Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Shirley Williams
Former Liberal Democrat Leader in the House of Lords
From 99 words collected by Liz Gray, published by
Darton, Longman & Todd www.99words.co.uk
99 pence from the sale of each book will go to Peace Direct
WELCOME
T
he first principle of ethical and ecological living is ourselves that we are shaping Earth The very notion that
to live in harmony with oneself, with the fellow humans have become the shapers of Earth makes Earth
members of the human family, and with all the guffaw in swirls of violence.
species of the Earth community. Unfortunately, In the same issue of the Journal, author Ginger Strand
rather than living in harmony, the industrial societies writes: The idea of the anthropocene plays too slickly into
have been busy controlling, dominating and reshaping the the hands of the techno-utopians who will argue that since
natural world to suit the industrial design and financial we are at the helm, we might as well put our hands on the
greed of modern civilisation. Now it is being proposed rudder and steer. The very word anthropocene makes too
that we should name our age the Anthropocene epoch, little accommodation for anything else besides us; its not
meaning the age of Man. going to help us live with more grace in a world full of things
The Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, who proposed this we cant control, things we dont know, things we might
new name, has very good intentions. He believes that by never know What we dont need is another word that feeds
highlighting human centrality and our idea of the all-powerful controllers
the impact of human activities upon we dream or fear we are.
the natural world we might wake up The name The late eco-theologian Thomas
and do something to save the planet; Berry proposed another name, which
we might develop a new sensibility
anthropocene is much more humble and hopeful. He
for sustainability. However, many completely muddles suggested that we name the coming
ecologists and environmentalists are the message epoch the Ecozoic. He urged humanity
worried about this proposal and to repair the damage it has inflicted on
are asking a fundamental question: the Earth and to bring about an era
by naming a geological epoch after ourselves are we not that is respectful of Nature, self-renewing and ecologically
committing the ultimate act of human arrogance? sustainable. He envisioned a new age in which humans and
There is a reason for such questioning. Human hubris has all other species live in harmony with each other. (Somehow
been in evidence before even when intentions may have Thomas Berrys suggestion has not caught the attention of
been good. For example, the Whole Earth Catalog once scientists and academics in the same way as Paul Crutzens.)
proclaimed that we are as gods and might as well get good Once upon a time people believed in God; they believed
at it. And more recently, Mark Lynas named the human that God would solve all their problems. Today we have a
species the god species. new god: the God of Technology. The industrial mindset
One way or another the industrial societies possessing has come to believe that we will find solutions to all
powerful technologies have come to believe that they our problems in technology, and somehow the name
can and have conquered Nature. Now Nature must be anthropocene leads us towards that conviction, but in this
managed, manipulated and even looked after but only issue of Resurgence & Ecologist Charles Eisenstein takes
so that it can better serve the ever-increasing demands of the view that technological fixes have severe limitations
industrial societies. and that the problems created by technology cannot be
In this context even the well-intentioned idea of solved by technology. He says we have to find other ways.
anthropocene could prove to be dangerous. Writing in the Similarly other authors also highlight the need to reconnect
Spring 2013 issue of Earth Island Journal, Kathleen Dean with Nature and thus pave the way to the Ecozoic Era.
Moore of Oregon State University says: We should use The choice is ours. Either we can embrace the suggested
words cautiously. Words are powerful, magical, impossible Anthropocene epoch, or create a new Ecozoic Era.
to control. With a single misguided phrase they can move
a concept from one world into another, altering forever the
landscape for our thinking.
So no, not the anthropocene. That name completely
muddles the message.
Proud, solipsistic creatures that we are, we can convince Satish Kumar
1 Welcome
Satish Kumar introduces the new Ecozoic Era,
which shifts our collective concerns to a deeper
respect for Nature and ecology
FRONTLINE
4 ACTION FROM THE GRASS ROOTS
Lorna Howarth reports
NEW ONLINE
www.resurgence.org www.theecologist.org Social Media
Virginia Kennedy explains how a All the stories environmentalists across Twitter: @resurgence_mag
traditional mechanism of conflict the globe are talking about; plus lots @the_ecologist
resolution may help us today; of ideas for Green Living including Facebook: Resurgencetrust
Barbara Gardner on compassion and Associate Editor, Susan Clarks new TheEcologist
learning from our spiritual heritage; foraged foods column
Lindsay Clarke praises the remarkable Check for new daily content, including Resurgence & Ecologist App
work of an under-rated novelist; and regular analysis of key conservation
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Helen Moore asks what influences the issues plus brand new films from the
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eco-poets imagination? Ecologist Film Unit
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USA
ROOFTOP READY
A man in New York is taking advantage of the
urban heat islands that a concrete jungle
creates in order to grow exotic hot-house veggies in
which he makes available to other budding urban
gardeners. As the seeds are acclimatised to the harsh
city environment, even the notoriously petulant
his rooftop garden. It can be a hostile environment okra will grow, as well as chillies, aubergines and
up there in the NY skyline, so the appropriately tomatoes. Pickens collaborative ethos, where he
named Zach Pickens has been selectively saving seeds shares his knowledge and seeds, is the antithesis of
from his most resilient plants for several seasons Monsantos profit-before-planet strategy. What a
now and has produced a range of Rooftop Ready great example of grass-roots activism!
