I’ve been a bit busy the last few days but articles keep coming and in this age of “nature-based solutions” it seems everyone has an answer but animals are always missing from the narrative. The Guardian published a piece this week on a Dutch dredge company’s ideas for regreening the Sinai desert – inspired by regreening efforts in the Loess Plateau in China. But will regreening deserts work?
Van der Hoeven calculated the lake contained about 2.5bn cubic metres of silt. If one were to restore the Sinai, this vast reserve of nutrient-rich material was exactly what would be needed. “It became clear we had a massive opportunity,” he says. “It wasn’t the solution to a single problem; it was the solution to all the problems.”
Plants increase environmental nutrient load without animals
You’ll forgive my cynicism at the first instance. A solution to all problems?
I have worked with Dutch dredging companies, mining companies and consultants all my life. It’s worth taking suggestions with a pinch of salt. In this case, the company has been asked to re-deepen the lake, so the need to dump material somewhere, was the reason for the conversation in the first place.
In this case, 2.5bn tonnes of what could only really be described as “toxic” would be a consequence of requests to rescue Lake Sinai from silting up.
In theory it’s a reasonable idea and you’d argue doing something is going to be no better than allowing the lake to dry up completely. The sediment though, has to contain enormous quantities of nitrate and phosphate, among other things. This is not a problem in the Middle East that’s endemic to this lake.
Where does that nutrient go?
Engineers tend to think in fairly simplistic terms … more nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More means more growth means more farming and more employment.
It’s true but this is not a nature-based solution because that would necessitate a net reduction of nutrients or at least, processes that ensure dangerous levels of pollution are absorbed into biological processes and not allowed to escape into waterways and the Mediterranean.
This could easily become just another form of landscape engineering and unless it is done very carefully, will not create an ecosystem. Each time we completely alter a landscape we release huge amounts of free energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More into a system and we delay it reaching a habitable state once more.
Van der Hoeven says “If we want to do something about global warming, we have to do something about deserts.”
How is Earth’s tree cover fairing?
Earth has more tree cover now than it did 35 years ago. Why would we think planting more vegetation in the desert would be the answer to our environmental problems?
Yet again, it’s the animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More that is missing. The reason why these suggestions make no sense alone, is because wildlife is the fundamental part of the equation that makes the outcome self-sustaining. Few ecologists understand this and I would be surprised to find any engineers that would. If you don’t build in structure and 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, you end up having to pay to constantly clean up and that’s economically impossible.
You can’t restyle land and plant vegetation without simultaneous and significant attention to rebuilding ecosystem function, which simply means, wildlife populations and their concurrent habitat. It means migration corridors, 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 areas, bans on hunting and numerous other protection mechanisms sufficient to allow the system time (decades, or maybe hundreds of years) to reform.
The critical importance of wildlife in ecosystems
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 have to be readied for wildlife as part of the exit strategy–and that includes human animals! Local people are ultimately going to have to look after the land so they also need to be able to make a living. It’s encouraging to find that the Great Green Wall of the Sahel has moved towards locally-led programs and maybe the Sinai will do the same. Even then, there is little focus on wildlife.
Slowly, the idea of a Great Green Wall has changed into a program centered around indigenous land use techniques, not planting a forest on the edge of a desert. The African Union and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization now refer to it as “Africa’s flagship initiative to combat land degradation, desertification and drought.” Incredibly, the Great Green Wall—or some form of it—appears to be working.
In the Sinai, there are Arabian Oryx, Sinai Leopard, Red-breasted Goose and the hundreds of other declining species of the region. What use will they be in zoos? The big questions for the dredge engineers are:
- How do you create locally self-determined conservation outcomes?
- How do you convince a nation that without wildlife, things might become worse?
- How can locals be persuaded to protect their own wildlife in situ for the next 100 years?
These major landscape reconstruction ideas are no different to how the first Aborigines settled Australia, except now we are placing the human survival aspects in the hands of single corporations who don’t necessarily have accountability for the long-term health and integrity of ecosystems.
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How Aboriginal people made the most successful ecosystems
Humans are animals. It seems such an obvious thing to say but we don’t behave, think or talk as though we believe it. And this has a profound effect on…
How do we get conservation on track?
I fear wildlife conservation will again be an after-thought done by low-paid scientists left to pick up where the engineers have left off.
I realise I sound cynical but I know how little ecology plays in the upfront design and intelligence of engineering projects. In this case, the proposals are not for building ecosystems because they can’t do that without wildlife and the consequences could be quite damaging for the surrounding regions and may not create a net benefit for the local human population.
As a footnote, I’m curious as to how this will work without upsetting systems globally. As the Guardian article points out, there is evidence that the Sinai once was green – as recently as 4,500 to 8,000 years ago. Back then though, wildlife was abundant and diverse planet-wide. We have to be very cautious these days not to further upset the biosphere when it is teetering on the edge of collapse due to the massive loss of animal biomassThe weight of living organisms. Biomass can be measured in relation to the amount of carbon, the dry weight (with all moisture removed) or living weight. In general it can be used to describe the volume of energy that is contained inside systems, as the size of animals relates to their metabolism and therefore, how much energy they contain and More in the last 50 years.
“Biblical” famine, pestilence and plague wreaked havoc on these ancient food bowls and caused the collapse of entire civilisations like ancient Egypt but they were fairly isolated incidents … the rest of the world was still largely dominated by Aboriginal societies and abundant wildlife.
Today we have scaled the effect our impact to almost every place humans live and there is hardly a landscape untouched that still has fully-functioning animal-driven ecosystem services. In other words, there’s not much resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More left to cope unless we rebuild wildlife populations.
Spotlight
Tree plantations may not improve forest cover or livelihood benefits: Research
The paper published on September 13 in Nature Sustainability suggests that the percentage of each plantation area classified as having more than 40% tree canopy density did not increase after establishment of plantations. Neither did it benefit local livelihoods. Read more.
BBC Future Planet: The ‘messy’ alternative to tree-planting
Trees are excellent at taking carbon out of the atmosphere and trapping it in their trunks, roots and leaves. But what if planting them wasn’t the solution? Recent research has shown that natural regeneration can potentially absorb 40 times more carbon than plantations, and provide a home for more species. It is also significantly cheaper than tree planting, with different studies in Brazil showing costs reduced by 38%, or even up to 76%. Read more …
Yale Environment 360: Are Huge Tree Planting Projects More Hype than Solution?
High-profile programs aimed at planting billions of trees are being launched worldwide. But a growing number of scientists are warning that these massive projects can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, and push people off their land. Read more
