Webinar: Restoring the Earth - Real World Solutions for Healing the Planet

Good morning everyone, welcome to the Ecosystem Restoration Communities webinars. This is a series of 3 webinars to kick off a workshop in Winnipeg and Biconia in June. We will, um, you will automatically be receiving an invitation based on your attendance here today, so thank you for coming and I'll pass the mic to Paul who will start off the first talk, Restoring the Earth: Real World Solutions for Healing the Planet.

Excellent. So welcome, everyone. So we're in the various spots around the world. And there we go. So I just want to show you this. Really, the, what we're— the goal of this is, is kind of introducing some of the teachers John D Liu is here, myself is here, Shirley is here, and we're teachers, and we're going to be making a workshop in Canada on the fundamentals of ecosystem restoration. So more of a hands-on workshop, and Ecosystem Restoration Communities is working with us. There's two ecosystem restoration communities in Canada that will be doing that workshop. And so I just want to kind of start and give us kind of a context of where we're trying to go and why we're, we're trying to do this. The planetary boundaries is something that's evolving and coming out again and again, showing us that more and more of our ecosystem boundaries are being gone past. You can see in the middle there, the green circle in the middle, and that is basically our planetary boundaries. And then you can see all these orange areas around the outside: climate change, biodiversity integrity, land system changes, freshwater change, geochemical flows. Geochemical flows is like nitrogen and the phosphorus, all those that we're putting on our land, and then it goes into the water, and then it goes into oceans, what's creating all these imbalances. Land system change is about, you know, we're removing all the native vegetation and replacing it with, you know, urbanization and agriculture, different things like that. Biodiversity loss, you know, we're hitting it in, in different ways. We're, we're not only destroying the, the number of species, you know, we've lost over 50% of the the biomass of species on the planet. We're also losing, because we're driving these populations to such low levels, we're losing a huge amount of the genetic diversity. And genetic diversity is the resilience of these communities to bounce back if there's some sort of a disease or some sort of environmental change like climate change. So we're losing that, that resilience. And so ecosystem restoration is about trying to return that resilience We've destroyed too much land, we've urbanized too much, we've put too many chemicals into the environment, and now we need to start restoring the Earth. We start moving backwards a little bit because we need to integrate ourselves into nature rather than seeing nature as some sort of an enemy or something that's out there, you know, starting to realize that we are part of nature as well. And here you can see some of the things that we've— that I was talking about. WWF was talking about 5 major threats, you know, land systems change, species overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, climate change. All these things are impacting our ecosystem, and we need to do things to mitigate these changes, reduce the amount of chemicals we're putting into the environment, start restoring some of the land, shifting our agricultural practices to more regenerative practice.

Paul?

Yeah, what do you have, John?

I'm sorry, if you could do something to move the way you have your people, the view, it's cutting off the end of the slide. Maybe you could make it, if you go up to the view, you can make it go sideways instead of straight up and down.

I think maybe I can get out again and then move you. Okay, how does that— better option? Or I can just reduce myself maybe.

Yeah, okay, done. You may be even to be able to enlarge.

