and look in the vegetation that you have, the biodiversity that you have,
35:39peatlands are the most important terrestrial carbon storage in the world.
35:43So here we have a very good example of a elderly bog.
35:46In this area you can see the hero of the bog, which is the Spanum Mosque.
35:51It's a really special plant because it trapped the carbon, absorbed the carbon from the atmosphere,
35:55and then it put that there for thousands of years.
36:01Years of accumulated carbon make peat the largest store on land.
36:10But this ancient landscape is extremely fragile.
36:17So here actually we may have 8,000 years of history of carbon accumulation, really slow accumulation on this black
36:25soil that we call peat.
36:28Sadly this area here now is releasing carbon.
36:32That 8,000 years of carbon accumulation is degraded because of natural pressures but also because of the history, the
36:40past history of human activities on here that have an impact on this land and now is promoting this loss
36:46of carbon.
36:49Peatlands cover nearly 3% of land on earth, but 15% of them are degraded, turning them from carbon
36:59sinks to carbon sources.
37:09In Ireland, just a fifth of peatlands remain, but Guadanez is showing the community how to restore them.
37:18So today we're doing reprofiling, so that's the fun part.
37:22Basically we got a historical start cutting where we have a very steep slope.
37:26So we're doing it with the digger today and the farmer is reprofiling that.
37:30So we're making a gentle slope that will allow the vegetation to come back and the water to come back
37:35there.
37:42About...
37:42Yeah, 2 metres.
37:432 metres, yeah.
37:45So by doing this we will make the water more stable, the water table will be more stable and hopefully
37:51it will be better.
37:55What we're trying to do is share the knowledge, so they can then train other people and improve the skills
38:01of the community to do Peatland restoration.
38:03Great.
38:05The better of the condition of the Peatland, the better will be the function of the Peatland and how much
38:11carbon we can trap on that Peatland.
38:14Despite the damage to the environment, commercial peat cutting was only banned in 2022.
38:23But more recent uses of Peatland still impact the carbon cycle, as well as the communities trying to live alongside.
38:33Peatland was always very cheap, so it was bought up a lot of the time by forestry and there's vast
38:41amounts of forestry that's wiped out land because they're being planted with silky spruce.
38:46And the young people are coming back to live on the family farm, and that's my greatest fear, is the
38:54whole history of that land is gone.
38:57Each farm has a name passed down from generation to generation, a name on each field.
39:02And then it's just a waste, it's a wasteland then, because the silky spruce, everything dies under it.
39:12But there's a plan to help communities thrive here, and support the Peatlands too.
39:18That one over there was that?
39:21Gwardeneth is working with local farmer Sean McGovern on a particularly prickly problem.
39:27There's a couple up there, Gwardeneth, I think.
39:29Oh, yeah, yeah, I can see them, yeah.
39:31Conifers are an invasive species. The roots go down into the peat and break up the peat, and that's releasing
39:37the carbon.
39:42It's amazing how fast they grow in a few short years.
39:49We cut the conifers, the roots will die and the carbon will stop being released into the atmosphere and it'll
39:56be sequestered back into the bog.
40:00One less? One less. There's a couple more up here.
40:04I suppose I am a bit different in that I'm one of the few young people that is farming in
40:10the area.
40:11A lot of family farms are closing down.
40:14And plantations are coming in of conifers and forestries.
40:18When forestry goes in, people go out, they don't come back.
40:22I love being from here. It's great to try and keep it alive and keep it going and keep people
40:26in the community.
40:29By restoring peatland for carbon drawdown, Sean is eligible for the community.
40:33He's eligible for an environmental grunt from the government.
40:37The better the condition of his land, the more money he'll be paid.
40:43Now I think we're in a period of transition where attitudes are changing towards peatland and people are realising how
40:49valuable it is.
40:50I think the attitudes of the older generation of farmers are quite impressive in that they are willing to take
40:56on new ideas and new things and try and make it work.
41:07Many people think climate change is a negative term.
41:11I think it's a positive term.
41:16It's an opportunity to work together.
41:18So what we can do is invest in the farms and improve the quality of the land.
41:23It's an opportunity to actually restore our habitats.
41:27And fix together what we have destroyed through the millennia and through the centuries.
41:32We pay for the training and then we pay also for the labour. So you can actually have some people
41:36full-time job, I think.
41:37If you measured the black area, that's bad, it would probably cover about, would it cover about three acres, four
41:46acres?
41:46No, more, more.
41:47More, yeah, yeah.
41:49Yeah, yeah.
41:50So on 2050, I would like to come back here with the farmers and look this habitat and see the
41:56amazing work that we have done with restoration and see how we're trapped in carbon.
42:00And how this habitat has gone from a carbon source at the moment, losing a lot of carbon to an
42:06amazing carbon sink.
42:08Because obviously this is a very big job.
42:10Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
42:14Indeed, it's possible.
42:20It is possible to see a future and live a better life with carbon.
42:26And we can even do this in the face of the most immediate challenge of all.
42:34For at least one month every year, nearly two-thirds of the world's population face a severe scarcity of water.
42:43And supplying enough of it to our growing cities is increasingly difficult.
42:49Even in some of the lushest places.
43:04Rio may be Carnival City.
43:08But beneath the glittering surface, there are big challenges.
43:17Most of its water is supplied by the Guandu River, but heavy industry and intensive farming along its banks have
43:25left the river polluted and silt-ridden.
43:31With the city's water treatment plant working overtime, the cost and reliability of the water supply is a growing problem
43:39for Rio's 14 million residents.
