Welcome back to Your Planet, a podcast series brought to you in association with The Conversation that delves into solutions for addressing climate change and the ecological crisis. 

In the first episode of Your Planet we took a deep dive into the Anthropocene -- the name given to a new epoch that many scientists believe Planet Earth has already entered, and which those experts say is marked by humanity’s unprecedented footprint on the earth.

This time we go back to the 1980's, when we had one big problem -- a giant hole in the Earth's ozone layer, which was ultimately reduced because of the actions taken worldwide. So how did we do it? What we learned in the process still inspires climate activists today.

In 1987, the global community signed the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer by phasing out man-made ozone-depleting substances. Today, many are calling for a new phase-out; this time targeting the production of fossil fuels, by far the largest contributors to global climate change.

This will be a key debate at COP28, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference held from 30 November until 12 December in Dubai.

To learn more about the ozone layer, we recommend this article by Cathy Clerbaux is a physicist at the Free University of Brussels and Senior scientist at Laboratoire Atmosphères & Observations Spatiales (LATMOS) at Sorbonne University

Host: Anna Cunningham.

Executive producer: Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer

Edition: Camille Kauffmann

Newsgathering: Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer

Music design: Nicolas Vair with Irma Cabrero-Abanto and Sebastian Villanueva.

Share your thoughts at podcasts@afp.com. Send us your voice notes +33 6 79 77 38 45

This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

AFP and The Conversation have retained their editorial independence at every stage of the project. 

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