Greening the Earth: A Treehugger's Retrospective
Looking back on the environmental movement after a 40 year stint
As Earth Day reaches its 50th year, I look back as an acolyte growing up in the 1970s and eventually joining the cause to save the planet. After 40 years of fieldwork, bumpy logging roads, dense policy papers and community meet-ups, it’s time to reconcile my role in the environmental movement.
In the formative years there were two main influences on my young malleable mind: Jacques Cousteau and Wild Kingdom. Back in those days of primitive TV broadcasting there wasn’t much to spark the fire of environmentalism and adventure. Cousteau, a pioneer in marine conservation, was the first to show me the otherly wondrous world of undersea life.
His flagship vessel, the Calypso, only sailed into my TV screen a few times a year or so. These nature specials made an imprint on me not only because of their beauty, but also due to their message of environmental protection. Even in the ocean a spark can be lit.
Wild Kingdom was sponsored by an insurance company and came on just before the Wonderful World of Disney show each Sunday. Each week the host, Marlin Perkins, recounted a tale of wrestling wildlife in faraway places. Wikipedia explains the show as I remember it:
Wild Kingdom increased ecological and environmental awareness in the United States. Its exciting footage brought the wilds of Africa, the Amazon River, and other exotic locales into the living rooms of millions of Americans.
So as one of those millions watching while eating Mom’s burgers off a metal TV tray, I started to dream about other continents.
Getting Into The Field
Armed with a forestry degree and youthful enthusiasm, I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Kenya, in east Africa, to participate in an agroforestry project. For two years, my cohorts and I worked with local Farmers’ Training Centres to teach growing fuelwood species with crops, using clay liners for metal cookstoves and starting biogas tanks.
We worked with local farmers, teachers’ groups at schools and other community groups to set up tree nurseries, demonstrate planting techniques and teach overall fuel efficiency. Villagers spent hours each day to collect firewood just to cook the daily meals on a three-stone fire.
After Kenya, I spent almost a year in the Sudan with an afforestation (establishing new areas with tree cover) project on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The project was a bust after eight months, mainly due to a coup d’etat overthrowing the elected government.
But for me it offered many lessons in human toil, including living on the margins, refugee migration, ecological despair and extreme isolation.
Taking Root In Asia
For the past 25 years, I’ve worked in the rainforests and oil palm plantations of Southeast Asia. I’ve hiked in the jungles and swamps with tiger conservationists, herpetologists, bat researchers, ornithologists and other scientists. I’ve visited with villagers and indigenous communities in Thailand, Cambodia and Borneo to discuss land rights and living conditions.
There are three paths that took me on these journeys:
The first path was doing NGO-related work with WWF Malaysia and Wild Asia, among others.
The second path was as a natural resource auditor to evaluate compliance of forest management authorities and oil palm operations against international standards for sustainability certification.
And the third path involved my own efforts to seek out stories and deal with policy issues as an environmental writer.
To highlight what occurred during this time span, let me give you a sampling of the issues and kind of work done in the environmental arena:
Turtle Legislation in Malaysia - A comprehensive review of state and federal legislation pertaining to turtle and terrapin egg collection and conservation measures for species protection.
Kyoto Protocol COP 3 - Assisted the WWF International delegation in Japan to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to lobby for reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Forest Management Unit Audits - In field assessments of state level FMUs against criteria to evaluate sustainable forest practices, environmental protection measures, community and worker welfare and biodiversity concerns.
Oil Palm Plantation Audits - In field assessments of oil palm plantations and mills to determine adherence to global standards that protect environmental, economic, labor force and community interests.
Responsible Tourism - On site checks against protocols to integrate sustainable practices and energy efficiencies from seaside resorts to village home stays.
The Greening and the Greenback
Saving the planet is a battle between greening the earth and getting the greenbacks. It’s a struggle played out across the globe on small and large landscapes. It’s a constant fight to keep the terrain intact to produce local resources for communities. The land grabbers are fierce. Standing timber is a vertical goldmine. Large scale plantations of oil palm are more profitable.
For rainforests, federal and state governments usually control access to the money pot. Too many private logging companies are just the middleman to harvest trees and move on. They are not vested as long term land managers. They are extractors.