There we go. We better— yep, okay, excellent. So as I was saying, we have, uh, all these impacts that are happening, and the ecosystem restoration movement is about giving something back and starting to restore these processes. So here you can see the Living Planet Index that was put out and over 50%, only 40% of the species in the world are remaining. You know, all these populations that are being monitored around the world, and not all populations of course are being monitored, we don't know all species, but you can see the steep declines from the 1970s. So, you know, we need to rethink what we're doing. We need to start integrating ourselves back into the planetary processes, start restoring the ecosystem functions that we've destroyed, because we all need fresh water, fresh air, clean soil, all these different things. I'll back it up. And so I'm just going to give a little, little moment. Sometimes you need to introduce yourself. I'm going to be one of the teachers, so just knowing one of the— some things about my myself. I'm a restoration ecologist. I have over 30 years experience restoring ecosystems. Uh, Resilient Ecosystems Institute, AC, is an ecosystem restoration community in the Yucatán, Mexico. I'm also doing Planet Healers, which is doing educational materials, courses, different things like that. And I'm also a certified ecological restoration practitioner with The Society for Ecological Restoration. Sometimes you have to do these things, introducing if people don't know what you are. So this is some of the projects that I've done in the past. So I, for 20 years, I ran a native plant nursery, and I was growing all sorts of species and restoring all sorts of ecosystems. Here you can see on the photo, the, in the center there, there's all sorts of aquatic species. So originally I started growing native aquatic vegetation. And then over time, I was doing it for 20 years. So gradually I moved up the shoreline and started growing wet trees and shrubs, and then I started growing prairie species, and then I started growing forest species, and then spring ephemerals and bogs and fens. So I was doing all these things, and being able, being able to propagate all these different species, you develop a very deep understanding of the needs of these species. And so we were doing a lot of restoration projects, probably hundreds of restoration projects around Canada, and I was producing, you know, half a million species a year that went out into these restoration projects. So I have a lot of knowledge of how to restore ecosystems and a lot of knowledge about these different species and how to propagate them. And so I'm happy to share all that knowledge with you. This is the farm that I had. You can see up— I don't know why the cursor doesn't appear, but you can see up the top there, the— there's a little bit of a squiggly area, and that's where my nursery was. And so the yellow areas on the property were, were areas that I restored tallgrass prairie. The green areas were areas of restoration forest. And then we also had wet areas, so we're obviously restoring wetland, wet meadow, stream, all these different things, ponds. So putting back the areas that had been damaged on this farm— it was originally a tobacco farm, so all this land was cleared— and then I was gradually working with the ecosystem and putting back the native vegetation. And we also had large areas where I was doing seed production as well, in the back of tallgrass prairie species, and in the wet meadow area. I was also collecting a lot of seed for wet meadow species as well. So not only was this a restoration project, but it— because it was a native plant nursery, it was also a major seed source. And we also had, like, some of the fields were for growing trees to up to a bigger size. Some of the areas were in wildflower seed rows so that we could have larger volumes of seed. We're doing restoration projects. Another project that I did was Urban Right-of-Way. So this was a, a large hydro corridor going through the City of Toronto, and the objective was turning this from sod. So this whole thing was in sod underneath these electric lines, so it had very little habitat value. And so we decided we were going to put in meadow. And so underneath these areas were large areas of meadow. And so we went through the whole process of going through the community involvement, doing environmental impact assessments, getting all that input from the community first, the community buy-in, and then going out and doing all the work, the staging. You know, it was 17 kilometers. It was crossing dozens of different stream systems and different corridors. So it was linking. It was also a long link connecting the east and west of the city. Most of the streams that were going through there, the rivers were going north-south. So it was this linkage that allows wildlife to move from one side of the city to the other, and people were also integrated into that. There was bicycle paths and that sort of thing. So there's all this consideration you need to think about when you're working with people, when you're working with traffic, working with wildlife, and then restoring the ecosystem to the, the highest level of integrity that you can have. Obviously, you know, this is an ecosystem that's under a hydro corridor, so you, you, you have to keep it into a meadow ecosystem, rather than allowing it to fully restore into a forest ecosystem, because the forest can't be growing underneath your hydro lines. So this is the project that I'm working on right now. So this is a, a cattle ranch, and we're doing tropical dry forest restoration. And this is Resilient Ecosystem Institute in the Yucatán. And you can see large areas— I wish this cursor would work— but large areas were cleared. The whole forest was actually cleared, uh, for cattle ranching. And this is a little bit later where you can see the front was still open. I guess it was too much area to maintain, so they were only maintaining the front area. But initially we were restoring the back, and so the back half had more trees that were of slightly later stage. There was more diversity. So we initially— we've been focusing on restoring the back half of the property. It's 39 hectares. And so planting trees, putting in wildlife ponds, or putting in wildlife structures to attract wildlife, because one of the things that we find for doing ecological restoration is just bringing the wildlife back into your ecosystem, and then you can work with the wildlife and they help you to restore. You know, a bird comes to, to drink water at your wildlife pond. And they poop, and when they're pooping, they're depositing seeds that they've been eating. And then around your pond, you've got more and more diversity and, and different species. Like, uh, we have a, a native chili here and a native papaya, which is just small. But once you attract the wildlife in, now that we only had a couple of those plants, uh, near the house— the house is in the middle there where it says Brazilian Ecosystems Institute.. And now the birds have spread those few plants that we planted all over the property. So just allowing the wildlife to, to make that contribution and working with nature is really important. And you can see—

oops.

