Comm: "Throughout history mankind has been drawn to water. It is the same impulse driving people on holiday on the South Coast of England and in northern India, where religious pilgrims come to the banks of the river Yamuna. This film is about the strange link between the two groups - the connection between our love of nature and the human spirit. Could it be these simple things could help us save the world?"

Satish Kumar, Editor of Resurgence Magazine: "Religious bodies need to address the issues of our time, and the crisis of our time is the imbalance between the earth and human beings."

Martin Palmer, Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC): "The annual treck to the seaside, the holiday, which of course comes from the word holy day, is a form of modern pilgrimage. We go to these places as we used to go to the great sacred shrines of the past, to reconnect."

Comm: "Bradwell-on-Sea in the East coast of England. Two distinct groups of people are drawn here: holidaymakers and the religious. These people belong to the Christian Othona community. They are making their daily walk to the 12th. century church of St Peter's - the oldest church in England - once a place of pilgrimage, and today a religious community has grown up around it."

Kate Mulkern: "The going to and trom the chapel twice a day reminds us of the tide. Our whole daily routine revolves around swimming. People come here from the cities to relax, to get a sense of space, we have wonderful starscapes at night and sunsets. The environment shapes our spirituality."

Comm: "Such attempts at harmony beteen humanity, spirituality and nature are only too rare."

Satish Kumar: "Human beings seem to have come to the conclusion in the wake of the scientific, technological and industrial revolution that the world is there for our benefit, we are masters of nature and environment and we can use it, use it, use it till it comes to a finish...

"At the moment the world religions have accepted the paradigm of materialism, consumerism, high living standards, economic growth. I would like to see religious leaders being avant garde in talking about a non-materialistic world view, avant garde in talking about a non-consumerist way of life."

Comm: "It was feelings like those that led to an extaordinary meeting in the Italian town of Assisi, the home of St Francis, the patron saint of nature. In 1986, the World Wide Fund for Nature, at the instigation of its patron, the Duke of Edinburgh, invited representatives of the world's major religions to a conference on the environment."

Martin Palmer: "Quite frankly the environmental movement is not in touch with very many people. What religion offers is that in every parish at every Mosque, in every Hindu temple you have people who for being environmental is simply what you are. This is what you do. We can reach more people, through sources of authority they recognise, more swiftly, more deeply than anything else."

Comm: "The major religions committed themselves to a modern expression of this message - making ecology and conservation the focus of their actions and prayers. From this has grown a movement for religions to make specific environmental actions - or sacred gifts to the world.

"To examine what this new force in conservation can achieve, Earth Report decided to take one slice of environmental activity around the planet - it went to India."

Comm: "This is the Indian town of Vrindavan, eighty miles south of New Delhi. It's a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. According to legend, the Hindu deity Krishna played as a boy in the sacred groves beside the Yamuna River."

Srivatsa Goswami: "Vindavan is the place of Krishna, where he played with his special friend, which is nature."

Comm: "But now the nature so beloved by Krishna is under threat. The river Yamuna is polluted and the town of Vrindavan stinks of sewage. The environment is under pressure from a spiralling population."

Srivatsa Goswami: "In 50 years we lost more forest cover than in 5000 years. We have killed our rivers, which we preserved for 5000 years, we can go on."

Comm: "But in Vrindavan help is at hand. Followers of Krishna have formed an organisation called Friends of Vrindavan. They cleaned up this sacred lake, and the woods around it. In this grove, a youthful Krishna is said to have played hide-and-seek with his earthly lover Radha. According to the legend, when Krishna left this earth, Radha wept and her tears formed a lake, known as 'Radharani' - or Radha's tears.

Satish Kumar: "Spirituality and the world cannot be put in two separate compartments. We have to spiritualise everyday life, we have to bring spirituality into our agriculture, our economics, in our politics in our everyday life, otherwise spirituality will have no relevence in our time. So religious leaders need to grasp the nettle and say that spirituality and religion, they are not somewhere different just in books, and churches, and temples and mosques, they are for everyday life. We have to spiritualise everyday living."

