In our previous post about peak oil I introduced the concept of finite resources which may be a limit to growth, and described how important oil has become to our civilisation. What will happen if dramatic actions are not taken in order to address the increasingly limited availability of oil and other fossil fuels? The consequences of scarcity of oil will be dire. Basic market laws of supply and demand indicates that the decrease in production will lead to higher oil prices, and therefore higher price on all of the goods and service which heavily depend on oil, as I detailed in one my precedent posts.

As cost will keep rising and consumer’s disposable income will keep decreasing, we will witness slower growth at first, followed by foreclosures, recession, depression, inverted rural flight and a potential collapse of governments and financial systems.

The Hirsh¹ report in 2005 established that:

• World’s GDP growth and oil production are roughly proportional. Decrease in oil production will lead to negative growth
• 4% global oil shortfall will lead to an oil price to ~$160 per barrel (from $45 or so at the time of the study)
• 4% global oil shortfall will plunge the US economy goes into recession and millions of job will be lost
• Waiting until production peaks would leave the world with a liquid fuel deficit for 20 years.

Robert Hirsch is a former senior energy program adviser for Science Applications International Corporation, ex manager of Exxon’s synthetic fuels research laboratory and of Exxon’s Petroleum Exploratory Research, and a consultant in energy.

We’ve already seen the oil peaking at about $145 in 2008, recession in the US economy and unemployment at record levels. High oil price have been around since 2004-2005, when it started to grow faster than inflation (click on the graph on the right for inflation-corrected prices) so the likelihood that the high oil price is one of the major causes of the financial crisis of the recent years is very high. Recently, the British energy secretary admitted that we may have a repeat of the 70s oil shock with a doubling of the price of petrol²

There is another debated theory around, called the Olduvai theory³, which defines industrial civilisation as the period when per capita energy production is above 37%. In this theory, the double pressure of population growth and decreasing fossil fuel resources will bring an end to the industrial civilisation (when the average energy per person decreases again and goes below 37%) unless alternative sources are brought on line sufficiently rapidly to mitigate the decline and eventually bring a new age of prosperity and growth⁴. Although the initial 1989 version of the Olduvai theory predicted the years 2000-2011 to be the start of a sliding decline towards a post-industrial stone age, the revised 2008 version of this theory show that there is hope if considerable financial and political pressure is exerted towards building alternative energy infrastructures. Unfortunately neither exists.

In a well-documented study on peak oil consequences, Tariel Mórrígan from the University of California, summarises the consequences as detailed in extensive studies on the subject. His analysis and that of David Korowic⁵ and others⁶ reach the conclusion that our civilisation and population are threatened with a collapse without equivalent in the history of our world. Tariel is the principal research associate of Global Climate Change, Human Security & Democracy (GCCHSD) and a member of its Global Academic Council. He points out that the analysis of peak oil consequences is difficult and often narrow-minded because all of the components involved in a collapse are interrelated and any of the mechanisms it will trigger will increase or trigger other mechanisms. His key points are:

• Declining oil and energy flows will increase economic costs and reduce global economic production. Reduced global production will undermine society’s ability to produce goods and services, to trade, and to produce and use energy, which will further reduce economic production
• Credit forms the basis of the monetary system. In a growing economy debt and interest can be repaid. In a declining economy the burden of interests cannot be repaid. Therefore, declining energy flows cannot maintain the economic production required to service debt. When outstanding debt cannot be repaid, the world’s economy will collapse.
• Society’s welfare has become very dependent on hyper-integrated globalized supply-chains dependent on cheap petrol. In developed and industrialized societies, regional and local economies will breakdown since few goods and services are produced locally, but rather are imported and outsourced from the global economy. Therefore, the more complex and globalized modern societies are, the more are they at risk from a systemic collapse.
• The system-wide functioning of global supply-chains is supported by monetary confidence and bank intermediation. When the economy will be destabilized, the banking system as a whole will become insolvent since their assets (i.e., loans) cannot be repaid.
• The global economy and supply-chains are also highly dependent on the operation of highly co-dependent critical infrastructure such as energy and water distribution, transportation, waste disposal, food, finance, telecommunications, and Internet technologies. Those infrastructures depend on continual re-supply of energy, materials and short-lifetime components, large economies of scale and the operation of the monetary and financial system. The interdependence of the infrastructures is likely to cause rapidly increasing risks of systemic failure. Systemic failure in one infrastructure may cause cascading failure in the others.
• Peak oil will induce the failure of our food production and distribution system, create extremely high inflation on food and water which will strip customers of their purchasing power. This will greatly exacerbate the economic crisis. Entire sectors of the economy such as leisure, tourism, recreational goods, fashion and so on will become irrelevant and will be devastated.
• The ability to develop new energy production and maintain existing energy infrastructure will likely be severely compromised. Assuming business as usual (meaning no peak oil), gas, coal and uranium are set to peak within the next 20 years. However peak oil will bring about general peak energy much sooner as mining and distribution of all related commodities will be seriously hampered. Insolvency amongst banks from a magnitude not yet experienced and widespread sovereign defaults will render any new investment in new energy technologies impossible. In particular, switching the whole economy to renewable energies – which would cost several trillion dollars – will be abandoned.
• Given that many nations and their citizens are insolvent and on the brink of debt default, the next oil price shock and/or permanent increase in oil prices may push the global economy into complete insolvency and collapse.
• Systemic collapse will likely result in widespread confusion, fear, human security risks, human rights abuses, and social break down. We will probably witness political instability, revolutions, failed states, social unrest, riots and civil wars, increased crime, military action, and other conflicts in some areas.
• Oil producing countries will ban exports and will have their economies going longer than the others. Non oil-producing countries will have to face earlier and faster decline and their economy could stop quite abruptly.
• Effective mitigation of peak oil will be dependent on the implementation of mega-projects and mega-changes at the maximum possible rate with at least one or two decades lead time. With adequate, timely mitigation, the costs of peaking can be minimized, but systemic collapse cannot be avoided without the very rapid introduction of some radical new advanced technologies.
• The human carrying capacity of the Earth will be greatly reduced, potentially going back to pre-industrial times (less than 1 billion people world-wide).

When dealing with an issue of this importance, we really need to keep our feet on earth and not to delusion ourselves. Here are some commonly heard objections to peak oils, which I believe are myths.

• We will never run out of oil, we will just have to pay more for it.

  This is actually true. The myth is that this is an argument used to brush the issue away without a very thorough argument. The reason that we will never run out of oil is that the economy won’t be able to sustain the price of oil scarcity and will either collapse or adapt without before we consume the last drop. “We’ll have to pay more” is not good enough, if “more” means three or ten times current price. And by the way, it is not only petrol which will increase in price, everything else will.

• The world will stop overnight.

  No. Peak oil is simply the time when the most oil is being produced⁷. That means that we have still at least a few years, maybe a few decades left to act. Panic is not a good advisor, neither is burying one’s head in sand. After the peak, the world will not stop, but we will go from recessions to depressions with a few episodes of regained growth as mitigation solutions are adopted. The speed of the decline in oil production will condition the success from a switch from oil economy to non oil economy.

• We will just drive less and drive an electric car

  A crash plan to switch the world over to electric car will take over ten years with prime political focus and untold amounts of money. And since running cars is far from being the only use for petrol, that won’t be enough to advert a crisis – you still need tyres, plastic and asphalt. Besides, current political will is failing and the money is just not there – everything has already been given to rogue bankers.