Seeds (a pun on Monsantos Roundup Ready seeds), www.rooftopready.com
USA
GREENSBURGS GONE GREEN!
S ix years after the Kansas town of Greensburg was hit by a
devastating tornado, it has risen from the ashes and rebuilt itself
along sustainable principles. With LEED-certified (energy-efficient)
municipal buildings saving US$200,000 annually in energy running
costs on 13 of its largest buildings; a net metering policy (similar to
the European feed-in tariff) that makes solar and wind power more
affordable for residents; and a new town master plan that includes
green corridors and a walkable downtown area, Greensburg now
truly deserves its name. The community-led redevelopment attracted
state and federal funding, to help establish renewable energy
initiatives such as BTI Wind Energy, a local wind-turbine company
that sells small-scale turbines for residential and commercial use
that now generate almost 10% of the towns electricity alone. It is
hoped Greensburg will now be more resilient in the face of any future
extreme weather events.
www.greenpeace.org
HUNGARY
GMO CORNFIELDS DESTROYED
R ecent news reports from Argentina detail
how the country has covered millions of
hectares with GMOs; but not all countries are
ploughed up to stop pollen spreading and the
corn getting into the food chain in Hungary.
Unlike in several other EU member countries,
quite so gung-ho about the biotech industrys GM seeds are banned in Hungary. Worryingly,
claims to be able to feed the world through the free movement of goods within the EU means
genetic engineering. Hungarys deputy state that authorities will not investigate how the seeds
secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development, arrived in Hungary, leaving a high risk of GMOs
Lajos Bognar, has stated that almost 1,000 continuing to leak into Europes ecosystems.
acres of maize found to have been planted See Frontline Online (www.theecologist.org) for
with Monsantos Pioneer GM seeds have been information about Argentinas GM soya boom.
BHUTAN
THE WORLDS FIRST
ORGANIC COUNTRY
B hutan plans to become the worlds first
country to turn its agriculture completely
organic. It will ban the sale of pesticides
and fertilisers, relying instead on the healthy
ecosystems of its farms and on farm waste.
Contrary to World Bank estimations, Bhutan
aims to increase its agricultural output, exporting
high-quality niche foods to India and China. In
one of the most refreshing statements from a
minister of agriculture, Pema Gyamtsho said:
We are Buddhists and we believe in living in
harmony with Nature. Animals have the right to
live, and we like to see plants happy and insects
happy. Bhutan is already the worlds best
example of sustainable development: 95% of the
population has clean water and electricity, 80%
of the country is forested, and it is both carbon
neutral and food secure.
MALAWI
PEDAL POWER CINEMA
Thousands of acacia trees are being planted as part of Africas Great Green Wall project
Photo David Rose/Panos
A
gas-guzzling motor race might prove an unlikely land, the less productive it becomes.
comparison for an environmental field trip, In a bid to fight desertification and the associated poverty,
but as our convoy of 4x4s cuts through the an epic land-restoration project has begun across the Sahel.
Senegalese bush, I feel like were competing in Dubbed the Great Green Wall of Africa, the initiative aims
the Dakar Rally. Bounding over dunes and brushing past to re-establish a more sustainable environment by planting
acacia trees, our driver picks a path across this harsh, an ambitious 4,831-mile-long corridor of trees between
unforgiving terrain using the brake lights of the car in front Senegal and Djibouti.
to navigate through the dust. Keen to learn more, I packed my bags for West Africa and
Excited by the spectacle, children run from their villages joined a UN-backed field trip to visit a number of Green
to wave at us, while bemused shepherds and their cattle look Wall pilot sites in northern Senegal. Accompanied by NGO
up from shady spots beneath the trees. researchers and representatives from
Occasionally, we pass a horse and cart various African governments (plus
transporting giant inner tubes full of
The Great Green Wall delegates from the Turkish government),
water from wells to nearby villages. project is as much about our expedition started out bright and
Welcome to the Sahel.
