al jazeera. you can keep up to date with the news on our website, al jazeera.com, u.s. and watching us and earth rises up and for the rest of you a round up of the world news headlines. >> i'm mei-ling mcnamara in canada here to discover how the great bear rainforest is being protected. >> i'm amanda burrell. i'm in london to find out how to make old houses green. >> and i'm yaara bou melhem in indonesia's south sulawesi looking at how the efforts of local people are restoring this mangrove forest.

>> unsustainable logging has destroyed nearly 80% of the world's ancient forests. the remaining 20%, and the ingenious and people and wildlife that live within them, are facing a precarious future. >> i'm mei-ling mcnamara and i'm heading into canada's great bear rainforest where a sustainable solution has finally been found. >> stretching 750 kilometers along brittish columbia's coast, the great bear rainforest is known to locals as canada's amazon. >> just amazing. >> its 6.4 million hectares make it one of the largest remaining temperate rain forests on earth, and one of the most productive ecosystems. >> however, much of this forest was not always protected. >> sea plane, the only way to fly. ooh! >> for years the forest was clear-cut by loggers.

throughout the 1990s it became a notorious environmental battle ground; the conservationists pitted against logging companies. all the while the old-growth forest remained vulnerable, which is 7% protected. >> patrick, can you tell me what it was like during the conflict in the 1990s? >> it was very difficult. i mean, you know, the term "war in the woods' has been used. i mean i think that essentially we were at war between the forest products industry and the environmental community, and then our customers were brought into that as well. >> when did it change? when was the moment when it changed? >> it changed in 1999 after the german papermakers and german publishers came to the great bear rainforest with greenpeace. as i like to say, afterwards they took everybody to the wood shed and said, you guys gotta fix this. the industry made a decision that it needed a new strategic approach, and that strategic approach would be based on dialogue and collaboration with environmental groups.

>> in 2009 everything came together. environmental groups, logging companies, first nations and the government announced a landmark collaboration, the great bear rainforest agreement. this put one third of the forest totally off limits to logging. it also legislated a new system of, "lighter touch" selective logging for the remaining two thirds. it gave first nation communities $120 million to develop a conservation economy as an alternative to logging. and it established a five year plan to further control logging in the remainder of the forest. a major victory for environmentalists. >> do you think you've changed, patrick, since the beginnings of the conflict, more than 20 years ago now? >> well in the early 1980s i was a logger. >> right. >> and that's how i made my living, so yeah, i've changed a lot. i mean i'm not opposed to logging obviously, but we certainly do things very different today. >> one of the people of the

forest is marven robinson from the gitga tribe, who works as a bear guide. >> today a greenpeace activist and i are with him to see wildlife that would not have survived without the agreement. >> eduardo, tell me a bit about this amazing place. >> it's an extraordinary place. we are close to the heart of the great bear rainforest right now, and are heading very close to where the land of the spirit bearer actually is. and basically, if you can imagine an area the size of switzerland, that is the great bear rainforest. >> how much damage does clear-cutting do to a forest? >> a lot of damage. very basically, like on a very large scale, if you can imagine, you know, it's taken hundreds if not thousands years for some of these forests to mature, these old-growth forests, old-growth trees that, in some cases in the great bear rainforest here, are 1500 years old. >> right. >> it's extraordinary, and massive amounts of trees. and for those trees to mature, for the forest to mature, it's all about relationships, and

those relationships take time to establish between species. when you cut on a very large scale, and on a large frequency, you are destroying those relationships, and you wipe out the memory really that exists on the land between species. >> so marven, our guide, he's driving the boat, has just spotted a humpback whale straight in front of us, who's just tailed, so we're gonna go and check it out. >> well if we get a bit closer. oh, it's blowing. you see it? it's blowing. that way! right there! here goes his tail. going. wow! oh my god, this is amazing! >> are we here now then? >> yeah, we're here down in a little place on princess royal

island that's a real special spot. and as you could see we've got old-growth forest. yeah, you could see all the fish parts there too. you see all the bones. >> so is that indicating that there's some bears around? >> yeah. >> shall i just wave my arms at you if there's a bear? >> no, you guys just stay altogether and you'll be fine. >> yeah, so when you see a lichen growing like this, it's the sign of a very healthy old-growth forest. you'll only find lichen in mosses growing like this in areas that are ecologically healthy and have a lot of old-growth trees. it's quite beautiful, eh? >>amazing. >> yeah. >> central to the deal's success were the people of the

first nations, who are believed to have lived here for 8,000 years. a number of these communities skilfully broker the deal between environmental groups, such as greenpeace, logging companies and the government. >> so what are we looking at here? >> ok, here we're right alongside of the salmon-bearing stream and that really means that this creek has all the right things happening for salmon to come and spawn, so it's either bears, wolves, minx, otters, eagles, you know, harvesting the fish, bringing it up into the forest, and that is why we have all this different life happening right there on the side of a creek. and you could see the mosses, you know, just rich and the different lichens, everything's thriving off of what this. not only just water, but the life that comes to it helps, you know, replenish the forest.

