Global Us: What connects us all

Hunting and illegal trading pose a threat to hawksbill sea turtles on the Solomon Islands. Local women are working together to protect the turtles' breeding grounds in the country's first-ever national park.

Meet Jessica Achieng from Nairobi, Kenya. She enjoys going to school and hopes to become a musician.

Yields are falling in major cocoa exporter Ghana. Small farmers don't cut down old trees to grow new ones. Instead they encroach on surrounding forest. A Dutch organization is helping them to live and work sustainably.

The town of Spangdahlem in Germany's Eifel Mountains has been a major US Air Force base since the 1950s. That's weighed heavily on the environment. Germany and the US have so far avoided the problem - worried about the costs involved.

An area which ran along the Iron Curtain during the Cold War has become rich in flora and fauna. Efforts are now underway to protect the "Green Belt" by creating a national park.

The Sharr mountain range lies near what was once the Iron Curtain on a ribbon of land designated the European Green Belt. But over the past two decades, threats to this scenic wilderness - such as farming and construction - have been mounting.

The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) is based in Mpigi, near the Ugandan capital. With a focus on social and environmental initiatives, the organization aims to help young people turn their dreams into reality.

According to the FAO, every year around 1.3 billion tons of food are discarded. At the same time, more than 820 million people worldwide suffer from hunger. A US company has developed a liquid which can extend the shelf-life of fruit and vegetables.

Shoes, bags, armbands - Adi Reza Nughoro in the city of Bandung creates the raw material for such products from agricultural waste. His startup Mycotech makes leather from mushrooms. It’s easy on the environment and doesn’t involve killing animals.

The spectacled bear is native to the Andes. But poaching, rapid urban growth and increasing deforestation in Colombia have been forcing the animal to look for new habitats.