With no-fishing zones, Mexican fishermen restored the marine ecosystem

Illicit activity is rampant in the rundown motel rooms dotting Costa Mesa’s Harbor and Newport boulevards. Officials think they finally have a plan to make some of those motels disappear: Property zoning.

Overall, Cambodia is a relatively poor country whose residents don't own much. Norwegian hotel owners in the city of Krong Siem Reap urge their Cambodian staff to be more in charge of making their own decisions by making them co-owners of the hotel, an act that forced them to have more confidence and critical thinking skills.

Farmers in Vietnam face rising sea levels but rejected the city's water engineering projects. They prefer gradual measures to cope with climate change so scientists have allowed the farmers to steer the conversation.

Louisiana and Vietnam both need affordable solutions to rising sea levels. Leaders from Vietnam visited Louisiana to compare ideas.

The World Conservation Union estimates that 40 percent of the more than 40,000 species it tracks on its Red List are close to extinction and this problem requires humans to change their behavior to fix it. Rare’s the Pride Campaign uses social marketing to attract attention and communicate the conservation message between local communities and government entities. The Pride Campaign has been replicated around the world for different conservation efforts to protect biodiversity.

Farmland is expensive and scarce in urban areas. In Boston Higher Ground Farm uses green roofs to grow its produce and Grove Lab has designed a cabinet for people to grow their vegetables indoors.

In just the next couple of decades, the World Bank says, farmers across Africa could lose more than half their cropland to drought and heat - the issue is considered so pressing that, a few years ago, Malawi's Department of Meteorological Services added "Climate Change" to its name. A new aid group group now works with farmers in more than 60 villages — with plans to expand — helping them become more resilient to a changing climate.

New water management technology implemented along the Columbia has significantly helped the fish population - specifically salmon - return to healthy numbers and has restored much of the community and industry that revolves around the river, including for native peoples.

Clean water and healthy ecosystems are becoming increasingly difficult to come by. With floating islands and other inventions, eco-entrepreneur Bruce Kania thinks that biomimicry - such as reconstructing wetlands and growing biofilms - can tackle the toughest of water problems.

In many parts of the world, not owning one's own land is more directly correlated to poverty than other factors such as illiteracy, but land reform is controversial, difficult, and expensive. A new program called Landesa is having success in India through a non-confiscatory model that gives families tennis-court size plots.