The Great Paradigm Shift

The Great Paradigm Shift Resetting the basic economic system and pradigms; restoring ecosystem function and abolishing poverty; using the power of the media to educate and create a more conscious and aware humanity.       John D. Liu, Photo by: Kosima Weber Liu, EEMP EEMP Logo, source: EEMPC.ORG     Who is John D. Liu: John D. Liu is a documentary filmmaker and ecologist. Mr. Liu is currently director of the Environmental Education Media Project and visiting fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology at the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIOO/KNAW). He is also ambassador for the Commonland foundation, the Ecological Return Foundation and many others. ”Wasteland becomes usable land; biologically dead soils become fruitful, and many malnourished communities can be revived if the right holistic thinking is applied. It could be visualized as a Garden of Eden story told backward, an idea captured in the title of an EEMP film ‘Back to the Garden’. ”1,2 With the prediction of the earth’s human population reaching up to 9.6 billion by 20503, with 805 million people with no proper access to food to live a healthy and active life 4 and the worldwide over 2 billion hectares of land with severely degraded ecosystems (from which some 1,5 billion hectares are eligible for rehabilitation and mixed land use)5,6, the story of reaching the garden of Eden seems an uphill battle. According to John D. Liu the cause of these problems is in the very basis of our economic system. Over time humans have valued production and consumption of products and services higher than they have valued ecosystem function. Ecosystem functions were considered a free good. John D. Liu believes that if the cause is just and you are not misleading anyone whilst informing them truth will prevail. To do this in the right way Liu started the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP). The EEMP aims to use the power of the media to educate the masses about the potential and necessity of the ecological rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems and subsequently their function. By communicating how others have learned to deal with their local ecosystems, working with the local climate conditions rather than against them, in an unbiased way Liu believes we can get ‘back to the garden.’ 1 This film by the EEMP for ‘Earth Report’ is about how in Rwanda a large park shows the beauty of conserving nature and next to this a severely degraded ecosystems because of human action. The policy of the government here is to introduce Umudugudu (Rwandan for neighborhoods) and educate the people how to rehabilitate the area and treat it responsibly. In this way improving there life and economic situation. Source: www.prefercanada.org/Umudugudu, retrieved: 08-06-2015. The Earth Report (EEMP) video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QarjubhmrX4 2 EEMP. 2015. "Eart-based Ecosystems." retrieved: 05-05-2015. http://eempc.org/project/. 3 UN. 2013. "World population projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 – UN report." retrieved: 08-04-2015. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45165 - .VXhFjeuZMy4. 4 WFP. 2015. "Hunger Statistics." retrieved: 09-04-2015. http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats. 5 Ferwerda, W. 2012. "Nature- Resilience." retrieved: 06-04-2015. http://www.commonland.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/03.-Nature- Resilience.pdf. 6 EEMP. 2015. "Eart-based Ecosystems." retrieved: 05-05-2015. http://eempc.org/project/. Thijs Flore: Within the scope of your work, how would you characterize the current state of the earth? John D. Liu: We are now in a position where we can see that the vast virgin forests in South America, Africa and North America have all been cut down. Neolithic agriculture as practiced by the Greeks, Romans, Nubians and Europeans has spread all over the world7. It has been industrialized so that the same techniques now use huge machines, which cover more land. But, what is happening is that we are reducing biodiversity, reducing biomass and reducing accumulated organic matter. The result of this is that we are artificially elevating evaporation rates and artificially elevating temperatures. We are reducing microbiologic communities that create fertility in the soil and that system created the atmosphere. At the same time we have 7.3 billion people on the earth and we are adding 1 billion people every twelve years. If we continue to follow this path, the wages of sin are death. Our cosmologies have foretold this and now science is telling us their indicators say that the natural systems are failing. The oceans are acidifying; there is biodiversity loss, extinctions, climate change, etcetera Every single one of these consequences is sufficient to end civilization, if we are not careful. We must understand this, become conscious and align our human activities with natural evolutionary systems.     Image 1:   Degraded forest ecosystems by Human activity  This image gives a good overview of what the situation is on earth in terms of the current state of forest ecosystems.            