Essay: Restore the Earth
Alan Watson Featherstone
Founder and Executive Director of Trees for Life
The 21st Century: One Hundred Years to Restore the Earth
Hanging on the wall next to my office desk is a photograph of the Earth as it appears from out in space. Taken by the Apollo astronauts during one of the missions to the moon in the late 1960s, it is the 'classic' image of our planet. With the continental outline of Africa clearly visible amongst the swirling white clouds and the blue of the oceans, it's easy to see why, out of the thousands of photographs which were taken then, it is almost always this one which is used.
However, some years ago I became aware that there's another, deeper and possibly more subconscious reason why this particular image has been used so much. I noticed then for the first time that the single most prominent terrestrial feature in the photograph is desert. From the Sahara in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula south to the Kalahari and the island of Madagascar, the land is all reddish-brown in colour.
Deserts of course are natural ecosystems on the planet, but many of the desert areas in the world today have been caused by human exploitation and mismanagement of the land. During Roman times, for example, much of coastal North Africa was forested, and the Atlas bear and Barbary lion lived there, although both have since become extinct.
In Madagascar, 80% of the forests have been destroyed and vast areas of the land have become desertified, as a result of erosion which followed the loss of the trees. A similar story of human-caused degradation of ecosystems and desertification has been played out in many other parts of the world, from China and Greece of the classical area to the dust bowl of the US Midwest in the 1930s and the Himalayas in Nepal today.
With this perspective then, the photograph next to my desk represents for me a call for help from the Earth, from Gaia. It is a constant reminder of the negative and accelerating impact our industrial society is having on the planet and its ecosystems, and of the destination which our culture is suicidally heading towards. With the current widespread loss of natural habitat and accelerating rates of extinction of our fellow species, this has been termed 'biological loneliness' - a future where we'll look around and see no tigers, elephants, rainforests or blue whales, but only our own species, and the weeds or pests which manage to thrive in our midst.
As we stand in the beginning of the new millennium, the situation with regard to trees and forests is particularly dire. Recent reports have shown that only 20% of the world's original forests remain in a natural state, and that 10% of the world's tree species are directly threatened. In Scotland only 1% of the Caledonian Forest still survives; in eastern Canada a similar 1% is all that is left of the red and white pine forests; in Lebanon just 2% of the famous cedars remain; in Brazil the Atlantic Forest has been reduced to 7% of its original 1 million square kilometres; and in New Zealand the forests of kauri trees which formerly covered 12 million hectares are down to a mere 4,000 hectares. If present trends continue, the forests of New Guinea, Chile, central Africa and Siberia will suffer a similar fate.
Most conservation campaigns today are rightly focussed on stopping this devastation of the world's forests, and there have been some successes to celebrate. However, even if all the destruction currently taking place were miraculously to stop tomorrow, we would still be left with a world which is substantially degraded in terms of its ability to sustain life, human, animal and tree alike. This is the world that I see in the photograph on my wall every day.
I cannot accept the biologically impoverished state of our planet - my home - and I have dedicated much of my adult life to doing what I can to help heal the wounds we have inflicted upon it. By allowing my passion and care for our world to guide me, I can see my actions having a real effect, both in terms of helping to restore the Caledonian Forest in Scotland and in enabling other people to see how they can make a difference too. However, time is short and I know that the changes which are needed now must come on a larger scale.
Paramount amongst these changes for me is a shift in consciousness; one which moves us individually and collectively away from the parasitic relationship our culture presently has with the Earth. I sometimes think of our society's addiction to endless economic growth as making us like a giant mosquito, sucking the life force out of the planet and giving nothing back in return. In his Turner Tomorrow Award-winning book, 'Ishmael', Daniel Quinn aptly describes this attribute of our culture by terming us 'Takers', and contrasting us with the 'Leavers' - the hunter-gatherer tribal peoples who, through the minimal impact of their lifestyles, left their land and the world in essentially the same condition as they found it.