>> it's fairly fresh kill too. >> yeah. >> for first nations like the gitga'at, the sea and the forest provided everything, including strips of bark sustainably harvested to roof their lodges. >> i would probably say that's probably close to, you know, maybe 100 to 200 years old in-between there, when this was peeled off, and it could be even more. >> how important, on a day-to-day basis, is this agreement? >> this to us really helped us in a sense of slowing things down to where it was a workable pace. this is basically like a living monument of our people, so we look at it as like a standing museum how important it is for our culture. >> hunting is not permitted in protected areas as part of the agreement. camera traps are one way to monitor the wildlife and deter would-be hunters.

>> but you could really see the spots where the bear has turned, just like us, and his paws there you could see there's no moss there. >> yeah. >> all right, how's this thing work? how do we get this off? >> i'll take the card out and then you could start dismantling and taking the camera trap off the tree. >> right, let's see some bears. oh, there's a bar. >>there's a bear right up close. >> oh yeah, black bear. >>yeah. >> so a bear, right, it would sit on this log and scoop fish? >>yeah, oh yeah. this is really good, one good pool, and that's. >> yeah. >> the reason why i chose this spot for the camera trap, there's a lot of really good pooling spots where the fish were trapped. >> oh wow! >>one of the images that very lively walked up, the bear had climbed on to it and walked away, so you know this is either early morning or just as it's starting to get dark at night. our latest word for it is mooksgm'ol meaning white bear.

mooksgm is white and ol is bear. but what everybody else knows this guy is is, "spirit bear." >> and you caught him on camera. >> yeah, so it's really nice to know that he's still using the stream here. >> so we've just come up to two black bears, a mother and her baby, and they're just over there. >> but i have to be really quiet, because i don't want to disturb their mother eating. she's ok.

>> my heart is beating very fast. >> so we just saw the mother and baby there, but it was terrifying. marven says we were very safe though, 'cause they're trusting us, they saw us filming and they just carried on eating. but it was both exciting and quite terrifying at the same time. >> so what's next for the great bear rainforest? >> it's actually extraordinary what has taken place here over the last ten years. nothing like it anywhere in the world and the forest it's much more protected than it has ever been. >> this is where i say right now people in bc and canada should really step up to the plate and,

you know, be responsible for the choices they're making. and it's really sad that i have to say that when this is my territory, but i'm asking for help, for not just the people in bc but all of canada and round the world. and to be sustainable in our own territory is really what we're trying to do. >> great. well thank you both very much. >> you're welcome. >>thank you. >> more work is required to maintain the delicate balance between economic and environmental interest needed to keep the forest truly safe. but as long as groups can unite in a common purpose, wild places like the great bear rainforest will survive. i find it really exciteing being up here because tom's house seem pretty revolutionary. i'm looking out at all the properties behind me, i get a real sense of potential of what can be done here.

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right now... >> al jazeera america >> these old houses may look wonderful but in fact they leak energy like sieves and produce carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. but this can be stopped. and inside some of these properties there are drastic changes afoot. i'm amanda burrell and i'm here to meet some of london's retrofitting pioneers.

>> amanda, nice to meet you! how are you doing? >> hello. you too. thank you. >> please, put these on! >> ok. it's a dangerous area is it? >> it is! >> this property is having a home energy retrofit, it's being updated to make it more eco-friendly. >> as you can see through here we are currently just installing the insulation. we have insulation on the external walls and we have insulation on what are called the party walls, the walls that join this house to the next house. down here we are insulating the chimney breast at the moment. traditionally area this would be an area of significant heat and air loss. >> a retrofit like this costs around 15% of the total renovation, in this case £10,000. but, as a result, energy bills

will be much less. >> we have here one of the layers of insulation- this is mineral wool insulation that's preventing the heat from escaping up through the flat into the flat above. this is a layer of osb, oriented strand board, and this will act as our airtight layer. and then we will tape all joints to prevent even the smallest amount of air escaping because that is exactly the problem. >> this house might look the same as all the others on the street but i've been told that actually it's radically different. >> hello. >> hi tom. hello. >> welcome. >> nice to meet you. >> wow. what a beautiful house! >> so what's different about this house? >> so this is the uk's first family home to be retrofitted to a passive house. a passive house is a type of house that uses much much less energy to heat it and and light. in this case we use about 90% less. >> so how do you do that? how does that work? >> so we do that by super-insulating the walls.

