This goes into details about healing damaged ecosystems (deserts) and making them livable as farms, grasslands or forests. (spoiler: it makes the Chinese look very good.)
"As much as 25% of the worlds landmass has been degraded...we've only just begun to recognize the real value of natural capital. Surely investing in the recovery of damaged environments is a cost effective way of solving many of the problems we face today. The source of wealth is the functional ecosystem. The products and services we derive from those are derivative. its impossible for the derivatives to be more valuable than the source. And yet in the economy we have now, as it stands, the products and services have monetary value but the source, the functional ecosystems has zero... we've created a global institution and economic theory based on a flaw in logic. So if we carry that flaw and logic from generation to generation, we compound the mistake."
China is doing really impressive stuff when it comes to re-greening the desert and preserving the ecology, and they're effectively exporting these techniques to other countries, one of the more well known techniques is the "straw checkerboard technique" which is now widely used to combat desertification:
"6 Useful Methods China Uses To Convert Desert Into Productive Lands Rich With Crops"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW0CCk3FQ5I
"China's longest inland river revived by reservoir discharge"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-XUWfIvTI
"Aerial China: Peach blossoms on terrace fields – reviving the 'least habitable area for humans'"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj8i9QvGuOo
