Focus on Arts and Ecology

October 2019 Newsletter

Dear Jon, 

On September 28, the Global Landscapes Forum hosted a monumental event in preparation for the upcoming decade. Meeting at the UN in New York City, it brought over 400 people from all over the world to join hands in laying the foundation for the UN's Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Scientists, farmers, diplomats, film makers, journalists, and youth came together to raise the call for natural climate solutions. The atmosphere was invigorating, inspiring, and incredibly hopeful. Here was restoration work that was being done the world over, and had been for many years! The stories were uplifting and the message was clear: we need to be united in ramping up nature-based solutions and efforts. 

On this day, I had the extraordinary opportunity to be present in this room with impassioned spirits that are restoring the earth. Better yet, I had the pleasure of interviewing some of them and hearing about their work. The Global Landscape Forum Speaker Interview Series will have a place in this newsletter over the next few months. This month, I invite you to read about the fascinating work that Dr. Susan Chomba is doing to restore the land and build resilient communities in Africa. 

At Bio4Climate, we're thrilled to see eco-restoration finally gaining traction globally. Major voices are getting behind these solutions (check out Greta Thunberg's film, described below) and bringing attention to the individuals, communities, and organizations that are dedicated to using Nature's tool to repair ecosystems, bring back biodiversity, and cool the climate. 

Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot speak for Eco-restoration 

Photo credit: Conservation International 

Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot, author and journalist at The Guardian, have come out with a short film. In it, they speak of the vast potential for ecosystems like mangroves, forests, and seagrass meadows to draw down atmospheric carbon. Though natural climate solutions like these can remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they receive only 2% as much funding as is spent on efforts to mitigate emissions. 

“Right now, we are ignoring natural climate solutions,” says Thunberg. “We spend 1,000 times more on global fossil fuel subsidies than on nature-based solutions." In the film, she and Monbiot plead with us to "protect, restore, and fund" such solutions in order to avoid climate breakdown. The film was released shortly before the global youth climate strike and the UN Climate Action Summit In New York last month. 

"To survive, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. But this alone will not be enough", Thunberg says. 

With carbon emissions still on the rise, and carbon-capture technologies not yet developed to scale, natural climate solutions will be critical to remove CO2 in large-scale and cost-effective ways.   

The rate of mass extinction of species is increasing as well, largely because humans are destroying ecosystems. Existing ecosystems must be protected to prevent further loss of the biodiversity we human beings depend upon to survive. Restoring natural habitats could allow for a number of species to return, and could improve climate resilience. Healthy ecosystems can protect populations from catastrophic flooding, droughts, and other extreme weather events. 

Lastly, Thunberg and Monbiot emphasize the need to fund activities that help protect and restore nature, rather than support funding that leads to ecosystem destruction. 

Tom Mustill, who produced the short film, recounted how they tried to make the film with as little environmental impact as possible. "We took trains to Sweden to interview Greta, charged our hybrid car at George’s house, used green energy to power the edit and recycled archive footage rather than shooting new.”

 Global Landscapes Forum: UN Decade of Eco-restoration Interview Series

featuring Dr. Susan Chomba

The potential for eco-restoration in Africa is immense and notably so. Around two-thirds of the continent remains degraded with 700 million hectares of land in urgent need of restoration. Dr. Susan Chomba holds a Ph.D. in Forest Governance, and works as a social scientist at the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi. She currently leads ICRAF’s Regreening Africa: a five-year project (2017-2022) that targets 500,000 households in Africa and aims to restore one million hectares of land. 

Mobilizing Populations to Green Landscapes 

Population is on the rise, with UN estimates predicting a worldwide population of 8.5 billion by 2030. This growth is a challenge, given constraints on resources and production, as well as increasing pressure to clear forests to create agricultural land. But it is not a universal one, Dr. Chomba says. Some case studies, “including a famous case study of the Machakos Landscape in Kenya,” show that “you can have greener landscapes with an increasing population.” In cases like this, the population increase, whether due to migration or growth of an existing population, had in fact reversed the condition of degraded land. “When people are conscious and aware that their livelihoods are dependent on the land, they are very likely to invest in soil and water conservation, and in tree-planting.” The indiscriminate clearing of land occurs when these linkages between livelihoods and the land are not apparent. 

Dr. Chomba acknowledges the complexity of population growth, but cautions against focusing too narrowly on the issue in the context of restoring landscapes. The subject of “household size” can be a sensitive one when, traditionally, cultures have favored large families as a source of labor and prestige.

But this situation can change with education. Studies show that women who go on to secondary education make better decisions on family planning. Dr. Chomba notes that when societies ensure women access to family planning information and measures, they have less need to dictate how many children a woman should have. Education connects to food security as well. Women with more education know more about nutrition, which helps them plan and provide healthy and nutritious meals for their families.

The Importance of Understanding Communities

Around the world people are beginning to understand the importance of harnessing local indigenous knowledge to address food and water insecurity. In Africa, development projects are working to integrate local knowledge with scientific advances. 

“The local people have been living and interacting with these environments for many, many years. So our assumption that we can bring entirely new knowledge into their systems is fundamentally wrong. We need to understand how they have evolved with these systems and within these structures, and then combine this with scientific knowledge.” This combination of knowledge would improve current food production processes, and also keep these systems sustainable over the long term.

