Interested person can now sign up and take the REDD+ Academy e-course here: http://unccelearn.org. Launched by the UN-REDD Programme in November 2015, the course is self-paced, free of charge and conducted in English.
Developing and implementing REDD+ goes beyond the forestry sector and
requires input from a broad spectrum of informed stakeholders. The key
term here is “informed”. Many stakeholders continue to feel challenged
and overwhelmed by unfamiliar concepts and terminology, and often find
it difficult to distinguish between facts and opinions. The demand for
capacity building continues remains high. The UN-REDD Programme
responded to the demand, with a series of regional and national REDD+
Academies. But clearly, face-to-face training courses can only reach a
limited number of people. The Programme therefore developed a REDD+
Academy e-course in English with support from the One UN Climate Change
Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn). The course provides access to
high-quality learning on REDD+ to an unlimited number of people.
In describing the REDD+ Academy learning materials, Achim Steiner,
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and United Nations Environment
Programme Executive Director stated, “The modules presented in the
e-Academy will equip you with the requisite knowledge to better
understand the various components of REDD+ planning and implementation,
and provide you with tools to promote the implementation of national
REDD+ activities in your country. I encourage all of you to apply the
knowledge you will gain over the course duration and to do your part to
make REDD+ a national and a global success!” (Link to the video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWipm8pAUVk&feature=youtu.be).
I read this superb story when I was in school, titled: "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jean Giono
It really fired my imagination on what a single lone person could achieve given time, effort and belief.
a) Amazingly beautiful short animation video: vimeo.com/32542316
b) pdf of the story: ftpf.org/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees.pdf
The story tells of a shepherd who keeps planting acorn seeds in a barren wind-swept land.
After 20 years the whole landscape turns green wit...
h a huge forest of acorn trees and streams flowing.
Till today I believed this to be a true story!!
Then I saw an article on our office noticeboard talking about a real life tree-planter from Assam.
It also said that the story is a fictional one.
On searching a little I found these amazingly real people who've far exceeded the story.
And now I believe the story it even more!!
1) Elzeard Bouffier - The Man who planted trees by Jean Giono: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees
A
little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav “Molai” Payeng began
burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India’s
Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided
to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he
could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly,
the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng
planted single-handedly.
It all started way back in 1979 when
floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day,
after the waters had receded, Payeng , only 16 then, found the place
dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life.
“The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and
wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage. I alerted the forest
department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said
nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo.
It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was
interested,” says Payeng, now 47.
While it’s taken years for
Payeng’s remarkable dedication to planting to receive some well-deserved
recognition internationally, it didn’t take long for wildlife in the
region to benefit from the manufactured forest. Demonstrating a keen
understanding of ecological balance, Payeng even transplanted ants to
his burgeoning ecosystem to bolster its natural harmony. Soon the
shadeless sandbar was transformed into a self-functioning environment
where a menagerie of creatures could dwell. The forest, called the Molai
woods, now serves as a safe haven for numerous birds, deers, rhinos,
tigers, and elephants — species increasingly at risk from habitat loss
elsewhere.
Despite the conspicuousness of Payeng’s project,
Forestry officials in the region first learned of this new forest in
2008 — and since then they’ve come to recognize his efforts as truly
remarkable, but perhaps not enough.
“We’re amazed at Payeng,”
says Assistant Conservator of Forests, Gunin Saikia. “He has been at it
for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have been made a
hero.”
Forests were central to Tagore’s works, just as they have been for India’s creative expression through centuries, writes Vandana Shiva.
by Vandana Shiva
Tagore started Santiniketan as a Tapovan – a forest school – both to take inspiration from Nature and to create an Indian Renaissance.
He wrote, in An Eastern University: “The unfortunate people who have lost the harvest of their past have lost their present age. They have missed their seed for cultivation, and go begging for their bare livelihood. We must not imagine that we are one of those disinherited peoples of the world. The time has come for us to break open the treasure trove of our ancestors, and use it for our commerce of life. Let us, with its help, make our future our own, and not continue our existence as the eternal rag-pickers in other people’s dustbins.”
