All language subtitles for RTE.The.Future.of.Nature.4of4.Humans.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

Life.

The closer you look,

the more mysterious it seems.

We can't see
the invisible forces at work.

But what if we could?

It's time to look at our home...

...in a whole new way.

Imagine carbon
cycling through nature.

It's one of the building blocks
of life...

...and it's stored in our forests...

...oceans...

...and grasslands

on an incredible scale.

But we've released too much
of it into the atmosphere,

risking our future.

We CAN halt emissions

and draw that carbon back down.

And our best ally for that

is nature.

Restoring it to abundance
is the biggest challenge of our time.

But we can do it.

If the future of nature
looked brighter,

so could the future for us all.

(clock ticking)

Imagine a world
where nature thrives...

...ecosystems are healthy...

...and the carbon cycle is stable.

Paradise.

If we want to live here too,

we must find ways
to be a force for good

throughout the natural world.

Maple and Willow
were found five days

after their mom
was found dead on a highway

here on the peninsula in California.

Dr Alex Herman works
at Oakland Zoo Veterinary Hospital.

She's overseeing the arrival
of a pair of orphaned mountain lions.

When they came in, they were tiny,
about four to six weeks old.

They were very hungry,
very dehydrated.

Willow very soon after that
developed pneumonia

just from the trauma
of the whole situation.

She was really, really sick.

We were very concerned
that we could lose her.

Thanks to the team's expertise,

Maple and Willow have both survived.

It's really nice to see them

moving around, climbing, playing.

These kittens may be safe,

but they're not the first
the team has rescued.

Here at the Oakland Zoo,

we've treated
26 orphaned mountain lions

since our program began in 2018.

Mountain lions being hit by cars
is a common, big problem.

The future
for these youngsters is limited.

None of the orphaned mountain
lions that we've seen so far

here at the Oakland Zoo
have been able to be rewilded.

They need to stay in captivity

because they're just too young
when they lose their mother.

So normally they'll hunt with
their mom, be mentored, taught,

protected by their mom
until they're two years old.

Because their mom was killed,
they've lost that opportunity.

In the wild,

mountain lions are found
from Canada to southern Chile.

They're so widespread,
they have different names -

pumas, cougars,
even Florida panthers.

But the more their ranges
overlap with ours,

the more they hit a dead end.

So the freeways in our study area
are extremely busy,

some of the busiest in the world.

The 101 Freeway sees
over 350,000 vehicles a day.

Roads in our area
are definitely a deathtrap

for our local mountain lions.

Jeff Sikich
and the National Park Service team

have been studying
mountain lions here in LA

for over 20 years.

It's been a tough ride.

Last year we had 15 get
struck and killed by vehicles.

Some of our animals
that we've been following,

we mark as kittens
at three weeks of age.

I have followed them
their whole life.

And to see these animals, you know,
struck by a vehicle is just awful.

LA may seem an unusual place
to find North America's biggest cats,

but they're smart and stealthy.

We rarely get sightings
of these animals,

and it really speaks
to their elusive nature.

In this environment
we have here,

they can be 20 meters in front
of me and we won't see them.

So we do a lot of looking for signs.

So looking for tracks, um, scat.

And then also our greatest tool,
we use our remote cameras

in areas where we think we might get
a mountain lion to walk by.

And we have been studying them
by capturing them,

placing GPS radio collars
on individuals.

By charting the mountain
lions' movements,

Jeff can see the limits
of their territory.

So we're just north
of the 101 Freeway

right at Liberty Canyon.

This is a natural pinch point
for them,

this natural habitat
on either side

leading up to the freeway
right at Liberty Canyon.

This human barrier

is having a devastating impact
on the population.

These mountain lions
aren't crossing the freeways often,

and this has led to very low genetic
diversity in our population

and also close inbreeding.

And recently we've started
to see the physical effects

of that low genetic diversity
in our population.

We have documented mountain lions
with these physical abnormalities,

um, a distal tail kink.

And we've also seen some
reproductive abnormalities as well.

The longer they stay trapped,

the bleaker their future.

If inbreeding depression

sets in to our Santa Monica
mountain lion population,

there's pretty much a 99% chance
of extinction within 50 years.

We get asked often, well,

what if we lose mountain lions
from this area? What will happen?

And we like to say that's an
experiment we don't wanna conduct.

You know, the mountain lion
being an umbrella species,

that if mountain lions
are doing good in an area,

if that population is healthy,

that equals healthy prey populations

and a healthy ecosystem overall.

The more nature there is,

the more effective the ecosystem is

at drawing down carbon.

But remove the apex predator,

and it can fail.

