This blog is written as a think-piece for Regeneration advocates. It poses the question “What narrative is our movement seeking, and why?”. This is my 2000-word essence of why we need regeneration. The next step is to translate the core message into an elevators pitch – something that people can get behind easily. This is outside of the capabilities of my Asperger brain – it takes a team.
Climate Change action and the larger planetary crisis
Emerging climate action
In recent months Carbon Trading is ramping up throughout the Western World. This is good news – finally the World’s governments seem to move closer to climate action. And also a cause of concern – carbon trading is a re-distributive mechanism that reduces the cost of reducing fuel emissions. Carbon trading does NOT impose a cap on global greenhouse gas emissions – it just fosters an economic exchange between emitters who can cheaply address their emissions, and those for whom emission reductions are more expensive. So without a strong cap – an upper limit of global carbon emissions, carbon trading is simply hogwash. Two things need to be in place: governments need to (1) set and enforce national and global global emission caps, and (2) then they need to reduce this cap in a transparent and dependable manner. Then, the theory behind carbon markets actually works: emission trading reduces the cost in meeting the cap.
Furthermore, emission reductions are only a small component of humankind’s predicament with maintaining a livable planet. I strongly believe that only brutal honesty about our situation can help us turn the tides here. We have to be honest that our first attempts to (re-)introduce carbon trading are not a “success over climate change”. It merely marks that we pick up on our journey to actively manage Mother Earth.
Our predicament – a planetary crisis.
Even without climate change, humankind is on track to train-wreck our biosphere and undermine our own source of living. In 1962, Rachel Carlson published Silent Spring and raised awareness how chemical practices in agriculture are destroying biodiversity. Ten years later, 1972, Dennis & Donella Meadows and a few colleagues have dropped a bombshell – the Limits To Growth have clearly identified how humankind is on a track that leads to a wall. This report received ample media attention, and every educated person of that generation was made aware that the World’s economic growth strategy will lead to an uninhabitable planet. Since then, humankind stayed on track on Meadows et al’s dooming predictions, as occasionally “revisits” to Meadows analysis keep on telling us (e.g. Nodhaus et al. 1992[1] Bardi[2], O’Riordan 2017 [3]). Climate Change was not part of Meadows original analysis – in the image of a train accelerating against a wall, climate change is the result of human action that accelerates this wall toward the train.
Humankind is on track of driving itself into a solid wall of environmental collapse at accelerating speed. Biodiversity extinction, resource depletion, deforestation, desertification, the destruction of soils – our pressure on the natural world exceeds planetary boundaries [4]. If humankind does not take immediate action, we risk societal collapse. Governments have acknowledged this planetary predicament in Rio 1992 and signed Agenda 21 and follow-up summits, and ratified three conventions on the protection of biodiversity, desertification, and climate change. Humankind has also create consensus knowledge in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2008) and the nternational Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD, 2009)
Even if humankind would totally stop and reverse climate change today, our situation would still be dire – our planetary train is accelerating toward a wall. A transition to green energies does nothing about the overuse of the natural world. In a way, the fear associated with climate change may actually be a huge distraction from the most fundamental task of our time – ecosystem restoration at unprecedented scale. Climate action offers a sense of accomplishment for those who purchase a Tesla rather than a pickup truck, giving us reasons to continue to remain willfully ignorant of the planetary crisis.
Climate action at the expense of the biosphere?
With increasing desperation around climate change, humankind may opt for climate actions that even have negative externalities for the natural world. For two decades, climate policies are promoting biofuels – corn ethanol and palm-oil biodiesel – that rapidly convert land into degraded monocultures. In a way, we are trying to de-accelerate the wall that is moving towards us, in ways that continue to accelerate the train’s speed toward the wall. Whether this is a zero-sum game, or slightly giving us more time or less, is up for debate. And humankind does not have the time to wait for academic research to give us exact estimates. Fact is: we need to stop the train from speeding into the wall, AND we need to stop the wall moving towards us. We must do both, simultaneously. Not one at the expense of the other. And if we cannot fully bring the train to a stop, or the wall, then we need to restructure our society such that we can handle a little crash – because our society has structural resilience.