Tagore encouraged his secretary, Leonard Elmhirst, to start a Santiniketan-like school in England. This is how The Dartington Hall Trust was established, from which grew Schumacher College, the first green college in the West. And back in India, Navdanya’s Bija Vidyapeeth was started by Satish Kumar and me as a sister institution of Schumacher College. All these institutions are thus connected, through the inspiration of Tagore, to the ancient culture of the forest.
These learning centres are teaching freedom and Earth Democracy in times of multiple crises intensified by globalisation. Today, just as in Tagore’s time, we need to turn to the forest for lessons in freedom.
As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forest, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still influences our minds. The forests are sources of water and the storehouse of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy; of leaving space for others whilst drawing sustenance from the common web of life.
In his essay Tapovan (‘Forest of Purity’), Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled the culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”
It is this ‘unity in diversity’ that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both Nature and culture. The forest is a unity in its diversity, and we are united with Nature through our relationship with the forest.
In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom: it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says that our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.
The forest teaches us union and compassion.
For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and Nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. He writes: “In all our dramas…Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.” It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living, not by conquest and domination, but by coexistence and cooperation, that is at the heart of a forest culture.
The forest also teaches us ‘enoughness’: as the principle of equity, enjoying the gifts of Nature without exploitation and accumulation. In The Religion of the Forest Tagore quotes from the ancient texts written in the forest: “Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by God; and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through greed of possession.”
No species in a forest appropriates the share of another species. Every species sustains itself in cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the Indigenous people of contemporary India are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest that can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to Nature and finding sources for our freedom.
Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India: “The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel.”
Globalisation has created a civilisation that is based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on violence. In The Spirit of Freedom, Tagore warned: “The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless…They become morally incapable of allowing freedom to others.”
Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery. He went on to observe: “My experience in the West, where I have realised the immense power of money and of organised propaganda – working everywhere behind screens of camouflage, creating an atmosphere of distrust, timidity and antipathy – has impressed me deeply with the truth that real freedom is of the mind and spirit; it can never come to us from outside. He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend
it to others…he who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it.”
Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading our tribal lands and forests through the mining of iron ore, bauxite and coal. Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribe in India is defined as a ‘Maoist’ by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal.
If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India is to stay democratic, if each Indian citizen is to be guaranteed a livelihood, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation; we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence. We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teacher of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy. This will be the greatest tribute to Tagore. India needs to do more than pay lip service to this great visionary. We need to follow his ideals.
Vandana Shiva is the author of Earth Democracy and Soil, Not Oil.
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By Jennifer Hattam, Istanbul, Turkey
on April 16, 2010 http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2010/04/city-trees-photographers-explore-the-urban-forest.php
Trees in the city don't just provide visual relief and cooling shade in the midst of the hard-edged urban jungle: They remove greenhouse gases and pollutants from the air, lower power bills while boosting property values, assist with stormwater management, and even reduce stress and crime rates.
These photos of city trees show their tenacity in surviving in incongruous, sometimes seemingly inhospitable locations -- and the strong drive people have to try to bring a bit of nature, real or not, into the urban environment.
Areas with urban trees attract more businesses and visitors, who "linger and shop longer along tree-lined streets," according to the Colorado Tree Coalition. Apartments and offices in those areas "rent more quickly and have higher occupancy rates" -- and the people working in them are more productive and less prone to absenteeism.
When strategically planted for shade and windbreaks, trees can help reduce home cooling and heating costs. In Washington, D.C., urban trees save more than $2.6 million in air-conditioning costs annually.
Photo: Shannon Claire, "Good Morning," Inner Richmond, San Francisco, California
New York-based photographer Kate Glicksberg focuses on "exploring the city as a unique habitat where nature, humans, and the concrete grid co-exist" in her recent body of work, "The Urban Forest," on display through April 18 at the nonprofit art space Chashama in New York.
Photo: Kate Glicksberg, "Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY" (2009)
"A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 pounds a year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support two human beings," according to the Colorado Tree Coalition.
Trees can also enhance traffic calming measures, the Colorado Tree Coalition says: "Tall trees give the perception of making a street feel narrower, slowing people down."