7 Neolithic agriculture points to the period farm animals were first domesticated and agriculture was introduced: it began in the Near East by the 8th millennium BC and spread to northern Europe by the 4th millennium BC. Source: www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Neolithic, retrieved: 08-06-2015. As is shown in the dictionary quote this a mode of working the land that was first developed between 10 and 8 thousand years BC. In the at that time prevalent climate and soil conditions of the near east. The question is if this is the right model to use all over the world?       Thijs Flore: You spent some time in China as a television producer, following its economic development after 1987. What made you turn to environmental and ecological issues? John D. Liu: As a journalist, I first covered the rise of China from poverty and isolation and I later covered the Soviet Union. In that period I spent a lot of with the leaders of China, Europe and the presidents of the United States, filming them, I got to observe them and I decided that geopolitical events were somehow more like an illusion. In 1995 I was asked by the World Bank8 to film the baseline study for 'The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project'9. When I got there I saw geologic time, evolutionary time and all of human history revealed. The geopolitical events didn't seem very important, no one will know who the leaders were in a 1000 years, it's irrelevant. But for anyone who will live in the future the quality of their life on the Earth will be determined by our understanding of ecological function. This was a revelation to me, and I began to seriously study this and I have not stopped since.   Image 2 + 3: Before and After images of the ‘Loess Plateau Watershed rehabilitation Project’. This project was meant to reach a few goals most prominently: 1. Get the 50 million people who live there out of poverty. 2. Rehabilitate and secure the local ecosystem 3. Guiding the people to a more sustainable lifestyle. 8 The World Bank Group (WBG) was established in 1944 to rebuild post-World War II Europe under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Today, the World Bank functions as an international organization that fights poverty by offering development assistance to middle-income and low-income countries. By giving loans and offering advice and training in both the private and public sectors, the World Bank aims to eliminate poverty by helping themselves. Under the World Bank group, there are complementary institutions that aid in its goals to provide assistance. (www.investopedia.com/articles/03/042303.asp, date accessed 06-06-2015) 9 In 1994 the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project was launched to mitigate desertification; limited success has resulted for a portion of the Loess Plateau, where now trees and grass have turned green. A major focus of the Project was to try to guide the people living in the Plateau to use more sustainable ways of living such as keeping goats in pens not being allowed to roam free and erode the soft silty soil found in the plateau. Many trees were planted and nature is now reclaiming a portion of the Loess Plateau. Results have reduced the massive silt loads to the Yellow River by about one percent. World Bank, Reengaging in Agricultural Water Management: Challenges and Options, 2006. The project is also part of the film “Hope in a Changing Climate” Source: www.academia.edu/5556485/_Hope_in_a_Changing_Climate_English_Language, retrieved: 05-06-2015 Thijs Flore: How did you come to found the EEMP? John D. Liu: Following China's economic development were intense levels of pollution, this was happening because Europe, the USA and other developed countries, exported their polluting factories to China getting very low cost for labor. China used this mechanism to develop its economy. But people had no understanding of the consequences of toxicity; they didn't understand their individual relationship to the environment and ecology. When I saw this I thought somebody should do something about the environment. After sometime I became ashamed of my attitude, I thought, it is also my problem, if I see this type of pollution and I don't act. I thought what could I do? I was a television producer and cameraman, so I thought I should do something that uses the media to educate the public about the environment. At the time I was thinking about the environment, but now I recognize that the environment is secondary to ecological systems. The environment simply reflects human awareness of those systems. The fact is that we are not very aware of what is happening. Thijs Flore: Where would you position the Environmental Education Media Project in the field of likeminded institutions? John D. Liu: The Environmental Education Media Project is an extremely weak institution, as opposed to the United Nations, the World Bank or the World Wildlife Fund. We have no fundraising apparatus, nothing like that. What we see with the Environmental Education Media Project is that by treating knowledge as a right and as something, which is not a commodity we have