Living Planet

We live on a watery planet — nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface is underwater. As climate change raises temperatures, water is being pushed in new and more extreme directions. But are there ways we could use water to our advantage, environmentally? This week, we hear from communities trying to push back the seas and others suffering from diminishing water supplies.

This week, we bring you an episode of DW's On the Green Fence, hosted by Neil King. In it, he heads to the forest in search of urgent answers on how to save them. Around the globe, climate change and severe droughts have wrought havoc on forests far and wide. As forest dieback increases, even young trees are dying. So what happens if we lose our forests? And what we can do to stop it?

In this special episode, we reflect on a year of environmental reporting that’s taken us from the northern stretches of oil-producing Russia to the frog-filled forests of Australia. We listen back to snippets of our favorite stories and interviews, reliving the most important environmental events of 2021, along with the funny, weird and mind-blowing moments on Living Planet in the year gone by.

How should we construct our houses and cities to better withstand a changing climate? This week we explore building strategies that reduce emissions and deal with new climate realities. From the promise of hydrogen fueling neighborhoods and businesses, to towns and cities that are using flooding to their advantage, we dig into how we can better design the places we live.

From new words in the dictionary to new migration patterns for plants, animals and humans, we dig into ways that climate change is transforming more than just the weather. We also take a look at one tight-lipped contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that is rarely talked about, despite being one of the world's top emitters.

Today on the show, we climb up into the Scottish Highlands in search of the country's last patches of snow. We also talk about how the world's waste problem could be solved if companies were responsible for repairing the products they sell and cleaning up the rubbish from packaging they produce. And we hear from a group of women in India taking trash clean-up into their own hands.

We head to the Comoros Islands, where the world's demand for ylang ylang oil is leaving the region bare and its makers shorthanded. And hear why environmental groups and politicians in Barcelona are angry over plans to attract more tourists. Plus, we speak with a journalist who has investigated the influence of the fossil fuel industry in American schools' climate change education.

We talk about how to make COP26 goals a reality, get a glimpse into the future of green tech-powered living in Sweden, marvel at meadow-made cheese in Italy, and speak science to power to save the Arctic.

Delegates are running out of time to agree on how to keep global temperatures in check at the UN climate conference in Glasgow. Young people especially are piling on the pressure for action. We hear from DW reporters covering the event and get their impressions. And in Senegal, emissions reductions come too late for the survival of one coastal community already dealing with rising sea levels.

This week, we're talking about the biggest environment event of the year – the global climate conference known as COP26. We hear from one of our reporters who's there in Glasgow covering the policy tussles and from an activist who traveled there from Nigeria to make her voice heard, along with many other young people. We also take a look at how climate change is affecting people's lives right now.