Reforestation in the Sahara & Six-Legged Meat | Earthrise

welcome to a new series to bring to stories from people across the planet we're finding solutions to the environmental challenges that we all face this is Earth right I'm Guillory Torabi in Africa where a multinational project is attempting to stop the spread of the Sahara and I'm Russell beard in Holland to find out why farm animals of the future might be a little creepy and I'm Meili McNamara and Kielder Northumberland we're a breeding project is saving Britain's pearls production of animal protein using livestock is resource heavy and puts an incredible strain in our natural systems it also has a bigger impact in global warming than driving cars as our population and our global appetite for meat increase we need to find other ways of satisfying this demand I'm here at Vogue an Indian University Holland to check out the environmental benefits of eating bugs professor van van house just right great oh my goodness why are you researching insects as food well we will have a meat crisis very soon 70% all the agricultural land at the moment is used for livestock the world population is doubling and the meat the amount is also doubling so we need another earth to feed the world so just enforceable also if you look at it environmentally 18% of all the greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock so we need alternatives for our protein and insects aren't excellent alternatives what do you call this mrs. Lovelace this is a bogus be careful because they bite so you fight to be honest it's a stretch for me to think of this guy as food but that must be the battle that you're facing trying to convince Westerners that there's a good meal to be had of these guys yeah but it's only the Western people have problems with it so yeah most of the rural population doesn't have any problem and I would also say if you taste advance then the next time it's not a problem anymore so so there you have it insects such as locusts grasshoppers and mealworms are nutritious and have much less impact on the environment and livestock but finding the right insect is just part of the story if we're going to make any impact at all on a global demand for protein we need to make sure we've got a reliable and sustainable supply so we've come to the correct insect rearing facility this is Marika tell us what tell us what you do here well we have a lot of insects here we breathe stem species well most of the insects are for the animal consumption but we have one insect also for the human consumption okay can you show us yes how you doing where you doing come on in Wow those warms are big enough for selling coming week they get shifted and then we sell see you can put more warmth in one place then you can put cows I think there's between 700 and a thousand kilos only in this room of insects insects insects are great at turning plants into protein it takes 10 kilograms of plant matter to make just one kilogram beef for that same 10 kilograms will produce 9 kilograms of insect protein this is because they're cold-blooded and don't need to waste any energy in controlling their body temperature okay so we've done our feeding of the mealworms and the next stage of the process is now to take the mature worms out oh my god Wow Wow look at that there's a lot of worms so this is like pure adult mealworm which is ready to go up to market and to the kitchens basically the rest is all going to go back into the incubator and start the cycle again but and that's our work here done we're just now so okay so we found out the insects and nutritious you can farm them on a commercial scale and they're better for the environment but all this means nothing unless people are actually prepared to eat them they just need a bit hold your hand bourbon is a chef at the restaurant of the future he's been cooking with insects for over three years your average person having a look at that to begin with with the pretty if people ask me often this question I always say to them do you eat shrimps yeah and I say there's he'll often guests and I like them and I say those are the insects of the sea I think I recognize this guy from the lab this morning and I could be wrong but you feel and hear how crunchy do ya really if you just add a little bit of salt on your head okay there's nice NIC ya know their heads will just go right in there for the head okay moment of truth if I kind of kind of step out myself and just don't even think about it then that is really nice that's crunchy that's all he isn't there there not another layer under the majority this burger is still beef but um even just by using what you see 20% 20% even by using 20% grasshopper in this that's 20% less beef so less damage to the environment less water that you're using YUM you're eating the entire you don't set the entire and say we all wait wait about 55 percent of a cow and this is the whole insect 100% well you cook it with work I mean how is it going to actually get people to to eat eat worms basically make it noise okay I could look nice make it taste nice and then food looks good and you're hungry you will eat it okay listen grasshopper burn yourself oh right well I hope you enjoy them they prepared with a lot of love from your hand and I think it's a fantastic idea so thanks to your research hopefully we'll see a lot more restaurant serving grasshopper burgers in the future Bon Appetit the Sahara Desert covers nearly 10% of the African continent over the past few decades a decline in rainfall coupled with soil degradation due to over grazing has caused a huge increase in the rate in which the Sahara is spreading if this continues the impact of this spread on the environment and on the people that live here will be nothing short of catastrophic over there is the Sahara and in this direction is the Sahel a belt of dry grassland