So this is what the property looks like now. It's in the dry season. I couldn't find a, a green season picture, but you can see that the vegetation's changed. It's, it's slowly regenerating. You know, we're kind of kickstarting the system, putting in native species. Uh, certain species are here, and you know, they're regrowing from the vegetation. But one of the things that we found was that in the front area where the, the area was completely cleared, the pioneer species were coming in, but because the cattle had been there for so long that the, the older species, the next, uh, serial stage in the regeneration, didn't come up. And so we have these pioneer species that grow up, uh, nitrogen fishing species, and they grew up, but now they're starting to die back. It's after 15 years, but there's nothing coming up in the understory because the cattle have, have removed the seed bank and they removed all the seedlings. So this is the next phase of our project, is removing the later cereal stages into the front area, some of it seeding in from the, the birds and different things. But there's a lot of species, you know, that have bigger seeds that don't get moved by birds. And so you have to put these species back into the system to kickstart it and get it moving back in the right way. That gives you a bit of a, an idea of where I'm coming from and what I have to offer. Into this course. I just want to talk a little bit about, you know, it's, it's more and more I'm finding that, you know, people want to do something, but I'm finding that people have a lot of disconnection from nature. And so I'm, I'm doing, been doing a lot of exploration. How do we create that nature connection? Even people that come out to my property that are, you know, biologists or or different things that come out to the property and they volunteer. I realize that they're, you know, when they first come, they're scared. They're scared of nature. They're scared that, you know, there's going to be a snake jumps out or some sort of wild animal is going to jump out. And people don't realize that, you know, we're one of the largest predators on the planet, and so everything is scared of us. So nothing's going to attack us. And so after a few days, I noticed that people start to calm down. It's like, okay, things aren't going to jump out and attack me. You know, the snakes run away. Most of the wildlife runs away when we enter the forest long before we, you know, that we walk in there. You're, you're extremely lucky if you're able to see wildlife in the natural forest. So it's just this, this connection, you know, moving ourselves from this view, this anthropocentric view that, you know, nature is a resource, and, and trying to understand how to live as part of nature, how we're— how can we reintegrate ourselves into nature, to understand that, you know, we— every part of us came from another living being, you know, even our bodies consist of, you know, over 50% of the cells in our body are other living beings. And those living beings within our gut system, you know, they provide B vitamins that we can't produce ourselves, they break down cellulose and other things that we can't digest ourselves, and that, you know, without them we would die or we would be very sick. So understanding, you know, just, just that connection between having healthy soils, healthy plants, and having a healthy human microbiome, all the microbiome that's within us, is extremely important. You know, shifting that view, we are part of the ecosystem, we're completely integrated with our ecosystems, and we can't take ourselves out of them. So moving from that, you know, top-down approach, we have a lot of ego I'm moving it to more of an eco perspective. And now I'll just pass this on to John because he's got a lot of— he wants to talk about some things as well. How do I do this? There we go.

I have to unmute myself so you can hear me. Can you hear me? I think you're good. I don't see Yeah, oh, we see everyone. Look at everyone.

Hello everyone.

So it's wonderful to be here. Thank you, Paul. Can you hear me?

Yes, excellent.

