Dear Colleagues:

Greetings and best wishes on a Sunday afternoon from Beijing.  Congratulations on all your good work.

I’d like to alert you to a line of enquiry that suggests functional solutions to Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, Desertification, Food Insecurity, Poverty, Disparity, Migration, Conflict, and Population Growth.

Although it is quite complex it can be summed up as “Integrated Poverty Eradication and Large-Scale Ecosystem Rehabilitation”.

This is based on scientific evidence that show the effects that biodiversity, biomass, accumulated organic matter and microclimates below tree canopies or above grass canopies, have on gas exchange, nutrient cycling and infiltration and retention of rainfall.   Simultaneously various econometric evaluations are emerging that provide an overwhelming rationale to invest and restore ecosystem function wherever it has been degraded.   And finally on functional models that show that it is possible to restore ecosystem function if you understand the principles which govern functionality.

This is rather welcome news, however, in order to restore ecosystem function over large areas it is necessary to end the behaviors that degraded the functionality in the first place.  This means that the growing human populations must change their behaviors replacing unsustainable lifestyles and livelihoods with sustainable ones.  This suggests that subsistence agriculture must end abruptly … not slowly over time.  Gradually the picture has become more and more clear and now it is possible to see why and how ending poverty for millions immediately is possible and what the implications of this would be for many of our most serious problems.

I first became interested in this when I began documenting the Loess Plateau in China.

What was most fascinating about the Loess Plateau when I first began to study it in 1995 was that this area was fundamentally ecologically ruined and had been for a very long time.  This effectively meant that the 10’s of millions of people who lived there were desperately poor.  Although the Loess Plateau had been the center of power and affluence for the Qin, Han and Tang Dynasties – some of the most creative in Chinese history - it has been famous for poverty and suffering for over 1000 years, scientifically described as the most eroded place on Earth and euphemistically known as “China’s Sorrow”.  For more than a millennium the region was continuously plagued by Floods, Droughts, Mudslides and dust storms.

Since restoration efforts began almost 15 years ago there has been a dramatic improvement in ecosystem function over broad areas.  Income and productivity increased as well by 10 times.   There is evidence that hydrological function can return when vegetation cover is restored, fertility and productivity can increase with organic matter and soil moisture and that if you differentiate and designate ecological and economic land (and resist the desire to choose all the species) it is possible to ensure that biodiversity will survive into future generations.

You can watch “The Lessons of the Loess Plateau” at <www.earthshope.org>.

You can see my recent presentation at the TALLBERG FORUM at the following URL  (or in the news posting below this text).

http://webbtv.compodium.se/tallberg09/ondemand/034/

You can see and hear Gro Harlem Brundtland, Amory Lovins, and all the other speakers at this years TALLBERG FORUM at the following URL

http://webbtv.compodium.se/tallberg09/

While the work in China is impressive it is not standing alone.

In the United States between 1933 and 1942, 5% of American Males worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  This was in reaction to a financial crisis (The Great Depression –beginning in 1929) and a huge ecological disaster (The Dust Bowl).  The men of the CCC planted between 3 and 5 billion trees and made 700 parks.  This highly successful intervention helped North America to sustain growth and affluence in the second half of the 20th century.

I’ve also been studying this in Africa, South America, South East Asia and Europe – so worldwide.  Scientific analysis of the data leads to the conclusion that soil moisture, fertility, relative humidity, microclimates, are all dynamic.  If we continue with existing trends then we can predict the outcome as long term negative trends accumulate in a vicious cycle.  But if we understand the natural systems functionality and do not disrupt it we can benefit from a virtuous cycle where organic matter, biomass and biodiversity are restored, helping us to achieve massive carbon sequestration gains, increased fertility from nutrient cycling and we can restore infiltration and retention of rainfall naturally, regulating the hydrological cycle and returning soil moisture, relative humidity and microclimates.  Ultimately if taken to scale this can reverse the trends that are leading to desertification, biodiversity loss, extreme weather events and even human induced climate changes.  But we have to realize that the scale is global and these disruptions are not a local problem but one that is a systemic problem on a planetary scale.

Once we get our minds around the size of the task – no less than ending poverty and restoring degraded land everywhere on earth – we can begin to see how this could be done.