had an enormous impact for an organization with such a weak institutional basis. We have indications that knowledge, if it is true, not used in a manipulative way and presented truthfully, can have a serious impact. It would be interesting to talk about objectivity and subjectivity. For instance I just came from Ghana and if we go to Ghana, and we [as a camera crew] walk into a village, we have changed the situation. Just by walking into the village!10 The situation is not objective and yet when we take this information and we don't use it for personal gain or to try to manipulate the observers, the viewers. Than there is some sort of respect, which allows for ideas to either stand or fall in the consciousness of the viewer. Instead of feeling insulted that you are being manipulated you look whether or not you agree. Now there is a very nuanced further parsing of this kind of thinking. Believing something is very different than knowing something. We are not actually seeking to have you believe something we are having you try to process information, as a form of knowledge and then find that you've incorporated that information in your world view. Thijs Flore: Although you see the EEMP as a weak institution, could you explain how you can still have an impact? John D. Liu: We have a huge impact on a planetary scale, probably because we are right and we have no personal interest in the outcome. We are not consultants who are seeking to gain anything. We are providing information. That is why I was trying to talk about objectivity and subjectivity. We are providing information; it can become knowledge, if it is processed. If you go beyond knowledge you can transcend into another level of consciousness. Beyond just knowing a few salient facts, into seeing the synergies of systemic functions. In this case we study planetary systems: hydrology, fertility, natural regulation of weather, climate and biodiversity.   10 An example of the work that is done in Ghana in this case for the United Nations University (UNU) and United Nations Council for Combating Desertification (UNCCD). Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXrvyKIjP2Q Thijs Flore: With the EEMP how did you come to these conclusions? John D. Liu: We followed the evidence and we came to the fact that slavery, feudalism and mercantile expansion following the industrial revolution has imposed a world view on indigenous people around the world. This world view says that derivatives are more valuable than natural earth systems. This is a complete insult to the cosmological, historical and cultural development of pretty much everybody on the earth. For instance in Mali11 I learned there are 14 million people in 1 million two hundred thousand sq. kilometers, [approximately twice the size of France] and they are called according to the UN human development indicators12 'the poorest people on the earth' but their land holds the largest hydrological pump regulating the planetary hydro-cycle and climate on the planet. How could they possibly be poor? How can we demand that they destroy their ecosystems in order to buy a bicycle or a pair of tennis shoes? We say this is the wealthiest period in human history when in fact there are billions of poor people on edges of degraded ecosystems. And because WE [in Europe and the USA] need climate regulation at this time, we are into a tremendous absurdity if you think about it. Having hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of high paid consultants going to the UN to discuss the importance of climate regulations. Thijs Flore: With the recent developments like the G8+513 TEEB study14, the British governments’ Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change15 and many more, what do you think will happen? John D. Liu: I think what we are seeing is that this is a moment in human history that is very similar to the flat-earth, round-earth time, someone like Copernicus or Galileo could come along and mention: 'You know, by the way there is vast empiric evidence that the earth is round and zero that it is flat', eventually the people chose the truth. At the same moment there are institutions and legal systems, which are based on the old assumptions [flat-earth]. These people, who get their power from these systems, are trying to maintain them. They’ll not give them up without a fight. Thijs Flore: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) we have until 2030 to make the new round earth theory work. It is said that by 2030 we’ve reached the point of no return, what do you think about this?16 11 ‘In Search of Sustainability’ is a film about Mali’s inner Niger river ecosystem and its management and potential for rehabilitation. Source: www.academia.edu/12518117/In_Search_of_Sustainability_-_Mali, retrieved: 04-06-2015. 12 United Nations Human Development Index shows us a list of how developed certain countries are. This list is based on many different indicators. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_Human_Development_Index, retrieved: 04-06-2015. 