For most people, this is a tough reality check. Humans have avoided facing this reality for (at least) half a century now. Only in their retirement, those who were young when Meadows’ report hit the news during the 70s are opening up now – and stare in horror at the mess that we are leaving for our children and grand children. Parents and teachers alike are struggling with how to communicate this reality to youth. We have to overcome depression and doom – this leads to inaction, exactly the wrong choices. Yet, we need to educate and create hope – in ways that empowers us to take decisive but wise action.
Most decision makers and leaders live in utter denial and continue to mutter, with increasing insecurity that is often overwritten with anger: “Business As Usual, Growth, Economy!”. While the mainstream public is struggling with connecting the dots. Exactly here I see the most pressing task for the regenerative movement.
Resilience and regeneration from a philosophical perspective
The “sustainability” narrative is coming to an end. When I worked under Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at Potsdam Institute for Climate Adaptation Studies in the early 2000s, we have already struggled with this concept, from a system dynamics perspective: sustainability was sold as a “stable system domain”, and scientists looked for a new policy framework where our actions drove the Earth Ship into a “sustainability haven”. Once we reach that stable haven, we can sit back on our sustainable couch in our sustainable mansion, eat sustainable chips while chugging a sustainable beer, and watch a sustainable sit-com. In a way, we dreamed of sustainability as a “haven of stability” – which has never before existed on Earth. And our dream have not materialized.
Now, advocates are recognizing “sustainability” as a narrow band between “degeneration” and “regeneration”. Looking at the living world around me, I cannot see “sustainability” anywhere – I can just see the permanent cycle of death and life, destruction and renewal, degeneration and regeneration. And depending on our perspective, the same action can be degenerative from one angle and regenerative from another. Natural ecosystems seldom reach a climax state: regular disturbances set back small areas, creating new niches, new opportunities that enhance diversity. Indigenous cultures have continuously managed the temperate regions of North America for mosaic landscapes, living havens of functional and genetic diversity. But not of stability or permanence or “sustainability”. We have hoped for a “sustainability climax” – and now discover that this promise was another Golden Calf that we have fallen for.
Without this stable haven of sustainability, it is worth taking a new look at the role of diversity. In diverse systems, Shiva is active everywhere – the Hindu Goddess of destruction and renewal. One plant dies and gives life to another. Destruction creates disturbance, and disturbance gives way for new life, new strategies of renewal. In diverse systems, regeneration and degradation balance each other beautifully – nature as a whole is stable, you may call it “sustainable” from a bird’s eye perspective. With a microscopic lens, we cannot find sustainability anywhere – just destruction and rebirth, degradation and regeneration.
The main threat to this new way of looking at sustainability is the lack of diversity, the monoculture. Monocultures exist in agriculture but also in our culture, our ideas, economies, diets, in our gut microbiomes, our fashions, or our aspirations in life. When we all aspire to nothing else but becoming a doctor, or if our entire youth is happy only as an Ivory League student, then our society will certainly collapse.
If we look at macro-level sustainability as a balance between regeneration and degradation at the micro level, then macro-level regeneration translates into a myriad of regenerative local actions – for the biosphere, ecosystems, education, emotional and spiritual health – the regenerative universe is infinite. Each of our actions can be evaluated from this angle – what aspects does the action regenerate? What does it degenerate or destroy? Regeneration also becomes a new foundation for community, for a renewal of spirituality and religiousness. In diversity we thrive – as individuals, communities, as society and as the planet in its beautiful entirety.
Controlling the Regenerative Agriculture Narrative
The planetary crisis – the train that is accelerating toward a wall, while human actions are also pushing the wall towards the train – stays in crass contrast to the promise of regeneration. Regenerative Agriculture, and more broadly ecosystem restoration, is caught between these two stories.
On one hand, we – the regenerative movement – need to recognize and acknowledge the planetary crisis with its self-perpetuating dynamics. This is scary, but we need to equip decision makers with simple test questions: Does that action degenerate Earth and speed up the train, or does it accelerate the wall by contributing to climate change? On the other hand, we need to build our capacity to regenerate through diversity. Does that action foster diversity or monocultures? Does it accumulate assets and power in few hands such that diversity comes to an end, or does it share decision power and provide a home and safe haven for communities locally and across the globe?
