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The focus of this week's show is demographic change. In our first report we head to India, where the number of children per family varies widely between rural and urban areas. We also take a look at Germany's multi-generational housing projects, and see how locals in Papua New Guinea are protecting their rain forest.
In India, children signal social status and can be relied on to provide for their parents when they get old. This traditional mindset is slowly beginning to change, especially among the urban population. But 700 million Indians live in rural areas, and they are as traditional as ever.
The traditional understanding of the family could soon become a problem. China - another country with a population of billions - has maintained a one-child policy as part of its population control program for more than 30 years. But India has no such policy - and its population is expected to exceed 1.7 billion by 2050.
Sun City, Arizona, is home to more than 40,000 pensioners, with an average age of 73.5. No one who lives here is under 55. As a result, there are no children, and next to no crime and litter.
Residents never have to leave their gated community - everything they need is on their doorstep, from churches to supermarkets, healthcare services and hospitals. Originally from Minnesota, Lori and Bill Pearson bought their dream home in Sun City and have never looked back. These days, hundreds of thousands of senior citizens live in similar retirement communities across the US.
It won't be long before Japan, Italy and Germany have the world's highest percentages of senior citizens. But in fact, the average age is rising all over the world. Many elderly people suffer from loneliness and have little contact to children and young people.
It's a problem that multigenerational housing projects are designed to tackle. Home to young and old, these housing projects are a boon across the generations. Germany is now home to more than 500 of them. The first was founded twenty years ago in Salzgitter.
The Huon Peninsula has no cars, no telephone, and no TV - but it does have 76,000 hectares of intact forest and a population of 10,000. The forest is set to become Papua New Guinea's first conservation area.
As one of the first tropical rainforest projects to be set up under the International Climate Initiative, this is the first conservation area in which nature conservation and rural development are to go hand-in-hand. The area is host to a unique biological diversity and is also a significant carbon sink. The conservation efforts are expected to reduce CO2 emissions and thus contribute to climate mitigation.
The communities are committing themselves to using the forests in a sustainable manner and protecting the diversity of species, and in return they and their children are being provided with medical supplies and education.
