Touched by the expression of a dying baby Orangutan, Willie Smits and the Orangutan Survival Foundation regrew a destroyed rainforest in Borneo using satellite imagery and permaculture (though he doesn’t use the word in his TED talk). Why was the project so successful and long-lived (still going after twenty years)? The key, according to Smits, is not to swoop in like an environmental missionary with no regard for the economic plight of local people, but to factor human economic activity in the complex ecological solution.

Continue reading »