Okay, so, um, very glad to be here. I'm, I'm, I'm coming to you from Sussex in the UK where we are building a very interesting new new ecosystem restoration community in what I would call the Shire. It even has a hobbit house. So when you want to come and visit the hobbits, it's here where it's a little bit bigger. And I'm going to share my screen to show you some things here. That's not the one I want. I think it's this one, isn't it? And so, can you see that? Anybody? Yeah, okay. Okay. And is it full screen for you? Yes? All right. And I guess I'm going to also become tiny for myself, or maybe I'll be a little, a little box for me. So it's lovely to see you all. And I'm going to start this in motion. So it's going to take me 14 minutes after this button is pushed. So if we go back 3— 3 billion-plus years ago. So 3.8 billion years ago, evolution began. Before that, the Earth was forming for about 4.56 billion years ago. But when evolution started, we had a great deal of microbial development and then fungal development as well. And these microbiomes— and these you're seeing are filamentous fungi, which actually are very important in holding the soil together. And they also have, as we've learned, the mycelial network is, is also engaged with the communications and also transactional sharing of different things. And from all of this activity has come differentiation and speciation leading to infinite potential variety in genetics. And that's the basis of all the systems that we depend on for life— the oxygenated atmosphere, the freshwater system, the fertile soils, and the amazing biodiversity. So as I've been learning this over the last 30 years, I've been challenging myself by presenting to different universities and different scientific organizations. And I was always expecting that they were going to say, "No, you're just wrong. You don't know what you're talking about." And then it turns out that they didn't say that. They said, "Well, that's true." And so what I've seen in China especially is that they're taking this understanding of these natural systems and the scientific understanding we have of this, and they're applying it to ecological restoration at scale. And so it turns out— and I think many of you have seen what I did in the Loess Plateau before— but 30-plus years ago, I went out to the Loess Plateau and it looked like this. So this was called the most eroded place on Earth. And it was fundamentally ecologically destroyed. But it was also the cradle of Chinese civilization. And it was also very important during the Chinese Revolution. So many historical events had taken place in there. And there was a lot of connection to this area in Chinese history. But at the time when I first went out there 30-plus years ago, it was a ruin. So interestingly, that was the same time that China was getting rich. And what the Chinese were seeing is what we see all over the world. Wherever you destroy the vegetation, wherever you destroy and expose the soils, to direct solar radiation, wherever you just extract, you have always less. So it's exactly the reverse of evolutionary succession, which was always more biomass, always more necromass, and always more biodiversity. But through our extraction thinking it was always less. And when you get to the endgame, it's really destroyed. And when it's destroyed, you get drought, you get flooding, you get famine, you get wildfires, you get mudslides, you get all these accumulated impacts. So we basically— the Chinese really sort of realized they were a poster child of degraded landscapes. You could go all over the place and see degraded landscapes. And so quite a lot— many decades ago, they began to change it. I would also say that anywhere where this happened, it's the same outcome. And if no one recognizes that you can reverse this, tendency, then it goes to collapsing. So this is what it looked like when I first went out there. I'm sure you've probably all seen this before, but it's always good to look and realize that this is possible. So this is what— this was actually after 14 years. So there's— this was in 2009, the second shot. The first one, I think, was 2004. Again, 2004, and the one coming up is 2009. So there's been a lot more development since then, and it's much better than before, and the same techniques are being used all over China. And they were planting a lot of monocultures, but you don't see the monocultures anymore because they were planting early pioneer species, which were replaced either by planting other trees or from the legacy genome emerging. And this influenced the infiltration and retention of moisture, which changed the humidity, increased the size of the canopy, which put— put a higher canopy, which interrupted the solar radiation from directly hitting the Earth. So it's changed the physics. And I began to see this as the great work of our time. That if we do this, the next generations will be fine. There's nothing wrong with the Earth. It's really human beings who are egotistically, as Paul said, It's ego, not eco. And if we shift to eco-thinking and eco-logic, so it's logical. And that means that every human being on the planet has a role to play and that each of their activities are meaningful. So this is completely different than believing that value is coming from buying and selling things.. So I'd also like to show a little bit about what is possible. So this is the Taklamakan. And if you haven't seen this, perhaps you haven't— the Chinese have even put vegetative canopies or vegetative corridors through the middle of the second largest shifting sand desert in the world. So the fact that you can do that, I'm not sure I would attempt those kinds of things normally. But the fact that you can do that suggests that we can restore any place that is truly degraded. And it changes on the sand. I'm just going to pause for a second. No, I can't. Maybe can I? Can I pause? So on the sand, at noon in July, the temperature was 70 degrees centigrade. And below this artificial vegetative canopy that they built, the temperature was 25 degrees centigrade. That's 45 degrees centigrade difference. Now, this is also— this is a simple thing that they were doing at that time, just planting straw. You didn't— they weren't planting seeds. They were planting straw. And any moisture dew point or anything that would go down would go down those straws and begin to deteriorate the organic material. And then birds would land and poop on there. And there would be flowers coming up without ever planting anything. And so you could theoretically do these kinds of things over vast areas and have a result. But it turns out it's our understanding and our intention that makes this happen. If we don't understand it, if we don't do it, then it won't happen. And this is, this is compost being made in Sweden at the highest level of biodynamic care. And it's just beautiful.. And this can be done very rapidly and very well. And we know how to do these kinds of things. And if we get everyone engaged in it, then it's going to create more value than what's happening in our economies where we're trying to use fuels from fossils or we're trying to buy and sell things and saying that the things that we buy and sell are super important. These are nursery systems. When I showed this kind of thing to Africans, they were saying, well, that's a forest. And I said, no, that's the nursery. You plant those out later, and then you're building a forest. And so if we in our ecosystem restoration communities build these kinds of facilities, then, and learn how to do it, and if we as communities through volunteerism, through entrepreneurialism, we plant trees, we're going to have an enormous result. And that result is going to give everyone who wants it something important to do. And in doing what's important, they're going to have huge benefits to their lives. It's, it's, it's a little bit about understanding the responsibility and understanding the risk and understanding the reward. So we all have the responsibility. We all have to shoulder part of the risk. And we all have to benefit from the reward that's happening. And as I look at the geopolitical situation, I'm very concerned with the way things are going. And I think that the ecosystem restoration communities may have another task besides just ecology. It may be that we need to protect very much the communities. And the way to do that is to control the water, to have access to water for everyone, to have access to clean water for everyone, to take care and steward the soils, and to steward the vegetation and the biodiversity. So there's quite a lot of work to do there, and Besides the kind of amazing things that are going on in— which we've seen in the earlier parts, the Chinese are doing even more. So I really would like to bring some of you over to China and share some of the things which are happening there too. And I'm going to show you one or two things after this. You know, we have to do this on a planetary scale, but we have to do it locally, hyper-locally, everywhere. And when we do, we're going to get what we need. Now, this is going to go very fast unless I slow it down, but I can make this available to everybody. These are projects. There are over 250 of these projects that have already taken place in China. They're at urban scale. I'm going to try to— I can't take it going that fast. I'm going to try to slow it down. But if you understand that we can make constructed wetlands from areas where there are massively compacted or hardened infrastructure, And that not only is this useful, it actually, it's functional and it's quite beautiful. And this is what's happening to Chinese cities. So when you are walking through a city and it's desperately hot and there's fast winds, you have a heat sink and a wind tunnel. Imagine if your cities had different relative humidity and had different ways to block the wind. And then you'll see what this is like. And so they're not just talking about this kind of thing. They're talking about ecological civilization. They're looking past the ideas of— materialism as the basis of the economy. And they're looking at what is the rights of individuals. Do we have a right to food? Do we all have a right to have housing? Do we all have the right to live and have access to nature? And I think if we get there, um, we're going to find that we do. This is where I am today looking out the window, and that's exactly what I see. This is our— my host is Diane, who's the pearly queen. So she's a Cockney royalty. And this is Alastair Gould, who is the head of the Cleary Foundation and the Bay Trust and several other foundations. And I'm going to show you a few more pictures of— so this is here. This is in what's called the Pines Calyx, where we have the opportunity to create a new media program that can go— it's more than a program. It's like a network. So I hope you'll all be joining in this effort because we want to— this is what it looks like. It's a— from the outside, it's a Catalan vaulted natural building. So it's quite beautiful. And surrounding it is 10 acres of botanical sanctuary. So it's truly a lovely thing. And there's another 80-some— 86 acres connected to our— not contingent or contiguous, but nearby. So thank you so much for listening to me. And I think we should use as much time if we can, whatever we have left, to talk with one another. And thank you for listening to me. Did I get rid of that?

