Forest Keep Drylands Working - Short Film by John D. Liu

In the not-so-distant past, the largest part of the world's drylands were wooded. Southern Spain was one big forest. The African Sahel densely wooded. The bare, dry Pyrenees in Italy had thickly wooded slopes. And the Loess Plateau in China was covered with a mixed forest. Jordan, at the crossroads of Western and Eastern culture had forested hills and valleys. This was not in prehistoric times. On the geologic time scale, we're talking about yesterday.

Look at this place. It was an amazing civilized situation once, and just total collapse. It's gone. And that's the situation we're facing today. We have a global economy now. We have a globalized system and we're flying blind on any process of collapse. So we have to look at revaluing what is important to us. If we don't actually start to repair the ecosystems so that our productivity is premised on a system that runs on natural function, then we're We have no idea of the consequence. We have no idea of the scale. It's quite terrifying, actually.

I cannot stand and watch our land be degraded and ignorant people abusing it. It's my duty to take a stand to make things better.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, biomass models for Africa, for example, show that much of the land most suited for forest cover has been degraded and deforested. And we can see this with our own eyes. A country like Kenya, for example, could almost double its above- and below-ground biomass through active restoration. On the magnificent planet we call Earth, forests represent one of the most perfect systems. The best evidence we have suggests that over billions of years, the Earth was transformed from a molten rock into a beautiful garden. The air we breathe, the water cycle we depend on, were created by, continuously filtered, and constantly renewed by biological life. As each generation lays down its body in death, the decaying organic matter and minerals from geologic materials form a living soil, a habitat for insects and microbes that transmits nutrients and water to the next generation. Life has evolved in wondrous diversity, with species specially adapted to their environments, often depending on how much water was available. Many relatively water-scarce ecosystems, including grasslands, forest savanna, steppe, thicket, and subtropical dry forest, among others, are collectively known as drylands. Drylands can be found on every continent and cover over 32% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. If deserts are included, then the percentage rises to over 40%. More than 2 billion people live in drylands in over 100 countries across this planet. 90% of the world's poor and marginalized live in drylands. Asia has the largest total of drylands with 18 million square kilometers.

When I was 10, my friends and I used to drink wonderful spring water. We used to play in the locust tree groves and we could swim in the reservoir. From '94 and '95, more seriously in '97, '98, and '99, and especially in the spring sandstorm this year, 2000, it was fierce. The sand started covering everything. In the past, there wasn't any sand here. This was all grass.

Nearly 50% of the African continent is covered by drylands. Many people who live in drylands depend directly upon the natural resources for their survival. The vast numbers of people that live in drylands include nearly 30% of the population of South America. Due to human impact, most of the dryland soils show evidence of frequent water stress, low organic matter, and high impact from solar radiation. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the United Nations Development Program, 70% of the world's drylands have been degraded. It's a very old story: tree cutting, unsustainable agriculture, and free-ranging of goats and sheep, compounded by new mechanized ways to speed the destruction. Where we have reduced biodiversity, reduced biomass, and interrupted the accumulation of organic matter, we have also altered the ability of nature to naturally regulate the hydrological cycle, the weather, and the climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted significant increases in annual mean surface temperatures and decreases in precipitation over broad dryland areas on all continents. Already now, climate change has a far greater impact in dryland countries than in more temperate regions.

One thing that became apparent early on is the connection between damaged environments and human poverty. In many parts of the world, there's been a —vicious cycle. Continuous use of the land has led to subsistence agriculture, and generation by generation, this has further degraded the soils. The vital question we have to ask is, can this destructive process be reversed?

Poverty, dependence on external inputs, and the destruction of the local natural supply systems has often led to collapse.

The environment degraded and the culture here was vulnerable to their water supply. Their water supply catchment coming in was just in one particular area, so that made the people very, very vulnerable. But generally, the trade in commodities finished. The trade finished, the civilization collapsed. The value was all on the imported goods coming through, and once that resource finished, the system finished.

There is proof that large-scale restoration works. The Chinese in the Loess Plateau banned tree cutting and free-ranging of goats and sheep, terraced the land, and planted millions of trees.

