Environmental Education Media Project

The Campaign for Ecosystem Restoration, Poverty Eradication and Climate Stability

We have seen and documented that it is possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems, to restore ecosystem function in areas where they have been lost, to fundamentally improve the lives of people who have been trapped in poverty for generations, and to sequester carbon naturally. This has been dramatically demonstrated on the Loess Plateau in China -- birthplace of the Han Chinese and headwaters of The Yellow River -- and been further verified through research in other parts of the world.

For more than fifteen years, John D. Liu and his colleagues at the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) have been studying, documenting and reporting on successful efforts to restore the Loess Plateau. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project has transformed an area of more than 35,000 sq. kilometers. Once a totally dysfunctional and denuded environment, an area approximately the size of Belgium is now a recovering, vegetated ecosystem where there is abundant vegetation cover; natural water infiltration and retention is being restored. Grinding poverty is lifting, the natural sequestration of carbon by canopy and groundcover flora is returning, soil carbon and fertility are increasing from natural nutrient cycling, biomass is again being generated by increased photosynthesis, and water is naturally infiltrated and retained in fully vegetated, living soils.

Over the last five years, research has expanded to cover the globe focusing mainly on what this might mean for Africa. The potential to scale this demonstrated success has been specifically recognized by The World Bank, The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The Jane Goodall Institute and the Rothamsted Research Institute. Nations are also beginning to see the vast potential of this approach. The government of President Paul Kigame in Rwanda, for example, has adopted a new national land-use policy based on the “Earth’s Hope” presentations and analysis.

To share what we have learned with world leaders, local decision makers and the general public -- and to incubate global ecosystem restoration projects around the world – EEMP’s founder, John D. Liu, has presented his work to hundreds of audiences around the world. To take this solutions-focused knowledge and work to the next level, placing it at the center of global discussions, EEMP has developed the film, "Hope in a Changing Climate," is planning a “Visual Database of Best Practices” and is launching The Campaign for Climate Stability, Ecosystem Restoration, and Poverty Eradication.

A few of John's talks below:

John's TALLBERG presentation in Sweden

2011 Bioneers conference in California