Edging Ahead…

…my hat is off to John Liu, for both the fundamental pragmatism of his ecological vision, and for the potential generalized applicability to the global crises facing us today. John’s the driving force behind Earth’s Hope, an organization committed to disseminating the ideas that fundamental ecosystem balance ultimately determines the survival or failure of whole civilizations, but that it is possible to rehabilitate large scale ecosystems we have allowed to degrade through societal “development”.

Reduced to a few basic concepts as I’ve wrapped my head around them, and with apologies to John if I’ve misunderstood or misinterpreted his message, he has convinced me to seriously consider that;

• In addition to initiatives on carbon conservation and reduction and efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewables, we need to add a “third leg” to the global environmental recovery strategy, and that is to restore every degraded environment on the planet to its natural balance.
• This is not an insurmountable challenge. John’s documentation of the changes to 35,000 square kilometers of the Loess Plateau in China over just 10 years is an amazing affirmation of what can be done when political will is turned to practical implementation of real-world projects.
• The 21st century preoccupation with atmospheric CO2 reduction is a misplaced and overly complex approach to simple systemic global problem. The overarching problem is rooted in human activity planetwide which replaces natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture.
• Replacing natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture has one logical natural conclusion, which is the ultimate degradation of the environment resulting in barren, unproductive deserts.

Furthermore, John proposes, and makes a strong case that;

• ALL of the environmental issues we’ve been bombarded with over the past ten years can be addressed at some level with a simple fix involving rebuilding the land’s ability to retain available rainfall and so to recover its natural propensity toward biological diversity and equilibrium.
• Physical reclamation of biodiversity on a local level can have  global climatic impacts – and virutally all of these impacts are positive.
• integrated poverty eradication and large-scale ecosystem rehabilitation go together. Local biodiversity recovery projects lead to the reduction of poverty and overal raising of the standard of living, which in turn can lead to the reduction of negative ecological behaviors, which reinforces ecological recovery, which leads to regional weather modification, which ultimately can have global impact.

Further, in order to become globally effective;

• the movement has to be “organic” – “grass-roots”, if you will. It has to be furthered by the actions of committed individuals involved in local action with regional or global consequences.

The source material for the notes above are available in more detail at a post somewhat down the homepage on the Earth’s Hope blog but the very essence of what John presented can be seen in the before and after images at the Earth’s Hope website. If you find these images striking, be sure to download the “Lessons from the Loess Plateau” video and watch the entire amazing story unfold.

I’ve spent several hours with John over the past three days, listening to his vision, revelling in the imagry he has presented, and mulling over where to go from here. Although John argues vociferously against adopting a “ready, fire, aim” approach, cautioning that the first step is to seek to understand how the current state has been reached, and then to adopt sound ecological interventions around water retention and biodiversity reestablishment, at the simplest level, it seems to me, I need to do something…and so do you... You can start by reading John’s story, viewing some of the footage posted at the Earth’s Hope website, and then reviewing (and perhaps contributing to) the issues raised on the Earth’s Hope blog.

My personal memmonic for the second half of Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path (Right “Livelihood” through Right “Effort, Mindfullness and Concentration”) is -”Live Every Moment Carefully”

“Earth’s Hope” is that each of us will do exactly that. It’s never too late to start.