www.permaculture.co.uk permaculture No. 85 4 The Great Work W herever you are in the world, I like to imagine that you got down on your knees today and touched the soil. You found the Earth soft because of the organic matter, the love and care that you, your family and your community have lavished on it. I see you spreading straw or wood chips for mulch to enrich the soil and maintain the moisture. You added yesterday’s vegetable waste and turned the compost, experiencing joy when you saw how many worms were wiggling their way back into the fertile heart of the pile. If you recognise this scenario then you know how to sequester carbon and are on the forefront of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. All the paper climate agreements, financial finagling and virtual actions in the world aren’t worth as much as your compost pile and garden. We need to shout this from the roof- tops. Right now, the funds needed to address climate change are swirling in a vortex of highly paid consultants who endlessly debate what to do. This financial capital needs to flow to the individual and the collectivised farmers, gardeners and landscape restorers who, through their efforts to increase soil carbon, increase the height of vegetative canopies and protect biodiversity are leading
world, I like to imagine that you got down on your
knees today and touched the soil. You found the Earth soft because of the organic matter, the love and care that you, your family and your community have lavished on it. I see you spreading straw or wood chips for mulch to enrich the soil and maintain the moisture. You added yesterday’s vegetable waste and
turned the compost, experiencing joy when you saw how many worms were wiggling their way back into the fertile heart of the pile.
If you recognise this scenario then you know how to sequester carbon and are on the forefront of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. All the paper climate agreements, financial finagling and virtual actions in the world aren’t worth as much as your compost pile and garden.
We need to shout this from the rooftops. Right now, the funds needed to address climate change are swirling in a vortex of highly paid consultants who endlessly debate what to do. This financial capital needs to flow to the individual and the collectivised farmers, gardeners and landscape restorers who, through their efforts to increase soil carbon, increase the height of vegetative canopies and protect biodiversity are leading
Award winning filmmaker, John D. Liu, describes how earth restoration can help us grow a collective consciousness that will ensure our future, and the
practical steps we can take to do this
of Our Time. . .our species’ efforts to mitigate and adapt to human induced climate change. Imagine what we could do if we engaged people worldwide in restoring the Earth’s ecological function? If we paid people who badly need the work, like the homeless or refugees, to grow soils and replant denuded hillsides. There is a role to play for everyone on the Earth in ensuring the survival and sustainability of human civilization.
As I begin to write this, I’m in Egypt to participate in a regional forum organised by International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). I’ve arrived from Ghana, where we started the documentation of the first Forest Stewardship Council certified plantation forest in West Africa, together with colleagues from the COMMONLAND Foundation, the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP)
and FORM Ghana. I’m really happy to be writing to you and hopefully this will be the first of many essays that will live on these pages. As they say here in Egypt: “Insha’Allah” or “by the Grace of God”.
Above: John Liu with a local water expert on the Loess Plateau, China, 15 years after restoration began (left). John Liu and crew filming the Loess Plateau’s restoration (right).
From Paradise to DesertThe land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the birthplace of human agriculture, is known as the ‘fertile crescent’. In western religious cosmology these lands have been called ‘The Garden of Eden’, ‘Paradise’, and ‘The Land of Milk and Honey’. Looking today at the brittle, hyperarid landscapes, it is difficult to reconcile the barrenness with the lyrical names that come to us across time. This presents a fascinating puzzle requiring ecological forensics. How could the difference between what ancient people saw and described and what we see today be so huge?
Why did the lands where agriculture began degrade? Is it inevitable that human activity must cause the destruction of the Earth’s natural systems? Could our ancestors be providing us with clues with which we can solve the mystery?
For the last two decades I’ve been studying and documenting ecosystem function and dysfunction on a planetary scale. On China’s Loess Plateau I witnessed that it is possible to restore largescale degraded ecosystems and from this realization a growing vision of planetary restoration has emerged. These ideas at first attracted little attention. Gradually
though, more and more people have begun to understand that we have degraded the Earth, that natural systems are dynamic and that in the Anthropocene epoch these systems reflect our consciousness. It’s become clear to me that the principles of permaculture align closely with the requirements for ecological function in Earth ecosystems. Permaculture helps us make our community landscapes more resilient. Ecological restoration brings back natural ecological regulation on a planetary scale. Ultimately this knowledge will affect every aspect of human society, it’s simply a matter of time ... and the sooner the better.
Billions of People Prefer PeaceIn October of 2014, I wrote a short Facebook post about the increasing level of violence in the Middle East.1 In that short essay I posited that if there were hundreds or thousands willing to join in violence, there must be millions or even billions of people who prefer peace. The response to this was overwhelmingly positive. An ambitious and growing community immediately began selforganising to ‘Grow Peace Through Ecology’ in Jordan by working to collaboratively build a Research, Training and Innovation Centre for Ecological Restoration. A young Danish student, Robert Senftleben, has been at the centre of this group and is relentlessly determined to move from the theoretical to physical.2
Regardless of, or perhaps because of the degree of difficulty, many are feeling they need to do something to change the cycle of violence and suffering. It is intriguing to consider what would happen if we were to infiltrate all available moisture in the region? What would happen if we were to restore natural fertility to soils? What would happen if we brought back biodiversity? Could natural ecological function be the missing factor that has led all other efforts to find peace in the Middle East to fail?
The fundamental question that then emerges is, how can we restore it? This is where permaculture has a leading role. A significant and growing number of people are teaching themselves and others how to grow biologically healthy and
“Working with – instead of against – nature, the Chinese government turned the dusty
eroded hills of the Loess Plateau into a healthy landscape.”
continents and I have no doubt that functional ecological systems are much more productive than dysfunctional ones. You cannot erode the fertility, hydrological regulation and kill the microbial communities that build the Earth’s living soils and expect to have more productivity. You may have shortterm gains from artificial inputs, but over the long term you collapse the system and have nothing. This is broadly illustrated in the Middle East and Mediterranean biomes and we have proof that even these historically degraded landscapes can be restored if you know how to do it.
