An hour of companionable music and dialogue with Julian Caldecott on Peace with Nature in California and beyond – where it comes from, what it means, and how we get there from here. The interview is hosted by Alanna Jane Goldsmith on Radio 2050, the inspiring and forward-looking channel of internet-based Radio Paradise. Relax, enjoy, and think Peace with Nature!
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International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, 9 August 2023
What are we celebrating?
On this day we express solidarity with indigenous peoples living in about 90 countries around the world. With an estimated 7,000 languages and 5,000 distinct cultures among them, these peoples typically identify themselves as descendants of the original inhabitants of each country. They are usually also culturally distinct from the majority of people there whose ancestors arrived relatively recently. But many indigenous peoples have experienced a history of unfair exclusion, neglect and abuse, largely as a legacy of how explorers, settlers and colonisers, mainly of European origin, entered and took their lands in recent centuries. Yet many have survived and continue to nurture their distinct traditions and ways of understanding the world.
Why are we celebrating?
Each indigenous people holds a store of traditional social and ecological knowledge, ranging from techniques of survival to insights that could help resolve the deepest dilemmas of modern life. Among their thousands of distinct cultures are many unique perspectives on nature and humanity’s place in it. The more indigenous thinking engages with the mainstream, the greater the spectrum of solutions available to help resolve local, national and global problems. Indigenous peoples’ day 2023 is focused on the current generation of indigenous youth as a particularly energetic source of such solutions.
Deep background 1: people create cultures.
How humanity came to be divided into ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ people is a complex story. It starts with the fact that, as a species, our main claim to fame is that we can’t help being creative. We’re always making bits of culture, including languages, arts, tools, stories, beliefs, and new ways of describing, thinking, or doing things. We create small ones by ourselves, and larger ones with others, often by joining up what we and others are doing. All these fragments interact, making each other more or less likely to persist, produce others, or be forgotten. They include all the rules that keep bundles of culture going long enough for us to grow up with them and consider them normal. This is where our feeling of belonging to a distinct people comes from. For humanity as a whole, the result is a turbulent cultural ocean, with islands of stability representing peoples, each thinking of themselves as the people.
Deep background 2: people used to be very settled.
Before the European onslaught starting about 600 years ago, most of the world was occupied by thousands of different peoples. Each one had adapted to its own ecological circumstances, had its own culture, and had some kind of settled arrangement with its neighbours. Not always peaceful, but always organic and with each people knowing themselves to be unique and rooted in their own place, while accepting that other peoples saw themselves in the same ways. There were no orders from above because there was no above. Each people was the centre of its own world, living in the land by its own laws. Sometimes they shared with their neighbours a way to explain all this, like the Dreamtime of Aboriginal Australia, but sometimes they did not.
Deep background 3: people can make trouble.
Even settled people sometimes have to move, or some of them decide they want to, for various reasons ranging from environmental events to prophetic dreams. If the time is right then leaders emerge and people will follow. Having moved, they arrive elsewhere with little reliable knowledge of how to live there, and resident people (if any) may resist the invasion. Either way, the newcomers disrupt local systems: easy wild prey animals are massacred, new species of crops and livestock are introduced, and native vegetation is cleared. But after a generation or two, what were the new arrivals settle down and start thinking of themselves as indigenous again, with their own local laws, traditions and ways of life. This was the pattern as we became human over hundreds of millenia, and it was the same pattern while we occupied most of the world over the tens of millennia since then.
The European onslaught.
By the 15th century, what had once been the indigenous peoples of Europe had already been hammered by invasions, plagues, empires, genocides, and the intrusion of new ideas over several millennia. Throughly mixed up, and newly-energised by the reconquest of Iberia from Islam, they created ideas and technologies that allowed them to see the whole world as a discoverable and exploitable frontier. The Age of Discovery began, gently at first with Portuguese trade, but then more aggressively with Spanish advances in the New World. This set a pattern that impelled other European peoples to go everywhere to steal anything that they liked the look of from the locals. It became rational to distinguish between ‘European’ people, including all those raised in their ways, and ‘indigenous’ people who were so often their prey or coerced labourers, or (later) the second-class citizens of their empires and states.
Genocide, ethnocide, ecocide.
There are few ethical ways to obtain land for free that is already claimed. European colonists in many parts of the Americas had it relatively easy since so many indigenous people quickly died of introduced diseases. But elsewhere, such people could be (and were) declared inhuman, shot, poisoned, enslaved, or else broken militarily and the survivors moved out of the way. Thus lands were freed for new settlements, plantations and mines, creating social calamities across the world. Since the newcomers often had absolutely no idea of how to live sustainably where they now were, ecological calamities were also inevitable. Both kinds of disaster proliferated as the new ways forced themselves into every aspect of life. All this added up to the wholesale destruction of peoples (‘genocide’), ways of life (‘ethnocide’), and ecosystems (‘ecocide’).
New values, new purposes.
Indigenous peoples who managed to survive the European onslaught are now worth more than their weight in gold. Without them and their different ways of thinking, we would have only a limited global culture to guide us, one that is so full of bad habits that it can’t imagine or organise its way out of wrecking the world. As it is, though, we can still respectfully draw on immensely diverse cultural resources owned by indigenous peoples. And the sooner we learn from them how to think like indigenous people again, the better. With their help, we might be able to restore peace with nature – peace with the Great Mother, or Pachamama as many South American indigenous peoples call her. The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples reminds us of that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and time is ticking by.
© Julian Caldecott 2023
World Ocean(s) Day, 8 June 2023
Celebrating oceans
The world ocean encompasses all the bights, gulfs, seas, straits, bays, inlets and deep waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern oceans. With 97% of Earth’s 1.4 billion cubic kilometres of water, it covers 71% of our planet’s surface to a mean depth of 3.7 km, but with trenches up to three times deeper. World Ocean Day and World Oceans Day both sprang from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On 8 June they focus our attention on the key role of the oceans in the biosphere of our blue planet.
Two days in one
Ocean Day is the more activist version, especially engaging young people and partnerships with aquariums, zoos and museums. In 2022 it involved over 10,000 organisations and businesses in more than 15,000 ocean-themed events in 140 countries. Oceans Day is more official, linked to international treaties on the law of the sea, biodiversity, climate change and desertification. So between them, the two days in one respond to our emotional and intellectual fascination with the world ocean as the dominant feature of the biosphere. And in doing so they focus public concern on the need for governments to cooperate in saving this rich and beautiful living world.
Life in the world ocean
Almost all ocean life is sustained ultimately by the largest photosynthetic mechanism on Earth, the phytoplankton of the top hundred metres or so of sunlit water. This is mixed by currents, the daily vertical migrations of planktonic organisms, and the churning of whales. Its abundance is harvested directly or indirectly by a great diversity of jellies, corals, sponges and sea-fans, amongst many others, and by swarms of finned, tentacled, iridescent and scaled creatures. Once dead, these fall into a seething community of scavengers in the muddy silt of the abyss: brittle-stars, sea spiders, crabs, polychaete worms, nematodes, giant isopods, slime eels and sleeper sharks. And the accumulated nutrients of the sea bed are sometimes lifted back to the shallows by up-wellings that support areas of enormous biological productivity.