A large number of specific actions have been identified.  These seem to work wherever they are tried in China, North America, Africa and Elsewhere.  It is possible to physically change the rainfall dynamic and infiltrate and retain the rain where it comes down.  These are a mixture of physical and biological measures.  World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) and Best Practices in Watershed Management contain most of these.  This helps to restore vegetation cover and biodiversity which then accumulates organic matter.  It is also important to replace the burning of biomass with a renewable energy source and this can be Methane Generation which provides sanitation benefits, energy for development and the fastest method for creating organic compost.  With infiltration and retention of rainfall it is possible to achieve tremendous gains in biomass production, accumulation of optimal levels of organic matter and if we differentiate and designate economic and ecological land, we can ensure that biodiversity will survive into future generations.

The lessons that are emerging to combat human induced climate change are many.  It is now possible to see predictable and catastrophic outcomes if we do not make a major non-marginal correction in human society and economy.   As the world moves toward Copenhagen it is important that solutions compete based on the merit of the ideas and not simply to enrich the wealthy who can manipulate the very large sums of money being discussed.

Revaluing ecosystem functions such as water, soil fertility and biodiversity and recognizing that restoring these functions is the key to reducing human impact on the climate provides the rationale to transfer very large amounts of money to restoration of degraded parts of the Earth.  This will benefit everyone by helping to mitigate against human induced climate change and it will help to redress the disparity that has left 100’s of millions of people desperately poor at the edges of large degraded ecosystems.

There are two main strategies discussed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  (UNFCCC) for the Fifteenth Convening of the Parties in Copenhagen in December.  The first can be described as Enhanced Clean Development Mechanism primarily using Carbon Capture and Storage and Energy Efficiency to mechanically reduce human greenhouse gas emissions.  The second is the Reduction of Emissions through the Decrease in Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) or essentially protecting the last remaining forests from being lost.  While it is possible to see merits in both of these efforts it is difficult to see how these can be suggested to be solutions.  With Enhanced CDM it is possible to lower human emissions but impossible for this alone to rebalance the carbon cycle.   It seems to go without saying that we need to protect all the remaining functional ecosystems which REDD is to do.

Objective analysis shows that there is vast carbon sequestration potential as well as many other benefits to restoring large-scale damaged ecosystems that cannot be found in Enhanced CDM or REDD.  Restoration also has the benefit of helping to take the poorest people in the world and make them into the solution while ending their poverty forever.

While this line of inquiry is challenging it may offer the best solution to myriad problems that are in fact inter-related and can only be solved by comprehensive solutions that address them all.

I think we are all challenged to find and analyze solutions in the public dialogue.

If this is interesting to you I’d be happy to write for any of your publications or to provide broadcast programming on the subject for your television stations.  Or, if you would like to follow this line of inquiry yourselves I would be happy to provide you with interviews, databases and contact information that I have gathered.

John D. Liu

Patrick Climate change, Ecosystem Rehabilitation, John D. Liu, Sustainable development

Thought on a Comprehensive Strategy For Development In Poor Rural Communities: John D. Liu, Rothamsted International Fellow for the Communication of Science

Over many years of observing and documenting pockets of poverty in various places around the world, I have seen that ecological degradation and grinding poverty go hand in hand. In order to address one, it is necessary to address the other as well. Now, because of global disruptions to ecosystems (e.g. climate change, desertification, etc.) we can see that poverty and degradation somewhere, is actually poverty and degradation everywhere. If we fail to address the combined issues of poverty and ecological degradation then we will experience continuous and accumulated disruptions from lowered biodiversity, lowered fertility, disruptions to the hydrological system, growing extreme weather events and continuous anthropogenic impact on climate change.

This means that there is a rationale for the transfer of sufficient capital and technical support to address these issues wherever they occur, not simply because we want to help the poor, but because this is the most efficient and cost effective way for human beings to address a wide range of problems, including: biodiversity loss, fresh water stress, desertification, loss of soil fertility, poverty, disparity, population growth, conflict and climate change.

