Watch this new provocative 22-minute TedTalk by Allan Savory on ‘How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change’.

Alan Savory, a Zimbabwean-born biologist/ecologist and rangelands specialist, gives environmentalists pause in a recent TedTalk, published 4 Mar 2013, on the ‘cancer’ of desertification of the world’s drylands, which make up some two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.

‘Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert’, Savory begins in this quietly powerful talk. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes he has evidence that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

The factor is your old-fashioned cattle, sheep and goat herds — the very animals vilified by generations of range ecologists arguing that domesticated animals cause, not stop, desertification.

‘We know that desertification is caused by livestock’, Savory begins, ‘mostly by cattle, sheep and…