13 The Group of Eight + Five (G8+5) is an international group that consists of the leaders of the heads of government from the G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States), plus the heads of government of the five leading emerging economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8%2B5, retrieved: 02-06-2015. 14 The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is a global initiative focused on “making nature’s values visible”. Its principal objective is to mainstream the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision-making at all levels. It aims to achieve this goal by following a structured approach to valuation that can help decision-makers recognize, demonstrate and capture the values of ecosystems and biodiversity. Source: www.teebweb.org, retrieved: 02-06-2015. 15 The Review states that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics. The Review provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimize the economic and social disruptions. The Stern Review's main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change far outweigh the costs of not acting. The Review points to the potential impacts of climate change on water resources, food production, health, and the environment. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review, retrieved: 02-06-2015. 16  IPCC. 2007. "C. Mitigation in the short and medium term (until 2030)." retrieved: 03-06-2015. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/spmsspm-c.html. John D. Liu: Transformational change will take place because what you have is the necessity to reach critical mass. When you reach critical mass, which is according to Malcolm Gladwell around 20-21% of the thought leaders, than it is unstoppable17. When the thought leaders get it, it is not going to take 17 years it is going to take a moment; the Soviet Union disappeared in front of my eyes without anybody thinking it was possible. Transformational change is not only possible it is inevitable. We need to get our mind around the fact that these things are going to change. It is the flat-earth, round-earth situation. We are in the flat - earth moment but it is at the end of its viability.   As soon as the critical mass understands, the existing economy is going to collapse and we need to have a viable, sustainable, defensible alternative. We have to define a round- earth theory that says: 'Wealth comes from clean fresh water; from soil fertility; from clean healthy nutritious food; from natural regulation of hydrology, weather and climate. Thijs Flore: You wrote the 'Greening the Screen' article for ‘Our Planet’, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) magazine, from 2001.18 In this article you emphasize that television [audiovisual media] is the medium of choice when informing the public and creating awareness. Could you explain how this would work? John D. Liu: We have the ability to communicate with every human being on the planet, simultaneously and instantaneously. But we are not using it in the way we should. The consciousness of human beings is too low. People actually walk around saying that they are 'consumers'. It’s grotesque to imagine that they have given up their sovereignty as human beings to be 'consumers' instead of taking responsibility. This is a very low level of consciousness and this is reflected in the types of media that are portrayed. If we realize that what we understand scientifically is not being considered at all, false premises and huge assumptions are leading our leaders, our businesses, society and everybody is following them. We have a weak institution that basically tells the truth but only for people who can hear it! But the noise level is so high, that it's hard for people to hear it. When we would use our communication ability in the right way, we could reach a consensus, an understanding. But you would have to recognize the rights of every human being, you'd have to recognize the intrinsic values, the relative values and the actual values of ecological function in relationship to derivatives. Thijs Flore: In the ‘Greening the Screen’ article you state that our audiovisual communications ability is flooded with “violence, vacuity and voyeurism”18 and that this is not necessary. What would be the right way to use our communicating abilities? John D. Liu: That is what we need to talk about, but we’re not having this discussion. We are having a bunch of experts who are creating indecipherable codes to talk to each other, so they can maintain a separation from the rest of the people and that is exactly what we don't need. I think that if there is a role for the EEMP it is to translate the science and jargon into something that can be understood by everybody. Thijs Flore: Could you give an example of how the Environmental Education Media Project uses its ability to communicate with the whole planet to create more awareness? John D. Liu: At the moment we are working to bring indigenous communities together. There are many indigenous people around the world who have created political blocks in order to effect the global climate treaty and they are becoming a very serious actor. For the United Nations Framework Convention on 17 "The Law of the Few", or, as Malcolm Gladwell states, "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts". According to Gladwell, economists call this the "80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants" This is based on the Pareto Principle also called ‘the law of the vital few’. