In Part 3 of this episode at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany, we will hear conversations between John Liu and folks who are working to restore degraded forest lands around the world through research, international business, and volunteer initiatives.
John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonand Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. You can find his films and research papers at knaw.academia.edu/JohnDLiu
Patrick Worms is President of the European Agroforestry Federation and Senior Science Advisor for the World Agroforestry Centre, a research organization that studies the benefits of trees in agicultural systems and helps farmers to implement their findings.
Pieter van Midwoud is the Tree Planting Officer for Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees. As people use the search engine, their counter shows how many trees they are responsible for purchasing, and Pieter is the one who connects with reforestation projects around the world to get the them planted.
You can set Ecosia as your default search engine or try it out at ecosia.org.
Paul Hol is the Executive Director of Form International, a forest management and services company that manages 27,000 hectares of sustainable forest plantations, forest restortion, nature conservation, and agroforestry in Ghana and Tanzania. They work to restore degraded forest lands and local livelihoods while creating models that demonstrate that trees can be a good investment.
Aviram Rozin is the Founder and International Director of Sadhana Forest, a vegan volunteer-based organization focused on creating long-term plant-based food security through environmental restoration. Globally, there are 133 million malnourished people living in arid areas who have private land but are not using it to grow food due to lack of water and agricultural knowledge. Sadhana Forest trains local people in India, Haiti and Kenya in the use of water-saving irrigation techniques and provides them with free seedlings to plant drought-resistant, indigenous, food-bearing trees around their homes.
Aviram is also a board member of the Foundation for the World Education and the first council member from India in the Global Restoration Council.
Sadh Guru is a mystic, best-selling author, and founder of the Isha Foundation. He has inspired a people’s movement in India that has planted over 32 million trees.
You can find the entire conversation between Sadh Guru and Eric Solheim, Environment Director for the U.N. here.
Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I’m using in the intro and ending. You can find his amazing nature art at mdigiorgio.com . Mike says that if you’d like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find his email on his website and he can mail you a CD.