Category: DailyShorts

Fast-growing bamboo has gone in and out of fashion but is now being seen as a possible climate hero. Its capacity to absorb carbon is enhanced by how densely it can be grown, the speed and its regrowth after harvesting - a great advantage over trees. Tom Heap meets Arief Rabiek from the Environmental Bamboo Foundation based in Indonesia. He's working to restore degraded land by planting bamboo which can be managed by communities on a forest to factory system. The harvested product can be used for building structures and furniture through to vases baskets and clothing. He wants to expand the project to nine other countries to bring economic and environmental benefits but are some uses better than others? Dr Tamsin Edwards helps evaluate the scope of bamboo as a solution.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci of the University of Birmingham.

Cattle emit huge quantities of planet-warming methane. But they can be stopped! Tom Heap meets Eileen Wall from SRUC, Scotland's Rural College who introduces him to a host of cunning carbon-cutting ideas- from seaweed in the feed and gas masks for cows to barns that can convert methane into energy to power the farm.

Tom is joined by Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London to calculate just how much difference these ideas might make to our warming Earth. Are those the best answers or should we all be persuaded to cut our meat consumption?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci of University of Birmingham and to Dr Michelle Cain of Cranfield University.

Is logging always bad for the planet? A team from The Nature Conservancy in the United States believe they have developed a way to cut down the trees we need for construction without damaging tropical forests or adding to our carbon emissions.

Tom Heap meets Peter Ellis, the man behind Reduced Impact Logging, and his Indonesian colleagues, Purnomo and Ruslandi, who are persuading the foresters of Borneo to take up the new techniques.

Back in the UK, climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards joins Tom to crunch the numbers- how much carbon dioxide could these ideas save?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor David Coomes from the University of Cambridge and to Professor Michelle Pinard and Professor David Burslem from the University of Aberdeen.