by Andreas Kornevall, Pyrenees, France

The environment is moving from a green issue to a red alert. This was made clear in two interventions recently – Margaret Beckett’s New York lecture in which she set out the security threats arising from crop failure, flooding and water shortages – and the report by a dozen former generals and admirals in the US, saying that climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.

These warnings need to be taken to their logical conclusion. Security issues demand security responses. And that should mean that the economic– and military - might of the world’s most powerful and wealthy states needs to be harnessed to fight what Greenpeace calls "the weather of mass destruction".

The world is waking up to the need to invest in low carbon energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, but at the same time there is a need to rebuild damaged environments at ground level as part of an effort to restore the entire global ecosystem to health and stability. For the next hundred years, we need to embark on a large-scale co-ordinated effort to restore the climate’s regulatory services that only healthy ecosystems can provide – this is the great work ahead for coming generations.

The forests, oceans, wildlife, tundra, grasslands and freshwaters are all being degraded. For example, today, as the oceans are warming and the mangroves and coral reefs being depleted, the absorption of CO2 is lessened. According to scientists the ocean is taking up less CO2 now than it did in the 1980’s - the excess of CO2 in the atmosphere leads to its acidification.

On a global scale, MAP (Mangrove Action Project) claims the nutrient deficit in marine ecosystems caused by the degradation of mangroves results in annual losses of approximately 4.7 million tons of fish and 1.5 million tons of shrimp for the fishing industry – here both the ecology and the economy is compromised. To make the case for restoring them - planting mangroves would not only benefit the sea life itself, but will at the same time, absorb CO2, provide fish stock to communities, enhance local health and generate economic activity.

Our global forests are in crisis and shortages of forest foods and fuel wood create social hardships for the poor: 90 percent of the poorest of the poor depend on forests (World Bank). For example in the Sahel desert, thanks to one NGO called newTree, through ordinary gestures such as keeping foraging goats out of seeded areas, highly biodiverse forests are developing and starting to provide food, energy and shelter to the local communities.

Lester Brown in his Plan B puts some interesting figures on earth restoration and the type of budget it requires: He estimates costs of $6 billion for Reforesting the Earth; $24 billion for Protecting topsoil on cropland:

• $9 billion for Restoring range lands
• $13 billion for Restoring fisheries
• $31 billion for Protecting biological diversity
• $10 billion for Stabilising water tables
• $93 billion Total

This compares with current Military Budgets of $492 billion in the United States; $65 billion in Russia; $56 billion in China; $49 billion in United Kingdom; $45 billion in Japan; $40 billion in France; $30 billion in Germany; $19 billion in Saudi Arabia; $19 billion in India; $18 billion in Italy; and $142 billion elsewhere - a total of $975 billion World Military Expenditure

In other words restoring critical eco-systems and stabilizing them for the future costs around a tenth of current military expenditure. This budget, no charity or environmental group can implement. How do we advocate for the above to happen? The ERS (Earth Restoration Service) has argued that the military is in a very good position to start restoration initiatives. Indeed, at a small scale, it already does. Existing examples are the US Army Corps of Engineers restoring the Everglades ecosystem in Florida, the Indian army undertaking restoration projects throughout the sub-continent and the South African military responding heroically to the flooding and environmental disaster in Mozambique at the turn of the millennium. Our founder Alan Watson Featherstone writes "funds might well be drawn from existing military resources which would give a new sense of value and fulfillment to the military, as they engage in addressing real threats to environmental security."

This is almost literally beating swords to ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.

What a redemption to change the pursuits of war to the tending of ecosystems - what can be more inspiriting than to see our world turning away from destruction to restoration? Both restoration and destruction are similar as they spring from intention – so we have been given a choice.

There is no longer time to sit back and make flower decorations for our life boats and "feel good" solutions to Climate Change - restoration on a global scale needs to be implemented, as a way to regain our place within nature’s web and as a powerful pursuit for peace.

In its search for resources and wealth, humanity is developing the last wildernesses of the world and damaging many of its treasures. We have to look behind us and clear up the destructive path we have walked. We are at the threshold of the age of restoration.

 

Andreas Kornevall Director of Operations Earth Restoration Service earthrestorationservice.org

Notes:

The U.S. number is the budget estimate for FY2006 (including $50 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan); Russia and China data are for 2003. "Building a New Future," in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton& Company, 2006. Additional data and information sources at www.earthpolicy.org Forest Restoration in Landscapes, beyond planting trees (Stephanie Mansourian, Daniel Vallauri, Nigel Dudley. Tim Flannery, the weather makers (Harper Collins) MAP (Mangrove Action Project) earthisland.org