Tierra del Fuego landscape.  Credit: Eduard Müller — Tierra del Fuego landscape. Credit: Eduard Müller

From the Field Guild to a Regenerative Economy blog, a fascinating interview with Eduard Müller, President Rector of the University for International Cooperation, who has been deeply involved in addressing the challenges of biodiversity and land regeneration.

Müller has participated in the negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in the development of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Earth Charter movement, and in UNESCO’s MAB Programme.

Here he speaks frankly about what humanity needs to do, and why we have thus far failed to do it, as we head into the Sixth Planetary Extinction.

Can you explain why you are now so concerned about how we are prioritizing the issues threatening the planet?

Our planet is collapsing first due to a loss of biodiversity and second due to fertilizer use. Biological diversity was very important in the ‘90s, and then it just faded away, and climate change is now what everyone is focused on. The Paris Agreement is at the forefront of that.

Meanwhile fertilizer use is not even on the radar in all of these pronouncements we see coming out of the United Nations. The third planetary boundary that we have exceeded is land use, which is inextricably related to agriculture. So climate change as a critical issue is really just in fourth place. That’s why I’ve always preferred to talk about global change, and not only climate change.

You believe that our strategies for addressing these global crises have been both framed incorrectly and presided over too often by the power groups who were responsible for having created the crises.

I participated in the framing of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 17. Every single time that the United Nations opened up the floor for those meetings, it was, “We’d like to thank “X, Y and Z Corporation” for their support for having this meeting happen.” And if you look throughout the text of the SDGs it’s very technocratic. It’s the same philosophy, the same mindset that brought us into these problems we’re facing.

I was very active in Al Gore’s Climate Reality team back 10 or 12 years ago. He has played a magnificent role in raising awareness globally, but for me his focus on solving the earth’s crises through technology, such as hybrid and electric cars, is not going to be enough. These are all good initiatives, but they’re like putting makeup on stains.

You say plants are our best hope to forestall planetary extinction.

We are experiencing the Sixth Planetary Extinction, and the difference from the others is it’s the first time we have so much science to back it up. We know exactly how we are going to disappear but we’re not using that information. There’s so much data, so much information. What we have lost is the ability to transform that data, information, and knowledge into wisdom.

So we know we need to bring atmospheric CO2 down to below 350 parts per million. If we don’t do it, we won’t make it. I know people in the northern hemisphere have the expectation that they’ll invent a machine that pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere.

But we can’t wait. We already have the best machines to do it, which are plants. These machines actually made our planet habitable millions of years ago. Plants pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere, and created conditions for other life. So why not go back to them, instead of continuing to destroy them with traditional agriculture?

You have also been involved for the last 25 years with UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme that works across disciplines to address ecosystem challenges through a World Network of Biosphere Reserves. Can you describe this Biosphere Reserve approach and how it is being implemented?

It’s basically a concept of a territory that is managed by the people who live in it and who decide on how to allocate the uses of the land, from protected areas to more intensive uses. It has three functions, which is conservation, development, and education. So we identify the main constraints for a territory and how it can reverse degradation and do regenerative development.

And then we bring the different knowledge areas such as sustainable use, regeneration, connectivity conservation, regenerative agriculture, holistic cattle production, nature-based solutions, ecosystem approach and more, together with local knowledge to solve complex problems in a transdisciplinary fashion.

Over the years, we have tried this on several biosphere reserves throughout Latin America working with different stakeholders, such as government, business, local and indigenous communities, but so far not in a systemic way because we didn’t have the resources for it. But I truly believe that’s the way to go. I think there’s a global tendency in recent times that is strengthening local governance over central government. It’s artificial, having one central government.

By focusing on territories we can actually involve the local people in decision-making. We need to prepare them, because they don’t always have the training or education, but they do have a lot of knowledge of their place.

A big mistake scientists have made, and I would include myself among them at the beginning of my career, is assuming we have all the answers. Indigenous communities have worked on regeneration for ages. The academics are just too proud to go and learn from them. Or if they do, what they usually do is go and take their information and publish it, rarely reverting and generating the deserved benefit at the local level.

What we need to do is to go to local communities and work with them, developing the new maps for the territory with them. So this is basically our strategy of what we want to do. And then have these territorial sites as training sites for other places to come and learn.

The Agua y Paz (Water and Peace) Biosphere Reserve. Photo credits: Eduard Muller

What specific approaches do you take to land regeneration when you engage with a local territory or bioregion?

We look at biodiversity and fertilizer use as the main constraints for keeping our safe operating space for humanity. The only way to actually solve our problems is by recovering biodiversity and eliminating fertilizers, or reducing their use.

To do that we need to reintroduce regenerative cattle production to improve the biodiversity of grasslands. Grasses are a lot more efficient at fixing carbon than a forest is. Forests are actually losing carbon because they are drying out, they aren’t going to save us. A big system like a forest cannot adapt to changes quickly, whereas grass is very resilient, and it’s actually a carbon pump. But if you look at the UN documents, they’re all talking about reforestation.

We can also learn from what the Cubans did, they were forced to eliminate synthetic fertilizers and pesticides so they increased carbon in the soil with organic matter, and through that they raised productivity and are today producing most of their food requirements without damaging the environment.

Within the conservation community there’s a movement that says: “nature needs half to survive so that humans can survive.” By increasing agricultural productivity, we can then release land back to nature. In certain areas that can be natural regeneration. In other cases, we need assisted regeneration.

More here.

"Pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere? We already have the best machines to do it--plants." Eduard Müller on the climate emergencies we're ignoring