Desertification is happening fast on the dry loess plateau along China's ancient Silk Road, due mainly to the felling of trees by local residents (to use as fuel, or to sell for cash) and the clearing of wooded areas for farmland. To combat the trend, people have begun planting sea buckthorn, which are effective in arresting desertification and also useful from an economic standpoint. Sea buckthorn are highly resistant to arid conditions and extreme variations in temperature, and it is hoped that they will help to stabilize living conditions in the region.

The South Pacific island nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu are bearing the brunt of climate change. With an average elevation of just a few meters, higher tides in Kiribati and Tuvalu can send water into homes, cause wells to go saline, and trigger shortages of potable water. In addition, rising seas make it impossible to grow crops and are forcing formerly self-sufficient societies to become dependent on imports. This, in turn, has generated huge volumes of trash, creating a new social problem. As part of the South Pacific Countries Support Project, we are planting mangrove seedlings to protect island dwellers from the rising seas and encouraging local residents to sort their trash.

The Qinling Mountains are world famous as the home of a number of rare animals, including pandas and the endangered golden snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana). However, the felling of trees for fuel since the latter half of the 20th century has desolated the land and begun to threaten the survival of many species of wild animals. In order to restore the rich forest ecosystem, we are observing local animal and plant life and replanting the abandoned commercial logging roads that impede the movement of animals.

Seeds represent the beginning of everything, and symbolize the idea of an ever lasting cycle. The school focuses on seeds as it works to strengthen the forest ecosystem and carry out environmental education. It takes seeds and seedlings from the mountains, raises them in a nursery, and provides the seedlings to local residents for use in afforestation projects. It also uses the raising of seedlings and afforestation work as tools for environmental education.

In China's Inner Mongolia, where rapid desertification is taking place, an afforestation base has been set up at Baxiandong Junior High School for the planting of sea buckthorn, an economically valuable crop. The activities are designed to prevent desertification, provide environmental education, and help the local residents raise their standard of living.

Palawan is a verdant island in the southwest Philippines, but is also considered the most underdeveloped part of the nation. More and more people there eke out a subsistence by chopping down forests and engaging in slash-and-burn agriculture. To push for environmental conservation, we are working together with the TagBalay Foundation to teach women in Palawan's capital city to raise cassava and Eri silkworms.

The South Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are blessed with abundant tropical rainforests. Due to rapid population growth and modernization, however, the forests are no longer capable of regenerating quickly enough to keep up with traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, which has become a cause of tropical rainforest destruction. In order to preserve tropical rainforests while ensuring stable livelihoods for local residents, the Tropical Rainforest Conservation Project is working to provide technical support that will enable farmers to switch to sedentary organic farming.

In the mountains of northern Thailand, the local residents have lived fulfilling sustainable lifestyles amid their forests for many generations, but in order to halt environmental destruction caused by large-scale logging, the government has designated all forests as "state-owned forests," making it impossible for local residents to continue their livelihoods there. To recover their former way of living, local residents have to ask the national government to reclassify state-owned forests as communal forests. We are working with residents to draw up maps, which are needed to document their applications for communal forest designations.

The goal of this project is to help schools provide environmental education. We match up NPOs around Japan, which know how to run nature experience programs, with schools that are looking for this type of expertise and opportunity. By combining the best of these two types of organizations, we are able to arrange excellent environmental education programs. In addition, we also use the EE kids environmental education website as a platform for our activities.

"I want to foster 'environmental messengers' who can take environmental action and communicate their message to the rest of the world." With that thought in mind, Noguchi Ken and the NPO he leads opened up the Environmental School. Students there experience the beauty and fun of nature, and learn about social issues relating to environmental preservation.

As Japan's population declines and ages, its rural satoyama woodlands are beginning to go untended. This trend has had a big impact in Iizuna, Nagano Prefecture, but residents there have decided to rebuild and preserve their terraced paddy fields and satoyama, and to use them for the education of children.

Eco cabins (homes capable of running on natural energy) at this school give students a chance to experience a lifestyle that makes use of natural energy. The aim of the school is to spur heightened awareness of the need to fight global warming and build a sustainable society.