So this is the beginning of where it all happens. We have crocuses from the desert area, and we have moringa, which was, um, thought to be going to be extinct. There was about one clump or two of the moringa, and we collected the seeds, and now we have over 200 plants. So we do recovery programs. It's a proven way. It's very easy to use. It's not complicated. It's not expensive. You just use very simple methods that have been proven for thousands, thousands of years. And it just takes that little bit of attention, and you can have very good results with it.

The principles of restoration are the same regardless of the scale. This has to be adopted by everyone.

These are all non-hybrid heritage seeds, and they'll grow on and on and adapt more and more to this site. And they are, they're a lot more hardy all the time.

But you're fertilizing with With compost.

It's only compost, yeah. Compost and compost teas. And worm juice. We've got compost worm farms as well. They're all microbiological soil stimulants. They're all things that stimulate the soil life. We concentrate only on the soil life, 'cause you can never really fertilize a plant. You're really just fertilizing the soil. You're feeding the soil, not the plants. And the biology feeds the plants.

Do you continuously farm the kitchen garden?

Yep, we're planting new seedlings in as old plants are coming out. We're interplanting straight in and we're continuously cropping. And that's because we're using the compost and we've got these rich organic matters in the soil. That's quite a different soil just here. And it's quite damp. The largest diversity of organisms in the known universe, the soil organisms. There's 50 million genus of bacteria and 50 million genus of fungi. And you're feeding the organisms and their exudates and their interactions are feeding the plants. That's how it works with natural systems and that's how it works with organics.

I'm in Baviaanskloof, or the Valley of the Baboons. This is near Port Elizabeth in South Africa. It's a reserve which is a World Heritage Site and it's got 3 biodiversity hotspots. And here, clear, beautiful streams are flowing out of the hills. And this water is flowing out of the hills because it's been captured and infiltrated and retained by the natural vegetation here on the hillsides. But just outside the reserve, there are vast areas where for 3 generations where farmers have been removing the natural vegetation. And in those areas, you see severely degraded lands, which are massively affected by drought.

If you think at farming in the past, people didn't pay any attention to actually protecting the natural resources. Because they used to have enough of that, and probably they didn't care by thinking long-term what's the consequences of what they're doing. We mustn't destroy our biggest asset, and our biggest asset here is nature. You destroy the ecology of your farm, you've got nothing left. There's no future. So that's the most The most, most important thing as a farmer to manage is the ecology of your farm.

To address the degradation, the South African government, African and international academics and students, and local people have created the Participatory Restoration of Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital in the Eastern Cape, or PRESENCE. This innovative program is bringing together the government, farmers, farmworkers, academics, and students students in a learning network. By synthesizing the indigenous knowledge of the local farming community, the Presence participants have learned the importance of a unique endemic plant. Portulacaria afra, called spekboom in Afrikaans, anchors a diverse range of plant life, helping to restore degraded land into a functional system.

Behind me is subtropical thicket. This is a specialized dryland forest ecosystem found mainly in South Africa. This system is extremely important. The canopy and the vegetation infiltrate and retain rainfall. The root systems prevent erosion. The accumulation of organic matter in the biomass itself all sequester carbon and this is habitat for some of the most endangered species on the planet.

The learning village houses a very professional nursery system that propagates mainly indigenous and endemic species, including large amounts of specboom, which is then transplanted by Working for Water teams onto the degraded slopes. Working for Water is part of a government employment program that includes Working for Wetlands and Working for Water. Woodlands, providing training and income for people who need jobs in work that benefits the local community and global ecological health.

I think we put life back into the area. I think it's crucial. I think water is the driver of everything. No water, no life. And when you can see that that water stays longer in the area, you see life coming back into the area. Or it's now because it's overgrazed and there is nothing anymore and the water runs off. It's dead. You walk in a desert. Or it's invasive aliens that sucks all the water of the area. You walk in that area and it's— you feel that. You feel that it's dead.

If the ecology is intact, this is a beautiful place. And that becomes a value to the land users. Secondly, another link to the ecology, this area has got the ability to generate a huge amount of carbon in, in the context of a, an arid or semi-arid to arid landscape.

Drylands account for 36% of the total carbon stock of terrestrial ecosystems. Despite its low plant biomass of 60 tons per hectare, —compared to an average of 150 tons per hectare in other terrestrial systems. There is substantial potential for soil carbon sequestration given its very large surface area and the high level of soil degradation. The scientists at PRESENCE are continuously studying and monitoring how the region's vegetation and water interact. Already the learning network has inspired 40 master's degrees and 10 PhDs. The data being gathered does much more than generate a degree. It is immediately useful to serve the community and protect the ecosystem.

