How to save the worldA global journey into making our lives better…

When the first humans arrived in the Philippines thousands of years ago they found a group of 7,000 islands remarkably rich in natural resources. The seas where inhabited by the globe’s most diverse communities, providing an abundant source of food throughout the year. The land was covered almost entirely by rain forest that provided them with food, building materials and seemingly everlasting supplies of clear, fresh drinking water.

Few countries in the world were originally more thoroughly covered by rainforest than the Philippines: Brazil has extensive savannah and brush, Indonesia has many dry islands, Kenya and Tanzania have only small patches of rainforest…

Because the sea around the Philippines is very deep, no path were open for wildlife to cross during ice ages, when the sea levels were lower. This resulted in a country that has more unique species acre for acre than anywhere else in the world. More than 510 species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians exist nowhere else in the world. As a point of comparison, Brazil, often referred to as the “storehouse of biodiversity”, has only 50% more unique species whilst being 28 times larger.

There are about 300-500 million cases of malaria every year, killing between 1 to 3 million people. It places a major strain on resources and considerably slow the development of countries in which it is endemic. It has been estimated that in some countries the disease decrease purchasing power by a factor 5, takes 2 points of growth, and costs Africa $12 billions USD every year. In some countries it may account for up to 40% of public health expenditure. In young children it can lead to brain damage.

In this context, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical company,

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.

I like Hans Rosling. The following presentations are properly jaw-dropping. He takes the old myths about poverty in the world and shine a new light on them.