EARTH FOCUS, a partnership between KCETLink and the Thomson Reuters Foundation provides audiences with urgent local and global environmental coverage that spotlights the issues, impact and possible solutions from a variety of unique perspectives.
airs Tuesdays at 3 a.m. beginning 9/3
- #1001 – “Sea Level Rising: Living with Water” – Louisiana is learning from Hurricane Katrina. Forecasts are dire for Louisiana to experience the second-highest sea level rise in the world. There is a big movement brewing in New Orleans to build adaptive “resilience zones.” In Southeast Louisiana, the native peoples of the Isle de Jean Charles have become the first U.S citizens moving within their homeland displaced by climate change.
- #1002 – “Climate Migration” – Populations are dramatically shifting as climate change drives migration. Droughts and floods are driving many people away from their rural, farming communities into big cities. We see how this is manifesting in Mongolia and examine the factors leading to the new community of Haitian people living in limbo at the border between Mexico and the U.S.
- #1003 – “City Planning” – Two cities, San Francisco and Freetown, brace for climate change using vastly different methodologies. San Francisco’s developers are building expensive real estate on floodplains as officials try to heed expert projections on future sea levels. On the other side of the world, a deadly mudslide caused by torrential rains and deforestation in Sierra Leone shows the consequences of city planning that doesn’t take climate change into account.
- #1004 – “Adaptation to Global Water Shortages” – Anticipating future water needs, two regions on opposite sides of the world turn to technology for answers. Western Morocco, near the Sahara Desert, is currently facing unprecedented drought and groundwater mismanagement. But an ancient method of gathering moisture from fog is being taught to 13 villages, allowing people to have a level of local control over their most basic need. Central Valley California: The food basket of the world uses nearly 80 percent of the entire state’s water supply. Yet there are still close to one million people who don’t have access to clean drinking water. Researchers at UCLA may change that through a technology that would allow unincorporated rural communities to control how contaminated water is treated.
- #1005 – “Future of Food” – Communities and innovators all over the world are creating new sustainable food sources that are resilient to climate change and growing populations. In Madagascar we see how villagers are closing off marine areas to allow the fish supply to replenish at a natural pace. In San Diego, California, aqua culturists are exploring open ocean farming as a more sustainable model for the fishing industry.
- #1006 – “Urban Habitat” – With so much biodiversity in the highly urban area of Los Angeles, species are thriving despite human interference, and in some cases because of it.
