This episode is the last installment of the Zero Hour series, part of CGTN America’s Global Action Initiative. It showcases the efforts of leading students at top universities in Latin America and Africa on their quest to tackle the most significant issue of our time: climate change. The optimism, ingenuity, and brilliance displayed in their projects stand in contrast with the realities of their surrounding communities, some of the worst-affected by the extreme weather conditions that have become a feature of the current climate crisis. 
 
In Brazil, as the largest wetland in the world was engulfed by the biggest fires ever recorded, a team of architects and engineers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro was hard at work on combatting climate change. Even amid a pandemic, the renowned university city lab brought to life an alternative and sustainable means of transportation: a bicycle made of bamboo. 

Halfway across the world, the rising levels of Lake Victoria are endangering the lives of communities that depend on it for their survival. Likewise, the glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, keep losing ground to the changing weather patterns. At the bottom tip of the continent, students at Stellenbosch University are coming up with novel and brilliant ways of tackling issues like water and energy consumption and the preservation of the great white sharks.