This semi-arid wilderness stretches
enfranchising these small early with a briefing in the Senegalese
capital, Dakar.
across the African continent from villages as it is about Leaving Africas most westerly city
Senegal to Djibouti and borders one of planting trees behind us, our convoy bumped its
the most inhospitable places on Earth way through the dusty, traffic-clogged
the Sahara Desert. It is a place of feast streets and into the bush, where we
and famine, but mainly famine; for three months of the peeled off the tarmac and onto a dirt track road.
year the heavens open and for the other nine this parched It was an uncomfortable, bone-shaking journey, which
earth doesnt receive a single drop of rain. But despite these Michele and I shared with Nora Berrahmouni, a forestry
lengthy droughts, this delicate ecosystem supports a rich officer for the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture
variety of wildlife and millions of inhabitants who eke out Organization) and smail Belen, Deputy General Director at
fragile existences farming the land. Turkeys Ministry of Forestry.
However, this already precarious knife-edge existence is Turkey is also suffering from desertification, so smail is
under increasing threat from a phenomenon known globally keen to learn more about the Great Green Wall, which he
as desertification. romantically describes as a modern-day Silk Road, only
Despite what some people think, desertification is not green. Hes one of many representatives from Turkey
the advancing of the desert; we are not talking about sand and is joined by colleagues from the Turkish International
encroachment here, explains Michele Bozzano, a research Cooperation and Development Agency (TKA), an
support officer for Bioversity International. Desertification organisation that has provided funding. Other Green Wall
describes the breaking of an equilibrium, which turns the benefactors include the African Union, the European Union,
land into desert. the United Nations and various partner organisations.
Typically, the main causes of desertification are intensive One of the first lessons we learn is that the Great Green
cattle grazing and deforestation, which are often the Wall is not simply about planting a corridor of trees. Its
desperate acts of impoverished pastoralists living along more of a mosaic; you need to plant the right species in the
the Sahel. The farmers around here have an awareness right place, says Nora. And species doesnt mean only
of sustainability they know when they are overdoing it, trees it could be a shrub or a herbaceous plant. Its about
says Michele. But when they have to buy medicine for mimicking Nature and in Nature, of course, you dont
their children they will keep exploiting the land. just see trees.
Its a vicious cycle: the more desperate farmers become, For the Great Green Wall to succeed, Nora says, it is
the more they work the land, and the more they work the essential the trees that are planted benefit the people living
Julian Broughton,
composer and poet
Palm oil, a rainforest risk commodity, has invisibly infiltrated our cakes, biscuits and crisps REX Features
I
asked a journalist to come and have a rainforest oil is grown in plantations on land cleared of rainforests.
picnic one day. Intrigued, she joined me on a rug in an Liquid at room temperature, it has invisibly infiltrated
English woodland. I laid out a selection from a local our cakes, cookies, crisps and curries as a replacement
supermarket. A Scotch egg, cake, apple juice, crisps, for harmful artificial trans fats. The corned beef also lay
delicious biscuits, some Dutch cheese and a tin of corned unopened because beef exports to Russia, Egypt and Europe
beef. You can eat anything you like, I said, as long as from Brazil have, over decades, helped to drive the massive
you can be sure theres no rainforest in it. expansion of cattle ranching there, the principal cause of
She reached for the crisps. Checking the packet, she saw Amazon rainforest destruction.
that it said they were cooked in vegetable oil. That could In the last two decades the expansion of agribusiness has
mean palm oil, I said. Its out. Next came the Scotch become the greatest cause of deforestation in the tropics.
egg. Its tricky, I said. Soya from the Amazon used to be Forest risk commodities such as beef and leather, soya,
imported through Holland as cheap feedstock for Europes palm oil, paper and pulp, and biofuels now drive some 80%
cows, pigs and chickens, but today most is going to China. of deforestation not poor families cutting wood for fuel!
Since 2005, the soya moratorium in Brazil has virtually In Africa, massive Chinese investment in land is under
ended the expansion of soya ranches into the Amazon, but way to secure food provision, and palm oil is expanding
if it is rescinded, the encroachment could begin again. there rapidly too, just as it is in the Peruvian Amazon, as
In the end, the only item we could be absolutely sure did Brazil successfully squeezes illegal deforestation out of its
not contain a rainforest footprint was the apple juice. Palm own frontier states.
