Restore the Earth

“In order to preserve or save wild animals that are on the verge of extinction, it implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is also with mankind” Henry David Thoreau.

Our forests made us - they give us oxygen, regulate climate, enrich our soils, collect water and offer a peace of mind. In today’s news, all the effects of our degraded habitat can be felt - food shortages, climate change, war over resources, droughts, and ecological deserts. Here in the UK where I live, the wild flower meadows have disappeared, and ancient old growth forests are a thing of the past.

According to Earth Trends - 13 million hectares of forest disappear each year - the largest loss is happening in the biologically rich tropical forests in the south. Now, with the looming threat of climate change, planting new forests has emerged as a central debate in mitigating against climate change. Deforestation contributes 15-20 percent of greenhouse emissions.

Forests store half of the Earth’s terrestial carbon and when they grow they withdraw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this carbon is released back to the atmosphere when forests are clear-cut or burnt. The no 1. culprit is agriculture - according to a major study of deforestation by Geist and Lambin, 2002 - agriculture is implicated in 96 percent of all the major deforestation cases.

Who will bear the brunt of our carbon rich lifestyle, and our behaviour towards our natural world? Our children will, the stakes they face cannot be higher. They will find it harder to access clean water, leading to more poverty and inequality. David Puttnam writes in the Guardian “…climate change could increase child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia by as many as 160 000 a year…”

The children need to speak up. But for children to be part of the changes required, they need adults to re-connect them to the natural world and inspire them, they need to start finding that, which clearly our society has completely lost in every way: the connection to nature and interdependence - nothing in this world is independent from the whole. Interdependence is something that is experienced through interaction with nature. I founded the School Tree Nursery Programme, here in the UK, on this thinking - to begin working and learning with the trees. As our cousins swung around their branches in the distant past, their hand co-ordination developed in the process, making them able to have enough dexterity to make tools, and this led to the development of our brains and consciousness. I have noticed that planting trees shows how our hands can engage positively with nature, this I feel can be the turning point, to begin an age of restoration. As we are the ones destroying our habitats, its in our power to also restore it.

We need to start planning now for severe levels of threats to the future generations. The Native Americans talked about planning for 7 generations ahead, and this is the level of wisdom that is required from our leaders. This approach is not about a knee-jerk reaction to changes in our environment but a carefully laid out plan for a thousand years into the future.

When the latest news is about food shortages, rise in oil prices and scrambling for resources such as clean water and air, its clear, we need a long term international consensus about saving our habitat and re-building soils and forests. In the short term we must pay for those who are facing hunger, but the solution in the long term will be in the restoration of our biodiversity - removing those obstacles that stand in the way of self-regeneration, protecting our forests and planting new ones. Henry David Thoreau, in his book, “Walking” - remarked: “The civilised nations - Greece, Rome, England - have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Little is expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted”

Gro Harlem Brundtland famously defined sustainable development as “’development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. 20 years on, it’s clear that we have already compromised the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainability now is not only about preparing for the future, but about repairing the damage of the past. We not only need sustainable development, but restorative development.

A short film about the forests in Ohio, USA.  It shows how the forests bring prosperity when left alive.  The return of forests brings hope and wealth to local communities.   Lester Brown claims we should be reforesting 150 million hectares in order to reforest the Earth - plenty of work to do!  It would increase the soil fertility, create wealth, halt desertification, mitigate against climate change, stabilise soil erosion and provide habitats for wildlife.   Lets hope we see more of this in the decade ahead.

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The planet is being held hostage by vested interests, today we are being led by the oil and gas companies, the gun lobby, the hunters, the loggers, the trappers, the polluters and the beef, pork, poultry and fishing industries. If hurricanes, floods, droughts and food shortages cannot stop our ways and attitudes about climate change, how then can diplomats do better in Bali?

In the US media, the Bali conference was invisible, it came and went. In end we have a map without a destination, a very useful tool if we are planning to go nowhere.

George Monbiot points out a source of corruption in all this - political campaign finance. He writes in the the Guardian “…since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore $142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.”

