Leading academics Joe Smith and Vince Gauci discuss some of the key issues highlighted in the film.
Loess is a thin soil. When it is dry it is whisked up into great sand storms, which blight Beijing and other cities. As part of the restoration project farmers were paid to keep their cattle off the hillsides. The results are astounding, the farmers now grow high value cash crops and the air is cleaner.
The land of Tigrai a village in Ethiopia has been degraded by centuries of subsistence farming. Eroded gulley's of dry mud show the force of floods that poured down the hillside when the rain came. Once the floods had gone, drought followed. Now after five years these once barren gulley's are green and rich with vegetation.
Rwanda is the watershed for the White Nile and Congo river, but until now the rain water ran straight off the hillsides, eroding soil and famine became a possibility. Because the government intervened early, little serious erosion occurred, the hydro-electric dams are filling up and the hillside is revegetated.
Alex Mulisa from the Poverty Environment Initiative talks about the significance of Rwanda to the survival of the river Nile and how acting locally has given Rwandans hope.
Three generations of the Wang family have harvested peanuts, which grown among their carrots. Their income has risen four fold. They grow nine different fruits, vegetables and cereals. It's no longer a matter of survival, as they now make money from their produce.
President Kagame's looks at the way forward, 'there is no excuse for anybody to continue to cause damage to our planet'. Presidents Kagame's message is that people are the solution and that people who pollute more, pay more, and people who pollute less are rewarded.
Professor Legesse Negash reveals how restoring Ethiopia's mountains is of regional, national and international importance.
Professor Legesse Negash shows John Liu how in five years he has managed to turn an old tarmaced highway into rich fertile land with organic soil and natural vegetation.