Comm: "The Friends of Vrindavan have taken this message to heart in the most basic way - by cleaning the streets."

Robyn Beech: "Because Vrindavan is a pilgrimage place large amounts of Indian devotees come to Vrindavan. Although the population is judged to be about 40,000, it will swell to about 150,000 people when those pilgrims will arrive."

Comm: "The Friends now employ a full-time gang of street cleaners. But they have an uphill struggle."

Robyn Beech: "If we don't have anywhere to dump the garbage, it is a very big problem. The municipality really don't do a very good job at keeping the problem under control. "

Comm: "The Friends also run a programme of tree planting. Continuing a scheme first funded by the WWF, they are maintaining and replanting this ancient forest attached to one of the city's temples. They run three nursaries, and employ eight gardeners. Vrindavan's friends are a small part of a growing global movement of conservation efforts inspired by religion.

"These followers of Krishna chanting their way through the streets of London are another manifestation of this global awaking in how the spiritual can play a part in conservation. The founder of the friends of Vrindavan was a member of the Hari Krishna sect. And there is a further link between them and another conservation scheme in India.

"The ancient Hindu temples of Orissa in eastern India. Traditionally, religion has permeated almost every aspect of daily life here, including the way in which people dealt with their environment."

Maharaja Dibyasingh Deb: "The people consider the forest areas as special dwelling areas of gods and goddesses. The people who live in the forest areas they have an emotional attachment to the forest. So much so that the trees are worshipped."

Comm: "But religious love for the trees has not been enough to preserve the forests. Population growth has meant that the forests have suffered, cut down to create agricultural land and to provide firewood. Now the shortage of wood is even threatening one of India's greatest religious festivals.

"Every summer Orissa stages the spectacular Rath Yatra festival, when the huge wooden effigy of the Lord Jagannath - who is a manifestation of Krishna - is paraded in wooden chariots through the city of Puri. The figure of Jagannath is carved from the increasingly endangered Neen tree. The chariots containing the deity and figures of his brother and sister are made from twelve other specific trees, all increasingly rare. Because of the shortage of wood, the festival itself is now in jeopardy.

"Each part of the vast chariots is traditionally built from a specific wood, the phasi tree for the wheels, and so on. Following the festival, the chariots are broken up and used to stoke the fires of the temple kitchens. And so the annual cycle of collecting the wood, building the chariots and dismantling them goes on. But with the forest disappearing, finding the right wood is becoming increasingly difficult.

"And this is where Ishkon, or the Hari Krishna movement, came in. It launched a project to plant new trees - the ones used to make Lord Jagannath. It enlisted the help of ARC - the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, an international body linking all major religions."

Maharaja Dibyasingh Deb: "We look at this as part of a larger project in which people will be motivated to join in conservation work. Involvement of people in protection of sacred grove is a vital ingredient to ensure the success of the conservation activity..."

Comm: "Now the government of Orissa has come in with plans to plant 2600 hectares of forest. Local villagers are involved from the beginning, to ensure the trees are protected and are not cut down for fire wood or building materials. Their inspiration is religious - to serve Lord Jagannath."

Maharaja Dibyasingh Deb: "What we tell them is this - look, you are serving the lord by looking after his forests and so he gets his supply of wood. They are very happy and they feel involved. This revives their religious sentiments, which are getting degraded because of cultural changes. It revives their association with the deity and gave powerful motivation apart from benefits of grazing for cattle, in addition to that, emotional satisfaction by looking after his forests."

Comm: "The Sri Jagannath Forest Project will be presented at the Katmandu meeting as a sacred gift by the Hindu relgion to world conservation - as part of movement to develop sacred lands."

Maharaja Dibyasingh Deb: "The new project, we see it as a sacred offering to Lord Jagannath and as a new concept in conservation in which religious motivation plays a part and a very constructive role and we hope this will lead to an expansion of the sacred forests - a sacred grove, for Orissa."