which separates the Sahara from Africa's tropical forests we're about to visit an exciting new project that's aimed to stop any more land from looking like this the great green wall is a multi-state project launched by the countries that lie within the Sahel the objective is to build a seven thousand kilometer long and 15 kilometer wide wall of trees straddling the edge of the Sahara Desert and stretching coast to coast through eleven states senegal was the first country to begin planting colonel SAR is the project's technical director and force expert nice to meet you they're coming so the first seed was planted 612 in 2008 the Senegal is deleted we have lots of countries near the Sahara we have the same problems we must be together so we're just about to walk into one of the very first plantations of the great green wall this was planted in 2008 it's the very beginning won't even know wow what a difference this is completely different it's green I can hear birds there's dragonflies it's complete contrast from what I saw this morning in the past is this area still wants nothing how does something like you stop the certification by a diversity of species about three four and five expresses it in the same area when you have dishes the oldest species can be systems and also every space is using testing booth down the Sun so the microorganisms work together you are the peon Tendo concrete data anybody care poking a fee so it's about recuperating land and giving it life again this is livable livable yeah but no it's it's time to is thank you what was the big challenge it was the population inside the certification the prices or business areas cutters died and have no water people migrating so this is so much more than just a certification isn't it exactly yeah go so I'm here with mossy and he's gonna teach me the proper technique of planting the acasio okay we there we go my contribution and I can see a Senegalese here part of the great green wall maybe I'll come back and watch it grow what's really amazing here is that all the planters are volunteers they're doing this in their free time to help out like Mohammed why did you travel all the way here to volunteer and help out you know the to fighting against the deforestation in order to make it so green to make it good for us and also to fight against poverty so proud to be a part in trial of this point so we'll call this Muhammad plants put the MP the great green wall is a project that is not solely about stopping desertification Colonel SAR takes me to see a recently created fruit plantation for the benefit of local people it would be the first time we protect members in this part of our country really will be a revolution it'll be very popular with the kids wonderful are people healthier yeah no they do not have this is now they have fresh vegetables to it and also 2 percent the market must be flexible with testing and the economy's developing so this is the village right by the plantation we were just at and as you can see it's market day it's really busy we just want to find out what do people think of the great green wall so they work here in the project disappearance ah recognize what's been Campbell and Bailey same cult Island that meter of it ooh is that a good but again in education rather than gonna go show JC what the community man Samuel if we do something like this in two thousand kilometers back our to Liberty yeah this education will be stopped that's something to be proud about okay I think it's possible yeah I will do it when Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans a long-feared prophecy came true decades of industrial development and dike building had stopped natural silt and mud from flowing into surrounding wetlands depriving the coast of a natural sponge that in the past had served as a hurricane buffer i'm lindsey graham's and we're about to meet Richie blank a local boat captain who recognized something needed to be done to solve the problem sir Richie we're on the coast of Louisiana yeah we're about 75 miles southeast of New Orleans on the Mississippi River we're near the Mississippi River Delta New Orleans wouldn't have had such a big problem with Katrina if it wouldn't have lost thousands and thousands of square acres of wetlands I used to protect it for every two and a half miles of wetlands it knocks down storm surge one foot I just make a cavity and put the tree in and I come back with the Dibble and I just pushed the mud back this small area where we're at here I planted 1,200 but the the total project area we planted 5,000 trees of spring oh it just sinks that's it we got a tree in the ground cypress trees they can grow right out of the water so they're excellent trees to have in the swamp they make knees called new metaphors and what happens the roots they go out from the tree horizontally and roots come through those roots vertically and this is what gives the cypress trees their stability it really locks itself in there and holds the land together which is what we're trying to do around here whoa okay scared me oh my god hey little guy yeah this is one of the most ecologically diverse places in North America what kind of other things are back here dozens of species of frogs there's lots of snakes so be careful there's alligators and every time I come on the bayou it seems like I see a new new species of burger we've lost so much land there's just a finite amount left that we can lose in Louisiana we lose a football field of land every half hour there's a lot of different factors there's a sub silence to know it's a delta so it's naturally sinking and so the oil companies dig pipeline canals which allow saltwater to come into the interior marshes it changes the salinity and it kills some of the plants that are able withstand freshwater more okay Wednesday do you see how this is green here on the tops