Seeds of Hope
RainforestECO – Regeneration & Youth Impact
Stories of Seed Balls and Seed Bombs and Trees and People
Meet our 2019 Brazilian planting partners…
I’ve noticed recently, that there’s a great deal of interest in the idea of dropping seed balls from drones and planes, with the intention of restoring degraded land. So I’m asking you to play with me for a moment, while we consider if this is effective as part of a solution to global warming.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a wonderful practice, when it’s done over receptive soil, with help of adequate rain to coax the seedling to life and sustain its growth. But I’m also noticing in our desire for a quick fix for a big challenge, that we’re not all thinking about the conditions required for growth of the trees to maturity.
Think of it this way. Have you ever planted, with the BEST OF INTENTIONS, a garden from seeds, that for one reason or another (oops, I forgot about them while I went on vacation), withered instead of flourished, in your beautifully prepared soil? Or perhaps you’ve tried planting seeds of something you love, that didn’t appreciate the soil conditions they were sown in?
It’s not just the color of you thumb. It happens all the time in large scale planting projects without soil preparation, adequate water and field maintenance. Here’s a bit of history we don’t need to repeat…
Of the 50 million seedlings planted every year in the 11 northern Nigeria states worst effected by desertification, 37.5 million wither and die within two months, environmental officials say. Read more…
On the other hand, have you experienced planting seeds in good soil that were well cared for before being transplanted to the soil outdoors? Did they take off and thrive? YES!
So while that’s an over simplification, keep it in mind as you learn about some of the different ways seed balls are being used around the world.
Here’s a really informative post about how the idea of making seed balls was originated by Masanobu Fukuoka, for restoration of pastures.
Seeds balls are an ancient technique for propagating plants from seeds without opening up soil with cultivation tools such as a plow.
The rediscovery and popularization of seedballs (or “Clay Dumplings” as he called them) in modern times is typically ascribed to Japanese natural farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka. Read more…
Here’s a sweet video about using seed balls to plant wildflowers on banks of streams in Texas, that works beautifully under those conditions…
Here’s a post about tree seed balls being planted by hand in receptive areas, and providing maintenance afterward, that seems to be working well in India.
“We began to mix the seeds with mud and cow dung,” Vikas says. “We made little balls of them, sort of like laddus and they helped to bring down the mortality rate of trees by 50%. The cow dung helps to keep animals and pests away, and we see to it that we plant them in area.” Read more…
And then we have a seed bombing method developed by someone at Lockheed Martin.
Peter Simmons, from Lockheed Martin said: “Equipment we developed for precision planting of fields of landmines can be adapted easily for planting trees.” Read more…
Here’s a report about using tree seed balls to plant degraded land in Kenya, by helicopter that’s gotten a lot of buzz lately, via video that’s been going viral on Facebook!
“We just planted 20,000 tree seeds in less than 20 minutes.” Read more…
Here’s a report about the potential for large scale mangrove restoration with seed balls planted by drones, in Myanmar. And I highly recommend watching the video produced after the article quoted below was written. Click on the drone image below and start at 13 min for the section on Myanmar.
Armed with a drone and the capacity to fire 5,000 seeds an hour, can this new technology be the way forward for Myanmar’s mangrove crisis? Read more…
This is an exciting test run for a potentially wonderful planting method for wetlands, while it’s too early to see the results. Their team is going back in August to do a very large planting, and we’ll look at the results of the first planting later this year and next.
Mangroves, because of the moisture, are the very likely places for drone plantings to survive. Biocarbon Engineering recognizes this by stating they only plant wetlands, in their FAQ. This is very good!
And, while the BioCarbon Engineering speaker on the video, made the claim that seeds planted this way in March would create a living shield that would grow to protect the villages from cyclones this year, it’s not possible. The hosting organization knows this since their hand planting experience has shown that it took three years for transplants to reach the size that’s being claimed as achievable in months from seed.
I truly hope this drone planting method for mangroves produces great results without any needed exaggeration for effect!