So shall I just, uh, share with you the upcoming workshop and then we'll have an opportunity to ask questions? I hope that's okay and I hope I'm not covering it. Um, so we're having a workshop, we're doing this great work that the ambassador of ecosystem restoration communities, John D Liu, was talking about, and how wondrous to see the transformation to nature and the change that's making in so many places. And we want it to happen here and are making it happen here in Manitoba. So we're bringing lots of people from around the world and local experts for a workshop June 16th to 20th. We're starting off in Winnipeg. It's— I love this wording— the ultimate hands-on workshop for regenerative practice and ecosystem restoration, and you're going to really get grounded in the elements and learn about monitoring techniques with Paul Morris, who's an expert, Sophia Oritz, Heather Unger, who has the Northern Grove ERC— ecosystem restoration communities, I should say— and Paul Kruse together. And coming from Europe is Melissa Hootkroetel. So we're having a slew of fabulous experts, and we're going to guide you through interactive activities, expert tours, lectures, and group discussions, and really, you know, get grounded in the land. Let's see if I can move this forward. So we talked about this— these are all the elements. We are going to identify plants, we're going to be networking, we're hoping people can come from all the ecosystem restoration communities which occur around the world, and we're going to draw on Indigenous knowledge systems and work with Baconia, which is a Métis community in Saguenay, and do lots of regenerative work on soil, water retention, and biodiversity. So I dropped the poster in the chat, and I'll let you get on with the questions. Sorry for this, you know, I just want everyone to get involved and learn more, and so I wanted to share this with you now.

Excellent. Thank you, Shirley.

John, are there any questions?

Uh, yeah, I see it. Um, so Tinka, are you here?

Yes, I'm here.

What would you like to know?

I'm just curious what it is and what it entails.

