#27 Vicki Hird: Rebugging the Planet
Muse Ecology
Bugs are foundational to life on Earth, and their numbers are plummeting due to human activity. In this conversation with Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet, we explore the wonders of bugs and how we can restore our relationship with them. You can find more information about rebugging, and purchase the book, at . Here's the two papers referenced in Vicki's book that came up in our discussion, on the potential effects of new higher frequency radiation on invertebrates: Arno Thielens et al., Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz, Science...
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#26 Addressing the Other Leg of Climate Change, 2nd Panel
Muse Ecology
"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Prof. Millan M. Millan This last episode, for now, in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, was a great panel conversation with 6 people from 3 different organizations, each working from distinct approaches to restore weather and climate through restoring natural processes. It was a lovely example of the diversity of backgrounds that are beginning to come together around this idea. Juliette Kool and Ties van der Hoeven, Maya Dutta and Jim Laurie, Marcel de Berg and Pieter-Paul de Kluvier, Here...
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#25 Addressing the Other Leg of Climate Change, 1st Panel
Muse Ecology
The understanding that we can restore weather and climate systems by protecting and restoring the living surface of the Earth is an idea whose time has come. In these final two episodes in this Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we'll hear discussions of how this understanding is beginning to guide our response to climate change, from grassroots to international levels.
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#24 Renewables and Accountability: A Panel Discussion
Muse Ecology
This episode is a diverse panel discussion on the implications of renewable energy supply chains on life, water, and local communities, and how we might address them.
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#23 Life and Lithium at Thacker Pass
Muse Ecology
In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we hear diverse voices from the resistance to the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, on Paiute and Shoshone ancestral lands.
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#22 Judith Schwartz and Walter Jehne: Climate Change Narrative Shift
Muse Ecology
In this conversation with author Judith Schwartz and scientist Walter Jehne, we discuss the importance of the shift from seeing the Earth as a resource base to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a web of life that both manages and depends on natural processes. In particular, we focus on how this perspective shift affects how we understand and are empowered to address anthropogenic climate change.
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#21 Paul Cereghino Part 2: Bioregional Restoration and Social Complexity
Muse Ecology
In this conversation with Paul Cereghino, we discuss some of the challenges of collaborating in groups and groups of groups to protect and restore the Earth, including such topics as the role of online interactions, the importance of place-based reality, benefits and pitfalls of systems like sociocracy, Covid complications, and much more.
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#20 Paul Cereghino Part 1: Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping
Muse Ecology
In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we explore one of the great challenges on our way back to harmony: humans. Through the lens of his Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping project in western Washington State, Paul Cereghino and I discuss some of the interhuman and intergroup complexities of grassroots ecological restoration efforts.
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#19 The Mangrove Action Project
Muse Ecology
In this episode we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder and international program director of the Mangrove Action Project. In our conversation with Alfredo, we discuss the importance of mangrove ecologies, their devastation by the shrimp farming industry, and how the mangrove action project uses an approach called Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration to facilitate their natural regeneration.
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#18 Neal Spackman; The Business of Restoring the Earth
Muse Ecology
We continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Neal Spackman, ecological restoration designer, regenerative entrepreneur, and bold visionary. Previously in this series, we heard how agriculture and development having long been destroying ecology and hydrology, causing disruptions of weather and climate systems, and leading to the fall of empires. Neal is working to change that ancient dynamic, by restoring ecological function and hydrology to regenerate economies and rainfall patterns.
info_outlineWhile largely unfamiliar to many, peatlands perform crucial funcions in Earth's carbon and water cycles. For many centuries we have been draining peatlands to free up land for commodity agriculture, destroying these important living systems. We now are growing aware of the effects of draining peatlands, and some folks are exploring ways to preserve and restore these wet ecologies while still being able to produce and harvest biomass and other crops from these areas. This sort of peatland agriculture is called paludiculture.
In part 4 of this 5 part series at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany, we will hear John D. Liu interview 3 individuals who are working to change agriculture, finance, and policy so that they work to restore, rather than drain peatlands.
John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also catalyzed the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement. You can find his films and research papers at knaw.academia.edu/JohnDLiu
Jans Joosten, one of the world's foremost experts on peatlands, is head of the Department of Peatland Studies and Paleoecology of Greifswald University. (http://greifswaldmoor.de/home.html) He will describe how peatlands function and some of the consequences of draining them. Through his research, writing, and policy advising he has helped to protect and restore peatlands all over the world.
Annawati van Paddenburg is Head of Sustainable Landscapes at the Investment and Policy Solutions Division of the Global Green Growth Initiative. (http://gggi.org/theme/sustainable-landscapes/) With member countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific, she has worked on climate and food security and sustainable growth in forest, agriculture, coastal, and marine areas.
Growing up in rural Indonesia, she is motivated by her observations of the destructive effects of business on the pristine landscapes of her childhood. The Indonesian government has recently determined to rewet their drained peatlands, and she is working with them to develop commodity production business models that support both local communities and peatland ecologies.
Aldert van Weeren is a cattail farmer. (http://wetlandproducts.com/) After rewetting and restoring peatland areas, intending to sustainably harvest cattails for housing insulation, he found that he had legally created nature reserves and was not allowed to harvest from them. He and others have been working to change these policies so that folks like him can restore and preserve peatland function while producing a nontoxic, renewable source of housing insulation.
Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I'm using in the intro and ending. You can find his amazing nature art at mdigiorgio.com . Mike says that if you'd like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find his email on his website and he can mail you a CD.