John D. Liu : Lets build Ecosystem Restoration Camps - worldwide! For Life on Earth!

Hello, dear spectators for InSPIRE Life, New Ideas for a New World. This is Petra Popp. I'm very, very delighted and happy to be with our John D Liu today and be able to present him to you. As you know, this blog wants to present and inform about inspiring people and projects that bring this world to a new state of being. And here we are with John D Liu. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

So let me introduce John quickly. John is a well-known filmmaker, ecologist, and researcher. And John is an expert on restoring ecosystems. Could you explain us what is eco-restoration for landscapes and why it is so important?

Shall I? Okay. Well, I guess to understand historically how I got to where I am or why I think the way I do, I began to study, um, historical degradation of landscapes in 1995. The World Bank asked me to go to the Loess Plateau in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River in China and look at this place which was the cradle of Chinese civilization, and it had been fundamentally ecologically destroyed. So I guess if I were thinking about academically what I do, I study function and dysfunction in terrestrial ecosystems, but I started by looking at dysfunctional systems. So when I learned more about dysfunctional systems, I realized that they can be restored, and we have documented and, and shown how you restore a very, very large-scale ecosystem, which means that you can infiltrate and retain all available moisture. You can restore the organic layer in the soil. You can reintroduce very large-scale biomass, and you can protect and encourage more and more biodiversity. So that's really what it is.

Thank you. And why is it so important in our context right now? Maybe you would like to explain to our spectators what is your opinion about the state of planet Earth right now? What is the situation?

Well, you know, opinion in these regards is not very important, but what we see is happening is that there are 7 point 3 billion people on the Earth now. We're adding about a billion people every 12 years, so this is an enormous population, and over the last 500 generations, since the advent of settled agriculture, we have massively altered the Earth's surface. The changes to the Earth's surface have caused different kinds of impacts, so we see climate changes. We can measure climate changes. We have changes in hydrological function. We have changes in temperature. People talk a lot about global warming, but really it's human-induced climate change. And what the outcome will be, we don't actually know. There is a linear trend toward increasing temperatures at this moment, but the actual outcome is hard to, to know. So this type of activity has in the past preceded ice ages. So theoretically speaking, we could see massive other changes. So we don't really know if it's just constantly going to increase in temperature or we're going to have some nonlinear outcomes. So this is what we're facing. These changes are enormous. They threaten human civilization. So we can see all the people who are migrating to Europe, partly because they're fleeing wars, but also partly because they can barely survive around the edges of large degraded ecosystems.

So thank you, John D Liu. So it is actually a good answer to respond to this positively, to this climate change, if we engage in restoring these largely damaged landscapes. So could it be really possible that you regreen a desert? Is it really possible?

Well, I think you need to differentiate between naturally occurring deserts and areas which have been desertified. So if you take a beautiful biome like the Congo Basin or the Amazon Basin, and you cut all the trees and you burn it down, then you're gonna artificially elevate the evaporation rates and raise the temperatures, and it will become like a desert. So there will be less carbon sequestration, there'll be less oxygen, less photosynthesis, there'll be less volatile organic compounds which can form the nuclei for clouds. So it changes everything. And, um, what we see is that the places that we are now looking at as huge degraded systems were not always degraded. They were degraded by human activity. So in the Middle East or the Mediterranean or the Sahel or Central Asia or Southwest of the United States. These places were different.

So thank you. And is it possible that you could say after 5, 6 years you could already see quite some change in these landscapes, in the hydraulic cycles, in the in the biodiversity that shows up, etc., etc., so people can resettle and relive around these places and abundance is coming back?

Well, I think there are principles. So when I started to look at degraded systems, and then I learned all about degraded systems, and it's kind of depressing. But when you know about degraded systems, then you kind of want to know what is it like in a functional system. And this is where the great joy of being able to study ecosystems comes from, because I've been able to go to the places that are pristine on the Earth and look at what's the difference between what is a functional system and what is a dysfunctional system., and it seems that there are principles, and the principles are evolutionary principles. So in a, in a functional ecosystem, or in an evolutionary outcome, there's pretty much always more biomass, more biodiversity, and more accumulated organic matter. So that is a clue. Biodiversity, biomass, and accumulated organic matter are critical for functional ecosystems. And when you look at the systems which are degraded, you find out that when human beings began to impact them, they reduced the biodiversity, they reduced the biomass, and they reduced the organic materials. So this alters photosynthesis, reduces gas exchange, it alters nutrient recycling and nutrient release by, uh, microbial communities which are making minerals available to biological life, and it massively alters infiltration and retention of rainfall. So sort of understanding those things allows you to design other behaviors which are aligned with evolutionary trends. So if you do this, if you, if you— human behavior is aligned with natural evolutionary trends, then the rivers flow, the soil is fertile, there's great biodiversity and beauty, and it's everywhere, it's productive. So yeah, if you understand it, it's basically that the, the— just like in a formal gardens, The landscape reflects the understanding of the people. So whatever our consciousness is, that's what it's going to look like.