With the scientific input, yeah, we've learned a lot that areas which that are really degraded can still be restored.

The whole philosophy of our organization is that your work should contribute to the bigger picture. It should be done in a way that it's useful, so the pride is in the usefulness of the work. The ideas come first of what needs to be done, and research comes as a support. So research is not done solely to get new ideas, but The ideas come first and then research is sort of feeding into those ideas so that they can be applied into the field.

That the only way we're going to make a change in any landscape is that when we work alone, it's not going to happen. When anybody works alone, it's not going to happen. That we have to give each other the room to work and develop yourself. But as well that we have to have the passion to work together and work with each other. Most important thing is when a student comes here that he personally develop, not about his thesis or anything else. He needs to personally develop. He needs to be a person who can change the world wherever he goes.

The learning network is also proving useful to help the next generation to learn about the environment in which they live and how to protect it.

The notion of climate change as a reality affecting all of us, something that's personal to all of us, even those living in affluent countries or those within bubbles of affluence in poor countries, in the last 5, 6 years there seems to have been a much greater awareness developing around the world that conservation and sustainable use of resources and restoration or reparation or repair or rehabilitation of things that we've gotten wrong or have damaged in the past, all of these things are important to all of us.

Globally, scientists predict increases of catastrophes like floods, droughts, and fires. One example of this happened near Melbourne in Australia in February of 2009. This whole area, nearly 100% of this forest was burnt.

I was there on the day when the fires went through. I've never ever seen fire as intense. It was devastating in terms of the structures, the trees that came down, the animals that were killed, the lives that were lost, human lives. There's a big potential for species to be lost here, and I think when the challenge was put to me by that senior ecologist, he said, "You give me a call when you reckon you've lost a species." and I haven't called him yet. So that really lifted me from despair into, well, I've got a challenge here. And the more I looked, the more I realised this forest has been and done this before. It's done intense fire before. It knows how to handle it. It's doing— it's regenerating in its own way. And whilst there are still a couple of species of animals I'm keeping a close eye on, I haven't rung him yet.

It is amazing how quickly nature can recover. We have to align ourselves with these natural forces.

You know, you can see all around you the regeneration that's occurring. There's an obvious parallel between the forest regrowing and your own recovery. I think what you can hear below us here, clear, clean, clear water. A lot of this water ends up supplying Melbourne's water supply. People sometimes refer to the Kinglake Forest as Melbourne's lungs.

We need to consider why it is that the ruins of once great civilizations are found in drylands, and realize that unless we learn the lessons of history, we are destined to repeat them.

Breakdown can be quite quick, and it can suddenly collapse, and then it can't restore itself. So we've got a responsibility to put it back into a stage where nature can take over and do the restoration itself.

In drylands, we have the opportunity to actively employ a strategy of both mitigating and adapting to the worst impact of biodiversity loss, desertification, and climate change. Returning indigenous and endemic vegetation to degraded landscapes helps nature to regulate the hydrological cycle, sequesters large amounts of carbon, increases fertility in the soil and productivity in agriculture, strengthening the resilience of the land and reducing the risk from extreme weather. Once the majority of the world's drylands were covered with forests, but now they are degraded. In restoring them, we have the opportunity to provide meaningful employment for vast numbers of people in work that is of urgent importance for humanity and the earth.

Can we have more? Can we plant more? Can we— can we— especially the degraded areas of the earth, can we get them green again? Can we Can we get the streams like this flowing again?

Look at the last 50 years. It's been a world of individualism, egoism, and look where it brings us. I think we need to work together. The system is too complex. The system is changing too fast. One single leader is not going to be able to solve it. Of course, maybe one leader is a more, a little bit leader, but I think it's a collective leadership what we need.

The more an area is considered a lost cause, the more I think it's an opportunity to show that it's not, and it sets an obvious example. When you set up systems that are abundant and demonstrate a complete reversal of the environment and the ecology in places like the Middle East, then it gives everybody hope. You can do it anywhere. And we can. There are no lost causes. We can regenerate any landscape.

The only way that we can address the problems we face is to design solutions that are able to reach the scale of the problems. Restoring drylands provides the chance for humanity to act as a species on a planetary scale to secure our common future.