Traces of deep history
The oceans cradled life on Earth, and many of its basic designs (phyla) are only found in the sea. From the distribution of these and other marine organisms we can trace the effects of continental drift going back scores of millions of years. Thus there was once a huge equatorial Tethys Ocean, named for the ancient water goddess and consort of Oceanus. It lay between the northern continent of Laurasia (now Eurasia and North America) and the southern continent of Gondwanaland (now South America, Africa, Madagascar, India and Australia). It remained tropical as the continents wandered and collided, but was gradually squeezed by the moving lands. So it ended up as the Coral Triangle, reaching from Malaysia to the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. That region preserves the whole evolutionary record of a long and continuous history, and therefore has more marine species than any other.
The over-fished ocean
People have been harvesting the abundance of sea life since the early days of our lineage. We may even have taken up walking on two legs for wading and foraging in coastal waters. Later we made more and more effective traps and boats, in recent years powering unbreakable fishing nets and steel trawls through delicate and complex marine ecosystems. For all our knowledge of wildlife ecology and sustainable yields on land, where we can see what’s going on, we never really understood how sea-life should be harvested properly. The result is that life in the ocean is now much depleted, and can only really recover where people agree to take the pressure off and let it breed and grow again. These precautionary and no-take agreements are very hard to reach, and meanwhile there are other threats that are even harder to manage.
The polluted ocean
Everything we make and do on land can be picked up and carried by water downstream and into the sea. Run-off includes phosphates and nitrates from farmlands, and sewage from livestock and people. Biologically active, these wastes drive algal blooms that sap the oxygen from sea water, suffocating other life and creating multiplying dead zones. Diverse poisons add to the harm: insecticides from farms, waste chemicals dumped or leaked from industrial plants, and toxins leached from garbage land-fills. We even allow about 11 million tonnes of plastic wastes into the ocean each year, all with their own physical and chemical impacts. And finally, carbon dioxide from almost everything we do is making sea-water steadily more acidic, dissolving the shells and skeletons of marine organisms. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres says, we’ve been using nature and the world ocean like a toilet.
The heating ocean
Far more than air and the land surface, water takes a lot of energy to heat up and it holds that energy for a long time. By absorbing most of the extra heat trapped on Earth by carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, the world ocean has protected us against its effects. This let us ignore or deny the underlying problem of global heating for too long, but the days of wilful ignorance are over. Since about 1970 average deep ocean temperatures have been rising, and those of surface waters are now accelerating upwards. And this changes everything: sea level as the ocean expands, the volume and direction of ocean currents, the timing and quantity of rainfall on land, and the frequency and destructive potential of storms that hit the coasts.
Action stations: this is not a drill!
World Ocean(s) Day is now deadly serious. We need to get a grip on sewage, chemical and plastic waste, our destructive treatment of marine ecosystems, and greenhouse gas emissions if we are to navigate this century without global catastrophe. The world ocean is too big and far too powerful to harm with impunity. We know what we should be doing with ever-greater clarity, but taken together our governments and businesses are doing far too little of it. Some are leading, and we should be applauding and rewarding them. Many others are lagging, influenced by polluters and other short-term interests, and we should be pressing them to do better. What hope there is lies with the millions of young people and dynamic institutions who support World Ocean(s) Day, and in the human capacity to restore peace with nature.
© Julian Caldecott
International Day for Biological Diversity, 22 May 2023
A moment of global agreement
Biological diversity (or biodiversity) means the variety of living things. It is a term that passed from conservation science into international law through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This was agreed at a UN conference in Rio in 1992, along with the conventions on climate change and desertification, and entered into legal force on 29 December 1993. Those were the heady days when peoples, experts and governments could agree on the need for urgent action to save nature and the human future. But in the years that followed goals and targets were repeatedly missed, and our global problems kept on getting worse.
A subtle but important idea
Meanwhile the word ‘biodiversity’ never really caught on as a way to promote public understanding. To make it make sense it often had to be translated into stories and pictures about endangered animals, plants and nature reserves. This gave the impression that biodiversity just meant ‘wildlife’. But it is in fact a different, deeper and more subtle idea about the nature of all living systems, which are involved in crises of global heating and climate change, desertification and water stress, and poverty and insecurity. So it’s worth going back to the very beginning to see what ‘biodiversity’ really means.
Immortal life
All living things (or organisms) share a common and continuous ancestry from the start of life on Earth nearly four billion years ago. Life as a whole is thus effectively immortal, even though all individual organisms eventually die. But if they have been able to cope in their own particular environment, they will have reproduced before dying. If so, then their offspring will keep their lineage going for another generation. Uncountable lineages since the beginning have thus struggled to continue, all competing to seed every new instant and environment with their own kind of life.
Diverse life
Under this pressure, the lineages of life spawned a near-infinity of different forms. Each made a living in its own way, and bred almost true until opportunity or necessity changed the rules of its existence. Then new forms arose by natural selection, time after time, rising and falling into extinction as changing environments dictated. All this creativity and intergenerational memory was made possible by complex molecules that stored, copied and passed on the information needed to make each organism in each place and time. These molecules are what we call genes and genetic material, the stuff of heredity and design information in living systems.
The Tree of Life
Now consider the myriad trillions of individual organisms and tens of millions of distinct lineages (or species) at any moment of Earth’s history, all living in intricate relationships with one another. Then you see the complexity and diversity of life on Earth, which we call biodiversity. Add the perspective of billions of years, with each species only lasting a short while before being replaced, and you have the immortal Tree of Life itself. This is a metaphor for something well beyond ordinary human understanding. A Tree rooted in the unimaginably distant past, bearing a shimmering, ever-changing canopy of life forms on the twigs and branches of its many tangled lineages
The Living World
And now add the curved surface of the Earth, oceans and atmosphere within which the Tree grows: the great planetary ecosystem that we call the living world or Biosphere. This unites all the subsystems and environments inhabited by every organism and species that lives on the planet today. These two visions of the Tree of Life and the Biosphere are useful and important, and should be taught from birth in all societies (as they are in some). The idea of the Tree tells us how we as organisms came into being, and that of the Biosphere tells us where and how we live as organisms among many others. The idea of biodiversity is integral to both.
Our divided minds
These concepts help to place us in the Universe. They also give us a context and reason for our existence, both as organisms and as conscious, social beings able to make informed and debated choices. These two aspects of being human are equally true. We have an animal existence shaped by heredity and evolutionary change, as well as individual consciousness shaped by culture and life-experience. But tensions within this double truth yield dilemmas, as well as enormous potential for cooperation and selfishness, which we often call good and evil.
Careless economics
People have recently gained access to fossil energy in the form of coal and petroleum, and combined its use with powerful new technologies. Thus we have built an economic system that has been allowed to operate almost regardless of the rules of ecological sustainability. Dire and dangerous consequences are now rampant: global heating from pollution that traps the Sun’s heat in the Biosphere; ecosystem degradation from over-exploitation and the expansion of settlements, infrastructure, plantations and farmlands; and mass extinction of non-human life forms from direct harm to natural ecosystems and from climate change.
The shedding of leaves
By these means we have blighted the Tree of Life, which is now shedding ‘leaves’ (species), ‘twigs’ (genera) and ‘branches’ (larger and deeper lineages) faster than at any time since the meteor strike that killed the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And it is doing so much faster than at any other time in Earth’s history. This loss of biodiversity is rapidly degrading the integrity of the living systems that we depend upon. The blight is also undermining the stability of the oceans, Amazon, Arctic and other major Earth systems. The consequences if they tip into chaos are scarcely imaginable, but on present trends it could happen in this very century. Thus the blight threatens to end our comfort and prosperity, and quite possibly our existence.