Mountain lions are facing
a disastrous future.

They need a hero.

Ten years ago,
conservationist Beth Pratt

was inspired by the tale
of a mountain lion living in LA.

I read about P-22,

a mountain lion shows up
in Griffith Park,

and I was like, is that true?!

You know, is there really
a mountain lion in LA?

He had to cross two of the
busiest freeways in the nation,

and then he ends up on a
dead-end area of eight square miles,

the smallest known home range
ever recorded

for a male mountain lion.

And he makes it.

In fact, he became a celebrity
in a land of celebrities.

We had the P-22 Day Festival,
a festival for a mountain lion.

15,000 people showed up
to honour this cat.

So I think P-22 has really evoked
something magical in us

that even in the second-largest
city in the country,

nature had not been fully banished.

If a mountain lion could live

under the Hollywood sign
in the middle of LA,

what else was possible?

Beth is part of a campaign

that's aiming to change the fate
of all mountain lions.

It's launched a movement.

The science has always been there.
The public support is now there.

It really got people
to reconsider, like,

"OK, we can coexist
with large predators,"

and indeed, it's not just
that we can. We have to.

We have to save these cats.

It involves people having
the will to do something visionary.

All my work is about
coexisting with wildlife,

and there's lots of angles to that,

but the biggest
is infrastructure, right?

The biggest is, animals
need to get across roads.

Determined to help them,

Beth has spent a decade
raising nearly $90 million

for a seriously ambitious project.

This is where we're putting
a wildlife crossing.

Stretching 64 metres long
and 50 metres wide,

the Wallis Annenberg
Wildlife Crossing

will be the world's biggest
bridge for animals.

This is science come to life.
This is hope.

I've stood here at 2am
and I wouldn't even try to cross.

So you can imagine an animal
just isn't gonna make it.

You know, the Wallis
Annenberg Wildlife Crossing

is truly one of the most significant
conservation projects of our time,

not just 'cause it's gonna be
the world's largest crossing,

but because what it represents -
that we are doing this.

We are making way for wildlife

in one of the most populated
areas in the country.

The wildlife crossing
right at Liberty Canyon

couldn't have come
at a better time for our population.

Once the wildlife crossing is built,
we really only need

one mountain lion
every two years or so

to come down and successfully breed

to make a difference
in our small population here.

These are beautiful, iconic,
important animals

that are a part of California.

The wildlife corridor is being
recognised as a key to coexistence,

I think is the future
that we should all work towards.

Maintaining our ecosystems,

and fully functioning ecosystems,

are key to the climate crisis.

That is what's gonna save us.

How can we stop with one?

The more we build nature
into our lives,

the more carbon is drawn down.

If we become ecosystem engineers,

we can help nature thrive everywhere.

Mangrove forests
live along coastlines

and can draw down ten times
more carbon than plants on land.

But they're fragile,

and vulnerable to pollution.

On Hainan Island, China,

Dongzhai mangrove forest
is an important nature reserve.

Life's been flourishing here
for millions of years,

undisturbed -

until recently.

It's on the doorstep of Haikou city.

In just four decades,

it's grown
from less than half a million

to over two million people.

Kongjian Yu is an architect
with a radical vision.

Kongjian believes modern engineering
practices make the problem worse.

Kongjian was inspired
by his childhood

on the rice terraces
of central China.

The rice paddy landscape
is like a giant sponge,

not just slowing the water,

but filtering it and cleaning it too.

Kongjian has the solution
to Haikou's problem.

Kongjian has taken this vision

and supersized it.

He's turned Haikou
into a sponge city...

There are even benefits for the city.

For Kongjian, this is only the start.

Re-engineering our cities

is better for the future of nature.

It could even be better for us.

Freetown in Sierra Leone,
West Africa,

is one of the most vulnerable
places in the world

to the impacts of climate change.

In August 2017,

resident Idrissa Conteh

experienced just what that means.

Everyone lost someone.

I was getting ready
to go off to the office in Mali

when I heard about the landslide
in August of 2017,

and the immediate effect
of 1,000 people losing their lives,

and immediately there was thinking
about how to support Sierra Leone.

On hearing the tragic news,

senior climate adviser Eric Hubbard
was compelled to make a difference.

A few months later, I was here.

Listening, trying to understand

how people that live
in the community

understand risks.

Working with the city council,

Eric learned that climate change
caused crops to fail,

forcing thousands of people
to move here.

And this had severe consequences.

Urbanisation in itself
is not a problem,

but what we have is
unsustainable and unplanned.

And what that does is create
a level of deforestation

that is also unsustainable
for the city.

Over two square miles,

or 500,000 trees,

have been lost annually since 2011.

