How to save the world? A global journey into making our lives better…

Willie Smits set out with a mission to save orang-utans some years ago. Facing tremendous degradation of their natural habitats, those intelligent animals on the verge of extinction are being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their home gets degraded.

In the following video, you will see how the process of saving these creatures led him on to restoring the rainforest, creating job, preventing the creation of yet another desert and giving people and the nature a chance to develop together in harmony.
Samboja lestari is one of those areas worst hit by the effect of deforestation and industrialisation in the world. Excessive logging transformed what was once a lush rainforest into a virtual desert where only nutrient-consuming grass grow, area prone to bush fires preventing regrowth of any vegetation.

In 2002, the situation was 50% unemployment, huge crimes figures, sterile land, high mortality rate, 5 severe flooding events a year, annual fires and smoke related diseases, drought, virtually no animal life, failed crops, 22% of households income was spent on buying water… it was the poorest district in the province.

4 years later, he and the people involved in this project created 3,000 jobs, the climate changed for the best (-3 to 5 °C), regular rainfall returned, trees returned and cover the land again, wildlife and orang-utans returned, fires stopped, the district is no longer the poorest, there are over 1,000 different tree species, 137 bird species, the forest creates its own rain and provide waters to the nearby city.

Keys of this tremendous work:

• the local people must be fully involved and reap the fair benefits of the change
• it must be fair and culturally integrated to the local people
• the legal status must be sure
• the system must be transparent to avoid corruption
• it must be science based
• it must be economically feasible
• it must be ecologically sustainable

Etc.

For more information:

http://www.masarang.org/

http://redapes.org/