I
n 2008, global sales of organic food hit US$52 billion Clearly, it cannot be assumed that all programmes
more than double the US$23 billion spent six years designed to protect the environment are good for people.
earlier. Last year, the 5.8-millionth hybrid car was sold. Tribal peoples are often at the losing end of conservation
One thing is clear: a concern for the environment is and renewable energy projects, explains Alice Bayer of
embedded in the public consciousness like never before. Survival International, a group that campaigns for tribal
This pattern is evident at other levels. Until the mid- communities. About 80% of the worlds most biologically
1990s, environmental campaigners were at loggerheads rich regions are inhabited by Indigenous communities,
with politicians and businesses, but today green issues she says, but the establishment of conservation areas on
dominate global events and business statements. about 12% of the Earths surface has created 130 million
This high profile could be seen as a victory for conservation refugees.
environmental activists. But there are signs that, as the In 2011, a tribe in Kenya were subjected to a brutal
green movement has become eviction after two conservation
mainstream, it has also become charities agreed to pay US$2
a tool for the powerful rather Many companies that discuss million for their land. A few
than for those most vulnerable years earlier, a plan to create a
to the ill effects of the changing
their green practices in public are national park in Guinea-Bissau
environment. Such concerns simultaneously lobbying against met intense resistance from
have been around for several legislation behind closed doors locals. In 2009, 245 families
decades the term greenwash were asked to leave an area in
was coined in 1986. But the India to make more room for
growing public awareness of green issues has strengthened tigers. Across the world people are being displaced to make
the PR clout of eco-friendly practices, and businesses are room for renewables projects, while biofuel plantations
clamouring to cash in. have led to deforestation and food scarcity.
Multinational retailers such as Whole Foods Market, Often, ulterior motives are revealed. In 2011, it was
for example, have risen to success on the back of organic reported that the Tanzanian government was trying to
food labels, the UK Conservative Party adopted a tree as its evict residents of a village on the grounds that they were
logo in 2006, and the very word sustainability has been degrading the areas biodiversity but analysts suggested
overused by corporations to the point of redundancy. But that interest from foreign investors in the land was the real
such displays do not always mean action. Oil companies, reason. The urban poor are not safe either. In India middle-
for instance, have been accused of touting environmental class residential committees have adopted the language of
programmes while continuing to pollute. Moreover, eco- environmentalism to evict encroachers, who they claim
friendly boasts do not necessarily take other ethical factors are causing the deterioration of their surroundings.
into account. Eco-labels give the impression products are It seems that, while the green agenda has become a
sustainable, says Tim Forsyth, Reader in the Environment priority, it can also easily be hijacked.
at LSE, citing recent attempts by the palm oil industry as Campaigners believe one of the main problems is that the
an example. But [such schemes] are often criticised for response to environmental problems is being dictated by a
not going far enough, or ignoring social development and few interested parties. Policy is being shaped by powerful
technical things like fertiliser use. The Forest Stewardship businesses and financial interests, whom regulatory changes
Council gives an eco-label for legal logging, for example, would affect, says Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Friends of the Earth
but the World Rainforest Movement criticises this because Internationals programme coordinator for climate justice and
it legitimises industrial tree plantations. The Rainforest energy. Many companies that discuss their green practices in
Alliance certifies coffee, but only a small proportion of public lobby against legislation behind closed doors.
coffee certified this way is from those kinds of protected The influence on policy of those most affected by it is
coffee plantations. why many environmental standards are voluntary. The
lack of binding international regulations means national co-optation, suggest its time for activists to adjust their
governments are afraid of introducing strict rules, in case strategies. Primarily, this means broadening the focus.
businesses go elsewhere. In 2011, for example, the UK After all, environmental problems can no longer be
government embarked on a drive to slash environmental separated from those of globalisation and governance.
red tape to put fewer burdens on business. The recession is highlighting the urgent need to connect
Clifton says this is also why mainstream solutions tend environmental questions with broader ones of financial
to reinforce the status quo. She cites carbon trading (a systems and the global economy. We have to start making
system that lets the biggest polluters pay poorer countries or connections with other social movements with similar
companies to stop polluting on their behalf), claiming this visions of society.