Time will tell…
So, I’m still motivated to help humans learn how to bring soil back to life using organic practices, grow trees from native seeds to saplings, and earn a fair wage to plant them in the field, and take care of them until they become a forest once again.
Planting Hope in Young Hearts
Earth Day 2017 – I was invited to give a talk at the beautiful Manzanita School in Topanga, California. Now we’d like to share a few highlights of the talk with you…
The Power of Cookies – be sure to see the photo at the bottom…
Brazil is Home to 33% of the World’s Remaining Rainforests
Rainforest Regeneration is Possible
Former Coffee Country
Organic Agroforestry
4per1000 and Kiss the Ground – Compost Story
More on the 4 per 1000 “A 4‰ annual growth rate of the soil carbon stock would make it possible to stop the present increase in atmospheric CO2.”
So what are we waiting for? Let’s do this.
With gratitude for the awesome cookie baking moms who helped the project grow in 2011. Some of them were in the audience, taping and editing the video for this talk at Manzanita. I was there at the invitation of the young man seen with me in the photo above, the boy seen in the bottom right of the photo below…
Let’s Go: Drawdown
You will note, that Van Jones “liked” the link above when I shared it on Facebook 🙂 so I hope you’ll like what it represents here!
Seriously, this book, Drawdown, is filled with verifiable good news. And since returning from participation in COP22, the iGiveTrees project has refined focus to 4 of the Top 30 solutions to global warming:
Assets and Resources Being Shared Among Global Citizen Initiatives
Ever since we were invited to participate in 100 Projects for the Climate by Mission Publique, I could feel the direction of the wind had changed. It was now at our backs, rather than blustering at gale force in front of us. It’s a lot easier to move forward now.
We placed as #64 out of 100 projects, and then participated in a survey of needs to assess what’s needed to increase capacity. If you’re interested in the results of the survey, just click here or on the image to be directed to a fascinating collection of statistics, pie charts and word clouds! I learned that as a North and South American female over 50, I am most definitely in the minority among the contestants.
The French Ministry of Environment, Energy and Sea launched this global initiative with the following criterions:
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Projects led by citizens
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Innovative
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Repeatable at a broader scale
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Already in activity or close to be
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In relation with climate change
It appears that we all need two of the same things: funding and visibility. So a series of webinars is being offered during the month of October, through the French Ministry, to help us to develop and share our resources.
And those of us who are able to raise funds to participate in COP22 will meet in Marrakesh this November. I’m nearly there, so if you’d like to help sponsor my full on participation, please feel free to make a NON tax-deductible donation right here, or to mail a check to our fiscal sponsor, the EarthWays Foundation before the end of September.
I’ll be back with more news as it reveals itself to me…
Q. When Trees are Planted in the Forest, Do They Make Music?
Since our beginning, the project has attracted a range of supporting recording artists: Rickie Byars Beckwith (founder of the Agape International Choir), Faith Rivera (Emmy-winning Singer, Songwriter), Daniel Nahmod (Humanity Music Co.) and Nimo (Empty Hands Music) are among them.
Today we’re so pleased to share the news of 500 more trees that have been planted in the Atlantic Rainforest due to our fundraising efforts! These trees were planted at SINAL the inspiring environmental education center I first visited after Rio+20 in 2012.
A group of undergraduates from Harvard were part of the learning journey.
As part of a generous donation made to SINAL thanks to the iGiveTrees Campaign, we were able to plant 500 trees in some of the most degraded lands of our property. This planting was particular special because we were able to obtain saplings from two highly threatened tree species that are nearly extinct – Jussara and Jacaranda Caviuna. Jussara trees have little blue berries, similar to the acai berry, that are edible; however, the tree has been brutely cut down for years for its palm heart, that while delicious, is deadly to the tree. In fact, the tree has become so endangered that it is actually a federal crime to cut down a tree and can land one in jail. Yet somehow, it continues to happen.
