Your Planet

Welcome to Your Planet, a new podcast series from the international news agency AFP, brought to you in association with The Conversation. As world leaders are about to meet for the United Nations annual climate change conference, COP28, in Dubai, join us for this 8 part series. We’ll delve into solutions debated at the COP at a critical time for our planet. From the global south to the global north we’ll examine their potential and analyse how they aim to lead us into a more sustainable future. We’ll also keep a close eye on how some of those solutions relate to the nine crucial environmental planetary boundaries that scientists say must not be crossed. Six out of the nine boundaries have already been breached according to the Stockholm University’s Resilience Centre. So, how do we reduce pressure and reinforce the stability and resilience of earth’s system?We’ll also examine some ideas that are not viable solutions and debunk why they aren’t the fix they promise to offer us.Your Planet will explore these initiatives every Wednesday starting on November 22.Whether you’re an environmental enthusiast, a concerned citizen, or just curious about the future of our planet subscribe now and join us for Your Planet from AFP, coming soon. Host: Anna Cunningham. Executive producer : Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer. Editing: Camille Kauffmann. Sound design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva. This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation maintained their editorial independence throughout this project.

Welcome back to Your Planet, a podcast series brought to you in association with The Conversation that delves into solutions for addressing climate change and the ecological crisis. In the first episode of Your Planet we took a deep dive into the Anthropocene -- the name given to a new epoch that many scientists believe Planet Earth has already entered, and which those experts say is marked by humanity’s unprecedented footprint on the earth. This time we go back to the 1980's, when we had one big problem -- a giant hole in the Earth's ozone layer, which was ultimately reduced because of the actions taken worldwide. So how did we do it? What we learned in the process still inspires climate activists today.In 1987, the global community signed the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer by phasing out man-made ozone-depleting substances. Today, many are calling for a new phase-out; this time targeting the production of fossil fuels, by far the largest contributors to global climate change.This will be a key debate at COP28, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference held from 30 November until 12 December in Dubai.To learn more about the ozone layer, we recommend this article by Cathy Clerbaux is a physicist at the Free University of Brussels and Senior scientist at Laboratoire Atmosphères & Observations Spatiales (LATMOS) at Sorbonne UniversityHost: Anna Cunningham.Executive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project. 

Welcome back to Your Planet, a podcast series brought to you in association with The Conversation, that delves into solutions for addressing climate change. We explore and analyse some of the solutions that are being proposed to make out planet's future more sustainable. Do they all work? Or are some offering false hope? In this episode we take a look at carbon capture and storage (CCS), a big focus of the UN's COP28 climate talks.The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the existing fossil fuel infrastructure will push the world beyond the desired limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Oil producers have been throwing their weight behind carbon capture as a solution. But some climate experts warn that this technology alone would be insufficient to tackle global warming.With little investment and few projects in operation around the world so far, carbon capture is currently nowhere near the scale needed to make a difference in global emissions.Once you have listened to our podcast, if you want to learn more about soil carbon projects you can find an article written especially for our podcast by Remi Cardinael and Armwell Shumba in Zimbabwe and Vira Leng in Cambodia.Host: Anna CunninghamExecutive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Camille KauffmannMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project. 

Welcome back to Your Planet from AFP in association with The Conversation. Nuclear power has been one of the hot topics at the United Nations climate change conference, COP28 in Dubai, the focus being on accelerating various aspects of nuclear energy. More than 20 nations ranging from the US to Ghana, Japan and several European countries including France called for the tripling of nuclear energy capacity by 2050 from 2020 levels. Is nuclear power really good for the climate? Is it truly an ecological cure-all? And how feasible is that push to expand nuclear energy, particularly in developing countries? This episode delves into these questions and explores the debate.Host: Anna Cunningham.Executive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project. 

Welcome back to Your Planet a podcast series from AFP brought to you in association with The Conversation, that delves into solutions for addressing climate change. In previous episodes we’ve delved deep into the earth’s epoch to uncover what it tells us about where our earth is now, we’ve stepped back in time to the 1980s to understand what lessons can be learned from the crisis of the ozone layer… and we’ve examined carbon capture and the nuclear dilemma… This episode looks into the future of the world’s forests, and how important they are to our planet’s stability. But could climate projects involving forest conservation- those that promise to offset our carbon emissions - ultimately be the wrong solution for the climate crisis? The concept behind "carbon credits" has taken a major hit recently as scientific research has repeatedly shown claims of reduced emissions under the schemes are often hugely overestimated -- or simply non-existent.Please read this article in The Conversation about how the way scientists calculate the amount of CO2 that is captured by trees for carbon capture projects.Host: Anna CunninghamExecutive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Antoine Boyer Music design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.

Welcome back to Your Planet a podcast series from AFP brought to you in association with The Conversation, that delves into solutions for addressing climate change. We’ve been examining those planetary boundaries, the red lines that scientists say must not be crossed or else we are in big trouble. This time our focus is on water. We all rely on it, from humans to animals to plants, nothing can survive without water. Around 70 percent of Earth’s surface is made up of water, but the problem for us is that the majority of that water is salt water from our oceans. Barely three percent is freshwater, and around one percent of that is clean, accessible drinking water. There are clear reasons to be concerned about a possibility of rising conflicts and tensions, not only within communities but also neighbouring countries linked to water, but what role does water diplomacy play? Please read this article in The Conversation about Zaï, a farming technique of digging pits in less permeable soil to catch water and concentrate compost.Host: Anna CunninghamExecutive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Camille KauffmannMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.

Welcome back to Your Planet from AFP brought to you in association with The Conversation. Now so far in this series we’ve been exploring the potential solutions to take us forward to a more sustainable future and away from those planetary boundaries that tip us in the wrong direction. But we have done so from dry land - so it’s about time we take a deep dive into one major element of our planet - our oceans. What impact do human activities and the climate crisis have on the oceans and how do we protect the vast waters that make up our blue planet? In recent years we’ve seen melting ice caps, rising sea levels, marine heatwaves and a changing chemistry in our oceans that's happening so fast acidification is directly affecting marine life as well as the oceans ability to absorb CO2. But in 2023 a major step was taken to protect our oceans. Let’s take that dive into the blue to uncover more.Host: Anna CunninghamExecutive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Camille KauffmannMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.

Welcome back to Your Planet from AFP brought to you in association with The Conversation. Throughout this series we've endeavoured to explore solutions that offer hope for a more sustainable future on planet earth, but some of them, as we’ve discovered, are a bit more complicated than offering straightforward solutions. In this final episode we’re putting the climate itself directly in the dock as we investigate the role of litigation. Can it possibly act as a viable solution ?Host: Anna CunninghamExecutive producer: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferEdition: Camille KauffmannNewsgathering: Michaëla Cancela-KiefferMusic design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.And what if a river or nature itself could go to court ? Explore more about this topic, in this article by Diego Landivar in The Conversation Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.