Photo: Stevan Northcutt, "Departure," Tampa International Airport, Florida
In her early work on urban forests, Kate Glicksberg photographed "the clusters of trees that live in the intersections of highway overpasses" in Los Angeles. "I thought of them as still lives, in a way, because they were islands completely surrounded by highways on all sides," she says.
Three million trees were planted in Mexico City in 2007 as part of the Pro Árbol (Pro Tree) Campaign, a national effort to recover deforested areas and recharge the country's aquifers.
Photo: Ernesto Perales Soto, "Lonely Green in a Sea of Gray," Guanajuato, Mexico
Istanbul, where I live, has less than three square meters of green space per person, the lowest ratio in any European city, depriving residents of trees' health, aesthetic, and economic benefits.
Photo: Jennifer Hattam
"I see the city as an incredibly complex habitat full of nature. Sometimes you just have to look for it," Kate Glicksberg says. "One of the best parts of having the exhibition is that people have told me that it's helped them to see the nature in the city as well."
Kate Glicksberg started her "Urban Forest" project while living in Los Angeles during graduate school. When she moved back to New York in 2005, she started seeking out nature in the city's concrete environment, including graffiti and other pictorial representations of trees. "The inherent desire to integrate nature into built environments competes with the need to control it," she says.
Photo: Kate Glicksberg, "Butler Street, Brooklyn, NY" (2009)
"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do," author Willa Cather famously wrote.
American Forests's Global ReLeaf program has planted millions of trees in the United States and around the world, including an effort to replant the war-torn city of Sarajevo after residents were forced to cut city trees for fuel for heat and cooking.
"The psychological impact of trees on people's moods, emotions and enjoyment of their surroundings may in fact be one of the greatest benefits urban forests provide," Tree Canada says.
Public-housing residents who live in developments with trees, grass, and flowers reported that they "had better relations with their neighbors, felt a stronger sense of community, and experienced less violence in their homes," according to an article in Sierra magazine.
Photo: Kate Glicksberg, "Over Stuyvesant Town, New York, NY" (2008)
Glicksberg says her project got her "thinking about how humans, especially living in a city like New York, need nature in any way they can get it -- even if they have to create it themselves."
The curricula listed on this webpage have been selected in light of their adherence to state, national, or NAAEE educational standards and are thus suitable for classroom use. Click on a topic below to view lesson plans.
With population increase and urbanisation, water supplies are under threat - making the water purification services of catchment forests vital to maintaining human health.
Gland, Switzerland – Environmental degradation is causing serious detrimental health impacts for humans, but protecting natural habitats can reverse this and supply positive health benefits, according to a new WWF report.
“Our research confirms what we know instinctively: Human health is inextricably linked to the health of the planet,” says Chris Elliot, WWF’s Executive Director of Conservation.
Vital Sites: The Contribution of Protected Areas to Human Health notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates between 23 and 25 per cent of the global disease burden could be avoided by improved management of environmental conditions.
The report, released in advance of World Forestry Day on March 21, singles out deforestation for its key impacts on human health.
“Deforestation is a double blow to human health,” says Elliot. “It increases the spread of certain diseases while destroying plants and animals that may hold the key to treating illnesses that plague millions of people.”
Protecting natural landscapes can contribute positively to human health through protecting future medicinal resources, reducing the impacts of pollution, toxins and weather extremes and providing recreational places that support physical and mental well-being.
World Forestry Day takes on special significance this year, as 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. “Vital Sites” makes a strong case for protecting biodiversity.
In the forests of Borneo alone in the past decade WWF reports discoveries of trees and shrubs that may be used to treat cancer, HIV and malaria. In all, 422 new plant species have been discovered in Borneo in the last 25 years, but deforestation puts them and others waiting to be discovered at risk.
“When WWF stresses the importance of biodiversity, it’s not just because we enjoy a variety of trees or frogs in a forest. It’s because the science tells us that those trees and frogs are vital to the forest’s health, and the forest’s health is vital to our health,” says Elliot.
The report stresses that while people are good at cultivating plants whose value is known, we have a poor track record at conserving those seen as having little use for humans. The problem is, habitat destruction is eliminating potentially valuable species before they can even be discovered, let alone tested.
