Bill Moyers Earth on Edge report

Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?

— Ezekiel 34:18

Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last fish has been caught, only after the last river has been poisoned, only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.

— Cree Native American

Acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers and an award-winning team of producers reveal recent scientific evidence that Earth is approaching a key environmental threshold. Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge showcases new data depicting the scale of human impact on the planet's life-support systems. The two-hour program explores one of the most important questions of the new century: What is happening to Earth's capacity to support nature and civilization?

The documentary coincides with the launch of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international effort to gauge the health of the world's forests, grasslands, coastal and freshwater areas. Preliminary findings were featured in the World Resources Institute's (WRI) World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life. The statistics from their preliminary findings are staggering: half the world's wetlands lost in one century, half the world's forests chopped down, 70 percent of the world's major marine fisheries depleted, the world's reefs at risk.

But Earth On Edge pushes well past the numbers. Moyers and his team also take viewers on a journey of hope to meet people from the American Midwest to Mongolia who are pioneering sustainable solutions to ecological problems. Each story takes place in one of five major ecosystems: forest, agriculture, coastal, grassland, and fresh water. Reports from Kansas, British Columbia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mongolia illuminate the ways in which human demands over the past century have been wearing holes in the fabric of life. The program profiles individuals who are confronting the challenge head on, people who understand how their lives depend on Earth's ecosystems, and how their own energy and dedication might help restore them.

In South Africa, Moyers visits Working for Water, an innovative government program that has trained 40,000 unemployed people to cut down thousands of invasive trees and restore the precious water that flows from the mountains to the rivers. Traveling to Vancouver, British Columbia, Moyers' team tells the story of an experimental collaboration with one of Canada's biggest timber companies. Viewers join loggers as they fly in and out of the forest by helicopter to harvest trees in a way that mimics the natural process and allows the ancient rainforests and the wildlife they support to survive. In Mongolia, where the size of the herd determines wealth, Moyers spotlights the need to train new herders in the ancient techniques of migration to restore the overgrazed and parched landscape. From the coral reefs and mangroves of Brazil, the program examines a $4 million government project to close off some areas of an endangered reef in hopes that the coral and marine life will recover and allow fishermen and tourists to use and enjoy the coast in a sustainable way. And, finally, Moyers returns to America's Kansas prairies, where one farmer is bucking the tide against excessive herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that sap the soil of nutrients and pollute drinking water.

Moyers tells individual stories, in far-flung locations, but in the end it is strikingly clear that the program is about what has been done to the Earth and what can still be done to turn things around. Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge will be augmented by an extensive web site, as well as an education and outreach campaign directed by WRI. The site will provide in-depth information about ecosystems as well as updates on their status and instructions for taking action. WRI is also organizing a series of live events and panel discussions promoting public dialogue around the issues raised by Earth On Edge and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

See PBS article.