A day to remind us …
Which brings us to the International Day for Biological Diversity. This was declared by the United Nations in 1994 to mark the CBD’s coming into force on 29 December. But in 2001 the date was changed to 22 May to avoid the distractions of mid-winter and year-end festivals. Its purpose is to remind us of the need to respect the Tree of Life and the Biosphere, of what we have been doing to them with our careless economic system, and of how we must regulate our behaviour to stay within the bounds of sustainability. In short, of the need to restore harmony with nature before everything tips into chaos.
And a day for celebration and commitment
In 2023, the International Day for Biological Diversity is a reminder of acute danger. But it can also allow for celebration that we are starting to recognise the threat, and to act on it. Many now remember that nature is the most valuable thing we have. We are living more gently within nature, and voting for better and greener governments. Our great task now is to restore ecosystems and peace with nature, and on this day we should think realistically about how to do so. In practice it can mean donating to wildlife trusts and community rewilding initiatives, or participating in actions to protect nature, or helping to build a sense of ecological reality among young and old. All such efforts are welcome, and all are vital for the Tree of Life and Biosphere.
© Julian Caldecott
International Mother Earth Day, 22 April 2023
In debt to our mothers
International Mother Earth Day reminds us of the protection, comfort and education that we owe our own mothers, the mothers of all our ancestors, and the womb-like embrace of nature. But there is an edge to it as well, because although nature is beautiful, creative and generous, she is also powerful, her rules are not negotiable, and they are enforced by terrible sanctions.
Longing, belonging and biophilia
Deeper than the ideas of motherhood, reward and punishment, however, is knowing that we are part of nature and she is part of us. This is why we love fertility and diverse abundance. It is why we like gardens, and why so many people join nature clubs, volunteer for nature charities, and protest when nature is threatened. We sense that harm to nature means harm to us and our children.
Peace with nature as a good marriage
We can only live well when there is harmony between us and nature. But such peace is only possible if we accept that our own interests are not the only things that matter. Then we can join a community of interdependent beings, all with needs and rights that must be met for the whole system to work properly. Thus peace with nature is like a good marriage, one that accepts difference as well as common interest, and is maintained by traditions of respectful reciprocity.
Can we earn a viable future?
This line of thinking is deep-rooted in many indigenous cultures, and in recent years the Plurinational State of Bolivia has been particularly active in promoting it at the United Nations. A series of UN resolutions have sought to rebuild peace with nature by accepting an Earth-centred rather than a human-centred point of view. These ideas are becoming more influential, as the dangers of the global climate and nature emergency become clearer. They are signposts on the path by which humanity can earn a viable future.
The healing powers of ideas and actions
Everyone can help in this. We can all start to show respect for the rights of Mother Earth, simply by choosing to make space for her in our hearts. From there will come interest in learning more about nature, befriending people who share that interest, and becoming aware that even small groups can change the world. Just as a ruined ecosystem can regrow, so a damaged culture can recover through the healing power of informed ideas and community action.
Clean-up time
Many societies are now recovering their confidence in the wisdom of ecology. They include cities on the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour, countries like Costa Rica that have committed themselves to ‘peace with nature’, those like New Zealand that have embraced the ‘well-being economy’, and those like Ecuador that have written protections for the Rights of Mother Earth into their national constitutions. They also include states, provinces, municipalities, suburbs and innumerable communities that are quietly getting on with ecosystem restoration and clean-up, trusting in nature and voting for people whom they believe will support them.
Change, hope and progress
All share an awareness that sustainable well-being is available only to peoples whose laws and governance arrangements respect the needs and rules of nature. Recognising this direction of travel across humanity, despite many setbacks, we can hope that future Mother Earth Days will be even more celebratory than this one of 2023.
© Julian Caldecott
Avatar: the way of water
In The Abyss, his first Best Film Ever, James Cameron beautifully visualised intelligent creatures who had developed a subtle deep-sea civilisation based on, in and using the mysterious energetic substance that we have known for millennia as ‘water’ (see: Water: Life in Every Drop). In Avatar, his second Best Film Ever, he populated a tropical rainforest with fabulised forest creatures, indigenous Na’vi resisting a genocidal corporate land-grab, and the imaginative gleanings of coral reefs, such as giant Christmas-tree worms that vanish into their burrows among the trees as you approach.
In The Way of Water, his third Best Film Ever, Cameron returns to the forests of Pandora to pick up the story of the hybrid Na’vi-human family who defeated the ‘sky-people’ in Avatar. The same misty forest of giant trees, ferns, winged and spinning lizards, and the world-tree Eywa whose living mycelium embraces the whole forest and all who live and die within it. The family is deliciously happy, now with three natural children, one adopted daughter (Kiri, from Sigourney Weaver’s character in Avatar) and ‘Spider’ a half-adopted stray human who was left behind on Pandora as a baby when the sky-people were expelled.
Then a new star appears – the deceleration burn of a fleet of returning sky-people. They are coming not just for the rare mineral unobtanium but to settle Pandora as a refuge from the dying Earth. They arrive in characteristic human style, incinerating a swathe of paradise with their exhausts as they land, bulldozing the remnants, and using swarming robots to build a huge bridgehead fortress from which to spread their tendrils of exploitation. The Land of the Carrion Crow is set to replace the Land of Wonders.
Jake resumes his role as war-leader of the Na’vi, making for some spectacular action as a Na’vi war-party ambushes a freight train to loot weapons from the wreckage. It emerges that the invasion fleet has come equipped with a team of US Marines transplanted into Na’vi bodies for the sole purpose of finding and killing Jake. They are even blessed (Semper Fi[delis]!) by a video of the dreadful Colonel Quaritch to whom we had thought Neytiri had put paid in Avatar. Worse, his hideous restored soul now infests the leader of the Marine assassination squad.
In short order the Marines capture Jake’s and Neytiri’s children, including Kiri and Spider (who was sired by Quaritch). Having rescued all but Spider (who enters a sub-plot in which he helps and bonds with his ‘father’ the Quaritch-avatar), Jake realises that his presence endangers his people and decides to take his family far away. Riding winged lizards, they fly out over the ocean and settle among the Metkayina people, who are adapted to a semi-aquatic life with paddle-tails, finned forearms and a prodigious capacity to hold their breaths, aided sometimes by an oxygen-generating nudibranch worn on their backs.
The characters and with them the audience are returned to the home of all life: the ocean. The immersion is total, convincing, and entrancing. Thoroughly tweaked to comply with a different evolutionary heritage, the extraordinary creatures of Earth’s shallow tropical seas are visualised in dense and stunning detail. The intimate relationship between the Matkayina and the marine ecosystem and its inhabitants is explored in just enough detail to inspire, with the riding of flying-fish and plesiosaurs, and whale-like tulkun who are the spirit-siblings of the Matkayina.
The philosophy of the Matkayina is lived out before us. The way of water is one of origin and return, connectedness of all things back to the beginning, of mighty heart-beat and soft but inexorable power. And there is even a world-organism that is the marine outpost of Eywa and the sea of souls, to bind everything together into one sacred biosphere. Kiri reveals her own heritage as the daughter of the scientist who first sensed Eywa, by taking like a fish to the way of water and understanding (‘seeing’) the truth of the world-ocean.
The sky-people are doing their best to mess it all up. They’ve discovered that an oily extract drilled from the brains of freshly-killed tulkun can halt the human ageing process. So they have become whalers, complete with explosive harpoons and factory ships. The Marine squad, depleted by previous encounters with Jake and Neytiri but still led by the Quaritch-avatar, commandeer a whaler to continue their search for Jake. They raid villages to interrogate the natives, shoot their livestock and burn their ‘hooches’ as if they were in Vietnam. Then they start killing tulkun to lure they prey into the open.