• There is plenty of oil left in the Canadian bituminous sand, in the deep-sea oil field near Brazil…

  Now it is getting a bit technical with distinction between total oil reserves and recoverable reserves, and the notion of net energy. Overall, at current technologies, it is estimated that the Tupi oil field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, considered to be Western Hemisphere’s largest oil discovery of the last 30 years, can provide about 3 month worth of global supply⁸. Besides, it is located a whole 30% deeper under the sea than the infamous Macondo Prospect⁹ where the Gulf of Mexico oil spill happened last summer, and lies below a thick crust of semi-solid salt which creates a lot of troubles to oil companies¹⁰.
  Likewise, the bitumen sands of Canada may be able to provide about 5 years worth of consumption¹¹ if we do not consider their environmental costs. And that cost is huge. Those tar sand have been dubbed the “The World’s Most Destructive Project”¹². By 2020, the oil extraction from those sand in the Alberta region will have created tailing ponds of toxic sludge that cover more than one billion cubic meters. Birds that land on these ponds will die in minutes. Benzene, one of the most lethal human carcinogens, is released by Alberta’s Tar Sands into the atmosphere at a rate of 100 tonnes per year; it could be as high as 800 tonnes per year by 2015, if planned expansions occur. Fish are being found there covered with tumours and mutations. Arsenic could be as much as 453 times the acceptable levels in moose meat from the region. Communities living downstream from the Tar Sands have seen unusual cancer clusters… the list goes on and on. Are an additional five years of oil addiction and a few billion dollars worth all of this?

• We will survive on corn ethanol.

  No we won’t. The case for corn ethanol is artificial and the net energy it produces may not always be positive, which means that you have to spend a gallon of petrol to get a little above from a gallon of ethanol. Some studies even suggests that you have to spend more energy making a gallon of ethanol than the energy you get out of this gallon¹³ which would mean that corn ethanol is a loser’s game. Besides, the amount of fertile land it requires to get corn ethanol are enormous: if all the automobiles in the United States were fuelled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn

• Oil is a renewable resource and is constantly produced abiotically deep into the earth.

  This is unproved fringe theory which one can sometime find coming from fans of conspiracy theories¹⁴. The opinion of virtually all respected geologists is that oil is finite and is fully explainable by normal biogenic processes. If a little bit of hydrocarbon may be produced as the result of non-organic process, it is unlikely to be in any sort of commercial amounts.

Our next post on Peak oil will look into what we can do about it on an individual level to prepare ourselves, and another future post will discuss about large-scale actions which need to be taken at institutional level.

A storm is coming, and some say that it will wipe our civilisation off the earth¹. I am talking about the progressive disappearance of oil.

I have been thinking and investigating the issue called “peak oil” for over a year now, and it is one of the reasons which started me writing this blog. Peak oil is defined as the moment where the maximum oil is being produced and the production starts it final decline.

There are indications that peak oil is either imminent or even may have passed a few years ago. Although the consequences won’t be immediate after the peak, on the long term they will be dire. We will discuss what the possible solutions to peak oil are in a moment but first, what are we talking about? Let’s start by a few facts:

• There is only a limited amount of oil on the planet – because the planet is round.
• The world’s first commercial oil well was drilled in Poland in 1853, and global production reached 4 million barrels a year in the 1860s² (one barrel is about 159 litres).
• Today’s production hovers just above 70 million barrels a day³.
• 2005 was an all-time high at 73.72 million barrels a day³. Production is nearly flat since.
• The Industrial Revolution brought a better understanding of how to use energy and allowed global population to increase ten times compared to what has been constant over millennia^4a, 4b. It is quite clear that our population would never have reached this level without access to all the cheap energy sources we currently have.
• Our industry, food system and economy have become wholly dependent on cheap fuel.
• India and China demand for oil is set to quadruple by 2030⁵.
• Some 64 million barrel per day of additional gross capacity – the equivalent of almost six times the daily output of Saudi Arabia today – needs to be brought on stream between now and 2030 (World Energy Outlook 2008⁶)

So if the amount of oil we have is limited, if our demand is exponentially growing and if production has been stationary for 5 years, how much oil have we left?

First we have to realise there aren’t any massive oil field discoveries those days. It is estimated that the peak of oil production lags behind the peak of oil field discoveries by 30 to 40 years depending on the urgency with which new fields are brought on line. The graph below shows the rate of discoveries of conventional oil field:

Second, according to the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) itself^7a, 7b, we are on the verge of a downward slope. See this graph:

The graph above was submitted at an U.S. Department of Energy roundtable in April 2009. You can find the presentation document of this roundtable on the Department of Energy website. As you can see the only line going up is the demand. It is to be noted that over the next 5 years the amount required to meet demands equates to 10 million barrels a day, which is the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the largest producer on earth. Bear in mind that it takes least 7 years to get any new oil project running⁸ so if we were to meet oil demand in 7 years we will need to get 20% of our oil from yet-unidentified projects. Therefore we are already behind schedule by quite a long way.

The fact is that there is no cheap replacement for oil, and most of what we consider granted in the western world is based on its availability. If peak oil hasn’t passed yet, all the above facts suggest that peak oil is imminent (definitely less than 10 years, probably less than 5), after which we will start to see an irremediable decline in production. Sometime peak oil is defined as when demand outstrip supply, which in my opinion has already come to pass for a few years, given the current prices of crude and flat production despite international growth.

I’d like to stop a moment to let this sink in and consider what actually depends on oil.

• Most of our transportation: cars, planes, boat, trucks.
• Commercial shipment: bringing food to the supermarket, shipping building material, most of the industry.
• Tyres: It takes 3.6 billion gallons of crude oil to produce tyres for all of the cars in the U.S. and 7 gallons of crude to produce one tire^9a, 9b. Therefore should we all run on electric cars we would still have a problem.
• Mining equipment¹⁰, farming and forestry equipment. The energy density of any commercially available battery makes it very heavy to move around and therefore a poor replacement of liquid fuels¹¹.
• Most plastics¹². Plastics are everywhere. Look around you, starting by your computer and your phone, and the chips inside of them, and then try to imagine a world without plastics.
• Many pesticides are derived from petroleum^13, 14. Fertilizers are derived from natural gas, which ultimately will be confronted to the same issue.
• Motor’s lubricating oil¹⁵.
• Asphalt¹⁶.
• Our entire food production and distribution network is heavily dependent on oil and fossil fuels¹⁷. It is estimated that for every calories you eat, 10 calories of fossil fuels (mainly from oil and gas) is being used¹⁸.

There is no need to panic: we have only consumed half of the amount of oil there is on the planet. However there is clearly a case to seriously rethink our way of life. We will discuss the consequences and myths of peak oil in a soon to be released post.

But besides all of those perfectly valid albeit slightly passionate arguments I’d like to bring one which is not heard often, and the implications of which are rarely made plain enough. It is a cold, logical and scientific argument linked to the survival of the fittest theory from Darwin. But first, let’s take lessons from a troubled period of our history.

Ireland, 1845. The country had been under English rule for over 200 years^[4]. A system of iniquitous laws, absentee landlords and middlemen brought the Irish people under extreme poverty, with some families living on as little as half an acre plot^[5], plus having to pay a large rent to the owner. In order to maximise return they cultivated potatoes as their main crop. Specifically, they planted the “lumper” potato variety. And since potatoes are normally propagated vegetatively, all of these lumpers were clones, genetically identical to one another^[6].

One day of September, a fog reportedly spread over the fields of Ireland, bringing with it famine and death. The potato plants suddenly started to turn black, curl and die out in front of the disbelieving peasants, plunging them into despair and hunger^[7]. Potatoes dug out of the ground at first looked edible, but shrivelled and rotted within day.
The harvests of the following years were complete failure, and with millions depending completely on potatoes, people were reduced to eating their cattle, sheep, dogs and cats or even grass^[8]. It is estimated that as a result one million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland^[9].