Compendium Notes

Here's another excerpt from our Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming. The article below is from our fifth issue, July 2019, Vol. 3 No. 1 (pp. 42-43):

Blue carbon stocks of Great Barrier Reef deep-water seagrasses, York et al. 2018

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) protects northeast Australia from wave exposure, while also creating habitat for a vast expanse of shallow and deep-water seagrasses between the reef and the shoreline. Deep-water seagrasses here occupy an area roughly the size of Switzerland. While the carbon storage capacity of shallow-water seagrasses, dubbed ‘blue carbon,’ is known to be extremely high. The amounts of carbon stored in deep-water seagrasses (more than 15 meters down); it was expected to be lower as these plants are smaller and relatively sparse.

The authors found, however, that “deep-water seagrass contained similar levels of organic carbon (OC) to shallow-water species, despite being much sparser and smaller in stature” [York 2018: 1]. Furthermore, deep-water seagrass sediments contained about nine times more OC than surrounding bare areas.

If the OC stocks reported on in this study are similar to deep-water [seagrass] meadows elsewhere within the GBR lagoon, then OC bound within this system is roughly estimated at 27.4 million tons [York 2018: 1].

---

Dr. Susan Chomba speaks at the UN Headquarters in New York City for Restore the Earth. Photo credit: Global Landscapes Forum

   

     

Tony Rinaudo's Outstanding Agro-Ecological Work on the Drylands in Niger

Photo credit: The Right Livelihood Foundation

Tony Rinaudo, famously known as the 'Forest Maker,' has helped transform millions of hectares of dry land in Niger. A specialist in natural resources management and an agronomist at World Vision, Tony has restored land all over the world to ensure food security and ecological resilience for vulnerable communities. 

In his interview with the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn last year, he talked about the importance of helping people change their behavior and mindsets so they will respect and restore the land. It is also crucial to understand the potential for life and its resilience even in the most barren landscapes.

"The process itself builds on the fact that even though many landscapes look like they're treeless barren plains, just beneath the surface there is a treasure trove waiting to be released."

Tony explains that changing the way we manage the landscape, with few resources, can have extraordinary effects, with nature beginning to heal itself quickly.

The conservation farming technique that Tony implemented, called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), has been so successful that it has been applied in 24 different countries. 

Watch the full interview and find more on the FMNR website.

continued with Dr. Susan Chomba. . . 

The Current Challenges in Africa

But when it comes to land restoration, there are no magic bullets, as Dr. Chomba reveals. Implementing such projects takes time, and it can be challenging to engage local community members. The challenge is particularly evident in poorer areas, where farmers habitually cut down trees and burn charcoal so they can provide food for their families and send their children to school.  

“It takes a lot of work because talking is not enough, you need to be able to provide tangible alternatives to [farmers]. Engaging with these communities to change mindsets, discuss alternative sources of livelihoods, and actually implement them takes time.”

Additionally, certain policies can be limiting to the progress of a restoration project. For example, laws that mandate the arrest and prosecution of individuals who prune or use any tree discourages communities from becoming involved in restoration projects. When such policies can be avoided, restoration projects can flourish. However, issues around land tenure and tree ownership can take a long time to negotiate and reverse.

A third challenge that Dr. Chomba highlights involves gender: women’s involvement in restoration, and the social and cultural norms around it. In many African communities traditional rules dictate that women cannot have ownership over land. Such rules provide women with little incentive to restore land.  Project teams also tend to be male-dominated. This further dissuades women, who traditionally take care of household and farm work, from joining.

Project teams also tend to be male-dominated. This further dissuades women, who traditionally take care of household and farm work, from joining.

Despite these challenges, Dr. Chomba sees “good traction” on the ground. A major approach to involving communities is engaging with government agencies and the relevant ministries in order to reverse the limiting policies and thus allow for large-scale land restoration. It will take a long time, as Dr. Chomba remarks, but there is no denying that the restoration movement in Africa has already taken root. In Niger, five million hectares of land have been restored through farmer-managed restoration.

"There will be more." 

Don't Miss these Events!  

Facing the Climate Crisis with Grit and Grace

 

When: Sunday, November 17, 2019

Where: Cambridge, MA

Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee, PhD, is a Climate Chaplain and Coach who helps communities wrap their minds around the grief, fear, rage, and overwhelm associated with climate change, such that they can move toward a place of Grounded Focus. Using tools from secular and faith traditions as well as ethics, social psychology, and project management, she outlines strategies to build a Resilience Mindset. This mindset provides a foundation that enables us to process the enormity of this challenge as we participate in sustained practices of healing and strategic engagement.

Tallessyn will be joined by her daughter Telynia Jeansun Grenfell-Lee. Telynia is in her final year of high school at the Macomber Center for Self-Directed Learning in Framingham, MA. She has experienced a wide variety of educational contexts, including a Massachusetts public school; a community-oriented private school; both a democratic school and an international school in Basel, Switzerland; and most recently, the self-directed homeschooling center where she now attends part-time. Telynia cares deeply about social justice and is considering a career path that combines urban climate resilience with photography/videography and writing. 

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