Climate change is a constantly evolving issue.
The TV series, “Changing Planet,” will chronicle the changing environment over seven years.
It will air at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20 on New Mexico PBS channel 5.1. The stream will be available on the PBS Video App.
“What is really important about this show is that we’re looking at stories from across the globe,” says Bill Gardner, vice president, multiplatform programming and head of development, PBS. “The climate issues can seem abstract, but when you break down the issues and see what solutions arise, it’s amazing.”
“Changing Planet,” is led by conservation scientist M. Sanjayan.
The series is an unprecedented seven-year global reporting effort to monitor climate change in six of the planet’s most vulnerable ecosystems. It features the most recent science and explores how communities are pursuing their environmental goals. Each Earth Day, PBS and Sanjayan will return to the same place each year. There will be losers and winners, but there will also be positive changes and reasons to believe.
Gardner says in the first hour, Sanjayan travels to Northern California’s Klamath River Basin, where the Yurok Tribe leads environmental projects that combine modern science with thousands of years of traditional knowledge.
Decimated by decades of gold mining and the damming of its rivers, the area is now being brought back, thanks to a massive engineering program to restore the river’s flow and improve the health of the salmon population. The Yurok also practice traditional forest stewardship through controlled burning, which helps to maintain a healthy ecosystem and prevent fires getting out of control.
Global warming is melting Arctic ice at an unprecedented rate in Iceland, raising the possibility of Iceland becoming a land without ice.
Marine biologists are developing techniques to breed coral that is more resistant to temperature changes in the Maldives, where coral reefs have been bleaching.
Scientists are also studying endangered manta Rays, which fertilize reefs with nutrients taken from the ocean. The ecosystem could be destroyed if it loses its fertilizer.
As drought worsens in Kenya, where 14million people live off agriculture, human-animal conflict is on the rise. Some communities are building sand dams to deal with drought. These dams can hold enough water that they can supply approximately 5,000 households annually. Sand dams are being created across Africa as a grassroots solution that improves food security and provides jobs.
“In many ways, a lot of these ideas have been around for centuries,” Gardner says. “The sand dams are such a simple idea. If you pay attention to the insights, there are solutions in front of you.”
Gardner says there are two main messages to be learned from the series.
“We have the power to affect change and it really comes down to the social choices that we make,” Gardner says. “As a people, we’re making decisions and the priorities aren’t to the benefit of our long-term health.”
Gardner states that PBS is focused upon solutions and success stories.
“We have to set the context and what we can do,” he says. “People have solutions. We as viewers must see the potential for better. The truth is, the planet will outlast us.”