It is now understood that the cause of the famine was a mold cold Phytophthora infestans^[10], which, incidentally, has made a comeback in recent years due to fungicide resistance^[11].

So what can be learnt from the tragedy Irish people lived more than a century ago? I believe that the real danger with cloning has nothing to do with the misconception about eating dangerous food, it has to do with SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: Clone herds of cows, and what you will end up is a huge number of replicas of the same strengths and flaws. Now, it would suffice that ONE BACTERIA finds a killer flaw, and we would end up with a very large scale disaster. The more cloned animals/plant there is, the more prone to large-scale disaster global agriculture will be. In other words, less genetic variety = increased susceptibility to epidemics. Instead of creating nature freaks, scientists should focus on how to make a sustainable agriculture based on biodiversity. Genetic diversity is the best way to adapt to the disasters of diseases, climate change and so on.

For more information on how to do this, see for instance Return To Resistance or Self-organising Agroecosystems from Raoul
A.
Robinson

Based on our research, slavery occurs in every country of the world (OK maybe not Greenland). Currently, my organization, Free the Slaves, has active partners in seven countries: Nepal, India, Ghana, Uganda, Haiti and Brazil. We collaborate with more organizations: in Pakistan, Cambodia, in Europe and here, in the U.S.

Hervé: Do you mean that the problem exists in the “developed world”? Is there any country in which this problem does not exist?
Kevin: Slavery absolutely happens in the developed world. I collaborated with Ron Soodalter on our recent book The Slave Next Door, which investigates contemporary slavery in the U.S. Instances of slavery have been found in over one hundred U.S. cities. There is a good chance that slavery exists in your town. We found that not only is slavery alive and well in today’s America, it is also very likely found in the supply chains of the clothes we wear, the shrimp and chocolate we eat, the coffee we drink, the carpets we walk on, the cell phones and computers we use every day.

Hervé: This may sound naive, but slavery is totally illegal and a grave violation of human rights. Why are the police not doing something?
Kevin: There are many efforts under way to combat slavery, domestically and internationally. Many police departments in American cities have established anti-slavery task forces. But slavery is a systematic phenomenon. Whole communities should be engaged in ending slavery. There are many resources you can tap into, to learn about modern day slavery. Educate yourself, be alert to the signs of human trafficking and slavery. If every American makes ending slavery a priority in their lives, we can influence policy and truly end slavery in our lifetime.

Hervé: It is quite disturbing to hear that some people in our neighborhood might be subject to such abuse. But what are the roots of modern slavery and how do people get into it?
Kevin: Slavery happens where there is a lack of the rule of law and a vacuum of economic opportunity. It boils down to globalization, urbanization and population. When economic opportunities are absent, a person must leave the familiarity of their home, and go to the city. Or, migrate out of their country all together.

They cross borders into unknown lands, where they don’t know the customs and can’t speak the local language. They find themselves in situations where they are at the mercy of others, and fall prey to traffickers. If the rule of law has broken down due to conflict or corruption then a person won’t be protected from enslavement even in their own country. The strongest predictor of slavery in a country is the level of corruption and the failure of the rule of law.

The value of slaves is lower now than it has ever been. During the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slaves were valued at about $40,000 in today’s currency. Today, a slave is only worth $90. That makes modern day slaves more disposable than ever.

Hervé: We hear of cases of people going to some mid-eastern countries as construction workers only to receive bad treatments, work in horrible conditions and are paid a ridiculous pittance and therefore are unable to even go back to their home countries. Does this qualify as slavery?
Kevin: There have certainly been reported cases of slavery in the construction industry of Gulf nations – and cases of slavery in the construction industry of the U.S. as well. Whenever workers are forced to work under threats, unable to leave of their own free will, they are enslaved. Remember the rule of thumb asks, “Can this person walk away?” If you are in a terrible job, but can choose to walk away even into a worse situation, then you situation is bad, but it is not slavery. Slavery means no choices.

Hervé: How much of this is a consequence of “dirty trades” such as drug, prostitution/pornography, weapons smuggling and poaching of endangered species… Kevin: It is hard to quantify how much slavery is related to some of these trades. Of course, slavery and human trafficking is a lucrative and growing business, and we do know it is linked to other criminal activities.

People who are willing to defy the law and sell drugs and guns are usually perfectly willing to deal in people as well, especially since human trafficking often has a lower risk of detection and arrest. Criminals who are involved in environmental destruction, like illegal logging or mining, are also known to use slaves. Criminals don’t care – and if they can find a way to use people as slaves they will.

Hervé: What would be the global cost of freeing every slave in the world?
Kevin: While slavery profits criminals to the tune of $30 to $50 billion a year, it is estimated that the cost of eradicating slavery is somewhere between $10 and $20 billions of dollars over a 25 year period — it’s a bargain! And less than what slave profiteers make in a single year.

But beyond this, there is what I call the “freedom dividend.” When a person comes out of slavery, they are free to be an active member of society—to become producers and consumers, community leaders, captains of industry. I’ve seen former slaves start schools dedicated to educating other survivors of slavery and businesses that fuel economic growth in their communities. The economic value of an empowered and free population is something we’re working to measure right now, but all signs point to the idea that a great way to fight poverty is to end slavery.

Hervé: The fact that this virtuous circle exists brings a considerable hope: it might be that in the end making people free would yield better economical results than keeping slave trades as they are. I am really looking forward to hearing your conclusion on the economic value of a free population once you’d have finished measuring it, as it could make one of the strongest incentives yet for governments to react. The relatively “low” price of freeing the slaves globally is quite surprising, if you consider that the US government spent roughly the same amount per month waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan ^[1], that France and UK spent more than that building a tunnel under the sea between them ^[2], or that this amount equates to the global revenue Goldman Sachs made in the first 3 months of this year ^[3]… Note that I am not making a moral judgement on those last things, but those facts just put the global cost of freedom in perspective.

Now, could you tell our readers about your general approach?
Kevin: Our approach is to work in partnership with local activists and organizations. We don’t believe in parachuting in, and telling people what to do. Slavery exists within complex social and economic environments – the specific systems that drive people to be enslaved in India are not the same in Ghana, or Haiti, or the U.S. We empower local, grassroots groups when they have a successful record in getting people out of slavery and into full lives, and then work together to help those in slavery to create sustainable freedom.

Helping to bring a person out of slavery is a multi-tiered process. The initial rescue is just the beginning. The systems that make communities vulnerable to slavery in the first place, like corruption and discrimination, have to be eradicated. Slavery survivors must have access to psychological assistance. Former child slaves need specialized, transitional education to catch up. They must become economically empowered. They must be empowered to organize and affect policy and assert their basic rights. The good news is that we know how to do this and every day we see ex-slaves running for office, building new communities, graduating from schools, it is really exciting.

Hervé: How do you actually free those people? Do you knock the doors and remove them by force from the slaveholders? Do you send the police? Do you bring the slave “owner” to justice?
Kevin: All of the above, depending on the situation. But I have to stress that a person should never attempt to do a rescue on their own. A botched rescue attempt can result in retaliation and further abuse toward the victims. If you suspect a case of slavery, contact the national hotline, inform the police, or a local non-profit group that specializes in human rights. www.endslaverynow.com is a good resource for finding organizations that specialize in slavery.