and on the edges yeah all this green this is from this year so that grew from the little saplings that we planted into this yeah that this tree probably got about a foot taller since I planted it here when I can prove the trees can be established here then people can really say you know what what this guys doing really works and we should back them up tell me why you thought you needed to take action why not the government why not wait for someone else because I've been waiting for somebody else and uh I've never seen anybody out here doing anything like this I've heard a lot of people talking about any of it and uh I just decided I wanted to be the person that was gonna do it you say I am NOT an environmentalist why do you say that cuz that's a dirty word around here really yes I mean everybody around here is either a fisherman who works in the oil field I mean I would never want these people to think I'm an environmentalist you know I'm just somebody who wants to keep this place from washing away so quick I hope this becomes a Cypress forest like it once was when my grandfather was my 50 years from now I'd love to come out here and hang a hammock up between two of my trees and take her that would be that would be really great the rivers of Britain famous for their salmon are also home to one of the longest living invertebrates in the world the freshwater pearl mussel they're a vital component in this aquatic ecosystem they filter algae and bacteria from the water and stabilize sediment in lakes and river beds but they are also one of the most threatened species on the planet silt caused by livestock grazing and other human activities is their single biggest threat the juveniles died as silt clogs their filtering mechanisms that prevents them from attaching to riverbeds I'm mailing MacNamara and I'm here at the Kildare salmon center in Northumberland to find out about a new project that's saving Britain's freshwater pearl's this one that's maybe 45 we're gonna five years old yes wow that's quite old and well that's one of our youngest ones really and then one like this which is very big which is probably over 100 years old hundred years old oh my goodness we've got mussels aged maybe 45 to over 100 but we've got no young ones at all because in the river they're no longer breeding we can't find any juveniles we want to breed them in captivity so that we can release young mussels back into the river with the aim of helping the population to recover and research is carried out at the salmon centre because the mussels must spend a part of their lifecycle attached to the gills of juvenile salmon after three months they detach and drop to the river bed richard bond is the manager at the center we're just looking at these skills just to see what the numbers of pearl muscle go kidiot alike so it gives us an idea of how many we're gonna be stocking back to the river okay so what am I looking at so you can see the gill arches there from the fish you can have up to 2,000 on each of the fish is a very high number but it just helps us to monitor the numbers of Lydia there there it helps us to improve our techniques for the future for future generations of pearl mussels really so these these babies are the hosts for the freshwater pearls that's right sort of later on in the summer these these eggs will have hatched and there'll be fish about maybe three four centimeters in length you guys everything yes we do we've got some of those from last year in the tanks behind me there there's about four thousand salmon in this tank at the moment and we're actually going to take these out to the river later today and release them to the river back to the wild and hopefully they'll grow head off to sea and come back in a few years time so now I'm actually catching some of the salmon and I'm netting it I'm gonna put it in this bucket here and then we're gonna transport it to the river each one of these carries thousands of pearl mussels in its Gill so you will not see if the pearl mussels have have actually taken off in these rivers for maybe maybe 10 15 25 years why do you do it why do you do it well I think that it's really important that we keep our rivers as good as they can be and the Pearl mussel is the benchmark for that she'll never see it you may never see it I'm not that old yes I think I'll be retired before we get a really healthy population back in this river which is there it's it's sad but it's for the future reintroduction alone is not enough a bigger plan is also in place to create protection zones along river beds so this is the moment of truth well this is a moment anyway when we let the fish go that have thousands of little larvae inside on their gills hoping for the best of the co mussels I guess yeah then they'll just head off find their own little territories and set to set up a little place for their themselves why are the crow muscles so important well not only they are very endangered species they're really important for the environment they filter water and so they clean the rivers and there are fantastic biological sort of indicator to tell us how clean our rivers are but 20 meters to respec or either 29 inches yeah I said communication yeah those ones you can fill them oh yeah you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 224,492

Keywords: Six legged meat, environment, Earthrise, meat supply, youtube, UK pearl mussels, aljazeera, animal proteins, Sahara Desert, Conservation, Desertification, Sahara, Reforestation, Wildlife, earthrise, al jazeera english, environmental science, environment maine musik, environmental engineering, environmental science crash course, environmental issues, environmental noises smash, sahara desert documentary, sahara desert animals, sahara desert flood, sahara desert oasis

Id: ACUUIPE2Odw

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 01 2011