Insects are the quiet engineers of the environment - pollinating our plants, balancing our ecosystems and clearing up our waste. Some insects can digest plastic, and they play a vital role in crop production. At the same time their populations are under threat from pesticides, habitat loss and climate change. In this programme, Helen Czerski and Tom Heap explore the largely ignored world of insects. Could they be the answer to some of the environmental problems we have created? Would eating them help lower our carbon footprint, and will the western world ever overcome its squeamishness to the idea? Helen and Tom explore the weird and wonderful world of insects with a panel of experts.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

From ancient Rome onwards our civilisation has been built on concrete. It's incredibly useful but emits huge quantities of carbon dioxide in its production. What are the alternatives? Tom Heap and Helen Czerski explore the issues with a panel of experts: Professor Colin Hills from Greenwich University, Smith Mordak Chief Executive of UK Green Building Council, and structural engineer Roma Agrawal, who worked on the construction of London's tallest building, the Shard.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Researcher: Harrison Jones

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

The islands of the Pacific Ocean are on the frontline of climate change. Sea level rise will eventually erase some from the map and make many more uninhabitable. Tom Heap and Helen Czerski hear from the people of the region and explore its stunning wildlife both above and below the waves.

With them in the studio are Professor Tammy Horton from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and BBC One Show naturalist, Mike Dilger. Tammy studies- and names- some of the thousands of creatures recently discovered living at depths of 4-6km in the Pacific's Clarion Clipperton Zone, while Mike has just returned from the bird-watching trip of a lifetime, spotting the extraordinary Birds of Paradise of Papua New Guinea.

Samoan climate journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson joins in the conversation to consider how Pacific islanders respond to the prevailing narratives around climate change. She says that the islanders have no wish to be presented as victims and are well placed to stand up for their rights in international climate negotiations and to actively lead efforts to maintain their rich cultures, despite the rising tides.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Researcher: Harrison Jones

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

The shipping industry is an enormous source of pollution. Ships burn dirty fuel oil that helps contribute to the industry's global carbon emissions and even in port they continue to belch out noxious fumes that pollute the air of many of our major port cities. Tom Heap and Helen Czerski search for the solutions, from a return to sailing ships to new fuels - and even the possibility of ships being more like penguins - with a panel including:

Paddy Rodgers, Director (Chief Executive) of Royal Museums Greenwich and former CEO of Euronav

Tristan Smith, Professor of Energy and Transport, Bartlett School of Environment, Energy & Resources (UCL)

Aoife O’Leary, CEO of Opportunity Green

Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

Assistant Producers: Toby Field and Harrison Jones

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

PFAS chemicals are all around us. They're used in frying pans, food packaging and waterproof coats but they have been linked to thyroid disease, liver damage and cancer. The trouble is that PFAS just doesn't go away- these 'forever chemicals' build up in our bodies and the environment.

Tom Heap and Helen Czerski look back at the invention of these miracle chemicals, their use in the Second World War and the Space Race and meet Robert Bilott, the American lawyer who held the PFAS manufacturers to account, going head to head with the enormous DuPont corporation. They're also joined by Stephanie Metzger of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Hannah Evans from the environmental charity Fidra and by the journalist Leana Hosea of Watershed Investigations.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

40 years ago a hole was discovered in the ozone layer. It provoked an international effort to ban the chemicals that were destroying our protection from the sun. Tom Heap and Helen Czerski are joined by Jonathan Shanklin, one of the team that realised that CFC chemicals used in aerosol cans and refrigerants were helping to create a 20 million square kilometre hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. Also on the panel they speak to Alice Bell, author of ‘Our Biggest Experiment: a history of the climate crisis’ and head of policy, climate and health at Wellcome, and Bristol University's Professor Matt Rigby who helps monitor how well countries are sticking to their promises on protecting the ozone layer.

They discuss the unparalleled international unity that swiftly banned the worst of the ozone-destroying chemicals, and ask why we can't come up with a similar solution for manmade climate change. Tom will be meeting the detectives dedicated to hunting down the chemicals that still threaten the ozone layer and come with an enormous cost to the climate.

