EARTH’S HOPE:
envisioning a future with functional ecosystems

to rebalance the carbon cycle
to ensure biodiversity survives for future generations
to halt and reverse desertification
to ensure food security for all
to eradicate poverty

EARTH’S HOPE:
envisioning a future with functional ecosystems

Human beings will determine what the Earth will be like in the future. It can either be “hot, dry and crowded” or it can be moist, fertile and nurturing. What it will be depends on whether humanity can collectively learn what it has failed to learn for millennia, namely, how to ensure functional ecosystems.

Climate change is showing us that we have altered natural systems.

We can accurately and logically understand what has happened.

We have and are seriously reducing the biological diversity of all living things. We have reduced the amounts of biomass being generated in many parts of the world. By reducing photosynthesis we have lowered natural carbon uptake and storage and reduced the accumulation of organic matter in the soil, lowering soil fertility and productivity. Reduced organic matter in the soil has altered the infiltration and retention of rainfall.
Lowered soil moisture has led to degradation of microclimates and weather patterns. This alters local and therefore global temperature averages.

To fix this, a physical response, as a species, on a planetary scale is required.

As long as we ignore what this means then we are committed to the outcomes from long-term trends.

As soon as we understand what this means we can reverse these trends.

We can reverse the trends by physically ensuring the infiltration and retention of rainfall, by consciously and efficiently increasing organic matter in the soil, by restoring vegetation cover wherever it has been lost, by designating ecological land with natural succession of endemic and indigenous plants, to ensure that biodiversity survives for future generations.

John D. Liu Mission Statement

John sent this article on the Garden of Eden to me last night.  Don’t worry too much about the biblical issues.  The take away point here should be that this might be the first example of a pattern that we’ve seen countless times all over the world, such as on the Loess Plateau and by the headwaters of the White Nile and Congo Rivers.  The pattern is sequential and the outcome is predictable.  Lessons of the Loess Plateau, however, has shown us that we can restore ecosystems that years of poor farming techniques and chronic undervaluaing of ecosystem functionality destroyed.  We can avert the ecological and social crisis that occur at the end of this pattern of destruction.  But we can only do it if we act swiftly together.

Paul Kedrosky recently compared the collective call to action to solve to the Y2K problem and our response today’s financial/economic crisis.  How did we avoid the could-have-been Y2K crisis?  Kedrosky writes:

So, why didn’t the worst happen? In part what happened is this: People acted. While they were late, slow, stupid, and error-prone, they did what people do when a big enough alarm bell is rung loudly and long enough: They tried to figure out what they could do in the time they had to reduce their risk, and they did those things. They didn’t think other people would get there, but they knew they would.

We have to ring the alarm bell and figure out what we can do in time to reduce our risk of destroying ecosystems around the world and paying a terrible price.  Ringing the bell is the first step, and that’s what we’re trying to do right now.  Please view the Garden of Eden article in this light.

Michael Collins Lessons of the Loess Plateau, Mission Statement Loess Plateau

Michael Collins Ecosystem Rehabilitation, Mission Statement Africa

Just got the following message from John: 

Today I’m flying in a Boeing 777 on the way to San Francisco to address the Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE).  I’m honored to have the privilege to address all the worthy educators who are striving to move education forward.  I’m thinking about the life long efforts of so many people, to expand human knowledge, to initiate young people into the progression of understanding.  The courage and dedication needed to do this is awe-inspiring.  The fact is that these teachers and their students will to some degree determine what the future will hold.

My topic is:

“Earth’s Hope”  - A Global Response to Climate Change by Healing the Earth”

This ambitious theme now comes naturally to me.  I’ve become so familiar with the concepts that it all seems simple.  But I can imagine to someone who is confused and perhaps fearful about natural ecosystem function and climate change that it seems anything but simple.

For me I began to see this when I was asked by the World Bank to document the rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau in China back in 1995.  

The Loess Plateau is the cradle of Chinese civilization, where the early Chinese dynasties like the Qin, the Han and the Tang were centered.  Where great science, art and power dominated the thoughts of Chinese for Millennia.  But the great civilization that they built also sowed the seeds of their own destruction by degrading the ecosystem function.

It seems like a cliché but if we do not learn from history then we are destined to repeat it.

Now as I study the results of modern society there are so many parallels with the ancient past.

We have seen what caused the Yellow River civilization to fail.  This is the same trajectory that the other cradles of civilization have followed. 

It is too easy to say they cut the trees (but they did).

But it is a bit more complicated than just cutting trees.  What actually seems to have happened is that the ancient Chinese began to reduce biodiversity and this reduced biomass.  Reduction of biomass lowered photosynthesis and altered several other crucial processes in a logical progression.  I have called this a “Hierarchy of Ecosystem Functionality”. 

What I have observed suggests that the  progression goes roughly like this.

Reduction of Biodiversity

Reduction in Biomass (plant cover)

Reduction in Photosynthesis

Reduction in Carbon uptake and manufacture of Oxygen

Reduction in accumulation of Organic Matter

Disruption of Nutrient Cycling

Reduction  of Fertility

Reduction of Infiltration and Retention of Rainfall

Changes in soil moisture

Changes in relative humidity

Changes in weather

Changes in Climate.

On a local basis or a regional basis this leads civilizations to collapse but now we are at the point where we are affecting not simply microclimates but the macroclimate.

This is important.  But what is most important is that the process seems to be reversible.  But we must understand it and act accordingly.

This is why “Earth’s Hope” is an important line of inquiry.

It is not simple but it is understandable.

The more we study this the better able we are to PHYSICALLY respond.  We can actually restore soil fertility where it has been lost.  We can restore tree cover, grass cover and undergrowth and all of this sequesters carbon and improves infiltration and retention of rainfall.  Right now it seems that there is nothing more important than this.  Watch this space to learn more and join us to help heal the earth. 

John D. Liu

Michael Collins John D. Liu, Mission Statement Hierarchy of Functionality, Loess Plateau, Mission, San Francisco California

Envisioning a future without poverty in a world with intact ecosystems.

Earth’s Hope’s mission is to understand, to educate, to inspire and to facilitate global action that will ensure a future without poverty in a world with intact ecosystems.  We can achieve mission by researching and documenting functional and dysfunctional ecosystems, communicating globally online and locally in person, compiling and making our researching and documentation accessible, helping to design and implement ecosystem rehabilitation projects and collaborating to solve problems.  Through our committed work, Earth’s Hope aims to build a community of people who understand that the critical problems that we face can be solved, and who are willing ot teach and lead others to work for our common future.

Earth’s Hope allows us to collectively inquire about our problems and their solutions.   We will begin outlining some of these problems and their solutions on the blog and the website in the coming months.

The most important thing for you to know right now, is that Earth’s Hope is you.

Michael Collins Mission Statement Education, Mission