The scene – barely imagined and never before filmed – is set for a magnificent showdown between mechanised death-systems controlled by sky-people and Pandoran life-systems cooperating with Jake, Neytiri, their various children and the Matkayina. A tulkun individual who has befriended the family does a particularly wonderful job of dodging explosive harpoons, flattening evildoers, and disposing of an awful Australian whaler in the Captain Ahab style. This is all glorious and riveting, and leads to repeated hair-raising episodes as the people we care about are cuffed to sinking ships, held at knife-point, and almost drowned in dark and foetid air pockets as Cameron channels the Titanic experience, but this time with Eywa helping.
The movie ends with life having triumphed, for now. Most of the Jake-Neytiri family and Matkayina survive and Kiri is well in tune with global life energies, but the Quaritch-avatar lives on (thanks to Spider) to cause havoc again, and the sky-people are still digging in. I can’t wait for Cameron’s next Best Film Ever. Maybe we’ll find out how to transmute the obsessive planet-killing behaviour of the human species into something more like peace with nature in the realm of the universal Earth Mother, our own Eywa. And just maybe, if billions of people see and understand The Way of Water, we can find peace with nature in real life.
© Julian Caldecott 2022
Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman (Sceptre, 2022).
In this gripping and disconcerting novel, the venomous lumpsucker (Cyclopterus venenatus) is a Baltic Sea fish that makes a living by cleaning the teeth of larger fish. Like the tropical cleaner wrasse, it is smart enough to recognise itself in a mirror and to remember the quirks and identities of its many clients, the better to avoid becoming a quick meal for a cheater.
But unlike the cleaner wrasse, it is clever and social enough to gang up on a cheater and punish it with deadly bites. And like humans, it is vindictive enough to kill another member of the cheater’s species, if it feels outraged enough and thinks it can get away with it. All this makes the venomous lumpsucker super-bright, sentient, and worth money.
The book opens when a permit to make a wild species extinct from the World Commission on Species Extinction (WCSE) is low and falling. Its value in the market has stagnated because too many licences were handed out for free, in order to gain the votes needed to set up the system in the first place, and then there was too much gaming and politicking to make it stick.
The WCSE demands 13 licences if the species that is driven into extinction is an intelligent one. Thus the venomous lumpsucker’s intellect is of interest to the Brahmasumadram Mining Company, whose robots are even now sucking up ferromanganese nodules from the sea bed around the species’ last breeding grounds.
Resaint is a consultant to businesses needing to know how many extinction permits to buy. She is one of the experts and employees who administer the bureaucracy of extinction. Her job is to check an old report on venomous lumpsucker intelligence. This had forced Brahmasumadram to buy 13 extinction licences, just in case, and to hire a consultant on animal intelligence.
Rumours that Resaint is about to certify the fish as intelligent reach Halyard, a Brahmasumadram executive. The cost of the 13 extinction permits “would barely register as a line item” to Brahmasumadram, but Halyard has his own interests. He bought the permits on behalf of the company for EUR 67,000 each, but then sold them personally, and illegally, in the belief that the WCSE was about to relax its rules.
The rule change would allow DNA samples, behavioural records and biometric scans of species stored in six Biobases to substitute for living creatures. This would make extinction potentially reversible and much harder to certify. Rumours of the new arrangement have already driven the price down to EUR 38,432, and Halyard expects it to fall much further. He plans to buy back the company’s 13 licences for peanuts, and pocket the difference.
But someone then destroys all six Biobases and their records of 19,000 species. Panic buying drives the price of an extinction permit relentlessly towards EUR 800,000. Halyard realises that he might cover the cost of replacing one permit, but not all 13, so the venomous lumpsucker must neither be certified as intelligent nor allowed to go extinct.
The stakes are raised when Brahmasumadram’s machines accidentally destroy the species’ last breeding reef. Faced with jail, Halyard desperately plays for time and heads to the Baltic to persuade Resaint to change her report. This she flatly refuses to do, but the species’ apparent extinction is even more of an issue for both of them. So begins a frantic search by Halyard and Resaint for any surviving population of venomous lumpsuckers.
His motivations start simply but become more complex as he is drawn to Resaint, while hers are only slowly revealed. She had dwelled on the fate of a now-extinct parasitoid wasp, and has decided that at least one human must be punished for mass extinction. And this must be done by an animal bright enough to know the meaning of vengeance. She feels a duty to be that human, and yearns to be sacrificed by venomous lumpsuckers.
But this quest can only be fulfilled if they are alive. So Halyard and Resaint criss-cross Europe, following clues to surviving populations of venomous lumpsuckers. Sanctuary North is the first stop, a private reserve in Estonia where endangered species are rescued from extinction. This is funded by credits from the WCSE, but their low value has forced it to rent storage for toxic waste. The barrels have leaked, and the venomous lumpsucker ponds are now dead.
Next up is Surface Wave, an offshore city in the Baltic, beneath which venomous lumpsuckers are thriving until they are poisoned by the city authorities. The search leads at last to the English West Country, which has been bought by the world’s richest man as a place for the last of every species to be used in the service of his own narcissism.
Along the way we discover that the UK is now known as the Hermit Kingdom. It has cancelled its treaty commitments, sealed its borders, and mined the Channel against humanitarian aid from the EU. And the US is mentioned only once, as a place that is no longer named “out of sheer embarrassment”. These futures are entirely plausible, given the state of present-day politics. And meanwhile we are also told who destroyed the Biobases, and for what greedy reason.
By the last five pages, I still had absolutely no idea how the story was going to end. I won’t tell, but I will say that a strength of the book is in its detail. Every sentence makes sense in the context of the dreadful world that humanity is building, with 85% of all wild species now headed for extinction. It exposes the monstrous contortions of capitalism in maximising private wealth, while others bleat about ethical planetary stewardship.
It all rings true from the current climate change debate. As I wrote in Surviving Climate Chaos (Cambridge, 2021): “erratic progress towards approximate agreements on fixing the climate problem is the compromise that has been squeezed out of tensions in the UN system between everyone knowing that something must be done and no one being willing to pay for it.”
The atmosphere and skill of Venomous Lumpsucker is reminiscent of Stark by Ben Elton, the 1989 comedy about green activists trying to prevent a shadowy elite escaping on luxury spacecraft from a world that they have destroyed for profit. Like the movie Don’t Look Up, as simulations of doomsday these works cannot be beaten for excoriating wit and dismal wisdom.
Humanity has no ethical justification for exterminating species, deliberately or neglectfully. But this will cut no ice without a mass movement driven by the sacredness of nature and a willingness to turn away from self-destructive pleasure and consumption. Meanwhile, all we can do is seek ways to slow things down, to raise awareness, to promote precaution.
I used to argue to clients that our own species could nominally be valued as equivalent to all others lumped together. With an annual human GDP of EUR 100 trillion, the other 50 million species would then be ‘worth’ EUR 2 million each. I figured that a price tag on every species in their cost-benefit analyses would make investors think twice before destroying any of them.
But I never thought that markets could do this job, for the very reasons that the WCES is failing to do it in Venomous Lumpsucker. Anyway the idea got nowhere, since development banks care little about extinction. It stalled in the same place as the idea that GHG emissions must be priced and rationed according to what the living world can tolerate, not what people want to do.