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point, retrieved: 02-06-2015. 18  Liu, John D. 2001. "Greening the Screen." retrieved: 07-05-2015. http://www.academia.edu/5566977/Greening_the_Screen_- _Our_Planet_Magazine_-_UNEP_-_2001. Climate Change the 21st annual Conference of the Parties (COP) later this year in Paris19 we are working with the French government and many indigenous peoples. We have a Chateau outside of Paris with 600 ha. of forrest20 where we are creating a 'sacred space' for indigenous ceremonies, where the elders will advise the political indigenous actors. The indigenous community will be there to energize their spirit and carry that strength into the negotiations. We were involved in Lima, Peru (during COP 20, 2014) where we had 16 hours of stage time. We called it: 'Growing Collective Consciousness From the Voices for the Climate' and this was, I think an amazing and wonderful experience because we took the scientists, politicians, indigenous people, religious leaders, young people, women and farmers and we put them all together and we said: No, don't have a speech, don't have a presentation, but talk to each other. Have a collective consciousness. Why do we believe? What do we want? And it worked very well. It is a phenomenon, because in the existing institutional development it is too reductionist, somehow. It makes giant assumptions, which do not work in terms of spiritual or philosophical understanding, the assumptions are economic and political, they are about power, about abiotic systems21. This is a crucial point in what is going on now. A lot of the political and financial discussions are not about carbon, not about natural ecological function, they are about power and abiotic systems.         Image 4 Marcos Avilques (L) and Marcio Kokoj of the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) address a news conference as part of the UN climate change conference COP 20 in Lima, Peru. Indigenous leaders from around the world gathered to demand recognition and rights, as both defenders of the world's rainforests and underappreciated players in the effort to slow climate change. For the first time we saw the publication of data that quantifies the exact size of the climate impact made by indigenous populations as front-line guardians of imperiled rainforests. The size of this impact, a kind of negative carbon footprint, is staggering. Nowhere is this more true than in the Amazon that begins just over the mountains from the just-concluded negotiations. Yet these people have to face violence of loggers and oil companies on a regular basis. Source: www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/murder-in-the-rainforest-20141216, retrieved: 02-06-2015 19 The COP, annuel United Nations Climate conference, the 21st wil be in Paris, October 2015. The First was in 1995 in Berlin. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_conference, retrieved: 01-06-2015. 20 The Chateau de Millemont is where the Millemont Institute for Water & Awareness (MIWA) is housed that employs several eco restoration initiatives. One of these being planned for launch during the COP 21 in Paris, October 2015. It will be an aggressive global effort to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. In the form of an investment company whose mission it will be to actively change the climate by re-greening desertified ecosystems and restoring hydrology globally. By buying desertified land and collaborating with indigenous/local people under the guidance of the likes of John D. Liu, Allan Savory and Geoff Lawton. To leave our children’s children a planet where life is beautiful, plentiful and possible. Source: www.earthscall.org/partners/, retrieved: 02-06-2015. 21 In biology and ecology, abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms. Chapin, F.S. III, H.A. Mooney, M.C. Chapin, and P. Matson. 2011. Principles of terrestrial ecosystem ecology. Springer, New York.   Thijs Flore: A message in your films seems to be that we are only able to rehabilitate the earth’s ecosystems if outsiders, who are aware of ecologic function, intervene and educate to help the local residents, and rehabilitate the situation. What are your thoughts on that? John D. Liu: We as human beings have already intervened on a consistent basis. It is basically about consciousness, human rights and equity. By assigning value to extracting, manufacturing and buying and selling things we have removed value from natural, ecological systems. In order for people who live simply on the earth to participate in human civilization they are required to extract, manufacture and buy and sell things. Or they are consigned to worthlessness. This is where the mistake is, they are not worthless they do not need to do anything to be equal to anyone else on the planet. According to this theory you need to grow the economy, you need to have more jobs; use more energy; more emissions; more pollution; more consumption more waste in order to have growth. That clearly doesn't work, you can't infinitely grow the economy based on finite resources. If you wanted this fundamental flaw in one sentence it would be: 'Valuing derivatives higher than the source of life’.         