I think it is important to point out, when reading the above, that corporations are not democracies, they are led by shareholders who are bound by the great oath of capitalism, profit. Those who have the most share of the cake decide. Today the same pattern is seen within the international community, the same corporations leading the US indirectly are also shaping its policies world-wide.

How can we break free from this grip? How can we find a way out? The answer will have to come down to a popular movement - young people especially should not tolerate such lame leadership as we have seen in Bali. They are the ones inheriting this mess. We need a new world built from basic ecological principles. Economics is a subsidiary to ecology. Real wealth such as clean water, food, medicines and resources come from nature, they are not conjured out of nothing. The capacity for the earth to sustain life is crumbling under mindless exploitation, resource extraction, chemical farming and the burning of fossil fuels. We might have to come face to face with a world not being able to feed us or provide any of the basic services such as clean water and fertile soils.

I have a dream:

Together we say: no more carbon dioxide emissions.
Together we declare the end of the age of oil, and the beginning of renewable energy.
We form a pact to restore the earth and we install the boldest initiative since the Marshall Plan.

Have a great Yule and all the best for 2008!

Mankind on a “brink of disaster” - The UN Secretary General made this SOS call after he had read the IPCC latest report.  All Governments are now fully informed, they will gather in Bali to discuss ways to avoid the abyss.
 
So far these meetings have produced nothing.  A cup of tea with your friendly neighbour could do more to stop climate change then a gathering of world leaders in Bali.  Especially if you both decide to stop cutting the lawn, effectively creating a carbon sink in your garden - lets see if this time is different.  Amidst all the noise out there on climate change a very interesting proposal is coming from Guyana.  The Independent newspaper reports the following:

“In a dramatic offer, the government of Guyana has said it is willing to place its entire standing forest under the control of a British-led, international body in return for a bilateral deal with the UK that would secure development aid and the technical assistance needed. 

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The World Bank decides to destroy the 2nd largest forest in the world

The rainforest in the Congo is the second largest forest after the Amazon.  The trees, soils and ecosystem locks 8 percent of our planet’s carbon.  This ecosystem, through a multitude of services, provides medicine, shelter, timber and food for 40 million people.  Today, the World Bank working indirecly with the UK Government, has decided to strip the forest of its timber, displace the local culture, and export its value to foreign markets.

The Guardian says “The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world’s second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside experts”.

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It’s an irony that developments such as transportation, communications and power generators, which are all regarded as progress, are today the main drive behind the  destruction of the Earth’s lungs, the Amazon.  It seems Governments are hell-bent in making sure pristine nature turns into a parking lot and supermarket - the very cultural landscape of the modern era; and its not a pretty picture.  Conservation International calls this development “a perfect storm of environmental destruction to the world’s oldest rainforest”.

New plans have been drawn up to boost trade between cities on the Latin American continent – this will mean of course creating dams, upgrading roads, telephone cables etc, opening up more pristine forests –conservationists claim the Amazon could be gone in 40 years.

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The Yangtze river dolphin, has been declared officially extinct following an intensive survey of its natural habitat.  The cause?  Unsustainable fishing, power generation, and mass shipping.

Scientists were towing sensitive hydrophones to listen for their call, but nothing was heard and when their habitat had been surveyed over and over, nothing was seen.

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If there is no technological fix today for climate change, when?  This attitude of a better technology tomorrow is similar to the alchemist of old, who thought, despite all the odds, that they would one day find an elixir that turns base metal into gold.

The world’s scientists are calling the strongest possible SOS signal on climate change, extinctions are going on unprecedented, habitat loss and the degradation of water, land and air is out of control.  UK alone will lose many bird species in the next decade and one in five wildflowers is becoming endangered.  Here in France where I live, the last endemic bear was shot a few years ago, the whales are losing their hunting grounds at the same time as our world’s forests are referred to as timber inventories.  There seem to be only two types of people who believe nothing is wrong with this picture - complete idiots or national US economists.

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