One of the fundamental things noted during the documentation of ecosystem restoration in China’s Loess Plateau was that you have to work in the worst places, because you need to intervene so that the situation doesn’t further deteriorate. For instance, if sands are shifting and dunes are beginning to overwhelm grasslands you must intervene to reverse this or the situation will accumulate and become much worse. This suggests two things to me. One is that really extreme conditions such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, where people live right at the edge of survival, need to be one focal point of action, and two, the sooner we make decisions to physically address the situation the better.

In trying to conceive of how this might work I have been contemplating and designing specific theoretic interventions. All of the thinking is based on a few principle ground rules.

1. One is that any external intervention is done in collaboration with the local community. This means that there is almost continuous use of “Participatory Assessment” to initially engage the community in the process and to continuously adjust to their needs and expectations. The process as envisioned is based on teamwork between the local and external participants. Using this facilitated method, the community can identify all of the problems, all of the resources, all of the possibilities, and together write the local development plan based on what the community (with external assistance) can achieve. This must be flexible because if the first goals are met then ambitions will increase. This can lead to a development trajectory where the participants are optimistic and see hope for their children and the future.

2. Restoration of ecosystem function and sustainability must be the key guiding principles. This provides the rationale for investment and external assistance and is something that both external and local participants can agree to. All levels of the community must study to the point where they understand that their future and indeed all our futures depend on functional ecosystems such as biodiversity, infiltration and retention of rainfall, soil moisture, nutrient cycling and productivity. By making this the primary goal it should be possible to increase food production while restoring soil organic matter, grass canopies, tree canopies and biodiversity.

3. External assistance needs to be based on equality between the external and the local participants. This is not a charity program to help the poor. It is a collaborative program to restore ecosystem function and all the participants are equal. The idea is also not that the external participants lower their standard of living to that of the local participants but that together the community works to raise the standard of living for everyone. Concrete examples of this would be that infrastructure such as housing, vehicles, sanitation, communication, and energy, etc. are not simply coming to the area for the external participants but should be integrated into the project.

4. The project can identify local building materials, enhance and update local designs, provide training in essential skills such as construction, energy generation and distribution, computer skills and so on. This would mean that external experts working with local participants should work to achieve the level of comfort, sanitation, infrastructure needed for themselves to live healthy and productively and that this should be provided to the entire community simultaneously. This should also include celebrating and encouraging local culture, protecting it from being overwhelmed by global influences.

5. We need to have well educated, skilled people who are willing to live together with the local people and share meals, work, study and housing with them. I would recommend two types of people for this task. One group is recently retired professionals who are not satisfied with simply leisure activities (Given the demographics of the baby boom this could be large). The second group is recent graduates who are seeking wider experience and meaningful work. Again this is potentially also quite a large group.

6. Applying this strategy will require the political will to provide financial support for this type of project however, the amounts are very practical, since you can do a tremendous amount with very little money in these desperately poor areas. The external participants should have some skills in resource management and resource mobilization.

Specific measures:

3 fundamental challenges must be overcome initially to transition the chronically poor from subsistence livelihoods, Water, Food and Energy. Once these basic requirements have been have been met, the wide range of needs to move toward a sustainable trajectory comes more into focus but also everything becomes employment and if mounted correctly with access to information (broadband internet access and facilitators) then the community can continue to follow inquiry, growing and improving forever.

Energy – with assistance from Uppsala University and Dr. Schauz in Germany we are seeking to design community based methane generation with gas being used to store energy and then following sulfur removal going direct to co-generation of heat and electricity for micro grids that serve only local communities. This is much more efficient that the national grid and provides jobs, direction and the energy for broadband internet access needed for non-traditional education (also needed by the external researchers and development professionals).

Compost - by using the methane generators residue from anaerobic digestion and going through one additional step - mixing the materials with dried leaves, shredded newspapers, sawdust or other cellulose materials and allowing aerobic digestion and worms to process everything we will have the fastest and best organic fertilizers available for agricultural and ecological rehabilitation.

Sanitation - merging sanitation with energy production means that we can gather all human waste and all animal waste for methane production thereby solving the sanitation issue and producing energy. If we also separate urine we can produce low cost nitrogen fertilizer to increase productivity. We can take it one extra step and remove the odor in order to increase the acceptance. This also provides jobs and is very supportable because of the need to produce food locally. Increased locally produced organic fertilizer from compost and urine separation represent cost-effective, necessary parts of development.