Thijs Flore: So are you saying we not aware of what’s is happening to the source of our lives? John D. Liu: We are not aware of what is happening on our planet. There are a number of systems, which are regulated by long-term evolutionary trends. Three of these fascinate me: 1: The total colonization of the earth, by biological life 2: the constant and continuous accumulation of organic matter as each generation of life dies and gives up its body. 3: differentiation and speciation; leading to infinite potential variety in genetics. I think these three leading trends are the methods or the vehicles, which create the atmosphere, soil fertility, regulate hydrology, weather, climate etc. I have presented that at the Royal Academy in Stockholm and at other respected institutes, they still haven't cut me off at the legs, so I guess it's fairly accurate. Thijs Flore: Where does your fascination for these three long-term trends come from? John D. Liu: Those are essentially immutable natural laws. If you study evolution and you realize that the earth was a molten rock surrounded by poisonous gasses than you also realize that human beings emerge in paradise. Our cosmologies and our scientific theories do not disagree, they actually reinforce each other. When you realize that, you had better think about the fact that if you interrupt long-term evolutionary trends, than those trends will reassert themselves, probably by removing you from the scene. Thijs Flore: That sounds like a reset of biodiversity. Within the evolutionary trends, what do you think is the role of biodiversity? John D. Liu: My feeling about biodiversity is that it is a higher order of function. There are fundamental functions like infiltration and the retention of rainfall or nutrient release and nutrient recycling and than there is a higher order of functionality that is differentiation and speciation leading to infinite potential variety in genetics. But generally our level of awareness of this is very low. Thijs Flore: Do you point at the awareness of how we all are a part of this system? John D. Liu: The majority of people now cannot grasp this. It’s an abstract concept to them and when it is no longer an abstract concept and they get it, they realize it is not a theory. Reincarnation is not a theory. It’s a reality, I’m going to die, my body is going to disintegrate and it is going to be reformed into the next generation of life. We are living for a few decades and we are lucky. What is astonishing is that we are sentient; we know that we're alive; we know that we're going to die. We are participating in enlarging the sum of human knowledge and that is extraordinary, that's the human evolutionary trait, which differentiates us from all other living things. That's what we are supposed to be doing. We have got to get this right, if we don't get this right in our lifetime, we won't be fulfilled, our lives will not be meaningful, we will not understand our purpose and our place.       Image 5   Opportunities for ‘The Great Work of Our Time’. This image is from the Bonn Challenge, it is a global aspiration to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s   deforested and degraded lands by 2020. It was launched by world leaders at a ministerial roundtable in   Bonn, Germany, in September 2011. Source: www.bonnchallenge.org/content/challenge, retrieved: 04-06-   2015   Thijs Flore: What would be our place? In the global rehabilitation of ecosystems one can understand this as subjugating the planet to our will. How do you see this? John D. Liu: The reason I say the 'Great Work of Our Time' is that now we are forced to either accept this, understand this and act on it or civilization will collapse. In order to take the other side, we must be conscious, we cannot take the other side in ignorance. You can't restore degraded landscapes if you are ignorant of how to do that. Or if you don't know how the earth systems function, you have to be conscious in order to do that. The interesting thing about this is that knowledge is a responsibility. When you start down this path and you begin to learn it just gets worse. Because the more you know the more responsibility you have. Most of the people plead ignorance and just follow the social and economic trends, if you follow them it is useless. In that way you are not contributing in human understanding. We can either consciously choose to move to a fair and sustainable future or we can unconsciously crash the system. Those are our two choices. But now if you’re asking about optimism or pessimism, it does not matter, we should do our best, we should find meaning, purpose and joy in our lives and if we do that we will probably have pretty big effect. I am surprised that so many people are following this. That is rather fascinating. What will be the outcome? Lets see. Fascinating, infinitely fascinating.