This short-sighted use of forest resources has major economic implications as well; by the year 2000, plant-based pharmaceuticals were estimated to earn more than $30 billion per year.
“Vital Sites” should be a wake-up call, not just for people concerned with protecting natural resources and biodiversity, but for anyone interested in protecting and promoting human health.
“Most people think of protected areas like national parks and nature reserves as tools for wildlife conservation, but by protecting whole habitats and ecosystems the world’s protected areas offer us some very practical social benefits as well,” writes Dr. Kathy MacKinnon, lead biodiversity specialist for the World Bank, in the report’s foreword.
A study released yesterday [press release ] by Georgia Tech planning Professor Brian Stone recommends planting millions of trees to create extensive new urban forests as a key part of international climate response plans. That's one conclusion of his look at the climatic impacts of deforestation and urbanization.
Stone's key finding is that:
“Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases.”
That offers a strong argument for recognizing how key land use is to responding to climate change. It's also a call to recognize the importance of local governments:
“As we look to address the climate change issue from a land use perspective, there is a huge opportunity for local and state governments...Presently, local government capacity is largely unharnessed in climate management structures under consideration by the U.S. Congress. Yet local governments possess extensive powers to manage the land use activities in both the urban and rural areas.”
Coming a few weeks before the Copenhagen negotiations, this is a well timed report. Both land use related emissions and local governments have been slowly acquiring a greater profile in international climate change negotiations.
Strangely, most reports on the study are running under the title "Reducing Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Enough to Slow Climate Change." Eye-catching, sure. But not really accurate. The real strength of this report seems to be (I say seems because the full text is yet to appear on the publisher's site) that it has put solid, nationally specific, numbers behind an argument that has long been made about the importance of local land use planning.
And did I mention that green streets aren't bad looking either? (image: treecanada.ca)
By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.
I was walking in the market one day with my wife,and somebody stuck a cage in my face.And in between those slitswere the saddest eyes I've ever seen.There was a very sick orangutan baby, my first encounter.That evening I came back to the market in the darkand I heard "uhh, uhh,"and sure enough I found a dying orangutan baby on a garbage heap.Of course, the cage was salvaged.I took up the little baby,massaged her, forced her to drinkuntil she finally started breathing normally.
This is Uce.She's now living in the jungle of Sungai Wain,and this is Matahari, her second son,which, by the way, is also the son of the second orangutan I rescued, Dodoy.That changed my life quite dramatically,and as of today, I have almost 1,000 babies in my two centers.
(Applause)
No. No. No. Wrong.It's horrible. It's a proof of our failing to save them in the wild.It's not good.This is merely proof of everyone failing to do the right thing.Having more than all the orangutans in all the zoos in the world together,just now like victims for every baby,six have disappeared from the forest.
The deforestation, especially for oil palm,to provide biofuel for Western countriesis what's causing these problems.And those are the peat swamp forests on 20 meters of peat,the largest accumulation of organic material in the world.When you open this for growing oil palmsyou're creating CO2 volcanoesthat are emitting so much CO2that my country is now the third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the worldafter China and the United States,and we don't have any industry at all.Only because of this deforestation.
And these are horrible images.I'm not going to talk too long about it,but there are so many of the family of Ucewhich are not so fortunate to live out there in that forestthat still have to go through that processand I don't know anymore where to put them.So I decided that I had to come up with a solution for herbut also a solutionthat will benefit the people that are trying to exploit those forests,to get their hands on the last timberand that are causing, in that way,the loss of habitat and all those victims.
So I created the place Samboja Lestari,and the idea was,if I can do this on the worst possible place that I can think ofwhere there is really nothing left, no one will have an excuse to say, "Yeah, but ..."No. Everyone should be able to follow this.
So we're in East Borneo. This is the place where I started.As you can see there's only yellow terrainthere's nothing left, just a bit of grass there.In 2002 we had about 50 percent of the people jobless there.There was a huge amount of crime.People spent so much of their money on health issues and drinking water.There was no agricultural productivity left.This was the poorest district in the whole provinceand it was a total extinction of wildlife.This was like a biological desert.When I stood there in the grass, it's hot -- not even the sound of insects --just this waving grass.