Some individual slaves need an individual rescue, but given that whole communities are enslaved in some parts of Asia we use a community organizing model. In Ghana we work with families who have had a child taken into slavery and trace the child and reunite him or her with the family. The many types of slavery need many types of responses, but we are guided by the idea that every liberation must lead to a full and healthy life.

Hervé: Getting people out of the net is certainly not the end of the story. Can you explain how you avoid owner’s retaliation, and most importantly how do those people get their lives back? If some of them are slaves since they were a child, it must take a lot of work to make them free “from inside”. Can you give us some ideas about your work on making them able to stand up for themselves?
Kevin: The rescue is just the start of emancipation. Rehabilitation and reintegration must follow. Free the Slaves works with several organizations around the world that exemplify this comprehensive, holistic process. Every year we give Freedom Awards to survivors of slavery who have dedicated their lives to bringing others to freedom.

James Kofi Annan is a great example. He was a child slave in Ghana’s fishing industry. He has founded his own anti-slavery organization, Challenging Heights. Sina Vann in Cambodia, Ricky Richard Anywar in Northern Uganda. Tina Frundt, who we are honoring this year, is a survivor of sex trafficking right here in the U.S. She has started her own organization, Courtney’s House.

There is nothing we can teach these survivors—quite the contrary. They are the teachers in the anti-slavery movement. And more and more, we should give the floor over to them, and take heed to their ideas.

Hervé: Can we hope that one day slavery will be part of history?
Kevin: Slavery can end. It is illegal in every country; it is not so important to the global economy that any industry (except the criminals) will fight to keep it; and it is universally condemned by reasonable people. It has actually been pushed to the very edge of our global society, slaves are the smallest fraction of the world population (.0004) they have ever been. Slavery is standing on the edge of its own extinction and with a good hard push can be eradicated in exactly the way the world chose to eradicate smallpox and put the necessary resources behind that effort. We’ve carefully prepared a plan for ending slavery – you can read it – it’s a book called Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves and it is guiding the modern anti-slavery movement.

Ending slavery is everyone’s responsibility. Everybody plays a role. The first step is become aware of the issue, and learning about the many forms slavery can take. But this isn’t enough. We have to actively work to eradicate slavery.

Support anti-slavery organizations like Free the Slaves – donate money, volunteer your time. Learn about legislation and be active in influencing policy. Learning about slavery in the supply chain of the products you use is a great way to understand how your life is touched by slavery.

Hervé: Do you do prevention work, by raising awareness among vulnerable communities, from the type of which people would typically become prey to slave trafficking?
Kevin: We raise awareness, partner with grassroots organizations that work to eradicate slavery in their own communities, and showcase the most promising anti-slavery practices through our annual Freedom Awards. The Free the Slaves website and blog are great resources of information. I recommend that anybody interested in educating themselves about slavery to spend time exploring these sites.

Hervé: Is the increasing anonymity of neighborhood a significant aggravating factor to slavery?
Kevin: Many cases of modern day slavery have been reported to the authorities by vigilant, good Samaritans. Slavery thrives in darkness. If you suspect someone is enslaved, by all means, report it to the authorities. But the most effective tool against slavery is a strong, united community. We have seen this happen in India. When a community bands together to watch out for one another, traffickers tend to leave them alone. Economic empowerment is another important factor. Communities can end slavery by eradicating the situations that make people vulnerable to slavery in the first place, by nurturing local business and local education. It never hurts to know your neighbors!

Hervé: You report stories of modern heroes who fought to bring freedom to some enslaved neighbor. Doesn’t the fight to free the slaves require a change of heart in as many people as possible?

Kevin: Absolutely! The contemporary abolitionist movement has been going on for over a decade now. Even so, many people don’t know that slavery still exists. Opening people’s eyes to modern day slavery is one of the most important things we can do today. And we should emphasize the positive. We are optimistic that slavery can end in our lifetime. Modern slavery is not a chronic condition. It can end.

Hervé: Can you suggest ways our readers can keep informed and help driving the change?
Kevin: The movement to end slavery is always growing and changing. The best way to stay informed is to visit our website: www.freetheslaves.net and blog www.ftsblog.net.

“Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental problem the world faces,” said David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell. “Yet, the problem, which is growing ever more critical, is being ignored”^[4]. It has nowadays reached a point where, to save the world from agricultural collapse, an in-depth rethink of soil management in view of sustainably improving soil fertility is needed.

I have already exposed in previous posts how good agricultural practices, including natural farming and the preservation of untouched spaces could contribute to a more fertile land. Today I want to discuss weeds.

Weed control is a relatively new concern of mankind. Available literature indicates that relatively few agricultural leaders and farmers became interested in weeds as a problem before 1200 AD or even 1500 AD. Real emphasis, both on a legal and technical standpoint, only appeared in the late 19th century^[5]. In actual facts, overlooked knowledge from the past use to consider some of the wild plants we call weed as companion crops, food or even medicine.

Professor Cocannouer has been teaching conservation and biology for close to fifty years, but has always thrived to go on the field (literally) to learn from nature, not only in his home state of Oklahoma where he has spent much time learning from the Indians, but also in other part of the world such as Europe, India and the Philippines.

From a lifetime of researches on weed, he concludes that overall, controlled weed are beneficial to the land by the following aspects:

1. Deep-rooted weeds feed in the lower soil and by doing so bring nutrients back to the surface and reduce the effects of leaching. This is particularly important for trace nutrients which are not added to most standard fertilisers, but could also have implication for the leaching of nitrates. Since weeds and crops do not feed in the same depth of the soil they do not excessively compete for nutrients and water.

2. The strength of weeds roots is able to break hard pans and restore the nutrients circulation between lower soil and the topsoil. This could have interesting applications in environmental restoration where hard layers effectively lock toxins and salts in the topsoil.

3. Weeds roots also help open the soil and increase its fibre content, which then make it easier for crops, the roots of which are generally weaker, to reach further into the ground and gain additional access to nutrients. Without those fibres the soil particle settle close together into a compact condition. Ultimately the lower soils becomes so agglutinated that the upward movement of capillary water is severely hampered, and the soil is then endangered of becoming thrown out of balance.

4. When they die, weeds roots increase the ground’s organic content, which then is being eaten by a multitude of micro-organisms, insects, worms and fungi, and processed into fertile dirt upon which the plants and crops can in turn feed.

5. Deep-feeding weeds will cause a capillarity movement of water along the outside of their roots, thus bringing back toward the surface some of the water which ran too far down to be available for the other crops. The upward moving moisture will become immediately available to the crop roots that are feeding in the surface soil, therefore a thin crop of weeds interspersed into conventional crop will help go through drier parts of the year.

6. Weeds are sources of food for many birds, whose dropping will in turn serve as natural fertilisers for the crops. Some of the birds attracted by the weeds will also prey on the insects and help to control their population.

7. Some weeds can provide a ground cover which will prevent direct exposition of the ground to the sun and help retain moisture.

However, anyone who expects to take a mediocre or poor piece of land and get a good crop of vegetable from it solely through mothering the vegetables with weeds is likely to be in for some disappointment: the weeds, if handled correctly, will do constructive work in the soil, but they won’t perform magic. The whole art of correct weed handling is to strike the right balance in weed control: neither left loose nor eradicated. If the weeds are growing too thickly, their roots will fail to develop into those useful deep-divers, and the weeds will choke the other plants. Also, in order to fulfil their potentials of bringing nutrients back to the surface, weeds need to be returned to the soil after they die (by turning them in for instance).