We must all be grateful to Geoff Lawton and other pioneers who are showing that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Earth, the landscapes are simply reflecting either our ignorance when they are degraded or our understanding with how they function. We must also realise that we need everyone on Earth to learn about and accept this point of view in order for humanity to survive and become sustainable.
Eye Opening DedicationThe presentations at the IUCN Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum for the Middle East in Egypt are continuing as I write. The participants are speaking in Arabic, but the text is in English so I can more or less understand what is going on. This region is seriously challenged by complex ecological, psychological, social, economic, and political problems. Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen and Palestine are just a few of the places that have been discussed here. It is eye opening for me to meet so many scholars, officials and activists who are dedicating their lives to working on the ecology of the region. Yet they don’t think they are special, for them it’s normal, because this is their home. We need to realise that we are all interconnected and that degradation anywhere on the Earth affects us all.
At the COP20 in Peru, an Indigenous Ecuadorian leader refused to shake my hand and I was worried that I had somehow offended him. But then he put his hand on my shoulder and told me to do the same and he said: “My Earth is Your Earth.” Then he embraced me and said: “My Spirit is Your Spirit.” Then he embraced me from the other side and said: “My Heart is Your Heart.” Then he took both my arms at the elbows and looked into my eyes and said: “We Are Working Together.” Now that’s a greeting.
It is amazing what can be done through pure intentions. Together many people are beginning to share a vision of the World with intact ecosystems. A new society will be built with this trust. We have to have faith. Emerging from experiences worldwide for some decades and over the last halfyear in Jordan is a growing participatory Global Earth Regeneration Alliance that is showing how to engage everyone in this, ‘The Great Work of Our Time’. More and more people can instantly understand the need for Research, Training and Innovation Centres for Ecological Restoration and can imagine them growing up wherever the land is
diverse soils rich in organic matter. They are learning that increases in organic material and microbiologic commun ities in the soil also retain vastly more moisture, especially when constantly covered by perennial vegetative growth. These same people are learning to grow closed canopy, multistorey polyculture food forests. These perennial systems align human systems with nature and have an entirely different result than continuing to practise Neolithic agriculture or our current toxic industrialised agricultural model.
The massive yields and productivity from well managed, biologically diverse, ecologically functional smallholdings are also shattering the myth that destroying natural fertility and hydrological regulation with industrial agriculture is somehow more productive than optimised perennial organic agriculture systems. I have been searching in all
Far Left: Part of the Loess Plateau in China, during and after restoration.
Left: A Loess Plateau farmer whose livelihood has been restored along with the land.
degraded. These centres can be fully functional, transparently governed, participatory communities that merge the personal interests of individuals and families with the broader societal need to transition from a wasteful and ultimately suicidal way of life to one where everyone on Earth is enga ged in ensuring food security, and hydrological and climate regulation.
Acknowledging what is real also means turning our backs on what is false. We are at the end of an era that will be known mainly for its waste, pollution, materialism, wanton violence and foolish addiction to fossil fuels. It can be frightening to change but, when you think about what we are leaving behind, change can be seen to be a very good thing. We need to change so many things. This is our chance. Not only can we address climate change and make our food systems healthier and more resilient, we can and must remake human society and economy to be fair for everyone. This is being recognised and this knowledge can empower people all over the world, engaging their creativity and giving their lives meaning.
Change is DifficultAs the endgame of this unsustainable era plays out, many people are standing on the sidelines. Their intelligence, imagination, energy and abilities are needed to move to the next level in human consciousness. We need to choose to act together as a species on a planetary scale and we have everything we need to do it. Those who understand this must do this first and the rest will follow. By joining together we can stop enriching those who flagrantly value the accumulation of material things over the health and well being of all life and move to enriching the Earth and our lives, increasing fertility, protecting biodiversity and removing forever toxic substances from the soil, air and the water. Together we can build energy efficient, passive solar, Earth architecture homes and make these available to everyone. This is our chance to ensure that everyone is employed to ensure the survival and sustainability of human civilisation.
Because it is possible to restore the Earth’s natural ecological systems, we are required to do it. This is not a job ... it is work. This work doesn’t enslave us to make money to stay on the treadmill of consumption. It frees us to spend our lives doing what we know is best for the Earth, for human civilisation, for our families and for
Below: The new lake at Tamera ecovillage, Portugal, which has had a very restorative effect on its surroundings. The site before (inset).
ourselves. When we join together to take up this challenge we are living the change we want to see on the Earth. Valuing and restoring the Earth’s natural systems is what all who are alive today are called to do. It is the meaning of our lives. It is our privilege, our joy, and our responsibility. It is ‘The Great Work of Our Time’
John D Liu made the documentaries Green Gold, Prix Italia award winner, and Hope in a Changing Climate, named the best ecosystem film at the International Wildlife Film Festival. He is currently Director of the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP), Visiting Fellow at the Nether lands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and Ecosystems Ambassador at the Commonland Foundation. To hear his lectures and read his papers see:https://knaw.academia.edu/JohnDLiu
Watch John’s films at permaculture.co.uk/videos: Green Gold:http://tiny.cc/green_gold_videoHope in a Changing Climate:http://tiny.cc/changing_climate
1 You can find the original message at: www.facebook.com/innovationcenters
2 Learn more about what is happening at: http://greendeserts.wordpress.com