by installing highly efficient windows, in this case all the windows are triple glazed - and by making the house more or less completely airtight so that we can control heat loss. >> can you show me around? >> absolutely, let's start with the ventilation system outside. >> tom pakenham is the director of green tomato energy which specializes in retrofitting to low energy standards. as a model for could be done. >> so, because the house is sealed you need to bring fresh air else into the house all the time otherwise people would suffocate. so the air comes in from the outside and passes down through this pipe which is hidden behind this trellis, down under the ground into the house, circulates fresh air all round the house constantly and then the old stale air comes out from a similar sort of pipe and is taken out and expelled. and every two and a half hours all of the air in the house is changed so it's constantly got lovely fresh, warm air in the house. and there's a machine in the basement which has a couple of

fans in which brings air in and takes air out. super duper machine. >> shall we have a look at it? >> yeah! >> gosh, looks complicated in here. >> a sort of engineer's dream. >> so this rather non-descript looking unit is called a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery machine. it does a lot of different things. pipes from this machine lead to ducts in the floors and ceilings, providing ventilation in every room. stale air and moisture is sucked out from the kitchen and bathrooms. heat from these is extracted and passed to the fresh air that goes into the living areas. on very cold days, a small heat pump warms this incoming air up more. this together with insulation and draught-proofing means the house stays warm even in the british winter. >> round the back here we've got our solar thermal hot water tanks. so the heat from the sun gets put into this tank thanks to

these little tubes which carry very very hot fluid from the roof. if you feel that you'll feel it's, that's at 80 degrees centigrade. >> ooh that's hot. that's really hot, i actually can't hold onto it for more than a few seconds. it works! >> and here's the source of the power. >> on the roof we have three solar thermal panels which make hot water. those take the heat from the sun and they heat up the fluid that runs through them and take that heat into the hot water tank to heat up the water in the hot water tank. and they generate about 70% of our annual hot water needs. so on a day like today they'll fill up the tank with about 600 liters of water at 60/70 degrees and if it were cloudy for the next 5 or 6 days we would still have hot water from them. >> you need to clean them every so often to take the dust off the top. if there's too much dust it reduces their efficiency. you have your sock, >> my high tech sock! >> wipe the dust off! >> you don't want to have vertigo if you go solar do you? >> no.

>> being up here is great because actually it's very very hot and you can really feel the power of the sun up here. >> tell me about these panels, what are these ones doing? >> these are solar photovoltaic panels. they convert the sunlight into electricity. this system is quite a small system but at the moment it's producing, generating all the electricity that the house is using in the fridge and the ventilation system and the pump for the solar thermal panels etc. >> and can those take you through a british winter? >> through the course of the year the most electricity is generated during the summer months but the system will continue to produce, generate some electricity throughout the whole of the year with very low amounts in the winter months. 20% of all of our energy requirements are generated by these panels. >> electricity is the sole source of power. in winter, any extra needed comes from the national grid. but when it's warmer these panels can generate more power

than the house requires. this is fed back into the grid on a daily basis in exchange for a small fee. >> the idea of retrofitting is beginning to spread. tom's company is advising two housing associations on how to make their properties more energy efficient. >> i find it really exciting being up here because tom's house seems pretty revolutionary. looking out at all the properties behind me i can't see any other solar panels. so i get a real sense of the potential of what can be done here and how the city can made more eco-friendly. >> we've traveled to the other side of sulawesi. this place used to be devoid of wildlife. but, this is what almost a decade's difference makes. a thriving mangrove forest.

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>> indonesia once had more than 4 million hectares of mangrove forests. but logging and clearing for aquaculture destroyed more than half of them. >> we're on our way now to the island of tanakeke in south sulawesi, which is just over there. the figures here are worse than the rest of the country with 70 per cent of its mangrove forests destroyed. but we're about to join a group of villagers to see what they're doing to bring back their mangrove forests. benjamin brown is part of the mangrove action project a washington based ngo. >> in a pond they can't grow because it's under water all the time. so we want the tide to come in and out so that mangroves get watered but then they also, the

soils are drained and they can grow. >> 500 hectares of mangroves were cleared here to make way for shrimp ponds, now abandoned. if they are to reclaim this sludge, the walls of the old shrimp ponds must first be destroyed. >> the community are also planting mangrove propagules in a controlled area. later, this plot will be compared another just over there, where hopefully mangroves will grow back naturally. >> we've travelled to other side of sulawesi.

this place used to be devoid of wildlife. but this is what a decade's difference makes.. a thriving mangrove forest. >> ben has been invited back by the village of tiwoho to see how this restoration project has fared. >> so what did this once look like? >> in about 2000 when we came here this was all just mud and an old abandoned shrimp pond and we planted a little and we broke some dyke walls in 2002 it's grown back since. amazing, about 9 metres tall at its tallest. >> a dense forest with all the trimmings. monitor lizards little tiny tarsius in the mangroves we found and these things called slow loris, cous cous, birds,

fish, crabs everything so it's really too much to count everything actually. there's a lot of diversity. >> so how do you rate your success here? >> when your guide brings a machete to get through the mangroves you know you've succeeded in your restoration. >> the fda isn't testing enough. >> now science is pursuing an organic alternative. >> these companies are trying out new technologies. >> no hormones are ever added into our tanks. >> mmm! >> techknow's team of experts show you how the miracles of science... >> i'm standing in a tropical windstorm. >> can affect and surprise us. >> wow, some of these are amazing. >> techknow - where technology meets humanity.

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