43:47But there's a simple, free solution, right on the doorstep.
43:56It would be difficult to stay here in the valley without water.
44:04Otavio Barros has lived here all his life.
44:08We are in the Valley Encantado.
44:11It's a community that has 28 houses with about 100 residents.
44:18If you want to drink water, you can drink water with water.
44:25It's a very large community that leads to the water.
44:29If you want to drink water and drink water, you can drink water until you get hot.
44:39Then the family of Lula made this little hort,
44:47but there are several things here.
44:50And they use the water to irrigate these plants.
44:56At first, we don't need to do this treatment
44:59because it flora from many places
45:01and we consume it all over the years.
45:03And it's rejuvenating, right?
45:05So we see our friends and colleagues say,
45:08you know this water,
45:08and I think you don't have the age that you're talking about.
45:11I think I'm playing here.
45:12You have more, I don't have less.
45:18The Enchanted Valley Community
45:20has enough clean, free water
45:24because it's alongside a crucial natural resource,
45:30the Tijuka Forest.
45:42Forests are like sponges,
45:44collecting and filtering rainfall.
45:58The Tijuka Forest is a small remnant
46:01of a once giant watershed ecosystem.
46:07The Atlantic Forest.
46:10spanning the length of Brazil,
46:13it was twice the size of Texas.
46:19But today, farming and industry
46:22has made it one of the most depleted ecosystems on Earth.
46:28and the region's water supply is in trouble.
46:39But 60 miles south of Rio, conservationists at Regua Reserve
46:44are piecing this giant watershed back together.
46:54They can only do it with the help of Brazil's largest gardener.
46:59So, they're coming out of the world.
47:00So, here, come on.
47:02We are now at this great moment
47:04of the arrival of another ant
47:05to the project of reintroduction of antas in Rio de Janeiro.
47:09This ant will be the 20th ant of the project.
47:16Professor Maron Gallies is returning tapirs to their natural environment.
47:22Anta is the largest terrestrial mammal in Brazil.
47:26But it was extinct in Rio de Janeiro in 1914.
47:30From 2017, Refauna started the reintroduction of these animals.
47:38The tapirs have come from zoos.
47:42So to prepare them for life in the wild, they'll first spend time in an outdoor enclosure.
47:50And after a month, we're going to leave these animals in the forest.
47:54This couple will be the new couple of ants in nature
47:59to make a natural function of a ant,
48:02which is to eat a fruit and spread its seeds.
48:07Weighing over 300 kilograms, tapirs feast on large fruits and seeds,
48:14which become large trees.
48:17And the larger the tree, the more carbon it can store.
48:33While the tapirs acclimatise,
48:36regular manager Raquel Locke is evaluating
48:39how best to restore the health of the watershed.
48:43We must think of the forest as this live entity,
48:48where every little form of life is necessary
48:52and has to be added when possible.
48:56All that diversity will have communities of insects, animals,
49:03coming back in due time.
49:05Certainly some bigger animals won't be able to come back by themselves.
49:13The more wildlife can be returned,
49:15the better the chance of restoring the watershed.
49:22Having spent a month acclimatising in their enclosure,
49:26the tapirs are ready to go to work in the forest.
49:31The promise of a treat is enough to lure one of them into its transit box.
49:45But the other tapir is not so easily fooled.
49:50The team will need all their skill and a lot of patience to lure this one in.
50:02We are using his favourite foot, but he's too clever.
50:08And just when the team think they've got the better of him.
50:15We decided to try it later because it's too difficult.
50:21So maybe he can get it then.
50:27After some time, and a fresh bag of treats,
50:31they're ready for one more attempt.
50:50Relocating large animals is ambitious, expensive work.
50:56And making projects like this happen means we must all make some tough choices.
51:03The biggest financial backer is a fossil fuel company.
51:10It seems a bit contradictory to receive the financial support from a petrol company
51:18for a natural environment.
51:22It's a possible way to protect the carbon dioxide.
51:27And so, we have to do this in the world.
51:36And we have to do this in the world.
51:39Even now, we can't wait for the energy transition to have money to finance projects of restoration
51:48of ecosystems.
51:50The urgency is now, and we need to regenerate forests, we need to have fauna in the forest
51:56to help in this regeneration.
52:18I'm happy.
52:20It's nice to see all the stages and everything for this.
52:30The tapirs will expand the watershed, and Rio could save nearly $80 million in water
52:38to treatment costs.
52:42Abundant nature benefits everyone.
52:46If we don't have the forest, it's already.
52:48I'm sure we'll have a big dry here.
52:53So we're part of nature, and nature is part of us.
53:05All across our planet, people are making changes to build a future with nature.
53:14Without people's involvement, care of a conservation project, it just wouldn't work.
53:21The more people involved, the better for nature.
53:26You have to take care of this globe.
53:28A nature-based solution can heal the planet.
53:36Just imagine what could be achieved if every one of us was part of this.
53:48A global movement for nature.
53:54If we want to have a flourishing future and be thriving in 2050 and beyond, we have to do this.
54:03We have to make changes.
54:05We have to make a trade-off.
54:07A trade-off doesn't necessarily mean we lose.
54:09And this kind of dynamic will actually win.
54:13And that's all I got.
54:19The brighter the future of nature.
54:25The brighter the future for us all.
54:29The brighter the future for us all.
54:37Last scene.
54:39The middle of the future.
54:41The brighter the future for us all.
55:10Transcription by CastingWords
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