Economic tinkering with extinction pricing can make sense, but only as a delaying tactic until people realise that to survive we must make peace with nature. This will mean accepting and putting into practice the knowledge that ecological laws outrank human laws. Reading and understanding the message of this chilling book is a good place to start.
© Julian Caldecott 2022
A Peace with Nature petition, 2020
Over the last year or more, Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion have been demanding that we ‘follow the science’ – science that tells us how endangered we ourselves are becoming. But solving this is not easy or simple. It’s not just a question of a few nature reserves or recycling plastic bottles. Rather, the whole attitude that people are in charge and that nature should fit under human needs is just plain wrong. Nature is far more powerful than we are, and she is starting to respond to abuse with fires, floods, storms and new diseases. This response can only get worse if we continue to abuse nature, paying little or no attention to the science of ecology (see: Ecological Risk and the Climate emergency).
With this in mind, I started a petition on 8 March 2020, calling for Peace with Nature to be written into national constitutions, starting with Scotland’s. This would declare an end to humanity’s suicidal war with nature by acknowledging the supremacy of ecological reality and our dependence on nature. The key practical point is that a Court of Ecology would be established to which citizens would have the right to appeal for any law to be examined for ecological safety, and struck down if it is considered unsafe. This would provide an essential protection for citizens, future generations, non-human species, and nature as a whole, against unsafe decisions by politicians. The effect of this would be to place ecological law at a higher level than human law, and establish that the people are sovereign while nature is supreme (see Towards a Peace with Nature Constitution). This is a new constitutional idea, since other national constitutions make either the people or parliament both sovereign and supreme, with the result that all power lies with humans. This is clearly wrong if you accept that nature is more powerful than us. By accepting it, Scotland would set a new standard for other countries to follow. And people are starting to accept that the world is not there just to be exploited by us.
By 31 March 2020, the petition had been viewed 1,103 times, shared 186 times, and signed by 358 people. I decided then to draw the process to a close, and forward the results to the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament and media. My aim was to put some new ideas ‘out there’ for public debate, and comments from some who have signed the petition show that we are indeed thinking in new ways: “this is essential for sustainable life on earth”, “the concept of a Court of Ecology is staggeringly powerful”, “we have lost so much already globally, and Scotland is well placed to lead by example”, “this is what is needed – human rights need to be balanced with responsibilities and social good, and of course the right of other species to exist and flourish”, “this is something that should have been done decades ago – but better late than never”, “this is THE most important issue of our time/of all time”, and finally “though Scotland is not my home, Earth is, and we all share the same planet – we need to lead by example, to show how it can be done.”
The text of the Petition:
“This is an appeal to include within a new Scottish constitution an Article on Peace with Nature. The Article would declare the end of ‘war’ against nature and seek cooperation with like-minded peoples and governments. In practical terms, it would also establish a Court of Ecology, the role of which would be to decide, on behalf of the country’s citizens, whether or not any law is safely compatible with ecological sustainability, and possessing the authority to strike it down if not. It would help to safeguard the people and biosphere against dangerous mistakes by politicians. A constitution that establishes the supremacy of ecological law over human law, and that offers a practical and cautious way to put it into effect, would also set a new, replicable and deeply hopeful standard for all other countries.
“Natural ecosystems sustain water supplies, environmental security, pollination of crops, fisheries and soil fertility, and many other irreplaceable things. Yet these ecosystems are deteriorating fast, exposing people, farms and settlements to severe risks and costs. All the living systems that provide food, water and security for people and businesses are failing, as indicated by spreading deserts, droughts, wildfires, floods, storms, mudslides, epidemics, extinctions, famines, and political crises induced by them. Ecologists know these to be connected into one worldwide pattern, and also as manifestations of ecological tipping points, which threaten us all, along with our children and everything else that we love about the world.
“They are all signs of humanity’s ‘war’ with nature, which must end with ‘peace’. But peace with a superior power such as nature, with which one cannot negotiate, in practice means ‘submission’. This would require us to stay carefully within the boundaries of peaceful behaviour if our existence is to continue. To explicitly align the principles of ecological sustainability and good governance at a constitutional level is necessary to take the pressure off nature definitively, and encourage and enable natural regrowth to occur. Citizens who think that a law may violate ecological sustainability should have the right to petition for it to be reviewed, debated by experts, and struck down if it is unsafe. This new and empowering approach is founded on the hope that steady progress towards ecological sustainability will be fast enough to save the biosphere and humanity.”
Updates to supporters:
22 April 2020. The spirit flares again! Earth Day 2020 marks fifty years since the 1970 epicentre of a peak in environmental consciousness and efforts to improve the relationship between humanity and nature. Between 1968 (‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ by Garrett Hardin), and 1972 (‘The Limits to Growth’ by the Club of Rome), new environmental institutions were set up and laws passed around the world, the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment occurred, and the UN Environment Programme was born. The spirit of those times has flickered and flared ever since, and on 22 April each year we remember that the struggle continues, most recently through the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Extinction Rebellion, and the inspiration of Greta Thunberg, among many others. The petition to write Peace with Nature into national constitutions is a push in the same direction, and to help continue it you can join us on the Peace with Nature Constitution Facebook group.
17 April 2020. A ‘Peace with Nature Constitution’ Facebook group. In the run-up to Earth Day on 22 April, I’ve set up a group on Facebook called ‘Peace with Nature Constitution’, aiming for Scotland to lead a new deal between humanity and the living world. Do join and invite others to join. Let’s not forget that the coronavirus is only one threat among an infinite variety that we are just beginning to stir up. It’s time to pay attention to the rules of ecology, to forget everything we were ever told about humanity being in charge of the world. We are not. We must live more modestly and in peace if we are to survive.
6 April 2020. Waves of support. Ten days have passed and people keep signing this petition. We are all distracted by the lock-down at the moment, so I now plan to keep the petition open until Earth Day on 22 April. Maybe we can reach a magic number by then, but comments received meanwhile make it clear that the new idea that ‘people are sovereign while nature is supreme’ has real traction, and that meaningful constitutional protections for the ecological safety of all citizens, future generations, non-human species and the biosphere as a whole are desperately needed. The struggle continues.
27 March 2020. Delivering the future. In the last few weeks we learned a lot about humanity’s truly precarious position in the biosphere, and the value of cooperation and foresight. Meanwhile our petition was viewed or shared 1,200 times and signed by 330 people. I’ll circulate it now for one last weekend before sending it to the citizens’ assemblies, media and parliament. Maybe this Spring we have planted an idea that will germinate, shatter the concrete of modernity, and one day bear fruit. There is certainly new hope in the air. Peace with Nature!
20 March 2020. Moving the Earth. As we grow in numbers, the Secretariat of the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland has replied that the Assembly “is not geared up to consider petitions”, but that an Assembly on climate change is being planned and may be open to new ideas. My feeling is that we should keep agitating for these assemblies to consider Peace with Nature, while reaching out to parliament, the media, and society as a whole. We should accept that we are now a movement, one calling for peace and peace-keeping with nature to be written into all national constitutions everywhere, starting with Scotland. This is a logical step from our calls to follow the science, to restore the biosphere, and to rebel against extinction. What do you think?
19 March 2020. Baby steps. The coronavirus continues to break hearts while promoting mutual aid and new thinking on our place in nature. It’s the latest in a succession of ecological (fire, flood) and social (economic, political) hammer-blows that have hit us since 2008, knocking the stuffing out of our certainties, and calling into question the true sources of security and risk in our world. They all remind us that reason and reality are the things to pay attention to, and that cooperation and foresight are the things to value. One supporter wrote that a ‘Peace with Nature’ Constitution is only a baby step, and that is true. But if baby steps are all we can do right now, we must still do them.