Regenerative Agriculture has embraced the opportunity of carbon sequestration, carbon trading, in order to attract resources and attention that our movement so dearly needs and deserves. At times, I fear that we are doing this at the expense of our narrative – we allow others to define the story of what our movement is about. It sounds as if Regenerative Agriculture is mainly a weapon in the fight against climate change. This story focuses our attention on the wall that is moving towards the train – all eyes on the wall, while nobody watches who’s firing up the train’s engine. By letting others set the narrative around RegenAg, by letting us be drawn into the “carbon financialization” story, our story is distracting from the train.
Regenerative Agriculture mostly is about stopping the train. We regenerate biodiversity, our labor-intensive practices regenerate rural communities with meaningful jobs in agriculture. Soil regeneration can re-invigorate watershed functions and the terrestrial water cycle, with its life-sustaining cooling functions. Regenerative agriculture grows nutrition-dense food that nurtures our bodies, and a food culture that nourish our souls. All of these elements are looking at the train! In addition, regenerative agriculture helps us pay back agriculture’s “carbon debt” (Sanderman et al., 2010). RegenAg also reduces our GHG emissions from fertilizer, soil degradation, and diesel. Yes, RegenAg also slows down the wall! But that is a side-effect, almost a positive externality.
Organizations like the World Resource Institute (WRI, here) or the World Economic Forum (WEF, here) are promoting their own narrative, with the positivist normative power that Western organizations are so good at. If we let others create that narrative – even allow others to reduce RegenAg’s narrative to “decelerating the wall” in carbon markets – then the public narrative loses the essence of RegenAg: it is a method for stopping the train. The “climate change narrative” of RegenAg will create economic opportunities for “slowing the wall at the expense of accelerating the train”: logging rainforests to grow palm-oil biodiesel; planting carbon sequestration monocultures in the hands of few. The corporate world has decades of experience in “hideous accounting” and will find ways to create zero carbon budgets – innovative corporate accountants have discovered myriads of strategies to hide profits offshore. The corporate world will develop similar strategies around water and carbon accounting, and is already succeeding. Because they have successfully create a narrative that allows them to. By defining the narrative, they can control the paradigm – the way that we humans perceive our surroundings, how people see agriculture and the living world around us.
Conclusion
So let’s be clear on our narrative – we simultaneously need to (1) STOP THE TRAIN speeding towards the wall, while also (2) DECELERATE THE WALL that is now moving towards the train. And we need to (3) BUILD SOCIETAL RESILIENCE that allows humankind to survive an inevitable crash. Regenerative Agriculture can accomplish all three – and it really is irrelevant how much it stops the wall. The debate with WRI is a distraction, a trap – and it is seductive to follow this trap. Let’s politely refuse, and stay on track of our narrative: Stopping the train while slowing down the wall.
All other sectors need to help us with that “wall thing” that is climate change – it is ludicrous to believe that RegenAg alone can undo the harm from a century of fossil fuel emissions. In my eyes, even arguments how much soil regeneration could buy us is a distraction from the train wreck. I believe that claims how “regenerative Ag can reverse climate change” play into a misleading narrative. Fact is: if we don’t regenerate our landscapes fast, our societies won’t have resilience to deal with the climate change that is coming up, carbon trading or not. We don’t really have a choice – regenerate now. Spiritually, emotionally, with all our hearts, all our assets, our management skills, our occasional blinks of wisdom to use technologies wisely – with everything that humankind has. And yes, we can: if we don’t hide from the truth (the train and the wall that are accelerating towards each other). And if we don’t let false Gods distract us (those fancy technologies that promise to safe our empty ways of living, those false financial instruments that promise easy paths to regeneration). Then we will set into a very joyful journey into a new age of humankind. One where our diversity creates balance in regeneration and degradation. Success stories are ample – Judy Schwartz has summarized some of them in her new book (reviewed by Dianne Donlon). We just need to walk the walk, and first explain people why and how. Brutal truth keeps us on track of this journey of hope.
[1] Nordhaus WD, Stavins RN, Weitzman ML. Lethal model 2: The limits to growth revisited. Brookings papers on economic activity. 1992 Jan 1;1992(2):1-59.
[2] Bardi U. The limits to growth revisited. Springer Science & Business Media; 2011 May 27.
[3] O’Riordan T. The Limits to Growth revisited. Routledge; 2017 Sep 29.
[4] Steffen W, Richardson K, Rockström J, Cornell SE, Fetzer I, Bennett EM, Biggs R, Carpenter SR, De Vries W, De Wit CA, Folke C. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science. 2015 Feb 13;347(6223).
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