Dead Planet Living Planet

Filmmaker and ecologist John Liu explains - and shows with film fragments - why landscape restoration matters and why it needs urgent implementation.
Healthy landscapes provide us with food, water, clean air, a stable climate, biodiversity, good health, security and happiness. However, a quarter of the world’s land mass is seriously degraded from centuries of deforestation, overgrazing, overexploitation, the building of infrastructure and pollution. Wars and migration are consequences of these problems.
Filmmaker and ecologist John Liu will tell the story of how a degraded area in China, the size of the Netherlands, was successfully restored in a short time. Millennia ago this region was very fertile and lush with vegetation. Over the centuries, the Chinese used up these resources unsustainably while unaware that it was their own actions that eroded a once green landscape into a ‘moon like’ landscape, causing loss of biodiversity, poverty and famine. John Liu  shows how it has been possible to restore this large-scale damaged ecosystem in a very short time. The soil was rebuilt, biodiversity came back, while farmers were able to triple their income and hope and inspiration returned to the communities. The farmers, the Chinese government and the financer, the World Bank, were astounded by the success. John Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally. 

John D. Liu is a Chinese-American filmmaker and ecologist. Following 15 years as a television news producer and cameraman for CBS News and other international television networks, he made a decision to devote the rest of his life to understanding and communicating about the Earth’s natural ecosystems. He produced many ecological films including: Hope in a Changing Climate, The Great work of Our Time and The Art of Healing the Earth. His films have been shown on BBC, National Geographic, Discovery, Central Chinese Television and many other networks around the world. John Liu is Director of the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP), Ecosystem Ambassador for the Commonland Foundation and a visiting research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIOO/KNAW). More information: commonland.com