17 March 2020. Imagine. One supporter wrote “This is THE most important issue of our time/of all time.” It reminds us that the galaxy may be littered with the remains of species who were clever enough to ruin their home worlds, but not wise enough to live at peace with nature. We can see the truth of this, and its power of warning. But the question remains: how to regulate ourselves to fair prosperity and ecological sustainability? A Peace with Nature Constitution is one part of the puzzle, and a Court of Ecology is another. But the aim is not to anticipate every ruling of such a Court, whatever our priorities. It is to empower and trust wise people to understand ecological reality and protect all living systems. Imagine having the right of appeal to a Court comprising people like Naomi Klein, Mark Carney, Hilary Mantel, Patrick Vallance, Margaret Atwood, Chris Whitty, and Brenda Hale. Add some serious ecology training and that’s what I imagine. It gives me hope, and joy.
16 March 2020. Healing new ground. We are now in uncharted levels of support for a wholly new constitutional idea: that the people are sovereign but nature is supreme. Also that powerful, practical means are essential to protect future generations, non-human species, and the web of life on Earth. Brilliant comments like this are coming in: “Excellent – this is essential for sustainable life on earth”, “the concept of a Court of Ecology is staggeringly powerful”, “We don’t have the option *not* to move forwards like this – we have lost so much already globally, and Scotland is well placed to lead by example”, and “Yes, this is what is needed. Human rights need to be balanced, responsibilities, social good, and of course the right of other species to exist and flourish.” So our movement is growing roots. Peace with Nature!
14 March 2020. Progress and principles. To recap, in this petition we are asking the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland to ensure that a Scottish Constitution includes an Article on Peace with Nature. This would end humanity’s suicidal ‘war’ with nature by acknowledging the supremacy of ecological reality and our dependent status with respect to nature. The key practical point is that a Court of Ecology would be established to which citizens would have the right to appeal for any law to be examined for ecological safety, and struck down if it is considered unsafe. This would provide an essential protection for citizens, future generations, non-human species, and nature as a whole, against unsafe decisions by politicians. The effect of this would be to place ecological law in principle at a higher level than human law, and establish for constitutional purposes that the people are sovereign while nature is supreme. This would set a new standard for everyone on Earth, with Scotland leading the way to a pragmatic but transformative solution to our existential crisis.
12 March 2020. Next steps to make peace with nature. Thanks so much for signing our petition to end the war against nature and set a new constitutional standard for keeping the peace. There are nearly 150 of us now, with lots of overseas support. But our aim is for Scotland to inspire the world by showing how to protect the biosphere and humanity, so it would be wonderful to boost the number of Scottish supporters. Therefore, please forward the petition and an encouraging note to anyone you know who might want to help, including any Scottish citizens and groups based in Scotland. We could then hope to make even more of an impact with the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland and the national media. Many thanks again. Peace with Nature!
Towards a Peace with Nature Constitution 2
The UK is exceptional in lacking a written constitution. Among its component nations, at least Scotland is contemplating independence, and with it the need for a written constitution to spell out the principles by which it defines and governs itself, relates to others, chooses its own priorities for justice and development, and reminds its citizens of the full range of their roles, rights, and responsibilities. As this process unfolds, it is worth noting four points.
- First, that those who frame new constitutions, whether ‘founding mothers’ or ‘citizens’ assemblies’, have the opportunity to learn from history and from elsewhere to create a new high-water mark in the evolution of human society.
- Second, that constitutions are long-term guiding documents, and should use prescriptive detail sparingly while also having built-in flexibility to allow for amendment and interpretation over time.
- Third, that a constitution must be widely understood and supported, so it should be built through inclusive processes of consultation, debate, participation, referendums and ultimate ratification by the people, and thereafter maintained through public education.
- Finally, that there are vital subjects at special risk of being missed in drafting a constitution, because they are little known publicly, or are only recently subjects of scientific certainty. These include Inherently ecological issues such as the causes, consequences, and potential mitigation of climate chaos, ecological collapse and mass extinction.
The last is my starting point, since the extent of mutual dependence between the well-being of a country’s people and the health of its ecosystems is now better understood the ever before. This knowledge comes from the science of ecology, which is the study of the living systems that comprise the biosphere. A constitution that does not start from the specific premise that ecological health is essential, and must be maintained, will therefore be obsolete before it is written. But ecologists have seldom been seen as sources of necessary guidance in public affairs, and this note aims to safeguard against the possibility of ecological neglect.
What follows is an appeal to include within any new constitution an Article on Peace with Nature. This would declare the end of ‘war’ against nature and seek cooperation with like-minded peoples and governments. In practical terms, it would also establish a Court of Ecology, the role of which would be to decide, on behalf of the country’s citizens, whether or not any law is safely compatible with ecological sustainability, and with the authority to strike it down if not. This goes far beyond the constitutional platitude that ‘nature is the patrimony of the nation and should be safeguarded for the benefit of future generations’, to which many countries subscribe even while being in ecological free-fall due to neglect of their own living systems.
Draft text for a ‘Peace with Nature’ Article is given in the following table with explanatory notes. It would only be a fragment of a constitution, however, and those framing a complete one would need to address many other issues, including property (e.g., whether terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems may be privately owned), rights (e.g., of citizens and other people, future generations, and non-human stakeholders), political participation and representation, and the aspirations and purposes of statehood and sovereignty. But all, ultimately, will need to be consistent with each other and with ecological sustainability.
| Draft text of a Peace with Nature Article | Explanatory notes |
By:
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We resolve:
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To put these aims into effect, we further resolve:
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Note 1 – ‘The Disasters of War’. Scientists organised through networks such as the United Nations Environment Programme, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), have shown humanity to be pushing at and breaking through the boundaries of ecological safety. Limits are known to have been exceeded in at least four areas: biosphere integrity, climate change, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows. Moreover, based on published evidence from many taxa, the Living Planet Index shows a decline of over 60% in wildlife abundance since 1970. In 2019, IPBES found that close to a million species are threatened by human actions, while other analyses imply that up to a million species are becoming committed to extinction each year due to trophic shifts and loss of co-evolved species. These signs add up to the key dimensions of climate and ecological emergency: climate chaos, ecological breakdown, and mass extinction. All have the potential to induce chaotic environmental change, which on the scale now foreseen could ultimately prove fatal to humanity.
Note 2 – Ecological tipping points. Natural ecosystems sustain water supplies, environmental security, pollination of crops, fisheries and soil fertility, among many other things that cannot be replaced by artificial means. Yet it is clear that these ecosystems are deteriorating fast, exposing people, farms and settlements to severe risks and costs. The truth is that all the living systems that provide food, water and security for people and businesses are failing, as indicated by spreading deserts, droughts, wildfires, floods, storms, mudslides, epidemics, extinctions, famines, and political crises induced by them. These are typically reported as individual ‘natural disasters’, but ecologists know them to be connected into one worldwide pattern, and also as manifestations of ecological tipping points. Several of these at the largest scale are now known and feared, including deforestation in the Amazon basin, which at over 20% of land area is very close to the point where there will be insufficient rainforest to maintain the region’s moist climate. Sustained and repeated drought would then permit the rapid replacement of all forest by fire-maintained grassland. A similar scenario is in prospect in Borneo and Sumatra. In all three cases, forest and land fires are underway and consistent with the tipping point prediction, with catastrophic implications for tropical biodiversity, environments and livelihoods.