Now, in his work Joseph Cocannouer specifically refers to a number of weeds as specially worth investigating:

This non-exhaustive list goes on in the original book: Weeds, guardians of the soil

Obviously this approach is not even in its infancy. Professor Cocannouer was a pioneer, but no one really continued his work on weeds. If weeds deserve better consideration than what they had until now, a fair amount of careful experimentation is needed by anyone who would like to use them correctly.

Sources:
[1] Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David R. Montgomery

[2] Global Survey of Human-Induced Soil Degradation http://www.fao.org/nr/land/information-resources/glasod/en/

[3] telegraph.co.uk: Britain facing food crisis as world’s soil ‘vanishes in 60 years’ http://goo.gl/Yx2O

[4] Cornell University: Slow, insidious soil erosion threatens human health and welfare http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/march06/soil.erosion.threat.ssl.html

[5] F. L. Timmons, Weed Science Society of America, Volume 53, Issue 6 (November-December 2005) http://goo.gl/86Ip

Stopping the world’s ecosystem collapse into an irreversible nose-dive requires more than dramatic action: it requires a massive culture shift. It requires us to learn how to live in harmony with and in nature, develop sustainable communities and develop a real sense of care for life in general.

Today I want to give a new community the opportunity to share their fantastic work on building and pioneering a sustainable way of life at the very heart of the rainforest. Erica Hogan has kindly answered our questions about her community, Finca Bellavista, in Costa Rica. Here is the transcript of the interview:

+ + +

Dear Erica, thank you for joining us today. I would first like to introduce Finca Bellavista to our readers. Can you tell us about your story, how the project came about?

Thank you for having me. Matt (my husband) went on a surfing trip to Costa Rica with some of his friends in 2006. After falling in love with the beauty and serenity of the Southern Zone, he called me to plan a trip down together. Both of us wanted to explore the option of finding a little getaway in the tropics to escape the doldrums of the Colorado ‘mud seasons’… maybe a fixer-upper surf shack or a bungalow in the rainforest. The idea was to create something simple… nothing too complicated.

In general, Finca Bellavista has been a mix of luck and serendipity. We couldn’t have planned for things to go as well as they have or for the idea to be as well-accepted as it has been so far. We “started” the project in our heads less than 4 years ago, began construction less than 3 years ago, accidentally sold out of Phase 1 in our first year and have sold 45 parcels thus far. Matt and I aren’t developers by schooling or training, we go with our hearts. I think that people can relate to that and appreciate that. We are just two normal 30-somethings that had a crazy idea, followed through with it, and shared it with others. In general, the idea of living in the treetops resonates with people from all walks of life and different corners of the world… whether they are 6 or 60, black or white, from Britain or Borneo. I think that’s most of the reason for our success in creating this community so far. While it might seem unusual to think of at first, there’s really just something very primal, simple and necessary about living in the trees that people want to experience.

That’s a pretty sustained pace, to say the least, considering how novel your concept is. Can you describe what is the state of your community?
Because we are still in our beginning stages there is a mix of personal situations going on. A fair amount of our owners want to live and work on-site within the next 5 years or so. As you can imagine, because this is a relatively new frontier in living, a lot of people are waiting to see how things are developed, how they can contribute, and in general are a little hesitant to pick up and move their lives.

Though we consider ourselves to be in the infancy stages of this project, there has been a lot of progress getting the community “off the ground”. Our community center is finished, complete with a large kitchen area and dining hall, an open-air lounge and WIFI zone, a rancho, and a bath house. Nearly one-third of our Sky Trail network is now up and running, offering stunning canopy and pristine river corridor views. Treehomes are starting to speckle the skyline. We have quite a few owners in various stages of creating and building treehomes, bringing lots of new energy and excitement to our growing neighborhood.

Does the Finca Bellavista have or envision having facilities dedicated to catering for tourists?
We have an on-site property management company to manage rentals for our owners and to provide a revenue stream for those who plan on using their homes a portion of the year. Currently our owners can place their home in our rental pool when they aren’t here, so in a way Finca Bellavista functions like a resort community for the time being, but that will change within the next couple of years to more full-time residents, families, and activities.

Also, we are in the planning phases of creating a space that can accommodate larger groups seeking an intimate and truly unique location. We envision weddings, yoga, meditation and relaxation retreats, family reunions or student groups utilizing this area in the years to come. There will be a lot of ways that this community will grow, and we are excited to see the directions it will go!

I understand. There must be something magical in seeing all of this taking place and growing in such a surreal setting. But all this activity in the rainforest… what is the effect on the surrounding wildlife?
Right now we are in the infrastructure stages of the project – constructing living and community spaces, building trails, improving the access road, installing hydropower. These are higher-impact activities that obviously have effects to the land and the wildlife. These activities will phase out over time, and it will be a little quieter here overall. It seems a little strange, but when there are more people, more noises, and things like heavy equipment around, we seem to see more wildlife, which is strange to me. We hope to blend in a little better over time, and I think that will be easier to do without so many large distractions.

Maybe the animals are curious of what’s all that noise about. I guess it gives an opportunity for you to interact with them as well… by the way, what is the effect of the wildlife on the community?
So far, it’s been an amazing process to watch. As a little bit of background on our exact piece of land: we are in an area of secondary growth rainforest… the majority of our land has been clear cut before, and many areas were replanted with homogenized, harvestable trees or turned into pasture land. The area where our “base camp” is located is a reclaimed gravel pit. Everything is in various stages of regrowth, and to be honest, it’s not a very healthy piece of forest in the grand scheme of things – lots of introduced species, replanted and homogenous patches of forest, relatively little diversity in the flora sense of things for what the area should have in its natural, unobstructed state, which it hasn’t been in decades. But, we are located in an interface zone: everything below us topographically speaking is cultivated and agricultural lands, and the land above us gradually phases into primary rainforest mountains.

This is a critical migration corridor between the Talamanca Mountains and the Osa Peninsula. As such, there are things that we recognize that we need to do in order to improve the connectibility of this corridor and the overall health of the land. For instance, the botanist we work with – Gerardo Rivera – has suggested that we start selectively removing trees that were planted as harvestable timber, and begin the process of replanting them with native and fruiting species to better draw in the wildlife and further the reforestation process. To the untrained or innocent eye, this appears to be a healthy patch of forest and is literally crawling with wildlife, yes. But it could be so much more. In fact, we recently began working with a non-profit organisation called ProCAT to begin documenting and inventorying the exact species found here and to contribute to the body of evidence and conservation efforts in the immediate and regional area. I believe this forest will be healthier 50 years from now than when we first bought it.

That’s very interesting. In some way by being there you allow the forest to heal from a previously deeply damaged state. But of course for this way of life to be truly sustainable, I guess you would want to decrease as much as possible getting your resources from elsewhere for fear of just moving issues around. How much self-sufficient can the community be?
We want to do as much as we can to reduce our reliance on the outside world. But, we will always have some reliance on the outside world, whether we want to or not. Some things just make more sense and use fewer resources outside of the Finca – whether that means we buy our rice, beans, chickens and eggs from neighbors (to me it certainly makes more sense to buy locally, and keep our neighbor’s livelihoods healthy than convert more of our land into food production and pay employees to do this separately), or gasoline to run generators during the construction process or having taxis pick up and drop off visitors rather than create reasons to leave and go pick people up from the airport.