Selective harvesting methods supplant the need to replant due to the natural growth of smaller tree size classes over long rotation periods. But overharvesting depletes forests to unsustainable levels. Degazetting a forest puts it totally out of production. And of course, biodiversity declines as lowland and hill habitats are degraded into fragmented habitats and idle lands.
For oil palm plantations, the land and labor requirements are huge. They also require intensive landscaping and external inputs for fertilizing and chemical pest control. The demand for cooking oil, food additives, home and beauty products and biofuel contribute to the zealous proliferation of plantations across southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia - where over 85% of the world’s supply of palm oil derives from.
The displacement of forest habitats to accommodate oil palm is the first casualty. The ecological toll from air and water pollution, soil erosion, animal migration disruption and chemical contamination is the second casualty. And in too many cases, local and indigenous communities are the third casualty due to land claim disputes, pollution concerns and resource decline.
For governments, the difficulties arise in balancing the appetite of developers and expanding business interests - besides political aspirations - against the welfare of local populations and poverty alleviation measures. Well managed forests sustain economic gains and oil palm is a profitable cash crop for both conglomerates and villagers alike.
For affected communities, there are usually two major scenarios. Government land schemes provided areas and incentives to plant oil palm or rubber trees to aid in reducing rural poverty and establish a way out of the cycle. For more remote indigenous groups, the battle is over historical land claims and the intrusion and abuse of big companies.
For biodiversity and the environment the struggle is always related to habitat loss, soil degradation, siltation and chemical contamination, open burning and the fragmentation of the larger landscape to thwart wildlife movement.
None of these scenarios are only black and white, nor sufficiently green.
One of the more egregious errors of greenwashing was a company road sign along the highway next to an oil palm plantation that read:
WE GREEN THE EARTH!
Admittedly they do have us on a technicality. However, a more accurate description might be the following:
WE GREEN THE EARTH! [BUT FIRST WE CUT THE TIMBER, CLEAR THE DEBRIS, BULLDOZE THE TERRACES AND PLANT AN EXOTIC SPECIES.]
I guess succinct advertising is not my forte.
Everybody has a story and an agenda in the environmental fight.
Future of the Planet
Is saving the planet a grandiose idea? Has the global equivalent of Mr. Peabody’s coal train hauled Paradise away? Pessimism is a luxury. Living is mandatory. Evolution requires tons of time. So what does that leave us?
In honor of Earth Day 2020, the filmmaker Michael Moore recently released the film “Plant of the Humans” by Jeff Gibbs. It’s a dystopic view of the fallacies of the environmental movement. It illustrates the missteps of green technologies, including solar power, battery storage and wind energy, and how some of the major environmental players (Sierra Club, Bill McKibben, Al Gore) were coopted to play the green game.
Remember, that everybody has a story and everyone has a bank account. The film has both highlights and lowlights, but it does frame the past 50 years into a thought puzzle. It beats the drum that the tech revolution fizzled, but does nothing to really showcase the hard work of non-tech action. The extrapolation of these failures to doom the planet results in a large information gap within the movie.
If we’re lucky the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 will signal the real change that the environmental movement could not fully muster. Nothing has ever stopped humanity in our tracks like the Stay-At-Home orders of most countries. It is a global phenomenon that is already demonstrating the environmental benefits to climate change, including cleaner air, reduced carbon emissions and renewed discussions.
It’s like the entire planet and its inhabitants in lockdown mode are able to breathe in deep and contemplate. Can the coronavirus be a turning point to shake up and shift the direction of the environmental cause?
Nature is very nasty. The tranquil essence of a virgin rainforest is a facade of equilibrium that hides the constant struggle for survival within. For society, the coronavirus has striped away the thin veneer layer and exposed the core rot of our consumptive culture. Humans can be very nasty too, especially if desperate.
It is time to rally the new environmentalists and send them into the forests, savannahs and seas to gain courage to formulate a better fight plan for the planet. For those of you staying closer to home, tap into your better self, find a constructive place within the community and share the wealth instead of consuming a greater share.
[Photo Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]