Meanwhile, a potential Arctic tipping point poses a clear and present danger to all life on Earth. An Arctic ‘death spiral’ has been documented (Figure 1), so-called because it displays in spiral form the volume of sea ice in the Arctic ocean declining since 1979, its depth having been measured by military submarines and its area by satellite imagery. Here it is notable that before 1980 there was little seasonal variation in sea ice volume as so much of it was in the form of deep, multi-year ice. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s multi-year ice declined and seasonal effects became more marked, and after 1997 most of the ice became single-year and began dramatically expanding in the winter and contracting in the summer months. The declining minimum ice volume in September each year (the innermost line) is the key point to note, since from the trends visible this seems likely to approach zero in the early 2030s.
Figure 1: The Arctic ‘death spiral’
The melting of ice and burning of permafrost peat in the Arctic since 1979 is from the small amount of global heating so far, as a result of carbon emissions from industry and deforestation since about 1950 when the ‘carbon balance’ tipping point was reached for the biosphere as a whole. With no ice to absorb extra greenhouse heat in the 2030s, Arctic water will heat up much faster than before (considering the 80-fold difference between the heat capacity of water and its latent heat of fusion), accelerating the melting and decay of permafrost peat, and release of methane. Methane is far more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, and the sudden release of trillions of tonnes of tCO2e during the 2030s and 2040s would greatly amplify the worldwide greenhouse effect, causing total climate chaos, decades of starvation, war and refugee movements, and the transformation of all societies and businesses.
Note 3 – Peace with Nature. The notion that we have been destroying the very ecosystems that sustain us can be expressed by saying that we are in a suicidal ‘war’ with nature. The alternative to this is ‘Peace with Nature’, an idea from Costa Rica, which in 1948 gave up its armed forces in favour of public health care and education, and committed itself in 2007 to resolve all conflicts between nature and its citizens. But Costa Rica is exceptional, due to its history of equitable land settlement (since the 16th century), official pacifism (since the 1940s), and innovative environmentalism (since the 1980s). Green investment over 30+ years has put Costa Rica in a strong position, but most of the rest of the world has run out of time to copy them. Inspiring leadership under the ‘Peace with Nature’ slogan, backed by real systemic change, is now needed globally to mobilise citizens and reshape institutions and economic systems. But ‘peace’ with a superior power such as nature, with which one cannot negotiate, in practice means ‘submission’. This would require us to stay carefully within the boundaries of peaceful behaviour if our existence is to continue. Knowing where the boundaries are is a complex issue, for which it would be wise to trust (within reason, and under collective supervision) those with deep ecological knowledge. To explicitly align the principles of ecological sustainability and good governance at a constitutional level is necessary to take the pressure off nature definitively, and encourage and enable natural regrowth to occur.
Note 4 – Rebellion, reaction, and bounded freedom. Many believe that ‘war’ with nature is inherent to the modern world, from its cosmology and values to its business models and technologies. They therefore prefer to strengthen communities and links between them and the ecosystems that sustain them. Coupled with a call to ‘follow the science’, this commitment is at the heart of the Extinction Rebellion and Climate Strike movements. Now tens of millions of citizens are demanding change, and the anxiety-motivators of this demand will only increase since ecosystems across the world really are disintegrating. Experience suggests that reaction to demands for systemic change will be limited to cosmetic tinkering until ecological sustainability is placed at the heart of governance, for which a constitutional provision is uniquely suited. But it is important to distinguish between the hard boundaries of ecological sustainability, and the ability both of capitalist enterprise to create shareable wealth and that of the state to improve enforceable equity. The boundaries are knowable through ecological science, and protectable through reason and the precautionary principle, but sharing and equity depend on values that are cultural and mutable. Our survival may require us to live within ecological boundaries, but our contentment requires us to achieve effective political settlements and freedoms within those boundaries. These are very different aims, and a constitution should recognise that they are both important.
Note 5 – The Court of Ecology. Here the draft suggests how to make Peace with Nature a practical reality. It does this by calling for a Court of Ecology to defend the boundaries of ecological sustainability by considering evidence and deciding whether existing laws can or cannot safely be allowed to stand. The Court would offer an accountable way to safeguard society and nature by reviewing and if necessary vetoing unsafe laws, through transparent deliberation, debate and collective decision-making.
Note 6 – Composition and powers of the Court. Numerous issues would need to be resolved as the new system is developed, including those to do with the selection and accreditation of ecologically-trained judges and advocates, the rules of evidence, subpoena and other powers of the Court, and the enforceability of its decisions. One suggestion on the appointment of Judge-Ecologists is contained illustratively in the draft text.
Note 7 – The right to petition the Court. The strategic intention is for those who think that a law may violate ecological sustainability to have the right to petition the Court for it to be reviewed, debated by experts, and possibly struck down. This process would be slow, algorithmic, and incremental, founded on the hope that steady progress towards ecological sustainability will be fast enough to save the biosphere and humanity. But if we run out of time we may have to think again, and rebuild human society guided by the precautionary principle and the need for urgent restoration of ecosystems. Meanwhile, though, a ground-breaking constitution that establishes the supremacy of ecological law over human law, and that offers a practical and cautious way to put it into effect, would set a new, replicable and deeply hopeful standard for all other countries.
© Julian Caldecott
Water 2020: new edition, new problems, new solutions
“As water crises multiply, and mass extinction and climate chaos escalate, we have the sense that nature is serving us a very clear warning and that something major has to change, or else. To respond requires that our adaptive skills are informed by ecology and applied effectively. The key issue is whether we can adjust our ways of life to make it in our new global environment. Building an informed awareness of water, and the life it bears in every drop, has to be a key starting point. Public involvement in the environmental struggle is now worldwide, transforming political agendas everywhere. Science, spirit and community are working together to release energy for change and justice at a scale seldom seen before. The channelling of this energy into ecological restoration and renewal of our relationships with nature and with each other is the great task of everyone alive today or soon to be born. It is time to make Peace with Nature.” (Water: Life in Every Drop, pbk ISBN 9781843199632, hbk ISBN 9781843199649.
More of the same but worse, plus chaos
As large swathes of England are flooded and much of Australia burns, the 2020 edition of Water: Life in Every Drop introduces key ideas of water ecology and sustainable development. These ideas are essentially unchanged since 2008, and stories I tell and their implications for our relationship with water remain true. The need is now even stronger for ecological thinking to shape our laws and constitutions. I have weeded the book for anything that seems misleading on current reading, and in the process I updated it. Lake Baikal in Siberia is now more threatened by pollution, for example, and there are many more people living around Lake Naivasha in Kenya. These reflect general trajectories, as does the rising power of China, but for water, ecosystems and climate the position can be summarised as ‘more of the same but worse, plus chaos’.
Meanwhile, many forebodings have been fulfilled. The consequences of global heating are hard to anticipate in detail as they involve turbulent systems, but some predictions are spot on. Many thousands of wild species are sliding into extinction each year, the sea is rising, atmospheric and oceanic currents are wobbling, multi-year droughts are grinding down large parts of Australia, North America and southern Africa, heatwaves are killing people in Europe and India, and lethal wildfires are raging with unheard-of ferocity in unexpected places. Every new year is breaking records for mean global surface temperature, and savage storms are taking heat and water from warmer oceans and slamming into unprepared coastlines. And all this follows with precision the expected path of a biosphere newly-loaded with greenhouse gases released by the actions of humanity.
