Living Planet

This week on Living Planet, 21-year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney from the Tla'amin Nation shares her perspective on the current biodiversity summit in Montreal and the shortcomings of such UN conferences. And in Namibia, fall-out from a scandal known as 'Fishrot' — where fishing rights were illegally given to an Icelandic company — is still rocking the country, its government and its fishermen.

Do you really know what happens to the stuff you throw away? In this episode, we follow the dirty trail of British waste, from the moment households toss their trash into the wheelie bin and diligently sort their recyclable goods, to where it actually ends up — revealing shocking illegal dumping and the farce of recycling.

As energy prices go sky-high this winter, any source of affordable energy may seem like a welcome reprieve. But does it make sense to be growing crops for fuel that could otherwise be food? This is the conundrum of biofuels. Today on Living Planet, we travel to the US, Kenya and Germany to explore biofuels – how they came about, their promises and drawbacks, and why it is we're still using them.

As the dust settles on COP27 climate talks in Egypt, we reflect on what was and what wasn't achieved to help the world avert catastrophic warming. But as we hear from people living in South Africa's coal belt — we’re not just headed for a world made worse by burning fossil fuels, we're living in one. And we meet the seed savers taking matters into their own hands — one tasty bean at a time.

In this special episode, five experts talk about how the world might pay for the harm that's been inflicted on poorer nations by burning fossil fuels. Director of the Loss & Damage Youth Coalition Ineza Umuhozo Grace, climate economist Gernot Wagner, the Dominican Republic's Vice Minister of Climate Change Milagros De Camps, and two International Red Cross representatives share their insights.

What responsibility do rich, high-emitting countries have towards poorer, low-emitting countries? And will western citizens commit to coughing up for the climate crisis? As the world gathers in Egypt to hash out a plan to limit warming, we ask some important questions in today's show. Plus, how Cameroon is faring amid the energy crisis and what it means to ignore climate change when city-building.

This week on Living Planet, we're tackling fire and ice. As wildfires get worse in a warming world, we venture to the Western United States to hear what it's like to live with this smoky season every year. And ahead of the annual UN climate conference, we speak to Arctic ecologist, Sue Natali, about thawing permafrost and just how much it has in store for climate change.

The fashion industry has a lot to answer for — in 2018, it was responsible for 4% of the globe's total emissions. We delve into the world of fast fashion spurred on by social media and find out what happens to clothing you buy online and return. And in the Himalayas, we travel the historic Silk Road to learn what has become of the wool and textile industries that once sustained empires.

We hear how human activity transformed the mighty Araguari River in Brazil. We also visit Uganda's capital, which has been designated as a 'Tree City of the World', but also deals with extreme air pollution — are trees enough to clean its air? And speaking of trees... in South Africa, there's one so big, it's home to hundreds of birds and bats, and it even houses a cave within it!

We take a listen to how the climate crisis is affecting people's lives in different parts of Africa — from profound societal impacts in Maasai communities in Kenya, to the mental health challenges people are enduring in South Africa, to threatened tropical peatland ecosystems in the Cuvette Centrale basin in the DRC.