On International Women’s Day (8 March) each year, we honor 16 women who are combating the climate crisis and restoring the Earth through science, finance, policymaking, art, activism, Indigenous rights, and many other professions and passions.

In this episode, we speak with three women honored in our 2022 list: Musonda Mumba, director for The Rome Centre for Sustainable Development of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Katharine Hayhoe, a prolific writer and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy; and young conservationist Analí Bustos. These three remarkable leaders gave us insights into the unique role of women in strengthening climate commitments, raising public awareness on climate issues, growing the reach of science, and conducting conservation and restoration on the ground across the globe.

Like many previous pandemics, the COVID-19 pandemic most likely started when a new coronavirus crossed over from wildlife to humans. Unfortunately, our destruction of the planet is causing new disease outbreaks, and we can expect many more pandemics to come unless we change our ways and build a more harmonious relationship with nature.

This week’s episode is a throwback to April 2020, when we spoke with two top experts on the spread of zoonotic diseases about how biodiversity loss causes pandemics – and what we can do about it.

Forests can help us solve the climate, hunger and cost of living crises, but they’re rapidly vanishing just when we need them the most.

Just under a third of the planet is forested, but that figure is diminishing by around 10 million hectares each year. Not only does deforestation put most of the world’s mammal, bird and amphibian species under threat, but it’s also releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and putting us at greater risk of another pandemic.

In this episode, originally aired on the International Day of Forests in March 2021, we bring together three of the world’s leading forestry experts, Wanjira Mathai, Robert Nasi and Mette Wilkie, to discuss the state of the world’s forests and how we can continue to protect and restore them.

In this episode, we discuss some of the world’s most remote communities: the isolated peoples of the Amazon rainforest.

Most of the Amazon’s some 400 Indigenous groups have made contact with the outside world over the course of the past five centuries, but a rare few remain off the map, living in almost incomprehensible harmony with the rainforest. Yet the expansion of human activity in the Amazon puts these groups at risk of annihilation, threatening not only the survival of their peoples but also their wisdom, mysticism, languages, and unparalleled knowledge of the forest’s species and cycles.

As the rainforest shrinks, can its isolated peoples somehow stay protected? In this GLF Live episode, originally aired in September 2021, renowned ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin takes us into his 30-year career of experiences living with Amazonians and studying their traditional plant uses to unravel this question and look at what the future could hold for some of the most ancient cultures on Earth.

Listen to Mark’s podcast, Plants of the Gods: https://markplotkin.com/podcast/ 

The COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest in a long line of pandemics that started with a virus spilling over from animals to humans. But what if we could make this pandemic the last – by identifying all of the world’s viruses before they pose a threat?

One project aims to do just that. The Global Virome Project, a global leader in pandemic research, has estimated that all future viral threats could be identified at a cost of around USD 4 billion. But where should this funding come from, and what else needs to be done, from international collaboration to the restructuring of health systems and the conservation of natural habitats and species?

In this episode, originally aired in December 2020, we spoke with Jonna Mazet, who co-leads the Global Virome Project, about the financial, scientific, governance and ecological measures needed to prevent the next pandemic.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ukraine produces about 10% of global wheat exports and 14% of corn exports, in addition to about half of all sunflower oil and a substantial amount of barley and fertilizers. Due to the Russian invasion, much of these supplies are now trapped in both countries, driving up food prices and upending our global food system.

This episode, originally aired live in March 2022, brought in leading food expert and GAIN executive director Lawrence Haddad to share his expectations and predictions for how the unfolding war will affect global food supplies, nutrition and security in the short and long term.