When you remove trees
systematically,

you disturb the soil dynamics.

So what happens to the loose soil?

First of all,
it becomes destabilised.

The landslide of 2017

was directly caused

by that level of removal and
the destabilisation of that slope.

The Freetown tragedy

highlights the dangers
of removing trees.

But the effects
of deforestation spiral further.

What we are probably
even more concerned about

are the rising temperatures.

All across the city,
people are feeling the heat.

Outdoor work is
a critical component of how we live.

There will be a point at which

it will be biophysically impossible
to do any of those things

if we don't figure out a way,
you know, to cool the environment.

Eugenia Kargbo is the Chief
Heat Officer for Freetown.

You can experience the heat,

you can feel the change
when you talk to communities

and you talk to people,

they can tell you
that something has changed.

But in terms of data,
that's a challenge.

And that's why we did
the first heat mapping,

was conducted in January,

which gave us a baseline
of what the current situation is.

Eugenia's data shows
Freetown rarely cools down,

and the forecast is worrying.

Projection from different studies

have predicted that if nothing
is done about the situation,

temperatures will rise to about
30, 35 degrees by the end of 2030.

This heat,
combined with intense humidity,

will be unbearable.

A solution is urgently needed.

In our approach,

we want to cool the air-scape
and stabilise slopes,

and what we have found

is that trees have
the propensity to do both.

As well as preventing landslides,

trees can reduce city temperatures
by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

The solution may be
to simply plant more,

but wherever they grow,
they need long-term care.

A survey of 176 new plantations

showed that after five years,
half the saplings had failed.

Growing trees in a
fast-developing city like Freetown

seems an impossible challenge.

"Freetown The Treetown"
is a community-led,

community-owned, community-driven

restoration process.

The Treetown project pays residents
like Sinneh Turay

to not just plant trees,

but also be their
long-term guardians.

Literally pay to grow.

Sinneh's planting
a mix of 52 different species

chosen for their environmental
and also economic benefits.

And technology is ensuring as many of
these saplings survive as possible.

We've integrated digital
technology into the process

to ensure that we get a digital
footprint of every tree,

and that way we can use
the digital space

to track the life
and the health of the tree.

And so that creates the ability
for the city to do something

that most cities
have never been able to do,

and that is to guarantee
an 80% tree survival rate.

The tracking happens
four times a year,

but the critical piece is
that we have created a care economy.

Whenever a tree is tagged
and in the database,

its digital footprint can be traded
on the worldwide carbon market.

And thanks to the ongoing monitoring,

companies that need to offset
their carbon footprint

can guarantee
the tree's continued health

and lasting value.

So we have built a natural capital
investment strategy

with corporate
and institutional partners

that are looking for carbon offsets.

That are... That have made
net zero pledges, right?

That have supply chains
into Sierra Leone.

Carbon offsetting
is not a licence to emit,

but it could be a short-term solution
to some urgent challenges.

The ecosystem services
from those trees

will really manifest around 2030.

But they have already begun
to sequester carbon.

Such big ideas could make a real
difference to the people living here.

The legacy of the project
could extend far beyond this city.

The thinking
was Freetown The Treetown

and what we like to call
Treetown Africa.

And so we've been doing a lot
of work to build out our model.

- We've got one over here.
- I see it.

This has created a context for us
to share broadly, step by step,

with cities across Africa
and across the Global South

what we've been doing
and how we've been doing it.

If we can embrace nature,

carbon can reinvigorate
our livelihoods.

(bleating)

(whistling)

Meg!

Come by. Come by.

Away, away, away.

No, Meg. Meg!

There, sit.

For farming families like John's,

one particular gift from the land

made the difference
between survival or failure.

Peat is waterlogged,
oxygen-depleted soil

filled with slowly decomposing
plant material.

Small-scale cutting for families
has never been the problem.

But large-scale
commercial peat extraction

has had devastating consequences.

Dr Guaduneth Chico
works with WaterLANDS,

an EU environmental initiative
aiming to restore the peatland.

On top of the Black Mountain,

Guaduneth can see why degraded
peatland is such a problem.

Years of accumulated carbon
make peat the largest store on land.

But this ancient landscape
is extremely fragile.

Peatlands cover
nearly 3% of land on Earth,

but 15% of them are degraded,

turning them from carbon sinks...

...to carbon sources.

In Ireland,
just a fifth of peatlands remain.

But Guaduneth's showing
the community how to restore them.

- About...
- Yeah, two meters.

Two meters. Yeah.

Despite the damage
to the environment,

commercial peat-cutting
was only banned in 2022.