Comm: "The actions of those involved in the Jagannath Reforestation project can be seen as a revival of a role some people believe religion has traditionally played but which has been long forgotten."

Martin Palmer: "The vast majority of religions are encoded environmental behaviour. They arise out of crises. If you believe there is a benign deity and then your entire way of life is destroyed by climatic change, then you have one of two choices - either you failed the gods or the gods failed you. So when you begin to recreate a sense of the sacred it won't be in the mold of what you have lost, because that doesn't work anymore. You will probably build in a little bit of wisdom about how not to over- use the environment, how not to chop down that forest on that hill because if you do you will get a mud slide which wipes out the crops. So you place a taboo in the name of newer deity on exploiting that forest. A great deal of religious practice are like signposts passed down through time to warn us: 'tread gently here because if you don't you're going to get stomped on.'"

Comm: "The resort of Nainital, six and a half thousand feet up in the foothills of the Himalayas in the state of Uttar Pradesh . It looks like paradise. But deforestation has been going on for so many years that the area is plagued by landslides, like this one, creating a huge scar beside the beautiful lake.

"Hidden in the mountains about an hour's drive away is the remote and isolated Sattal lake. On the top of a mountain above the lake, one man has been waging a lone war against the deforestation. He is a Hindu holy man who lives the life of a hermit in a mountain ashram.

"Swami Vankhandi, literally, Servant of the Forest, set up his ashram in 1978. Since then his sacred fire has burned continuously. The swami chose this hill because it is said to be the home of the forest Goddess. The top of the hill is in a special botanical area called an ecotone zone, where plants normally found only in different climatic regions can thrive together, like these figs and this prickly pear."

Swami Vankhandi: "This is a mango tree, and I have peach, mango and aloe They normally grow in hot zones but grow here because it is an ecotone zone.

"This tree is from the Himalayan Gungotree glacier at 18,000 feet. It has grown that much in one year. It was a small little seedling.

"Tigers and leopards and deer come through the ashram. The animals know that this is an ashram and so they feel secure here."

Comm: "The Swami wants to turn the ashram into an educational and research centre to investigate the medicinal properties of plants. He has drawn up a three-year plan development plan, but he needs thirty thousand pounds to implement it. ARC has promised half of the money but only if the Swami can raise the rest - and he says he cannot do that."

Swami Vankhandi: "I have no interest in moneymaking. But if any organisation is interested in coming here for scientific work then let them come and spend their money. But it is for others to approach me. That is not my job. I am only interested in prayer and prayer alone. When I pray here in isolation it sends vibrations into the environment that are caught by people all over the world. In 1970 I prayed for a year for the protection of the tiger and the result was there was a political movement to protect the tiger. I do not need the media."

Comm: "For Swami Vankhandi, conservation is not about joining movements, but is best served by living in harmony with nature."

Satish Kumar: "Our modern lifestyle has become very cluttered with goods and so many things, that we have no time to look after ourselves and our imaginations, our art and our soul. So the message is to simplify our life so that we can entertain the important aspects of our lives, so live simply so that others may simply live."

Comm: "The world's religions are slowly awakening to the power they have to conserve our environment. In Katmandu in November the major religions will gather in celebration of the world and its beauty."

Martin Palmer: "One of the things the religions have done is to ask the environmental movement to celebrate - a great shock - To celebrate what? The whole thing's going down the plug hole. You want us to have a party? This is fantastic, what we have. This is what we are going to do in Katmandu, say it's wonderful."

Comm: "The Baha'is have instigated a major educational programme to educate young people about the environment.

"The Buddhists have begun turning the forests into sacred, protected, lands.

"Christian churches are banning the use of harmful chemicals and running environmental education projects.

"The Jains are running reforestation projects across India.

"In the Jewish faith, thousands of synagogues across North America are running local environmental schemes.

"Islamic banks support sustainable development by providing loans without interest.

"The Taoists have planted millions of trees in China, turning barren hills into forests."

Martin Palmer: "Now when was the last time you were invited to a party to celebrate the environment? You cannot live with guilt 365 days a year."