Well, this particular emerging community has quite a lot of resources, and it recently had a So their main income here was from fishing, if you can imagine it. It sort of looks like a poem from, I don't know, some ancient British poet rowing a boat through here. It's women in love or something. And then they had a pollution episode where a a neighbor— I mean, someone bought a farm and started dumping toxic substances, and it killed all the fish. So we're in the process of developing constructed wetlands similar to what I showed you from the Chinese perspective to clean the water continuously and be able to monitor it continuously and ensure that the place is— the water is clean. And we realized that this is not a local problem. This is a big problem all over the UK. So we're going to use that knowledge that we get from building this constructed wetland. We're going to film it, and we're going to show everybody. Then you're going to have a facility where you can walk through and the whole process of cleaning the water using natural systems is made completely available to you. And there'll be films on it and writing and so on. So then we started realizing that that big, beautiful building that they have looks a lot like a recording studio or a television studio. And has been underutilized. So they ask us to— could we help convert that into something where it was used every day? So we're putting in a studio and making it possible to just communicate on a continuous basis. And we have a lot of other partners in this, so permaculture people and rewilding organizations. And ecosystem restoration communities are completely welcome to, to be featured there or have their own program on that network. And I think the idea for it is that when— I know as someone, I worked for CBS News and Italian state television, and I made a number of films for the BBC. I worked for German television. And when I look at television now, I can't watch it generally. And when I look at social media, I'm terrified as well. It doesn't seem to have very much editing, and so you don't really know what you're going to get. And what I think we could do here is have a channel of sanity, of of kindness and of rational thinking. So everyone is welcome to join in that. We need to do everything together because it's all mass collaboration, mass participation. Hope that helps.

Yeah, thank you.

John Hepworth.

Hi. I love this stuff. I've always been inspired by your stuff on the Lhotse Plateau that to me is transformative filmmaking. I'm a— I come from a film kind of background, so I love— I would say social media has got a lot more good stuff than maybe you've seen. There's lots of people on Instagram doing beautiful work and something I'm often find— and I, I'm dabbling in this stuff. I've got a BSc from 100 years ago. I, I went off into films, um, but I've been following permaculture and all this stuff for years. So I am fascinated by the idea of creating or fostering more overlap between all these networks, which I think everyone's already doing. And the thing recently was like, um, knowledge graphs, which I find fascinating, where McGill's got a thing called Sustainability Hub or something right now where people can sort of feed in their profiles, what they're doing, where their areas of research are overlapping, and they see complementarities that might have been hidden in other ways. Um, and, and I've also been just reading about, um, Will Ruddick's work with Grassroots Economics and this notion of commitment sharing, because a network effect— I'm really fascinated by the social engineering that's possible and unlocking what the opportunities might be where, you know, one organization might have a bunch of hydrological engineers, another organization might have a lot of graphic designers, and we really so need both. What I particularly loved about your presentation was you used visuals for what visuals are good for, and you used words for what words are good for, whereas so many people are giving these presentations where it's They say the words and you read the words. Anyway, I'm rambling and I'll let it go, but thank you so much for this. And I just love the idea of kind of people sharing what they are good at and what they can potentially contribute to other people's projects and that notion of kind of circularity, which is so, so fascinating. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. It's very kind. And I'm going to put my contact information into the the chat. Anybody wants to contact me, please do. Anybody else? Just open up your thing and ask a question if you want to. Did we talk you all into submission? What happened?

If no one else will go, I'll keep going. I love the idea also of not being afraid of the financialization and entrepreneurial space with this, because the thing that has struck me with permaculture is— and maybe people are doing this— why aren't the finance bros buying up farms, converting them into permaculture projects, and flipping them? Because to me that seems such an obvious source of straight-up money.