Are you 100% off-grid?
In keeping with our vision to live sustainably we opted to utilize the natural resources present on site to provide our residents access to carbon-neutral electricity. This decision made better sense to us as the thought of tying into the country’s national, monopolized grid (with its rolling brown and black-outs) seemed reason enough to go with an alternatively sourced power system. However, after more research on the country’s traditional power generation and its underlying social and environmental impacts, alternative energy seemed to be the only way we would bring electricity to Finca Bellavista. We are proud to currently power our community by harnessing the energy of the sun, using a 1200-watt photovoltaic DC power system to operate Finca Bellavista’s “base camp” and community amenities. Our residents future energy needs will be met with a combination of solar and hydro assets, which we are in the process of manifesting. Living within our means on alternative energy sources often means having to make lifestyle adjustments. Though many people are accustomed to using items like televisions, air conditioning, and hairdryers on a daily basis, they aren’t necessities and actually take large amounts of electricity that alternative energy systems cannot provide. Small and large adjustments must be made when considering a move towards using alternative energies and living off the grid. Very small things, such as using a traditional Costa Rican “coffee sock” to make a morning cup of Joe versus a pot of coffee in an electric coffeemaker, hanging laundry out to dry instead of using a dryer, and unplugging lamps, computers, and other appliances while not in use really make a difference in conserving energy, and are “laws of the land” here at the finca.

Do you grow your own food? A large portion of it, yes. Gardens take time to grow, and we are phasing into our food production. The number of people on site and eating at any given time varies greatly from day to day, so it’s hard to hit our food production perfectly.

Did you have to do some clear-cutting to dedicate land to food production? No – since a large portion of this property was pasture at some point. There were already many food bearing trees and plants growing. Most of the things that grow here are integrated with the forest and it’s sustenance farming – so there aren’t long rows of corn or rice paddies or anything like that… there’s yucca next to banana plants next to squash next to big trees and trails

Can you give us an idea of what food can people eat at Finca Bellavista?
Our gardens are flourishing here, and there always seems to be a great variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs available. Selections vary from day to day, but could include fresh spinach, mustard greens, zorrillo or butter lettuce greens, pejibayes, chayote, naranjilla, yucca, limes, tomatoes, plantains, papas de la Montana, bananas, papaya, passion fruit, palmito, cacao, mushrooms, basil, oregano, cilantro, lemon balm, ginger, lemongrass or spicy pepper
Generally people imagine the rainforest as a chunk of inedible forest… you prove here that it doesn’t need to be so. This is really an exciting project overall. Thanks! We agree – it’s been quite a life-changing experience for us. And actually that perception seems to only be a Westernized view of the world’s forests. Remember, the majority of Westernized countries considered forests and the wilderness were places to conquer and subdue… Westerners didn’t understand how to harvest and use the elements found in “The New Worlds” and therefore they were deemed useless.
Can we say this is the pioneering birth of a new type of eco-community, truly in harmony with wildlife? Of course! But I would say it’s in “better harmony”, not perfect harmony. I’m sure the sloths, monkeys, kinkajous, and tamanduas that encounter a treehouse for the first time are a mix of perturbed and excited to have human company.

Could the replication of such communities around the globe actually help save the world’s endangered rainforests? We can’t fool ourselves… there are impacts to us living in the rainforest, even if we aren’t cutting it down. We have found a way to keep the trees (by living in them) as one way to help preserve this specific piece of rainforest. If every stretch of rainforest in the world contained treehouses, that could obviously be just as impactful as bulldozing subdivisions all over the place.

We want to catalyze positive changes here… while this will never be a primary rainforest again, we can do things to improve the overall health and function of the land by managing it and working with NGOs and government entities to further research, and conservation efforts.

I have seen video on Youtube of people bringing in fridges inside their treehouse. Obviously there is a trade-off between modern comfort and the implication of living in a rainforest. I can think of the difficulties to generate enough electrical power, damp might also be an issue for most soft furniture (mattress, sofa..), there might be a weight limit inside the house, piping work might give you headaches… Can you tell us how you overcame those issues?
Actually, things are simplified significantly living here. Minimizing living spaces (a necessity when considering living in a treehouse) creates smaller amounts of headache. Though the finca is a bit more rustic and simple in nature than most people are used to, there are certain creature comforts to be found here. We believe there is beauty in simplicity. Simplicity also seems to allow people to fully enjoy the wonderful ambiance of what Mother Nature has provided here at Finca Bellavista. You want lights or a fridge or a radio: we have treehouses with electricity, and WIFI and other amenities that people choose to have. You can have windows too, or open frames only. I personally choose not to have windows because I don’t want to block out the sounds and smells and ambient temperatures present here. You collect spring or rainwater, gravity feed it downhill and up a tree, turn on the shower or flush a toilet just like a normal house, run wastewater in pipes down the trees and hide them with vines, and process waste through a biodigestor without electricity in the ground. Easier and simpler than what people think. And, come to think of it, why has humankind complicated so many things in the first place? One needn’t be tied to the grid in a city to have electricity or water or food to survive. And why do people create sterilized concrete boxes to live in?

Accessibility, health and safety may be a concern to some member of families who would consider coming to Finca Bellavista. How much child-friendly is it?
I can’t think of a more nurturing environment to raise a child honestly. Of course, everything is dependent on a person’s or parent’s comfort level.
To be honest, I can only think that most children would love to move in a house like that… Can someone come if he is disabled? Base camp is accessible with ramps and more level trails and access points… obviously, there are limitations for the elderly and the severely disabled here. But we have many friends that are differently abled and make adjustments to snowboard, ski, rock climb, etc. There’s no reason why they couldn’t do the same here. I worked at a special needs camp in Oklahoma for many years and we are actually in the process of trying to facilitate one of their groups to come here and experience the finca. And, we have a friend that has an amazing non-profit (www.adacs.org) that is going to try and bring a group of adaptive athletes down soon to test our accessibility.

How about the risk of fire? It’s the rainforest… last year was the driest “dry season” on record here at the finca in 40 years, and the spring fed rivers still flow and there is still 100% humidity some days even when it hasn’t rained in a month. Sure, fire could happen anytime anywhere, but we don’t necessarily worry about it as much as I worry about it in the Rocky Mountains during a summer lightning storm.

How does strong wind affect people’s life in case of storm? It depends on attachment methods. Our treehouse – Mis Ojos Miran la Catarata is attached to three trees with artificial limbs that allow for the house and its foundation to move about 6 inches in any direction. If there is a wind or an earthquake, it can dance and move with the trees without damaging the foundation. The rainforest and trees in general are very dynamic and there are never any guarantees as to how long a given tree may live. This is why the botanist’s close review and the process that follows is very important. The due diligence process in building a treehouse takes some time and takes many things into consideration in order to design and plan accordingly. There are obviously many adaptations that must be made to build a house in a tree, and luckily there are intelligent engineers out there that have created a variety of tools and attachments to make treetop living not only possible, but safe and secure as well. Even being a very dynamic environment, just like others in the world, the rainforest is no more dangerous than living elsewhere. We do get a lot of rain during certain times of year (though we are outside of the hurricane belt!) and there are sometimes earthquakes in the Southern Zone. Treehomes are often engineered and constructed to move with the winds and with earthquakes so while a conventional structure’s foundation might be damaged after an earthquake, a treehome’s foundation -- its root system -- has evolved during its entire lifespan to absorb the vibrations far better than a slab of concrete. Isn’t it dangerous to live in Oklahoma where there are tornados, or in Florida where there are floods and hurricanes, or Australia where there are fires or… you get the point?
Indeed, and in some aspects, if you live in a highly seismic area it sounds as if a treehouse could actually be a good idea -- certainly a cheaper option than an anti-seismic concrete construction. What about snakes, spiders and the like? Sure, there are snakes, spiders, cats and other critters that have a bad reputation in the jungle. Though none are inherently dangerous, a snake that gets stepped on might be tempted to defend itself. Using a flashlight at night, watching where you step, and wearing boots are the best ways to prevent harmful contact with a snake. A small amount of common sense can go a long way here… obviously if people molest or feed the wildlife, things will happen. It goes without saying that poking a snake or throwing a stick at a puma would both qualify as bad ideas. We ask that people observe all wildlife at a safe distance and don’t give them reasons to run off.