21st century humanity cannot go back to a 'Leaver' lifestyle. Instead, I believe it is imperative that we go forward into a new role in terms of our relationship with the Earth, that of the 'Giver'. I see this as a new paradigm in which we focus primarily on what we can do to care for the planet, not how much can we get from it. By dedicating ourselves to helping to heal the Earth, I know from my own personal experience that our needs will be met along the way, and the quality of our lives, rather than the quantity of our possessions, will increase many fold.
Around the world, concerned individuals and groups are already putting this new paradigm into practice in their lives and work. Ecological restoration is a growing area of science and conservation practice, with projects under way in many countries, including initiatives to restore salmon runs to rivers in the Pacific Northwest of North America, to restore the highly-threatened tropical dry forests of Costa Rica, the reintroduction of Arabian oryx into the wild in Oman and the restoration of mangroves to areas of Viet Nam's Mekong Delta which were defoliated during the war there.
These and the growing number of other similar projects are a good beginning for the essential work which lies ahead of us - restoration, on a coordinated, global scale, of our world's fragmented and degraded ecosystems. The survival of many of our planet's 5 million other species, and the habitat they depend on, as well as our own future wellbeing, necessitates the implementation of such a programme. The healing of the Earth, combined with a cessation of our nature-destroying activities, has to become the over-riding task of humanity in the decades ahead if we wish to avoid the most calamitous event in our planet's history since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
So, how might this scenario come to pass, when it seems so far from present day reality? In my experience of initiating the Trees for Life project to help restore the Caledonian Forest, I've found that the most important thing is to nurture the vision, the dream, no matter how far out of reach it appears to be. Given passion, commitment and time, the holding of a positive, empowering vision acts as a magnet, attracting support, resources, people and enabling it to be brought into form, step by step.
I have a dream, a vision, for the healing of the Earth, and it goes like this: 'Late in 1999, as a result of an initiative from concerned citizens and environmental groups, the United Nations declares the 21st Century to be the Century of Restoring the Earth, thereby providing a visionary and positive beginning to the new millennium, to lift human spirits beyond the depressing news about the state of the planet. At the same time, the Earth Restoration Service is launched as an international programme for young people to come together on specific Earth-healing projects, whether it be tree planting to help restore a forest, cleaning up polluted beaches and rivers, or helping to remove unnecessary roads from wild landscapes.
'Funding for this scheme and a myriad of practical projects comes from a special fund into which every nation has to contribute 10% of its military budget, as it is recognised that true security has nothing to do with weapons, but instead depends upon having a healthy planet to live on. In the following years, this percentage is steadily increased as larger scale, more ambitious restoration projects are implemented. A scheme to restore forests to the Sahel region of Africa is launched, a 10 year programme for the complete clean up of all toxic and chemical waste sites is initiated, an international initiative to green all the world's largest cities is announced and plans are drawn up to reintroduce endangered large mammals and other threatened species to their former ranges.
'These projects all help people to reconnect with Nature again, and in so doing they begin to connect more deeply with each other, sharing their cares and passions and finding common cause in helping to heal the Earth. Hope spreads around the world, and governments and large corporations are forced to respond to public feeling and commit themselves fully to restoration priorities. Years pass into decades, and looking back from the latter part of the 21st century, with the ozone layer fully recovered and the world's natural forest cover double what it was in the 1990s, people see and appreciate the change in human culture that took place at the beginning of the millennium, and how it all began with people acting from their hearts and putting their care for the planet into practice.'
Every day I'm reminded of this dream when I look at the photograph in my office, and I imagine what it could be like in a hundred years time, when the predominant colour of the Earth's land is green again, instead of reddish-brown. Then I also think of the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who said that "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." I believe that the destiny of our planet and all her species is literally in our hands, yours and mine all of ours, and I know which dream I'm working on to make a reality. What about you?
Alan Watson Featherstone
Founder and Executive Director of Trees for Life
