Ecologist Carlos Lopez Alberto displays the contrasting fortunes of two countries on the Caribbean, Haiti and Costa Rica. In the densely populated area of Haiti the once beautiful landscape has slowly become a man made desert. On the other hand in Costa Rica the government has sought to protect the land and established a network of reserves to encourage villages to protect the environment.

Since Mao's Great Leap Forward nearly 50 years ago, China has lost an area the size of Greenland to the desert. Waking up to the scale of the crisis, the government is mobilising people and resources on a mass scale. It aims to reclaim a quarter of a million square kilometres of land lost to the desert by 2020. Presenter Jennifer finds out, first hand the dimensions of the problem.

Within India on the coastal regions of Gujarat, the human population has increased by 62% in just 20 years. In a land already consumed by farming and a need for water for domestic consumption the increasing population is putting an unwanted strain upon the land.

In a country that receives less than 25 centimeters of rain a year, Jordans’ demand for water is at a critical point. At the present moment the only thing keeping the land from becoming a dry agricultural desert is the continuous work of its farmers. Jordanian TV reporter, Rula Amin goes in search of answers.

Today the main threat to the scarce Saharan grazing lands is not drought but tourism. With over nine million tourists per year in Morocco and Tunisia alone, and the craze for rallies brought on by the Paris-Dakar race, hundreds of thousands of vehicles travel all over the Moroccan Sahara each year.

Niger, on the fringes of the Sahel, is in the front-line against an advancing desert. Villages such as Limandi, in the Diffa Department, have been abandoned to the dunes. It is the classic image of desertification. And yet, despite a major drought, in this film there is strong evidence that some villagers are reversing the trend and re-greening their farms and pastures.

In this land where water is at a minimum the toll of the increasing number of tourists flocking to Spain in the summer months is causing a strain on the land. Alfredo Frenandez looks at the Spanish governments plans to deal with these problems and the possible consequences of these actions on the land.

Following a stubborn drought in 2006 Tanzania found its self in the middle of a major water shortage. Local TV reporter Kanky Mwaigomile travels to the forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania, the water towers of the country, to see first hand the effects of illegal logging and charcoal making.