Featuring contributions from:

Jonathan Shanklin - Emeritus Fellow, British Antarctic Survey

Matthew Rigby - Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Bristol

Alice Bell - Head of Policy: Climate and Health, Wellcome

Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

Rare Earth is produced in collaboration with the Open University

The wolf has mounted an extraordinary comeback. Once hunted to extinction across Western Europe, the wolf has taken advantage of the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the depopulation of the countryside to spread from east to west, reaching the suburbs of Amsterdam and Brussels. Only Britain, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and Iceland now lack the top predator that haunts our fairytales.

Tom Heap and Helen Czerski go face to snout with the wolf to find out the secrets of its success. They're joined by writer, Adam Weymouth, who tracked the route of a pioneering wolf called Slavc that made its way from Slovenia to Verona, kick-starting the return of the wolf packs to swathes of northern Italy. Erica Fudge of Strathclyde University shares her research into werewolf tales of the early modern period and BBC Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe digs into the relationship between farmers and wolves in their Carpathian heartland to reveal the conflicts we can expect as the western wolves increase their population.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

Special thanks to Wolf Watch UK

For the Arctic, 2024 was the second-warmest year on record, with temperatures rising much faster than the global rate. The region's resources- oil, gas, iron ore, uranium, even diamonds and the rare earth metals used in electric cars- suddenly seem accessible. That's caught the attention of China, Russia and the US, with President Trump, eager to mount a hostile takeover bid for Greenland.

In the first of a new series of Rare Earth, physicist Helen Czerski and environment journalist, Tom Heap consider the impact of this sudden global interest on the people, wildlife and landscape of the far north.

It's not the first time that climate change has determined the fate of the region. For 500 years the Vikings occupied Greenland, using it as a base for their discovery of North America. By the late 14th century temperatures were falling, their crops failing and supply ships from Scandinavia struggling to make it through the expanding icepack. Communications faltered and then stopped completely. Historian, Eleanor Barraclough joins Tom and Helen to explore the fate of the last Norse Greenlanders- one of the great mediaeval mysteries and a warning of the power of a changing climate.

They're also joined by Duncan Depledge from Loughborough University and the Royal United Services Institute who fills them in on the military and political backdrop to the Arctic Goldrush. In 2007 Russian explorer, Artur Chilingarov led a submarine expedition to the North Pole where he planted a Russian flag on the seabed. It was a blatant land grab by the Putin regime and a warning of Russian expansionism to come. The other Arctic nations are responding, with Denmark ploughing cash into the defence of Greenland as the United States and China stake their own claims to the riches of the frozen north that isn't quite as frozen as it was.

The impact of climate change on the region's wildlife is so often encapsulated by the image of a polar bear on an ice floe, but ecologist Helen Wheeler of Anglia Ruskin University is more interested in the northward march of the beaver. These landscape engineers are actually moving ahead of the treeline, using rocks and mud to dam the rivers of the far north. The dams are blocking travel routes of Inuit hunters and fishers and may even be helping to raise the temperature of Arctic lakes.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

Could 2025 be a year of progress on climate change and the nature crisis? Tom Heap and Helen Czerski search for some tentative green shoots with former Green MP Caroline Lucas, editor in chief of Business Green James Murray, and climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University

An ancient Babylonian text, Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, forbids the cutting down of street trees without permission. Nearly 4000 years later, threats to our urban trees still arouse the strongest passions. Coventry residents organised a record-breaking mass tree hug in November to save 26 trees marked for the chainsaws and the battle to save thousands of Sheffield's street trees from the council's contractors inspired folk songs and expensive legal battles.

As so many of us bring a tree home for Christmas, Tom Heap and Helen Czerski consider our feelings about street trees, the sweet hit of nature that provides year round shade and wildlife habitat in the least promising of city circumstances.

They're joined by Jon Stokes of the Tree Council, landscape historian Sonia Dümpelmann and Paul Powlesland, barrister and founder of Lawyers for Nature.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producers: Ellie Richold and Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University