The process of planting these trees was quite special as well because of several reasons. Firstly, in our search for the 500 saplings, we took several journeys to different nurseries in the area. Specifically, we discovered that the state water treatment company has reforestation projects throughout the area where they produce saplings. They understand that the forested hills of the Mata Atlantica are what allows the entire city of Rio de Janeiro to have fresh water – therefore, restoring the degraded lands is absolutely essential to them. We visited two different nurseries, each with a different variety of species. Therefore, we were able to maximize the biodiversity of the 500 trees we planted.
Secondly, throughout the process of the tree planting, we were able to include many diverse groups of people to planting. From local community members in the town of Santo Antonio, to international volunteers, to a group of undergraduate Harvard students who came for a learning journey at SINAL, many hands and hearts were part of the planting. It was very touching to see how inspired people were to be able to be part of the planting – there is something very special about getting to plant a tree in the Mata Atlantica. We are very, very grateful for the donation and are honored to have been able to be part of it.
The following is a list of species from the Mata Atlantica that we planted:
Euterpeedulis (jussara)*,
Garcinia sp. (bacupari),
Jacaratia spinosa (mamao do mato),
Eugenia brasiliensis (grumixama),
Spondias morbin (caja mirim),
Inga vera (inga),
Zeyheria tuberculosa (ipe felpudo),
Dalbergia nigra (jacaranda caviuna)*,
Senna sp. (aleluia),
Cedrela fissilis (cedro),
Cassia leptophylla (falso barbatimao),
Schinus molle (aroeira salsa),
Citharexylum myrianthum (pau viola),
Ceiba speciosa (paineira rosa),
Handroanthus sp. (ipe cascudo),
Albizia sp. (angico pururuca),
Licania tomentosa (oiti),
Pterocarpus violaceus (aldrago).
Great work team SINAL, we’re looking forward to planting more with you! And I’ll share more about SINAL’s upcoming events in a future post, but wanted to share this fresh news with iGiveTrees supporters right away!
Initiative 4 per 1000 Declaration of Intention
Rainforest ECO Enterprises and the iGive Trees project and are both honored to be among the signatory organizations of this Declaration of Support for the Initiative 4 per 1000: Soils for Food Security and Climate. We look forward to meeting with the other global citizen initiative representatives in Marrakesh at COP22 this November.
The Initiative has set itself the goal of helping address the following three issues:
- Improvement of food security by enhancing soil fertility and combating land degradation.
- Adaptation of agriculture to climate disruption.
- Mitigation of climate change.
We were included thanks to recognition by the French Ministry of Ecology for our citizen initiative projects in Brazil.
As an artist, I was inspired to translate the Declaration of Intention into the font TREE created by Katie Holton, in symbolic commitment. What you see planted on the right is a transcription of the words you see on the written on the left.
May these words take root and grow.
2017 UPDATE: To see photos of the actual banner and its international signers at COP22, visit my blog post on Medium.
Has big conservation gone astray?
ANALYSIS: The world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation.” But is it up to the task of saving life on Earth?
Read Part 1 of Conservation, Divided: Mongabay’s four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years.
Source article: Has big conservation gone astray?
by Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance | photo by Rhett A. Butler
One of the things you discover as an environmental journalist is just how quickly scientists and conservationists are happy to bash — off the record, of course — big conservation groups. These include four of the world’s largest wildlife and wild-lands-focused groups with a global footprint: WWF, Conservation International (CI), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), and at times, though to a much lesser extent, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Together these four groups employ over ten thousand people in nearly a hundred countries and have a collective annual income of around $2 billion. In many parts of the world, if not most, one of these four groups is likely to be seen as the public face of conservation efforts.
Over the years former employees have regularly dished the dirt to me about missed opportunities, misplaced values, and projects that seemed to fail as often as they succeeded, while current employees often sounded like public relations officials speaking in staccato. Outside conservationists often complained that the big NGOs took credit for their hard work and bungled local relationships. The same concerns would come up repeatedly: an obsession with the organization’s brand at the expense of success, a corporate-mimicked hierarchy, cushy relationships with some of the world’s biggest environmentally destructive corporations, radio silence on so many environmental issues, and an inability to respond to crises that are appearing with ever-more regularity.
You drink Coffee. We plant Trees.