Can anyone build his own house there, is the actual work always done by some contractors?
Homes at Finca Bellavista can be designed and built either by the owner, or by one of our preferred builders, who are listed under our Friends link on our webpage. We now have an in-house construction company that can manage and implement construction projects for owners as well. The majority of folks tend to use our company since we have more experience building in this environment. All home plans and designs must go through a review process with our Environmental Review Board, and obtain a municipal permit.
Can you describe the process of getting a house at Finca Bellavista?
Once an owner closes on his/her property here at the finca, there are several things to consider before moving forward with building a treehouse. As whimsical as treehouses are, there are many practical considerations to make! Many of those items require the patience, creativity, and desires of the owner. Treehouses are like snowflakes, no two are alike. We have found that the most frustrating phase for our owners of creating a living space here at FBV has been the overwhelming amount of possibilities given starting from scratch. Because this isn’t your typical cookie-cutter subdivision, you can’t really waltz into the office, sign a check and point to design A, B or C. Most people want to be involved in the creative stage of building their dream treehome here, but it does involve a fair amount of forethought, planning and patience. It’s always best to plan ahead, and we have a few suggestions to consider based on several seasons of construction experiences we’ve had here at the finca. Weather and rainfall are factors to take into consideration when scheduling any construction project. We will forever recommend shooting for a dry season start date here at the finca, which begins late November-ish most years. Working during the rainy season has many pitfalls and normally equates to time and money lost. However, construction schedules and timeframes are 100% dependent upon the budget and design of a home.
The processes leading up to treehouse construction take time and planning, and we suggest a staged approach.

The building process can take varying amounts of time. At the finca, this process has been as short as 2 months and as long as 6 months. Building timeframes are dependent on the size, style and finishes of your treehouse, and depend on variables like weather and materials availability.

That’s rather quick compared to the construction time of a concrete house. How much does it typically cost? Tree and stilt-built houses can vary greatly in price and go as high in price as imagination and budget will allow. Prices of structures certainly depend on the size, type of construction and finishes. We have built homes for as little as $35,000 and as much as $150,000.

You have a nice transportation facility you call Sky Trails. Can you tell us a bit about it? For starters, Finca Bellavista is a pedestrian-access community. Primary means of accessing homes are via the community’s ground or Sky Trails. Construction began in 2007 on the Skytrails, which is simply a network of zip lines and platforms for the exclusive use of residents and their guests (not electric or anything – just put on a harness and pulley and attach to the cables) throughout Finca Bellavista that allows residents and visitors a unique and adventurous view of life in the rainforest. Many areas of the Finca Bellavista community are accessed by these aerial trails and canopy platforms. This network of aerial trails has been designed with a primary focus on the transportation benefits, minimal ecological impacts and the aesthetic values of the surrounding environment. In addition to the great network of ground-level trails around the community, the zip lines provide an exciting and efficient means of accessing the various parts of the unique preserve that is Finca Bellavista.


You certainly hear it all the time, but it really recalls the Ewoks tree houses from Star Wars: the return of the Jedi. (That was actually my first thought when I saw it). Was this intentional? Yep… from the very start!
This is great. Finally, how can our readers get in touch with you, should they wish to come to Finca Bellavista? Just send them to our website… www.fincabellavista.net All of our contact information is on there.

Thank you very much for your time. I am aware this is a lot of question, but your community really is right on target for the challenges we have ahead. Thank you Herve! We realize that in the grand scheme of things we are just one project, one community, and a relative few amount of people. But the momentum shifts all across the world start small. If we can show that living off grid is not only possible, but a beautiful way to live and costs people far less in the long-run, it might prove that we aren’t crazy to be doing this… just simplifying our lives and enjoying more of what God and Mother Nature gave us and less of what the modern world has. It’s really not all that different or unusual at all… humans evolved from this in one way or another, and people all over the world could stand to make a few small changes to simplify their lives and therefore lessen our impact.

The recent events in the gulf of Mexico are cause for terrible concern, both for the ecosystem and for the nearby populations who have seen their livelihood disappear in a matter of a few weeks. This only remind us how helpless we are in front of disasters and ecosystem collapse.

There is no magic solution and the fragile ecosystem of the gulf will take time to recover, if at all. However, here is a clue on how we could potentially help the recovery inland, and help save our world’s endangered environment.

This tool is natural, safe and inexpensive: we are talking about the amazing digesting power of mycelium. Mycelium is the name given to the root-like system which support mushrooms (In actual fact, mushrooms are the fruits of mycelia).

Mushrooms are an amazing part of the natural world. They were one of the first type of life to colonise the land, terraforming and preparing the emergence of life on solid ground, ahead of plants and animals. They are primarily digestive networks, versatile and rapidly adaptable. Their ability to break down carbon bonds is remarkable, decomposing away variety of organic molecules as their main source of food. This has practical implication when it comes to petroleum hydrocarbon contamination as we will see in the experiment detailed below.

Oyster mushrooms producing on oil contaminated soil

restored pile

This is a very low-tech affordable way of dealing with some aspects of the problem we are currently facing in the gulf of Mexico. We urgently need more ideas of this type to restore and protect the world’s ecosystem.

To know more about mushroom and their amazing power to restore environments and save the world, learn how to differentiate major beneficial strain and how to grow them, read Paul Stamets’ book Mycelium Running

Masanobu Fukuoka

With this came a second realisation: why on earth is man trying so hard to do differently what nature has forged over millenniums of evolution? Why for instance farmers work very hard tilling the land when crops have evolved over millions and millions of year to germinate on untilled land?

Masanobu left at 25 a successful soil scientist career to devote his life to taking this path of humility. With his scientific mind, he worked over several decades to achieve how best to understand nature, questioning one by one every assumption of modern agriculture, and finding ways to get better results by copying nature and working with it.

You recognise a true scientist by the way he questions commonly accepted dogma. It is by doing so that mankind made its most spectacular advances. And the results of his life of patient observation are truly extraordinary. He found out that to achieve very high agricultural yield there is absolutely:

• no need to plow nor till the land: as tilling compacts the soil, increase erosion, kills beneficial organisms and reduce fertility.
• no need to apply fertilizer or compost: since need for fertilisers is the result of monoculture and tillage.
• no need to remove weeds by tilling or herbicides: as controlled weeds improve soil fertility.
• no need to use chemicals: the best path to pest control is a balanced environment and healthy crops. Spreading poisons on the ground imbalances the food chain and leads to the emergence of pest and harmful fungi.

In addition to the four above root principles, there is a number of practices discovered by Masanobu to get to making a natural farm truly efficient. It includes:
• rotating crop to improve soil fertility,
• broadcasting seeds in clay pellets to prevent pests eating them,
• scattering straw over the field and let ducks run wild to create natural “compost”
• using clover as ground cover to control weeds and fix nitrogen in the soil
• growing rice without flooding the field
• using no heavy machinery
• not pruning trees (except tree previously damaged by pruning)
• growing vegetable below trees in his orchards

The huge added benefit of this agricultural technique is how it saves energy and money. By removing the need for some of the hardest work and highest expenses of the farmer, Masanobu was able to feed himself with only a few hours of work a day, using virtually no fossil fuels, and this without compromising yield while vastly increasing production quality, to the extend he nicknamed his technique “Do-Nothing agriculture“. In fact, he reckons a quarter acre (1,000m²) can produce more than 600kg of grain by growing season using his natural method. His yields were actually comparable or higher to the best yield obtained using conventional or scientific methods.