But more recent uses of peatland

still impact the carbon cycle,

as well as the communities
trying to live alongside.

But there's a plan to help
communities thrive here -

and support the peatlands, too.

- That one over there?
- Yeah.

Guaduneth is working
with local farmer Sean McGovern

on a particularly prickly problem.

There's a couple up there,
Guaduneth, I think.

Yeah, yeah. I can see them. Yeah.

No, no.

There's no chance on that one.

It's amazing how fast
they grow in a few short years.

- One less.
- One less.

There's a couple more up here.

By restoring peatland
for carbon drawdown,

Sean is eligible for an environmental
grant from the government.

The better the condition of his land,

the more money he'll be paid.

So what we can do is,
you know, invest on the farms

and improve the quality of the land.

We train you...

We pay for the training and
then we pay also for the labour.

So you can actually have
some people full-time job, I think.

If you measured the black area,
where that's bad,

it would probably cover about...

It would cover about
three acres, four acres?

- Oh, more, more.
- More.

- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, would it, yeah...

...to do this because obviously
this is a very big job.

Oh, yeah. Of course.

It is possible to see a future
and live a better life with carbon.

And we can even do this

in the face of the most
immediate challenge of all.

For at least one month every year,

nearly two-thirds
of the world's population

face a severe scarcity of water,

and supplying enough of it
to our growing cities

is increasingly difficult...

...even in some
of the lushest places.

Rio may be Carnival City,

but beneath the glittering surface
there are big challenges.

Most of its water is supplied
by the Guandu River,

but heavy industry
and intensive farming along its banks

have left the river polluted
and silt-ridden.

With the city's water treatment
plant working overtime,

the cost and reliability
of the water supply

is a growing problem
for Rio's 14 million residents.

But there's a simple, free solution

right on the doorstep.

Otavio Barros
has lived here all his life.

The Enchanted Valley community
has enough clean, free water

because it's alongside
a crucial natural resource.

The Tijuca forest.

Forests are like sponges,

collecting and filtering rainfall.

The Tijuca Forest is a small remnant
of a once-giant watershed ecosystem.

The Atlantic Forest.

Spanning the length of Brazil,
it was twice the size of Texas.

But today, farming and industry

has made it one of the most
depleted ecosystems on Earth.

And the region's water supply
is in trouble.

But 60 miles south of Rio,

conservationists at REGUA Reserve

are piecing this giant
watershed back together.

They can only do it with the help
of Brazil's largest gardener.

Professor Maron Galliez

is returning tapirs
to their natural environment.

The tapirs have come from zoos,

so to prepare them
for life in the wild,

they'll first spend time
in an outdoor enclosure.

Weighing over 300 kilogrammes,

tapirs feast on large fruits
and seeds,

which become large trees,

and the larger the tree,

the more carbon it can store.

While the tapirs acclimatise,

REGUA manager Raquel Locke

is evaluating how best to restore
the health of the watershed.

We must think of the forest
as this live entity,

where every little form
of life is necessary

and has to be added when possible.

All that diversity will have
communities of insects,

animals coming back in due time.

Certainly some bigger animals

won't be able to come back
by themselves.

The more wildlife can be returned,

the better the chance
of restoring the watershed.

Having spent a month
acclimatising in their enclosure,

the tapirs are ready
to go to work in the forest.

The promise of a treat
is enough to lure one of them

into its transit box.

But the other tapir
is not so easily fooled.

The team will need all their skill,

and a lot of patience,
to lure this one in.

We are using his favourite foods,

but he's too clever.

And just when the team think
they've got the better of him...

We decided to try it later
because it's too difficult.

So maybe he can get in then.

After some time,
and a fresh bag of treats,

they're ready for one more attempt.

I'm relieved now.

Relocating large animals
is ambitious, expensive work.

And making projects like this happen

means we must
all make some tough choices.

Refauna's biggest financial backer
is a fossil fuel company.

I'm happy.

It's nice to see all the stages

and everything for this.

The tapirs will expand the watershed,

and Rio could save nearly $80 million
in water treatment costs.

Abundant nature benefits everyone.

All across our planet,

people are making changes
to build a future with nature.

Without people's involvement,
care of a conservation project,

it just wouldn't work.

The more people involved,
the better for nature.

Just imagine
what could be achieved...

...if every one of us
was part of this.

A global movement for nature.

If we want to have
a flourishing future

and be thriving in 2050 and beyond,

we have to do this.
We have to make changes.

We have to make a trade-off.

The trade-off doesn't
necessarily mean we lose,

and this kind of dynamic
will actually win.

That's all I got.

The brighter the future of nature...

...the brighter the future
for all of us.