Still, four years later we have created jobs for about 3,000 people.The climate has changed. I will show you:no more flooding, no more fires.It's no longer the poorest district,and there is a huge development of biodiversity.We've got over 1,000 species, we have 137 bird species as of today.We have 30 species of reptiles.
So what happened here? We created a huge economic failure in this forest.So basically the whole process of destructionhas gone a bit slower than what is happening now with the oil pump.But we saw the same thing --we had slash and burn agriculture;people cannot afford the fertilizerso they burn the trees and half the minerals available there.The fires become more frequentand after a while you're stuck with an area of landwhere there is no fertility left.There are no trees left.Still, in this place, in this grasslandwhere you can see our very first office there on that hill,four years later, there is this one green blop on the Earth's surface ...
(Applause)
And there is all these animals, and all these people happy,and there's this economic value.
So how's this possible?It was quite simple if you look at the steps:we bought the land, we dealt with the fire,and then only, we started doing the reforestationby combining agriculture with forestry.Only then we set up the infrastructure and management and the monetary.But we made sure that in every step of the waythe local people were going to be fully involvedso that no outside forces would be able to interfere with that.That the people would become the defenders of that forest.So we do the "people, profit, planet" principles,but we do it in addition --a sure legal status --because if the forest belongs to the statepeople say it belongs to me, it belongs to everyone.And then we apply all these other principleslike transparency, professional management measurable results, scalability, reprocability, et cetera.
What we did was we formulated recipeshow to go from a starting situation where you have nothingto a target situation.You formulate a recipe based upon the factors you can control.Whether it be the skills or the fertilizer or the plant choice.And then you look at the outputs and you start measuring what comes out.Now in this recipe you also have the cost.You also know how much labor is needed.If you can drop this recipe on the mapon a sandy soil, on a clay soil,on a steep slope, on flat soil,you put those different recipes; if you combine them,out of that comes a business plan,comes a work plan, and you can optimize itfor the amount of labor you have available or for the amount of fertilizer you have,and you can do it.
This is how it looks like in practice. We have this grass we want to get rid of.It exudes compounds from the rootsbut the Acacia trees are of a very low valuebut we need them to restore the micro climate, to protect the soiland to shake out the grasses.And after eight years they might actually yield some timber,that is, if you can preserve it in the right way,which we can do with bamboo peels.It's an old temple-building technique from Japanbut bamboo is very fire-susceptible.So if we would plant that in the beginning we would have a very high risk of losing everything again.So we plant it later, along the waterwaysto filter the water, provide the raw productsjust in time for when the timber becomes available.
So the idea is: how to integrate these flowsin space, over time and with the limited means you have.So we plant the trees, we plant these pineapplesand beans and ginger in between, to reduce the competition for the trees,the crop fertilizer -- organic material is useful for the agricultural crops,for the people, but also helps the trees, the farmers have free land,the system yields early income, the orangutans get healthy foodand we can speed up ecosystem regenerationwhile even saving some money.
So beautiful. What a theory.
But is it really that easy?Not really, because if you looked at what happened in 1998,the fire started.This is an area of about 50 million hectares. January.February. March.April.May.We lost 5.5 million hectares in just a matter of a few months.This is because we have 10,000 of those underground firesthat you also have in Pennsylvania here in the United States.And once the soil gets dried, you're in a dry season, you get cracks,oxygen goes in, flames come out and the problem starts all over again.
So how to break that cycle?Fire is the biggest problem.This is what it looked like for three months.For three months, the automatic lights outside did not go offbecause it was that dark.We lost all the crops, no children gained weight for over a year.They lost 12 IQ points; it was a disasterfor orangutans and people.So these fires are really the first things to work on.That was why I put it as a single point up there.And you need the local people for that because these grasslands,once they start burning, it goes through it like a windstormand you lose again the last bit of ash and nutrients to the first rainfall going to the seakilling off the coral reefs there.
So you have to do it with the local people.That is the short term solution but you also need a long term solution.So what we did is we created a ring of sugar palms around the area.These sugar palms turn out to be fire-resistantalso flood-resistant by the way.And they provide a lot of income for local people.