Water - the issue of water has been mainly considered from the point of view of flow rates. This is incorrect and should be rethought to be infiltration and retention, as work in China, Africa and around the world shows. What I am proposing is that the communities with external assistance provide water for everyone - ending the cycle of carrying water for mainly women and children - and then put people to work re vegetating in order to infiltrate and retain all water that hits the area. This depends on infiltrating 100 % of the water and that will ensure that vegetation cover and biodiversity can be restored as well as accumulated organic matters in the soil. Once these principles are understood and adhered to every day by everyone the development trajectory of the community will have turned around and will be headed for sustainability.

Food - What we have seen in relation to yield is that this is dependent on soil moisture and nutrient cycling and that it is possible to increase fertility in degraded soils. Based on these observations, areas that differentiated and designated ecological and economic land and allowed tree and grass cover in the ecological land changed the soil moisture and relative humidity regimes. By maintaining ecological land biodiversity and accumulation of organic matter changes microbiologic communities, soil organic matter, nutrient cycling and fertility. We have seen that you must have soil moisture and fertility in order to be self sufficient in food. That is the baseline. This can be improved by active measures. This must be done in participating communities.
If agriculture is set up to be integrated with many perennial crops and intercropping with an understanding of what is being called “conservation agriculture” techniques such as no-till that do not expose soils to wind, sun and water to reduce erosion and soil degradation an important phenomenon kicks in. That is that in severely degraded land “it is possible to increase productivity by decreasing the amount of land in cultivation” by increasing soil moisture and fertility. When fully understood this also puts a community on the path to sustainability as the function of infiltration and retention of rainfall and accumulation of organic matters can be restored. It is also important that animal husbandry that uses pin feeding where the fodder is cut and carried to the animals rather than they destructively graze it is possible to increase animal protein without the destructive impacts.

Conservation – By designating ecological land the community takes the first steps toward a sustainable future. This will accumulate positive results as functionality returns in the same way as degradation caused the accumulation of negative results. There is much to consider about conservation and it is both active and passive. Communities must actively refrain from behaviors and impacts that disrupt the ecological land. They must also passively stand back and let nature determine which species are most suitable so that there will be biodiversity surviving into future generations.

Education – Given the urgent need for both poverty eradication and large-scale ecosystem rehabilitation, traditional forms of education may need to be supplemented with something that has become much more technically feasible in recent years. This is using internet based resources with facilitation to allow all to study to whatever extent that they wish. This can be combined with equivalence testing to assign the level if degrees are required or can simply be knowledge that enhances the lives of the people. I would call this inquiry and by making the facilities available to young and old alike in communities it will be possible to engage the entire community into the inquiry of exactly what they need to raise out of poverty, to restore and conserve nature for the enhancement of their community.

External Technical Assistance – I would recommend using retired professionals and recent graduates from the host country and around the world. This will bring new thought into communities and help increase understanding across cultures, between ethnic groups and help bridge social and economic divides. This also helps to begin to fulfill the need to act as a species and not from national or regional interests. In this vision all people are equal.

Design and Construction of New Infrastructure – Once the community has moved away from subsistence agriculture it is very important for them to consider and to understand where they are going. This will require thinking about areas that they may have never considered. The book we have translated called “The Community Planning Handbook” can be useful in directing the communities attention to the many different issues needed to consider and the potential role for citizens to participate.

The strategies of having external technical assistance from development professionals, retired professional volunteers and recent graduates from the host country and from abroad can help to provide ideas. When this is used together with “Participatory Assessment” it is possible to engage the entire community in designing its future. Sanitation, Communications, Energy, Education, Healthcare, Administration, Service, and much more all join agriculture and conservation as possible livelihoods.

Value added to local products - Research into product development – This can begin with local agricultural products in an industrial kitchen/design laboratory. This should be built to high standards so that it can meet sanitation and food safety codes. By striving to reach high standards it should be possible to open up markets farther away from the home market. It should have the ability to process vegetables, meats, fruits, mushrooms, and any other local produce. Jams, jellies, condiments, dehydration, canning, freezing, prepared snack foods, drinks, all can be researched in this facility. If this facility is developed to the highest level it could also research extraction of essential oils.

