Hope in a Changing Climate

The Story

Cap and trade is surely not the story of a lifetime. And curbing industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, as fundamental as this end-of-the-pipe solution may be to stabilizing our changing climate, is not enough to secure our future.

Climate change is not an isolated, discrete challenge.  It is, on the contrary, at the nexus of how human behavior is altering the fundamental cycles of nature that have enabled our planet to emerge over geologic time from a cosmic boulder surrounded by toxic gases to the blue planet teeming with life.

Framed this way, new solutions emerge about how to address the challenge of climate change.

There is compelling evidence all around the world that if we understand ecosystem function then we don’t have to degrade it.  Research and documentation show that soil moisture, relative humidity, temperature, microclimates and soil fertility are dynamic, and human actions significantly determine whether these are lost in a vicious cycle or accumulate in a virtuous circle.  By understanding the scientific principles that regulate the water cycle, biomass, biodiversity and accumulated organic matter it is possible to not only protect existing healthy ecosystems but to restore ecosystems that have been degraded either recently or over historical time.

A functional methodology for employing the desperately poor in this restoration work has also been successfully demonstrated and documented, and has the potential to lift tens if not hundreds of millions of people out of an entrenched cycle of endemic poverty.

For more than ten years, John D. Liu, the Environmental Education Media Project and colleagues around the world have been identifying best practices and documenting effective methods for large-scale restoration of damaged or destroyed ecosystems. On the Loess Plateau, an area the size of Belgium has been successfully restored over ten years. A barren, brown landscape, denuded and degraded, has been brought back to life; a people entrenched in back-breaking poverty now work, farm, herd and live, in a functioning, green ecosystem where rainfall infiltrates, water is retained and crops are readied for export.

Firmly rooted in science, and synthesizing knowledge and experience across myriad disciplines, this story has primarily been told -- so far -- through more than 170 direct presentations.  From Kigali to London, from Addis Ababa to Paris, from Beijing to Bangkok we have spoken to bankers, students, presidents, journalists and scientists. That international discussion is now including a larger audience than ever before through the 27 Nov. BBC World broadcast and screenings with world leaders in Copenhagen.

The potential to scale this demonstrated success has been specifically recognized by The World Bank, The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), and the Rothamsted Research Institute. Nations are also beginning to see the vast potential of this approach. The government of President HE Paul Kagame in Rwanda, for example, has adopted a new national land-use policy based on EEMP’s presentations and analysis.