September - October 2020 Newsletter

I’ve discovered that while we all have our favorite culprits, there are no culturally easy answers for who’s to blame.  Everyone? No one?  It’s all more mysterious than it appears at first glance, and I’ll be discussing the paths that humans have wandered at the “Pathways to Regeneration: Restoration, Resiliency and Reciprocity” conference, sponsored by the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, on November 7, 2020.  Check it out, sign up!  In the meanwhile, if you’d like to share your ideas on pre-extinction perpetrators, please respond to this e-mail.

On a happier note, I’m pleased to introduce the newest member of our Bio4Climate team, Maya Dutta.   She doesn’t have a job title yet because she has so many talents that we can’t quite figure it out.  Our model is along the lines of the Gore Tex company which hires bright, creative people and tells a new employee to spend time in whatever department piques her interest, and after three months come back and decide where to work. She could be our staff mathematician (she was a math major), but we don’t do much beyond arithmetic (I suppose that could change).  For now she is starting as our newsIetter editor (she wrote most of this issue), database manager and contributor to our Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-restoration to Address Global Warming.  But I know she has some surprises in store. More from Maya soon.

Rumor has it that there’s some kind of election coming up.  Let's keep in mind that this too shall pass - and remember that we are Nature’s children, she knows best, and always has the last word.  That's why here at Bio4Climate we listen to her very carefully!

Very best wishes as we venture into the waning months of 2020, a year I suspect we all are eager to turn over to the history books,

Events: 

• GBH Forum Network - Bio4Climate's Life Saves the Planet series with Didi Pershouse, author of The Ecology of Care, interviewed by Katharine Zywert
• Community Solutions Conference - “Pathways to Regeneration: Restoration, Resiliency and Reciprocity,” November 6 - 8

In this issue:

• Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, reviewed by Maya Dutta
• Staff scientist Jim Laurie's future plans for his class - "Biodiversity 2: Systems Thinking and Transformation, Building Teams for Planetary Restoration"
• Call Story: Nick Rabb
• Featured Article: "Brazil's Landless Workers Persist through Agroecology", Civil Eats
• Compendium Notes: "Integration of wildlife and environmental health into a One Health approach," Sleeman et al. 2019
• Ann Barrett's ecologically inspired artwork 

Didi Pershouse on The Ecology of Care

We will explore topics close to the heart and fresh on the mind these days, as many look around at our public health and climate crises and wonder how we got to this point, and how we might pivot as a species. The ecological, social, and economic changes that are currently unfolding around us have profound implications for human and planetary health. Our two guests will show that it is possible to dramatically shift human health by drawing on the wisdom of other species and living systems. Please join us for this vital and timely discussion. 

Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

I’ve always been a tree-lover myself, seeking to know their names, consider their histories, and imagine their sense of subjectivity. Wohlleben is clearly a kindred spirit in this practice, and he is able to render his portrayals in reference to scientific findings on how trees communicate, sustain relationships, and act in symbiosis with fungal, microbial, and other plant, animal, and insect life around them. 

In recent times, as I’ve been forced to slow down and stay rooted in my home and neighborhood, and live like never before on a truly local scale, I find myself paying close attention to the changes in the trees around me. I watch their evolution over the seasons, even over the course of mere weeks and days, as unfolding developments are especially pronounced in Spring and Autumn months. Perhaps others too are finding themselves learning about the life around them, finding out which trees live nearby, when they begin to turn color, which birds and insects they are home to, what whispers they make on windy October mornings. This opportunity to pay attention and ground myself in my surroundings is an unexpected blessing in slowing down.

This book acts as a call to attentiveness, urging us to listen and look closer at these fantastic forms of life that we find so familiar. As Wohlleben can attest, there is so much more than meets the eye. 

- Maya Dutta

Photo: https://www.16sucai.com/

The Future of Jim Laurie's Class

Biodiversity 2: Systems Thinking and Transformation Building Teams for Planetary Restoration

As Staff Scientist Jim Laurie continues his series of Biodiversity and Planetary Restoration classes, we look ahead to envision what comes next. Jim’s Summer and Fall classes have pushed participants to grow our understanding of the possibilities for future life on Planet Earth, and identify our own capacity to contribute to the restoration we need. As the series continues into the Spring, Jim will continue to train us as restorers and leaders of change.

Check out what else students say about Jim’s Summer 2020 Biodiversity Class:

When I tried to explain the breadth and depth of what we were learning, my friends tended to look stunned!

- Sue Edmonds

Each session was an outpouring of fascinating materials, and I learned in every mode: reading, slides, videos, commentary, and input from classmates -- Jim deserves particular credit for gently drawing everyone present into the conversation, even when this meant modifying his plan-for-the-day.

- Gary Partenheimer

Fall classes are ongoing, and you are always welcome to join us! 

Wednesdays, September 16 - December 9, 2020, choose the 1 p.m. or 7 p.m. ET session.

The excitement and inspiration of science for the curious to the serious and everyone in-between.  A fully interactive online adventure with discussions, experiments and explorations for independent thinkers of any age, suitable for high school and college students, as well as inquiring minds of all levels, from beginner to PhD!

More information and registration info here.