If you’ve followed this blog through the years, you know I’ve lost hope more than once along the way, due to the many challenges faced by my field partners. While searching for even a glimmer of hope to keep this project alive in my heart and mind, I discovered two pieces of history:
1 – The first Europeans to arrive in Rio de Janeiro cut the forest for firewood and construction. Then lower areas were slashed and burned to clear land for sugar plantations. When coffee was brought to the area in 1760, further swathes were cut to create plantations. By then, deforestation had destroyed Rio’s watershed.
In 1861 one of the world’s first environmental restoration projects was initiated when the imperial government of Brazil decided that Tijuca should become a rainforest preserve. Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II assigned the enormous task of replanting the entire forest to a military commander. With the labor of 7 people (unknown slaves) they took saplings from other areas of the Atlantic Forest and planted native trees with a selection of exotics, in less than 13 years. In 1961 Tijuca was declared a National Park.
2 – The 5,000 trees we’ve given back to the land over the last years were planted in the Vale do Paraiba, São Paulo state, Brazil. The very area pictured in this photo from 1882, showing slaves working in coffee plantations of the denuded rainforest. Some of the people receiving the trees now, could be descendants of people who had worked in these fields. Both land and people are healing.
2015 International Day of Trees News Snips
The flying river is a movement of large quantities of water vapor transported in the atmosphere from the Amazon Basin to other parts of South America. The forest trees release water vapor into the atmosphere through transpiration and this moisture is deposited in other localities in the form of precipitation, forming a virtual river.
Meanwhile…
Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City – São Paulo Water Crisis Linked to Growth, Pollution and Deforestation
Deforestation in the Amazon River basin, hundreds of miles away, may also be adding to São Paulo’s water crisis. Cutting the forest reduces its capacity to release humidity into the air, diminishing rainfall in southeast Brazil, according to a recent study… Click here to read more.
Meanwhile….
Massive new study shows that pressures on the Amazon rainforest mean it can no longer be relied on to soak up more CO2 from the atmosphere than it puts out.
Two decades ago, the forest drew down a peak of two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year from the atmosphere. Now, according to a massive new study in Nature journal by more than 90 scientists, the rate of withdrawal has fallen to around half that total. Click here to read more.
Meanwhile…
I was searching for even a morsel of good news to report while composing this post, and received this message of genuine hope from John Liu, in response to my Facebook comment about the despair many of us feel these days. He wrote:
“I think that we need to realize our own limitations. As individuals we cannot solve the problems humanity faces. We need to do this together with large numbers of like minded people. This will have to be done by creating a new society and economy and way of life. COMMUNITIES dedicated to creating the models necessary. It is not an accident that this discussion is emerging now. We need to have a profound and ongoing conversation, to create an inclusive way that everyone can live in peace and achieve their full potential for themselves, for human society and for the Earth. I’m still overall encouraged by the recognition of the need. But we must go much further and LIVE THE CHANGE. This means shared ownership of land, tools, vehicles, and transparent participatory governance. But it also means full employment – WORK not JOBS – and it means equality of ownership. It will not be easy but there is great satisfaction and great rewards in joy, resilience, health and consciousness.”
“I think we need to realize that the problem is bigger than simply ecological degradation and the need to restore natural water regulation, soil fertility and biodiversity. It is also bigger than simply growing good healthy food. These are fundamentally important but there is much more that needs to be done. We need to remake human society and economy. This requires creating new institutions because the ones we have serve a corrupt and corrupting world view. One thing that I notice is the number of people who want to do restoration but don’t know where to work. These people must find each other and join together in social and professional partnerships. I think Benefit Corporations may be a good transition model. A way needs to be found to bring financial capital together with “Life’s Energy” from people who devote their lives to restoring the Earth. We need to value the “Life’s energy” higher than the financial investment and make both of these ways toward ownership. Equality, ownership, homes, food, ecological restoration, education healthcare, freedom, peace are all needed and possible but require us to begin a profound societal conversation and work steadily toward creating the human civilization we can be proud of and want our children and future generations to inhabit.”