This is how it looks like:the people have to tap them twice a day, just a millimeter sliceand the only thing you harvest is sugar water,carbon dioxide, rain fall and a little bit of sunshine.In principle you make those trees intobiological photovoltaic cells.And you can create so much energy from thisbecause they produce three times more energy per hectare per year,because you can tap them on a daily basis.You don't need to harvest organsor any other of the crops.
So this is the combination where we have all this genetic potential in the tropicswhich is still unexploited, and doing it in combination with technologybut also your legal side needs to be in very good order.So we bought that landand here is where we started our project,in the middle of nowhere.And if you zoom in a bit you can see that all of this areais divided into strips that go over different types of soil,and we were actually monetarilymeasuring every single tree in these 2,000 hectares, 5,000 acres.And this forest is quite different.
What I really did was I just followed nature,and nature doesn't know monocultures,but a natural forest has multilayers. That means that both in the ground and above the groundit can make better use of the available light,it can store more carbon in the system, it can provide more functions,but it's more complicated, it's not that simple and you have to work with the people.
So what we do is also, just like nature,we grow fast planting trees and underneath thatwe grow the slower growing, primary-grain forest trees of a very high diversitythat can optimally use that light and thenwhat is just as important: get the right fungi in therethat will grow into those leaves, bring back the nutrientsto the roots of the trees that have just dropped that leaf within 24 hours.And they become like nutrient pumpsand you need the bacteria to fix nitrogen,and without those microorganisms, you won't have any performance at all.
And then we started planting -- only 1,000 trees a day.We could have planted many, many more, but we didn't want to because we wanted to keep the number of jobs stable. We didn't want to lose the people that are going to work in that plantation. And we do a lot of work here. We use indicator plants to look what soil types, or what vegetables will grow, or what trees will grow here.And we have monitored every single one of those trees from space.
This is what it looks like in real, you have this irregular ring around it, with strips of 100 meters wide with sugar palms that can provide income for 648 families.It's only a small part of the area.
The nursery, in here, is quite different. If you look at the number of tree species we have in Europe, for instance, from the Urals up to England, you know how many?165. In this nursery, we're going to grow 10 times more the number of species.Can you imagine?You do need to know what you are working with, but it's that diversity which makes it work. That you can go from this zero situation,by planting the vegetables and the trees, or directly the trees, in the lines in that grass there,putting up the buffer zone, producing your compost, and then making sure that at every stage of that upgrowing forestthere are crops that can be used. In the beginning, maybe pineapples and beans and corn.In the second phase, there will be bananas and papayas.Later on, there will be chocolate and chilis. And then slowly, the trees start taking over, bringing in produce, from the fruits, from the timber, from the fuel wood. And finally, the sugar palm forest takes over and provides the people with permanent income.
On the top left, underneath those green stripes, you see some white dots -- those are actually individual pineapple plantsthat you can see from space. And in that area we started growing some acacia treesthat you just saw before. So this is after one year. And this is after two years. And that screen, if you look from the tower, this is when we start attacking the grass.We plant in the seedlingsmixed with the bananas, the papayas, all the crops for the local people,but the trees are growing up fast in between as well.And three years later, 137 species of birds.
(Applause)
So we lowered air temperature three to five degrees Celsius.Air humidity is up 10 percent.Cloud cover -- I'm going to show it to you -- is up. Rainfall is up. And all these species earn income.
This ecolodge that I built here, three years before was an empty, yellow field. This transponder we operate with the European Space Agencythat gives us the benefit that every satellite that comes over to calibrate itselfis taking a picture. Those pictures we use to analyze how much carbon, how the forest is developing, and we can monitor every tree using that satellite images through our corporation, but we can use these data nowto provide other regions with recipes and the same technology.We actually have it already with Google Earth. If you would use a little bit of your technology to put tracking devices in trucksand use Google Earth in combination with that, you could directly tell what palm oil has been sustainably produced,which company is stealing the timber, and you could save so much more carbon than with any measure of saving energy here.