Call Story: Nick Rabb

Nick Rabb is a PhD student at Tufts University jointly studying computer science and cognitive science. His research areas have included explanatory and scientific reasoning, and computational social simulations including ideology-driven population-level behavior and its interaction with “fake news.” He organizes with the Sunrise Movement’s Boston hub as well as with Massachusetts Peace Action, and frequently writes about political philosophy revolving around a Green New Deal and the peace effort.

A "call story" is about what inspires us to engage.  Nick contributed his to our initiative, Saving Life on Earth is Our Highest Calling!, put together in partnership with Spirit of Resilience. These call stories showcase the many paths people have taken toward engaging with environmental issues and making the fight for a livable climate a major part of their lives. From personal moments of realization to speeches, stories, or works of art that have spurred us to action, these narratives all have one thing in common - the decision that the only way forward is to act, and that together we can accomplish major change.  

Featured Article: 

Brazil's Landless Workers Persist

through Agroecology - Civil Eats

Photo: Tânia Rêgo, Agência Brasil

Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement has grown enormously against great odds, and its practice and teaching of agroecology and egalitarian community-building has influenced farmer organizations in the US. The Landless Workers’ Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is a great example of a movement fighting on multiple fronts for regeneration. It is made up of thousands of settlements of rural workers, who are united in their values and practice of doing well by people and by land. Though not everyone in the movement exclusively practices agroecology, it is one of the group’s central tenets, and there is a large emphasis on caring for the land and working it into a better condition than it was when they started.

Farmers are involved in building healthy soil and its life-supporting capacity, just as these settlements build strong social foundations of community and care. The leadership and organizational structure of MST empower the people, and the movement has found support and opportunities to share knowledge with groups across the globe. MST has a lot to teach us about how restorative farming practices fit together with equitable social and political structures, resist the dominance of big agribusiness and chemical farming, and realize ways of life that center the well-being of people and planet. Read the full article here. 

Compendium Notes

This is an excerpt from our  Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming. The article below is from our seventh issue,  published in July 2020, Vol. 4 No. 1. 

Integration of wildlife and environmental health into a

One Health approach, Sleeman et al. 2019

This article introduces the concept of One Health, a public health framework adopted by the Centers for Disease Control in 2009, which recognizes the interdependence of humans, animals and our shared environment. The concept has gained traction as a way to address health problems arising from global environmental change.

Climate change, loss of biodiversity, habitat fragmentation and pollution, and subsequent degradation of natural environments threaten the range of ecosystem services that support all life on this planet [Sleeman 2019: 91].

It was the challenge of responding to these complex [environmental] problems that led to the emergence of the concept of One Health, which is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines and sectors - working locally, nationally, regionally and globally - with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes, recognizing the interconnection among people, animals, plants and our shared environment. This definition acknowledges that human, domestic animal and wildlife health are interconnected within the context of ecosystem/environmental health and provides a useful conceptual framework for the development of solutions to global health and environmental challenges.

Given this interconnection, it follows that actions aimed primarily at improving the health of one part of the human-animal-environmental triad may have unanticipated consequences for the system as a whole if the harms they may cause to the other components are not considered. However, previous authors have noted that, despite the acknowledged interdependencies, few public or livestock health interventions include a consideration of biodiversity conservation or ecosystem/environmental health. Instead, health-promoting interventions focus largely on single-sector outcomes and, thus, may miss the opportunity to concurrently optimize outcomes in the other two sectors [Sleeman 2019: 92].

The authors suggest that despite its potential, the One Health approach does not as yet fully integrate wildlife and environmental health, instead favoring human health. Yet failure to optimize the health of all three realms can lead to unexpected outcomes, ironically increasing risk to humans in some cases. Therefore, the authors propose the clarification of One Health values and goals, and integration of a systems approach and a harm reduction perspective into the One Health framework.

Systems biology provides methods to understand how interactions among [interrelated and interdependent] parts [livestock, humans and wildlife, for example] give rise to the function and behavior of that system [Sleeman 2019: 96].

A harm reduction perspective recognizes that solutions to complex problems require a broad societal response and that elimination of risk is not feasible for most issues. Consequently, this perspective promotes collaborative, multisectoral approaches whereby reducing harm, despite uncertainty regarding the outcome, is valued over inaction spurred by a desire for a perfect solution [Sleeman 2019: 94].

Sleeman, J.M., et al., 2019, Integration of wildlife and environmental health into a One Health approach, Rev. Sci. Tech. 38(1), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564738/.

A Montage of Words and Images

Words by Scientists, Artists, Writers, and other thoughtful people

Images by Ann Barrett

Ann Barrett, an artist who has been participating in Jim Laurie's Biodiversity and Symbiosis courses, put together a fine collection of artwork and quotations inspired by her time learning with us. She has shared the resulting montages, which reflect some of her meditations on these topics. View her gallery on our website for more!  

“Ecological processes are not only more complex than we think. They are more complex than we can ever think.” - Michael Crowfoot, Soil Scientist

“The Process that actually removes CO₂ from atmospheric circulation is photosynthesis." - Christine Jones, Soil Ecologist

“Natural capital is the only true form of wealth.” - David Marsh, Australian Regenerative Farmer

Last But Not Least. . .

You're concerned about the current state of the Earth, and we are working for you, our young people, and the diverse web of life we all rely on.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we just want to say that we're a small non-profit doing BIG things.

Your support and involvement are very important! Please  . . .

. . . and a monthly donation is easy on your budget but is a major contribution to our work.

Many thanks!