One way to test products would be to have a restaurant and a store connected to this facility. If no one likes the product and no ones buys it then the team should go back to the drawing board. If however the product becomes a favorite of the customers you might have a hit. Once a product has been identified then a business plan that describes resource requirements, personnel requirements, manufacturing, packaging and marketing should be made and the product moved out on its own. At this point the research team begins the process with other commodities. Having external participants will open up new ideas, new tastes and new markets.

Marketing - connection to local, regional, national and world markets – Once products have been identified then they need to be connected with markets. This becomes a separate and important part of the development trajectory away from subsistence as it links the local community to larger markets up to and including world markets if it has the ability and the ambition. Certain products like essential oils could be important in that they are extremely valuable, easy to ship and are sold on international markets for cosmetics, food and other industries. Reaching this level with professionalism will help local communities build modern and sustainable businesses. I would suggest certain partners such as Weleda, which makes all natural products and that has a social conscience. This type of company can help the community to meet the technical requirements.

Health Care – This becomes both a social responsibility and an area for sustainable employment. Having international external participants will help ensure that health care is available. Retired doctors and nurses as well as medical students can help. Eventually the communities thus served will in turn serve others.

Scientific Monitoring – As this strategy is implemented it should be fully documented and scientifically monitored to see its strengths and weaknesses. Where it is effective it should be duplicated and where it is weak it should be strengthened.

In ecology each species seems to have a specific niche and have a specific contribution to play in the overall organism that is life. Sustainability to me means that it is possible to participate in an activity without reducing the ability to continue that activity in future generations. In development I think that it is necessary to have a comprehensive strategy that emulates nature as much as possible. Each part fits together with the overall goal of reaching sustainability.

There is much more to consider but it is already possible to see that the wealthy wherever they are in the world and the poor living in marginal and degraded lands all share the same fate. The future for both groups, rich and poor; will be determined by the same thing, functional ecosystems on a planetary scale. This means that the world can no longer afford to leave the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps but must engage to end poverty and restore ecosystem function everywhere immediately or face predictable and catastrophic consequences.

John D. Liu, johnliu@earthshope.org

John D. Liu Sustainable development Agriculture, Sustainability

Take a minute to explore the GreenForAll website.  “Green For All is a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.”  The founder, Van Jones, has been all over the news and has recently joined the Obama administration.

Michael Collins Sustainable development

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Changsha, Hunan, visiting Broad Air Conditioning, one of the most successful and environmentally friendly companies in China.  Just outside of Changsha, the Broad campus is a monument to sustainable development:  Energy efficient buildings, with triple paned windows and extra thick (150mm) insulation on the walls, are the construction standard; vegetable fields, chicken and pig pens and fishing ponds provide healthy, pesticide free, locally grown food to the the Broad cafeteria; and, Broad products, air conditioning, air cleaning and air exchange units, heat, cool and clean the air so efficiently that most pay for themselves in 3-5 years when you factor in how much you’d pay to power a comparable, conventional, dirty unit.  The entire company lives up to its motto of “We Protect life/我们保护生命“.

The sales team at Broad encourages its customers to make the trip to Changsha to see the factory and understand Broad’s mission.  After spending two days on the campus myself, meeting employees and learning about the company and it’s products, I don’t doubt Broad’s claim that it successfully sells to every customer who visits.  Book the plane tickets and book the product orders.  The factories, the people and the message are that impressive.

James Fallows did a profile on Broad’s founder Zhang Yue last year in the Atlantic.  Broad is a testament to Mr. Zhang’s hard work and vision.  He is not just the new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, but also the new generation of world-wide, green entrepreneurs.  (Here’s a short Tudou clip of Mr. Zhang.)

Why talk about Broad here?  We know that we cannot invent and invest our way out of our problems of climate change, desertification, loss of soil stability, loss of natural fertility, disruption of natural water infiltration and retention, loss of biodiversity, flooding, drought, poverty.  To do this, we need a complete solution based on ecosystem rehabilitation, sustainable development and poverty eradication.  Nonetheless, Broad’s products will help us solve one important aspect of our problems - finding ways to reduce the amount energy we consume and pollution we emit.

We need companies like Broad if we’re going to create a sustainable future for ourselves.

Michael Collins Sustainable development Air conditioning, Sustainable development