ROLE OF FORESTS This short animated film highlights the role forests can play in national development, a green economy and climate change. The film also reviews the impact of forests on business as usual and on transformative solutions. 

World Environment Day (WED) is an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and most widely celebrated global day for positive environmental action. WED activities take place all year round but climax on 5 June every year, involving everyone from everywhere. India has been named Global Host of World Environment Day 2011. Each year focuses on a topic of global significance and asks that we look at what we can do to reduce human impact on that issue.

Forests cover one third of the earth's land mass, performing vital functions and services around the world which make our planet alive with possibilities. In fact, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. They play a key role in our battle against climate change, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere while storing carbon dioxide. Read more about forests services here. Ecosystem services

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An African peasant farmer has managed what so many others failed to do: transform the lives of thousands of people by making the desert bloom again. Discover the untold story of Yacouba Sawadogo, an illiterate African farmer who battled for two decades with nature and man to become a pioneer in the fight against desertification. Perfectly pitched cinematography engages beautifully with a story that will leave you moved and inspired.

Yacouba resurrected an ancient planting technique known as "zai," using traditional planting pits. He hacked into the hard-baked earth and filled the pits with compost. In the region, tens of thousands of hectares of land that was completely unproductive have been made fertile again. Yacouba has reversed the process of desertification in the deforested and drought-ridden Sahel, a belt up to 1,000km wide, spanning Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

This story is a reminder that determined individuals can at least slow down the steamroller of environmental destruction across the planet.

Using, and then enhancing, traditional "zai" techniques for restoring degraded land, which involve planting seeds directly into pits that have been enhanced with small handfuls of composted dung, Yacouba Sawadogo has spent over a quarter century experimenting with his soils, and then teaching his fellow farmers, resulting in the successful rehabilitation of farmland, the regrowth of forests, and attention from international media and non-profit organizations who wanted to learn more about Sawadogo's techniques.

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