It was recognised in 2016 that human impacts mean that we are now living in a transition to a new geological era, the Anthropocene, which will be clearly visible in future sedimentary deposits that are rich in plastics and poor in fossil species. The Anthropocene succeeds the gentler Holocene, which followed the end of the Ice Ages 11,700 years ago. Our cities and farming systems depend on Holocene conditions, so there is now real concern that humanity will die out during this transition, along with most other life forms. We have the sense that nature is serving us a very clear warning and that something major has to change, or else. And we’re also running out of time. The melting of the Arctic Summer sea ice, which for decades has been absorbing surplus solar heat trapped on Earth by an enhanced greenhouse effect, is a particularly worrying trend that seems to be heading for zero in about 2030. After that, all bets are off.
Local water, local heroes, 2020
But we should remember that there are thousands of brilliant efforts by small groups all over the world — an aquifer or catchment restored here, a neighbourhood preparing against disaster there — multiplying everywhere but invisible to big government. These grass-roots actions must be validated and supported, networked and replicated, until they condense into a new Zeitgeist in which we all suddenly realise that of course we must pay attention to ecology, of course we must protect the web of life, and ask ourselves why else would we have minds, spirits and communities?
And meanwhile, we should also remember:
- that there are thousands of cities and hundreds of states and provinces that are getting on with ecologically-positive action regardless of what their national governments are doing;
- that some small countries are declaring ‘peace with nature’ and halting or reversing deforestation, extinction, and greenhouse gas emissions, with Costa Rica, Nepal, Bhutan, New Zealand, Iceland, East Timor and Portugal all springing to mind;
- that many corporations now see their assets as dangerously exposed to ecological risks, with their managers, shareholders and regulators struggling to forge new rules, often encouraged by potent divestment campaigns; and
- that since 2018 the Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion movements have been putting enormous constructive, non-violent pressure on governments across the world, forcing a re-think of human priorities and laws in the face of impending ecological collapse.
The future, if we can but imagine it …
This is all great stuff, and because this re-thinking was starting when I wrote this book I began Chapter 10 with a visit to the year 2085: ‘The biosphere, having been saved…’ While it is easy to be discouraged if you look only at big governments and the big picture, hope is to be found hidden in the undergrowth where local actions, local heroes, and small countries are the green shoots that will one day replace the deadly old system. In the process, we’ll have to accept that the rules of ecology apply to everyone, always and everywhere, but that we have the intelligence, compassion, will and freedom needed to rebuild a world that is good for everyone — born and unborn, weak and strong, human and non-human.
Physics, astronomy, evolution, governance
There are other challenges for the imagination here. They include background themes, such as the astonishing physical chemistry of water itself (Chapter 1) and the presence of water on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system and beyond (Chapter 2). Also, the origins of the ‘tree of life’ (Chapter 2), and the influence of human adaptation to coastal environments, in which foraging in water helped to shape our minds and bodies (Chapter 3). And the EU’s Water Framework Directive (Chapter 9), which is now seen as part of a global drive towards green ‘experimentalist’ governance, where local heroes meet, teach and make friends with national and international institutions.
Ocean plastics and acidification, wildlife collapse, water shortage
Meanwhile, some topics in the book have been publicised and popularised to the point of common knowledge and general interest. They include the following.
- Plastic in the oceans (Chapter 4) is choking, entangling and poisoning sea life, and is an inevitable consequence of making non-biodegradable materials for everyday use by everyone in an exploding population on a small planet. To solve it we will have to phase out the use of such plastics through effective regulation and/or taxation, while also cleaning up the debris.
- Acidification of the oceans (Chapter 2) is eroding the web of aquatic life that sustains most of the biosphere and is an inevitable consequence of burning fossil fuels into carbon dioxide, which dissolves in water to make carbonic acid. The current rate looks set to make the oceans more acidic than they have been for 65 million years. To solve this, we will have to phase out the burning of fossil fuels through effective regulation and/or taxation, while also cleaning up the air by capturing the greenhouse gases that have already been released.
- Collapse of wildlife numbers and diversity (Chapters 2, 4 and 9), by more than half since the 1970s, is an inevitable consequence of feeding and enriching humans by replacing most natural ecosystems with artificial ones and then spraying poisons over everything. To solve it we will have to deploy environmental education, community ecosystem ownership and benefit sharing, payment for ecosystem services, ecological restoration, organic farming and other effective arrangements in millions of locations, while also protecting natural ecosystems and wildlife populations through effective regulation, and systematically closing down and cleaning up all sources of agricultural, industrial and urban pollution.
- Critical shortage of fresh water in urban areas (Chapters 6, 8 and 9) is an inevitable consequence of not paying attention to where water comes from, not managing catchments properly, and not charging users enough to pay for these things (while also, often, being an inevitable consequence of rising sea levels and drought induced by global heating). To solve it we will have to establish ecosystem protection, ecological service payments and restoration arrangements in upstream locations, while investing in public water systems that guarantee adequate water for all at affordable cost, solving the climate change problem if we can, and managing humanely the evacuation of unviable cities where we have to.
Learning to survive
Some of the changes that face us during the birth of the Anthropocene may well be manageable, but only if our adaptive skills can be informed by ecology and applied effectively. The key issue is whether we can adjust our ways of life to make it in our new global environment. Building an informed awareness of water, and the life it bears in every drop, has to be a key starting point.
© Julian Caldecott
Praise for Water: Life in Every Drop:
- ‘A brilliant overview of an enormous subject’ – Steven Poole, The Guardian.
- ‘Should be read far, wide and as soon as possible . . . it does an excellent job of promoting a rational, effective, trans-ideological approach to environmental decision making’ – Miguel Mendonça, Resurgence.
- ‘Caldecott keeps a masterly hand on the reins of what is a vast topic . . . With laudable dexterity, [he] moves from the very small to the very large, from the interactions of atomic particles to the role water plays in the biosphere’ – The Ecologist.
- ‘A prophetic read’ – Edward P. Echlin, ecological theologian and author of The Cosmic Circle.
- ‘Includes a lucid presentation of the Aquatic Ape Theory . . . The book shows that we can avoid disaster if we come to our senses and give Gaia a helping hand’ – Elaine Morgan, evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Descent of Woman and The Scars of Evolution.
- ‘What could be more important than water? This book looks at every aspect of water from its chemistry and mystery to its central role in the ecology of EVERY LIVING THING. And yet, it’s a riveting read, full of fascinating stories from an author who actually knows what he’s talking about. So many of these environmental books are written by journalists with no real grounding in the subject. But Julian Caldecott is an ecologist with decades of field experience which enrich this work. He’s been there, done it, seen it and best of all, has put into practice ways of solving local water crises of every hue. Give it to all your friends and relations – they’ll love you for providing a good read and you’ll glow with the pleasure of sharing knowledge on the big issue of the coming decade.’ – ‘Smartyhands’ on Amazon.
- ‘I’ve just finished reading Water by Julian Caldecott. There’s a long waiting list to read it after me, but it goes deeply into marine pollution, of course. One point he makes is that visitors (tourists) to the coast need to take care of the environment they’re visiting. Earlier in the book there’s a good summary of what a Biosphere is, which I sent to the members of our Grabouw Beautiful committee. Highly recommended!’ – Andy Selfe, Whale Coast Conservation (Cape Town).
- ‘Water by Julian Caldecott is a brilliant, beautifully written book which I found very informative and initially depressing, but it finished on a positive note with a clear message of hope.’ – Henrik Chart, Land, Sea & Islands Centre, Arisaig (Scotland).