So this is the Samboja area, you measure how the trees grow back, but you can also measure the biodiversity coming back.And biodiversity is an indicator of how much water can be balanced, how many medicines can be kept here, And finally I made it into the rain machinebecause this forest is now creating its own rain. This nearby city of Balikpapan has a big problem with water, it's 80 percent surrounded by seawater, and we have now a lot of intrusion there. Now we looked at the clouds above this forest, so we looked at the reforestation area, semi-open area and open area.
And look at these images. I'll just run them very quickly through. In the tropics, raindrops are not formed from ice crystals,like is the case in the temperate zones, you need the trees with (unclear), chemicals that come out of the leaves of the treesthat initiate the raindrops. So you create a cool place where clouds can accumulate, and you have the trees to initiate the rain.And look, there's now 11.2 percent more clouds,that was already, after three years. If you look at rainfall, it was already up 20 percent at that time. Let's look at the next year, and you can see that that trend is continuing.Where at first we had a small cap of higher rainfall, that cap is now widening and getting higher.And if we look at the rainfall patternabove Samboja Lestari, it used to be the driest place, but now you see consistently, a peak of rain forming there. So you can actually change the climate. When there are trade winds of course the effect disappears, but afterwards, as soon as the wind stabilizes, you see again that the rainfall peaks come back above this area.
So to say it is hopeless is not the right thing to do,because we actually can make that differenceif you integrate the various technologies. And it's nice to have the science, but it still depends mostly upon the people,on your education. We have our farmer schools.But the real success of course, is our bandbecause if a baby is born, we will play, so everyone's our familyand you don't make trouble with your family.
This is how it looks. We have this road going around the area, which brings the people electricity and water from our own area. We have the zone with the sugar palms, and then we have this fence with very thorny palmsto keep the orangutans -- that we provide with a place to live in the middle --and the people apart. And inside, we have this area for reforestationas a gene bank to keep all that material alive,because for the last 12 years not a single seedling of the tropical hardwood trees has grown upbecause the climatic triggers have disappeared.All the seeds get eaten.
So now we do the monitoring on the insidefrom towers, satellites, ultralights.Each of the families that have sold their land now get a piece of land back. And it has two nice fences of tropical hardwood trees,you have the shade trees planted in year one,then you underplanted with the sugar palms,and you plant this thorny fence.And after a few years, you can remove some of those shade trees, the people get that acacia timber which we have preserved with the bamboo peel, and they can build a house, they have some fuel wood to cook with.And they can start producing from the trees as many as they like. They have enough income for three families.But whatever you do in that program, it has to be fully supported by the people,meaning that you also have to adjust it to the local, cultural values,There is no simple one recipe for one place.
You also have to make sure that it is very difficult to corrupt,that it's transparent. Like here, in Samboja Lestari,we divide that ring in groups of 20 families.If one member trespasses the agreement, and does cut down trees, the other 19 members have to decide what's going to happen to him. If the group doesn't take action, the other 33 groups have to decide what is going to happen to the groupthat doesn't comply with those great deals that we are offering them.
In north (unclear) it is the cooperative, they have a democratic culture thereso there you can use the local justice system to protect your system. So in summary, if you look at it, in year one the people can sell their landto get income, but they get jobs back in the construction and the reforestation,working with the orangutans, they can use the waste wood to make handicraft.They also get free land in between the trees, where they can grow their crops. They can now sell part of those fruits to the orangutan project.They get building material for houses, a contract for selling the sugar so we can produce huge amounts of ethanol and energy locally.They get all these other benefits environmentally, money, they get education, it's a great deal.
And everything is based upon that one thing --make sure that forest remains there. So if we want to help the orangutans --what I actually set out to do --we must make sure that the local people are the ones that benefit. Now I think the real key to doing it, to give a simple answer, is integration.I hope -- if you want to know more, you can read more.
This Digest is a faithful summary of the leading scientific consensus report produced in 2008 by the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO): "Forests and Energy, Key Issues"Learn more...
Level 1: Summary
Context - In coming years, the world’s energy consumption is expected to increase dramatically. While fossil fuels will remain a important source of energy, renewable energies will also gain importance, as a result of concerns over high fossil fuel prices, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and energy import dependence.
Could biofuels derived from forestry products and residues help meet the energy demand?