Um, well, if I could— if I could say something about that, we're, we're not thinking quite in that direction because, um, personally I'm thinking more about the how we could look at what is value. And what we've got now is we've got funny money. You know, I mean, if you— I'm looking at a window here. If I throw a brick through this window, I'm increasing the GDP. Well, that's senseless. And what we, we need to do is we need to do things which are needed, and we need to clean the water, we need to clean the soils, we need to restore the biomass and we need to ensure the protection of the biodiversity. So in doing that, and we've seen now in 8 years, I hope everybody has seen Andrew Millison's YouTube video on the first camp in Spain. It's just beautiful. And it's got over 400,000 hits since January when it went up. So it's, you know, we know the ecosystem restoration communities is the right thing and people want it all over the world and they need it. And we need to ensure that these communities become really good at what they do. And so having education connected to this is really important. And that's another thing which the Pines Calyx, this beautiful facility in Kent, can contribute to because it seems that if we create logical, compassionate, kind, and informative, and truthful, scientifically accurate, nature-based films that show how you do this. And we, we connect that to entrepreneurialism, not in the sense that we're going to make money as individuals and outcompete others. But we're going to use the creativity and intelligence and collective capital to do what's best for everyone and for the Earth. And in doing that, we can all learn to share because there's plenty of tools, there's plenty of cars, there's plenty of land. In fact, there's so much degraded land, it's almost overwhelming. So if we just say, all right, we're going to do this. We're not going to buy this. We're not going to sell this. Interestingly, to be in the UK, because I was in Dubai for one COP ago— well, not the last one, but the one before— and Charles the King of England, said, people don't own the Earth. And I thought, wow, you know, Charlie, you know, good on ya, mate, you know. But actually, you know, it sounded to me like a little bit like Thomas Jefferson saying, we hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men, you'll notice he said men, are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I would have to say, all right, that's a wonderful thing to say, and yet I know that Thomas Jefferson was one of the largest slave owners in Virginia. So this is a bit hypocritical. Charles is one of the biggest landowners, although I think it's devolved to his son William, and the Duchy of Cornwall is now the largest landowner in the UK. So, you know, if you think about this, everyone should have the right to life. Everyone should have the right to food. Everyone should have the right to, have a place to sleep. I mean, when did— you know, who thought of this idea that, you know, like, you don't have the right to sleep or to eat? You know, this is crazy. So we really need to tell the truth about these things because the longer we hold these kinds of irrational things and they become baked into our civilization, the more corrupt our civilization becomes. And, you know, we just need to— the indigenous people have known this forever. And this is being spread, has been spread by colonization from genocide and slavery and mercantilism for hundreds of years. And I mean, you can find all of this historically in every continent all over the world, all of us. All of our ancestors, we're the survivors. We're the ones who survived this horror. But all of us need to realize that we're all indigenous to the Earth. And whatever happened in the past, we really can't go back and not make it happen. But we are determining what's happening in the future. So this is our moment to do what needs to be done. And if we fail to do what needs to be done at this time, it's a tragedy. So we need to, we need to breathe deeply, embrace each other, and realize that we're going to determine the quality of life for all, all life, not just all humans, but all life in the future. And we have this opportunity because civilization is collapsing. And if you don't think it's collapsing, look at the data. We saw Johan Rockström's work with the planetary boundaries. It's very well documented. But that's an analog. Look at the fires. Look at the storm surges that are taking out cities. Look at tsunamis. Look at anything that you want to, and you're going to find we're in trouble. So the need for ecosystem restoration communities is not small, and it's not simply to increase the amount of organic gardening or something. It's really to ensure that people can control the water and the soil and the vegetation and protect the biodiversity going forward. Because if things in the civilization break down, then nothing else will matter. Your survival will depend on access to water. And food and soil and biodiversity. So I'm getting into a rant, I'd better stop.

I have a question I posted in the chat, but yeah, it's basically, it's based on this, this whole question of how do we shift the view from seeing nature as only resource to one where we are part of nature and basically the power of transformative media, but also in today's digital landscape that we are in, like, what do you see as opportunities to kind of maximize this use of media and storytelling and distribution of it to create those movements or this kind of revolution, so to say?

Paul, do you have something to say about this, or do you— you are muted, Paul, if you're trying to talk.