And John, you have a wonderful new project. Would you like to talk about this one? It's called the Eco-Restoration Camps. And would you like to explain our spectators What this project is about?

Well, we call it the Ecological Restoration Cooperative and the Ecological Restoration Camps. And what this is, is when we look at what's happening with climate change or what's happening with agriculture, conventional chemical agriculture, industrial agriculture, a lot of people are very dissatisfied. With this, uses a lot of chemicals, it's degrading, and we have these massive changes to the climate which threaten human civilization. So if you look at the institutions that have been built, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or the UN Development System or NGOs, charities, and you analyze, do these institutions have the ability, or the governments even, of different countries or the corporations, do they have the ability and the interest or the intention to solve these problems? And the answer is, doesn't look good, you know, it doesn't look like the corporations, the governments, or the international institutions are going to be very successful. We have 22, that in a couple of months we'll have the 22nd convening of the parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Well, if you have 22 years and thousands of people fly all over the world to have white wine and shrimp and olives, and then they talk about climate change, but they do this in a tent with a diesel generator blowing cold air into an open tent in the tropics, and they're supposed to be negotiating emissions controls. It's ridiculous. So, doesn't really bring you to any sort of confidence when you understand what's going on. So, when you look at that, well, when we look at climate changes, or you look at hydrological dysfunction, or you even look at the refugee situations, or, or all of these problems that we're facing, we need to act, and we have a duty to act. But the institutions that have been built that have the responsibility don't seem to bring us much confidence that they're going to do it. So could we directly act? This is the basis of the ecosystem restoration Cooperative, and the idea is that, that individual human beings, we the people, make a decision to restore the Earth and that we join together and we create a mechanism which just does that. And what that is, is ecosystem restoration camps. So we have learned in study that you can increase biodiversity, biomass, and accumulated organic matter. And when you do, it improves fertility, it improves infiltration and retention of rainfall, and it protects biodiversity. So that's what we need to do. So we need to actually teach very large numbers of people how to do this. We also need to look at new innovative ways to do this. So what better way to do that than to band together and work on this? So, when we do that, we can reduce it to the logistics. All we have to do is go there and start working on it. Instantly, today, we can sequester carbon. We can reregulate the hydrological cycle and we can protect biodiversity by making that decision. And so, that's what's happening. We started about 2 months ago to talk about this. And now hundreds of people have joined the cooperatives. We expect to have about 1,000 people before we make the first camp, and we are working to make this first camp in Spain at this time. But there, there ideally there will be camps in all continents. And people can go there and study and they can work and together we can do this. We don't need to ask for permission. We don't need— we have the responsibility and we have the right to do this. So that's kind of where we're at now.

Thank you, John D Liu. I will send some information if people want to inscribe in these camps, they are welcome and help out. Do a couple of months or a year in this camp and learn about Earth restoration. Also, you said you want to, and I really like this point, in our talks before, you said you want to place these camps mainly on what you call the acupuncture points of Earth. Would you like to end this interview, would you like to talk about this one?

Sure.

Thank you.

Well, I think what we're seeing is that it's similar to Chinese medicine. Practice or theory. So when you have the, the acupuncture points, the ethereal body, the meridian points, the chakras, you know, so in India and in China these have been studied for thousands of years, but Western science doesn't really understand it. They can't cut it open and there it is, you know, so they don't quite understand it, but If I look at the way that works, and I look at now the Earth, I would say that there are huge blockages. So the hydrological cycle's not flowing. The— what were once great rivers are dried out and, you know, are, are just ephemeral streams. So they only flow with huge floods during the rainy season, but then the rest of the year they're dry. Well, there's something seriously wrong with that scenario. And because of my studies over the last 20-some years, I know what it is. So we can replace the vegetation throughout these riverine systems, but we have to have this intention. And now most of the people are saying, "Well, if you pay me, I'll do it. But if you don't pay me, then I won't do anything." Well, we need to change that mentality. We need to say, well, this has to happen or our children won't have any water. They won't have any life. So this is like an acupuncture point which is blocked. And what's interesting is it's a very powerful point. When you go and you touch it, it hurts. It's in pain. But if you open this point, it will release enormous forces. We need to carefully, respectfully open these points and make the natural Earth systems flow in harmony with evolutionary trends. When we do this, that is the way forward for sustainability and survival.

Thank you very much, John D Liu. And I'll send out all the information concerning this beautiful project. And talk to you soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye from Saint-Germain. Bye-bye.