Crop over ground cover of clover

A natural farm takes time to set up. The reason that man’s impoved techniques seems to be necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependant on them. Besides, due to novelty of this natural approach there is no manual for every microclimate in the world, and some experimentation is necessary.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s work has had a global impact, and he is regarded as a major pioneer of the organic agriculture and permaculture movement. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 95.
His methods reached countries in Asia, Africa, Europe… In India, Fukuoka is fondly-regarded and his work has found a number of practitioners who have termed their method of farming ‘rishi kheti‘ literally meaning agriculture of the sages. He travelled extensively to desolate places in Africa, Europe and elsewhere to teach how to grow food naturally while restoring wasted ecosystems.

The natural farming the way he describes it is a pinnacle of simplicity and beauty, and it strikes a chord deep in one’s heart: nature is not evil, and man can live in harmony with it. One of my long term goals is to develop this type of agriculture.

Just a last word of warning to would-be natural farmers:
• this is no “do nothing”, natural farming is hard work at the beginning, and requires manual work.
• it took Masanobu Fukuoka years of trial to learn the right way to do it. This little post has no pretention to be a how-to guide. You can start to get a better understanding of his technique by reading his little book: One Straw Revolution.

Sources:
• world food program http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
• U.S. Energy Information administration on peak oil (see chart page 8.)
• Energy Use in Production of Food, Feed, and Fiber (D.R. Mears) for energy in food production calculation (here)

And these statistics do not even start to consider people who have an amputated limb. Each year, thousands of children are mutilated by landmines in countries such as Cambodia or Angola, thousands suffer amputation, a majority of which is due to vascular issues but we cannot ignore armed conflicts and road accidents as other causes.

Yet there is hope. Really amazing new technologies are arriving very quickly, as you will see in the video below. We cannot quite reproduce a whole leg overnight yet, but there exist working solutions for most of the essential organs.

Salamanders can regenerate a whole arm in a matter of weeks. Dr. Anthony Atala, pioneer of regenerative medicine at the Wake Forest Institute, explains that human body has the potential to do the same, but instead seal itself to prefent infection. Although the body can naturally regenerate on small scales, it is clearly insufficient in many cases.

Using “smart bio-materials”, one can build a “bridge” between bits of tissues and then encourage regrowth over a maximum distance of roughly a centimetre. This ways blood vessels, urethras… can be regrown.

For larger and more complex organs, such as muscles, this first approach doesn’t really work. The idea developed then is to take a small piece of tissue from the organ to replicate, grow them outside the body and add them on a complex scaffold of smart bio-degradable bio-materials. It is then placed into a reactor and grown into a working organ, and trained if applicable, before being transplanted back into the patient’s body.

In this video, Dr Atala demonstrate an impressing list of achievement using this technique. Researchers at the institute have been able to rebuild muscles, urethras, bladders, heart valve, ears, fingers… they are now researching into more complex organs such as the heart, the liver or the kidneys, and have even developed and experimental “heart printing device” based on a desktop printer which can recreate a working heart in 6 hours!!

This is a whole new field of medicine which hold great promises. As added benefits, such technology may decrease the waiting list for an organ, remove the need for immuno-suppressants and close many ethical debates on embryonic stem-cell research.

Few countries in the world were originally more thoroughly covered by rainforest than the Philippines: Brazil has extensive savannah and brush, Indonesia has many dry islands, Kenya and Tanzania have only small patches of rainforest…

Cebu Flowerpecker

The Philippines are home of the Philippine Eagle: heaviest second-largest eagle in the world, and definitely one of the rarest, most powerful bird on the planet.

Philippines eagle

Philippines Eagle

At the end of more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule (1898), old-growth rain forest still covered about 70% of the country, with most of the high lands untouched. In a 1992 survey, old-growth forest cover had declined to a shocking 8%, which represent the most rapid and severe loss of old-growth forest in the world. This destruction is the primary reason for the Philippines ranking as having the most severely endangered mammal and bird fauna in the world. The degradation and loss of forests is also the reason behind increasing floods and droughts, massive erosion, coral-reef siltation and death, and ground-water depletion. Even in an economic point of view, the cutting of the forest cannot be justified, since tourism alone brings in more revenue than wood, but tourism decreases as the wildlife is going away (in the end, no one would pay to see a bit of dry land covered in grass or beaches washed with soil erosion).

Getting into the reasons behind this waste would be far too long for a blogpost and is not the subject of this blog. One could just quote individual greed, corruption, lack of true leadership, ignorance and extreme poorness of some part of the population as the main factors (plus I think the weight of hundreds of years of colonisation).

Thankfully, solutions exists (see our string of article on reforestation). Even better, mentalities are changing quickly, and some local solutions have already been put in place with noticeable results. I would like to talk here of two cases which came to my attention.

How local communities can help: a case study

The Haribon foundation is one of the very few conservation group that had remained active and vocal under the rule of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In 1990, the Haribon foundation initiated a program in the communities surrounding mount Isarog to help poor farmers in the area develop an understanding of the ecology of the forest, of environmental economics and park management. Local people were taught how to write proposals for funding, how to use their constitutional rights and had some form of legal training.

Waling-waling, the Queen of Philippine flowers (Euanthe sanderiana)

Beneficial impact of ecosystem preservation: case study

Apo is a tiny island, less than a square kilometre, which has recently pulled itself out of a seemingly desperate economic and human decline. What began as a small fishery management experiment in the 1980s has grown into a twenty-fold increase in local fish population, secured future fish stocks, and growing businesses.

Apo’s small population (about 500 -700 residents) main source of income and livelyhood has been provided by the sea for centuries. But in recent years, destructive fishing practices (including dynamite and arsenic) had severely damaged the island’s coral reefs which provide critical fish habitat. And as the magnificent reefs were being converted to lifeless rubble, local fishermen had to go further to catch anything, which decreased the profitability of their activity. The disappearance of the reefs also drove tourism away (there was nothing left to see).

But Apo’s fortunes began to change when a marine biologist from nearby Negros Oriental, Dr. Angel Alcala, introduced the concept of community-based marine reserves to the Apo community. The concept was simple: leave 15% of the 104 hectare surrounding coral reef off-limits to fishing.
By 1982, the “no take” zone was in place and accepted by the community. Within a few years, fish abundance and diversity within the “no take” showed improvement, and restoration of coral cover became apparent. Fisheries in the adjacent reef areas improved, as fish populations migrated outwards from the reserve zone. Ultimately, the fish biomass increased from approximately eight tons per square kilometer to about 155 tons per square kilometre.

Apo Island

While these businesses are modest in scale, they provide a big impact to an island with a small population. The success of the small marine reserve has likely touched the entire community.

Perhaps the greatest success of Apo’s community-based marine reserve has been the inspiration it has provided to neighboring communities facing similar fisheries resource depletion. Today there are over 500 small reserves in the Visayas island group, with many small communities looking to mirror Apo’s success. And while only 1% of the world’s oceans are currently set aside as marine reserves, the concept is gaining attention worldwide as a realistic and manageable solution to building sustainable fisheries for all.

The Philippines is a country full of not very well known natural wonder, and there is much more to see than this post can cover. Click on the image below to learn more about the riches of the Philippine Rainforest

Do you know of any other initiatives taken in the Philippines to save the rainforest? Do you know of some places so badly affected by deforestation that it has become a virtual desert? Please let our readers know and put a comment below…