For myself, I think that in terms of developing movements and that sort of thing, it really comes back to the heart. You know, if we don't have a connection to the land that we're living on, the natural elements that are there, the wildlife, the soil, the water, you know, if we don't have a deep connection and a love for that, we don't have a connection to our ecosystems that we thrive in. How can we, you know, recreate these things? And how can we live in balance if we don't— if we keep thinking that we should take ourselves out of the system? We're completely integrated into the system, and there really is no separation. And until people start to understand that, they're not going to, you know, protect it. You know, they're— you're not going to see the sacredness in the flower. You're not going to approach a body of water with reverence and maybe even ask permission. May I go for a swim? May I go for a walk in your woods? Am I, you know, is it okay that I'm here? You know, asking the land, is that what I want to do? Okay, you know, it's— if we don't have that integration and that understanding of integration. And we think we have this power over everything, and we do to some extent. We can control what happens. We can decide, you know, do we want to degrade this land or do we want to protect and restore it? I mean, it's a choice. And unfortunately, we're the most powerful beings on this planet. We can wipe the whole thing out or You know, we had a Garden of Eden here, thousands and thousands of years, and we were able to sustain ourselves. How do we make that again? How do we integrate ourselves back into the ecosystem, into the communities? You know, listening to the land. I mean, Indigenous people understand that by being on the land, And you look at any Indigenous community, they're on the land for long periods of time and they make their mistakes. Maybe they drive the buffalo all off a cliff and kill thousands of them and you realize, oh, wait a minute, next year I don't have as many bison to eat, so maybe I need to shift how I'm doing things. But it's this trial and error of being in that area that you gradually understand, okay, well, now I'm gonna— I want raspberries, so maybe I'll move a little bit of raspberry around. I have— I like this fruit tree, maybe I'll, I'll choose all the biggest ones. And eventually, instead of having a chili mash that we have, the wild one, you've got a bigger one that's, you know, you can eat and have a meal with. You know, it's, it's just working with nature. Rather than against it, you know, then these natural processes will occur and the Earth can heal itself quite easily if you take that step back, if you stop damaging the ecosystem, if you stop throwing pollution and chemicals and all these different things that we're poisoning our planet with. Stop doing that, you know, and the ecosystems can start to recover. But we're not stopping. And we keep destroying and we keep damaging the ecosystems and driving it back to an earlier and earlier successional stage rather than allowing it to move back into a forest ecosystem, back into a fully functioning wetland ecosystem. You know, just some of it's stepping back and some of it's, you know, yeah, policies, okay, stop doing this, but in most of it's common sense. It's like nobody wants to drink plastic particles. Different things like that. Just if you want to create a global movement, understand how to nurture and how to love this planet. It's really about loving this planet. I love this, the life on this planet, every single aspect, you know. Value the biodiversity that's here. Not only the diversity in the ecosystems, but the diversity in people. You know, it's okay if you, you have the, the rednecks or the, the far right or the far left. It's okay, there are different perspectives and stuff, stuff, uh, trying to, you know, trying to control that. But come back to the things that are important. We all want clean air, fresh food that doesn't have chemicals in it. You know, even the, you know, for the redneck guys, they go out into the woods and they hunt. They enjoy hunting and they like being out in nature. You know, find, find, find those little catch points within those other communities that you think are other so that you can build a collective understanding and, and nurture the Earth.

If I would add something to that, we are talking a lot about social infrastructure these days. So the demographics are changing around the world. There are going to be a lot more elderly people. And so care for the elderly, child care, food security is going to be huge. Water treatment is going to be huge. Those are ways to do kind of an entrepreneurial work, not necessarily the idea like I'm going to get rich and make a huge amount of money, but I'll never be finished in the work because you— there, there's going to be so much need for this, and it's going to be something that we have to do with and for and each other to make sure that we're all safe. And when we, when we have that as an intention, we're going to live in peace with one another. And if we don't do that, if we don't have that intention, then I think it's going to be very risky because there'll be a whole lot of competition for, for things. If things break down, and if they don't, let's play volleyball and have dinner a lot, you know, let's have music and dancing, let's have a good time. That's kind of what we're seeing over here, and with this new concept of making collaborative programming in a shared facility, anybody who wants to write to me and talk to me about that, please do, because we're in the middle of getting this together. And obviously we can communicate with every human being on the planet simultaneously and instantaneously. But what do we say? So I think we have to be calm, be kind, and join together to say what needs to be said. And this, I think, is what will be the best case for communications. And yes, it's possible I'm not seeing a lot on social media because I'm trying not to look at it. And I know that I have tens of thousands of unread mails. So I know that I can't take it anymore. Maybe I've gotten too old. When I was younger, you know, I kind of pretended or at least tried to look through what was coming at me. But now I'm like, I really am not sure. If you want to reach me, and you know how to do it, but if you're just shotgunning to reach me, then I'm probably going to be hard hard to reach me. But if you want to find me, it's not difficult to find me. So do, do if you wish. And I think we're going to have a lot of food programming. I think we're going to have a lot of music programming. And I think we're going to have a lot of rational conversation with scientists and with spiritual people in spiritual movements and religions. And yeah, so I think I'm going to have to go now though.

Thank you so much. So I'll just end with a thanks. This is really a caring community and it's really reaching out to people. I think it's so important at this time to make these changes. And thank you so much, Paul and John D Liu, for joining. I just want to briefly mention there will be another webinar. We will have two more webinars, and the next webinar is When Life Springs Up Where We Tread: Partnering with Soil Biology in Ecosystem Restoration with Heather Unger from Northern Grove and Paul Kruse. So they will join us on August 18th. April 29th, uh, and then we'll have another with myself and Stuart Hill, and hopefully John D Liu can join that as well. So thank you so much everyone for coming, and, uh, we look forward to more communication, more dialogue, um, and more opportunities to do this real important work. Thank you.