Are you are among the fifty per cent of humans who live near the coast? If so, you inhabit a zone, that constantly channels water from the sea to land and back. Have you considered how much you are part of that process? The Reindeer Chronicles by Judith Schwartz describes the most vital of Earth’s life support: water. Schwartz builds hope by describing astonishing feats of landscape restoration. In doing so, the reader will uncover the connection between land and sea, people, water, soil and nature.
‘… all the knowledge and technology needed to shift to a regenerative future–one marked by agriculture that builds soil carbon, retains water, produces nutrient-dense food, and revives land and communities–is already available.’
Bridges and highways of moisture
Forests provide shade so that rain can be absorbed into the soil. In times of climate change we may have become accustomed to seeing storms as life-giving relief to a dry landscape. But a drought doesn’t break until this water can soak into the ground. Only after that can the trees breathe it back out and return this moisture to the sky as clouds.
This process has nourished food for your ancestors over hundreds of thousands of years. There are rivers of moisture in the atmosphere that rival the volume of the largest rivers on Earth. In The Reindeer Chronicles Schwartz visits the people of Hawaii and learns that this process was significant enough to create a cloud bridge between islands. Stripped for foreign cash crops, this bridge, that had spanned between communities for generations, collapsed along with soil erosion.
The rain in Spain
Neither does the rain in Spain fall on the plains any more. Moisture over the Mediterranean has nowhere to go as the Iberian peninsula has turned to desert. It accumulates. “Basically, you’re cutting a tree in Almería and getting a storm in Dusseldorf”, says scientist Millán Millán, in reference to recent devastating flooding in central Europe.
If, like me, you’re currently living in a coastal city, surrounding land-use is likely to be creating a barrier to the flow of life-giving water. Deforestation of hillside watersheds inhibits the return of water to the ocean. Modern farming reduces soil to dust which is a moisture repellant. Cities channel water into the sea off roofs and pavements, while air temperatures climb through lack of shade.
Schwartz describes a landscape in India where ‘some areas have gone from 2 percent green to 48 percent green, and seen temperatures lowered 2ºC (3.6ºF). That’s a remarkable result that would address much of the overheating forecast from climate change in the next few decades. This literal transition to a ‘greener’ economy will be a lifesaver for millions of people living in places where temperatures are becoming uninhabitable.
Islands of hope
Scientists like using islands as laboratories to study evolution and natural processes. Scaled down like this it’s easier to see how ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More. Surrounded by an increasingly uninhabitable world aren’t we all now living on islands of habitat?
One of the things I most enjoyed about reading Reindeer Chronicles was understanding what’s possible to achieve over similar geographic scales, small enough to understand, and big enough to make a difference to our civilisation. The projects that Schwartz writes about are only a few among thousands worldwide that prove what we suspect is possible. That nature can heal the Earth.
When you can restore the climate of a whole island nation it gives hope to the rest of the world. However, conflict arises because humans tend to be problem-oriented.
‘It was their set of beliefs that convinced them it was impossible. Once we acknowledged it could happen, it took the pressure off. This freed up their minds so they could consider what they would do.
Part of the challenge, therefore, is to create hope that if we work together we can make a difference. Schwartz tells the story of people in some of the most challenging environments on Earth. By working with each other as part of nature, they have managed to turn their misfortune into an opportunity, and revitalise their communities.
‘A landscape that’s suffering gives rise to people who are suffering. And troubled people create troubled landscapes’.
The importance of indigenous science
Schwartz meets scientists, engineers and naturalists who observe nature and have become acclimatised to its way of working. Their wisdom comes from many lifetime’s of observation and experience. That’s the say, the wisest of all, draw on knowledge imparted by classic literature, poems, and the traditional knowledge they learnt from ancestors.
Throughout The Reindeer Chronicles there is reinforcement of the importance of traditional knowledge. This isn’t a fanciful notion. To restore desert to a moisture-laden oasis in just a few decades means applying traditional wisdom and values first and science to support this. Schwartz writes extensively about places like the Loess Plateau in China. Thirty or so years ago this region had become almost unliveable. All over the world there are more and more examples of deserts that were once food bowls.
Part of the solution is to acknowledge the inherency of people in landscapes and recognise the role we can all play. More importantly, it’s about broadening our definition of science by embracing less tangible knowledge systems.
Perhaps the role of ecologists these days is to condense the processes of 20,000 years into 20 years. That’s to say, wisdom we might have learnt through trial and error over millennia, we now have decades to recreate. Reading the The Reindeer Chronicles, it was heartening to hear how much landscape restoration experts are drawing on multiple sources of inspiration.
But there is still a long way to go. The Australian government recently struck out whole sections on ‘indigenous science’ from global climate action policy. Governments remain defiant in their neglect of traditional knowledge, yet there is so much we can learn from it.
The connection between animals, landscapes and people
The Reindeer Chronicles takes its name from a chapter about the indigenous tribes of Norway. The Sámi were driven off their land and can no longer practice traditional reindeer herding.
The book only lightly touches on the connection between wild animals and people. Mostly it talks about regenerative agriculture and vegetation. As I discuss at length, wild animals are essential for ecosystem stability. Schwartz recognises the value of humans as components of ecosystems. For many conservationists, even this might be a bold assumption, but it’s true. And while the need for wild animals isn’t said explicitly in the book, it is very strongly implied.
‘The grasslands are not a tool to grow animals. The animals are a tool to grow grasslands’.
I liked this about the book. Sometimes the unsaid is more powerful. It sparked a great deal of curiosity around a subject so vast and multidisciplinary. Scientists still struggle to describe even the most basic socio-ecological function. This may be one of the main reasons why indigenous wisdom is so often ignored.
‘… the complexity of winter reindeer herding … requires continually monitoring snow … and how it is experienced by the animals … modern scientific assessments of how much land is required for a given number of reindeer are often predicated on an “average year”, which might not reflect the reality at any given time’.
One statement stood out as particularly powerful and I had not thought about wildlife conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More in this light before.
‘Hugo Reinert, a senior research fellow at the University of Oslo, argues that the government’s misunderstanding of reindeer ecology and the disempowerment of Sámi people are deeply connected, if not one and the same. He says the notion of controlling the reindeer is stand-in for reining in the Sámi people that have thus far defied control.’
A more natural culture
State-sanctioned attacks on traditional culture happen all over the world. The forced ‘modernisation’ of Aboriginal people is not an isolated problem, as we are more than aware of, in Australia. We are deserting traditional owners in the way we are deserting our land. Yet, it is the knowledge we need, for modern civilisation to survive.
The Reindeer Chronicles by Judith Schwartz shows, nonetheless, that there is a better way to think. That it’s possible to restore our world in a few decades. This hope is contained in descriptions of work being done to make our world more habitable. If a few thousand villages in India can reduce their average temperature by two degrees then so can we.
It is easier than ever for us to see the consequence of our actions and do something about it. Your behaviour, on the island of habitable land you live in, has a huge effect on other places. So, doesn’t that mean that by taking care of nature, you can have a huge positive impact, too?
About the book
Pages: 256 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inch
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Pub. Date: August 19, 2020
ISBN: 9781603588652
Read or listen to an extract