delays action on cutting emissions in industrialised countries We are still a long way off removing antagonism towards
and locks economies into continuing fossil fuel use. the environment agenda. Some are and will continue
The trading of water rights has been mooted as a solution to be disproportionately affected by environmental
to water scarcity, but investors and commodities traders have degradation, while others will find ways to avoid its effects
jumped upon it as a profit-making opportunity. and side-step regulations. Moreover, few are willing to be
Such measures, Clifton warns, detract attention from the first to change their ways. But environment problems
problems such as over-consumption, unequal economic continue, unavoidably, to be universal.
relations, the unsustainable globalised production network, When it comes to lifestyle change, environmentalists
and price manipulation. These strategies are crowding out acknowledge that mainstream society will not accept change
effective ones, she continues. For example, agriculture unless the green movement offers more than despair. We
led by small farmers is low-carbon activity that promotes need to encourage a love of Nature, liveable communities,
food security, but it is often undermined by the practices respect and critical thinking to help attract people away from
put forward as solutions. a consumer mentality, says environmental campaigner
So, where does the green movement go from here? Shepherd Bliss.
Far from being pessimistic, Clifton believes that this is
an inevitable stage in the process of campaigning and Debika Ray is a journalist specialising in global development
that the popularity of green issues, and their frequent and social justice.
I
remember the exact moment I developed a passion a handful of moth types that in the larval stage regularly eat
for moths. I was walking to the village post office textiles or other valuable human products. These aside, the
and there on the ground in front of me was a 2,500 British species of moths are completely harmless and
completely unfamiliar insect. The dead creature had play an invaluable role in pollinating trees or flowers and in
crinkle-edged forewings shaped like scimitar blades that acting as an engine house for wider biodiversity.
spanned the width of my palm. On the head were bizarre Yet the real tragedy of these insects is not just that the
horn-like antennae like something you might see on an wider public knows little about them. It is that the creatures
extraterrestrial in a childs comic. have massively declined in the last few decades. The
The creature was grey apart from two astonishing eyes of Dorset-based organisation Butterfly Conservation has just
glorious terracotta on its hind wings. published a report entitled The State
Weirdest of all was the body. From a of Britains Larger Moths 2013. The
disconcertingly furry head the moths insect group is divided into what are
whole abdomen tapered and curved British moths play known as micro-moths (1,620 species)
strongly upwards, so it looked as if and macro-moths (880 species). The
a six-legged mouse had been crossed
an invaluable role report covers just the latter, which
with a tiny banana. in acting as an include the more conspicuous and
It was, in fact, a species called the engine house for better-known species.
Poplar Hawk-moth, but at the time The document is based on Butterfly
it was so deeply unfamiliar to me wider biodiversity Conservations own studies, and
that you could have told me it had also on the 40 years of census work
just landed from outer space and I conducted by Rothamsted Research
would have been equally convinced. What I have since agricultural science station, whose mapping of moth
learnt is that Poplar Hawk-moths are actually a common population trends since 1968 represents the longest
garden species. And during my subsequent years of regular continuous detailed study of insects known to have been
trapping I would catch and release them weekly during carried out anywhere in the world.
spring and summer. The report highlights the fact that the overall national
This is part of the compelling magic of moths. Creatures abundance of larger moths has declined by 28% since 1968,
you can hardly even imagine exist are actually all around and that in the southern half of Britain that figure rises to
your house throughout the night. You realise that the 40%. In the north the rate of loss is considerably smaller
domestic environment is a parallel universe full of other- and is offset by range expansions as climate change enables a
worldly inhabitants. It is true for almost every one of us. number of moths to move northwards. Twenty-seven species
People with the most urban of handkerchief-sized plots have colonised Britain since the beginning of the century;
have recorded hundreds of moth species in their back yards. about 110 larger moths have increased in abundance and
Many of us may have little idea that moths are all around, more than 50 have doubled their populations.
but that is only one part of our ignorance. Worse, in some One of the reports other revelations concerns three
ways, is the way that their nocturnal lifestyles still make moths that have recently become extinct. Indicative of the
moths unpleasantly eerie for some, while others view all gloriously poetic names that moths received from early
species as pests that ruin our woollens. In truth there are just entomologists, they are the Orange Upperwing, Bordered
Large Elephant Hawk-moth (Deilephila elpenor), Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi), Mark Cocker is a naturalist and a regular contributor
Deaths Head Hawk-moth (Acherontia atropos), Lime Hawk-moth (Mimas tiliae) to the Guardian Country Diary.
Chris Shields www.illustratedwildlife.com www.birdsandpeople.org
The Language
of Wolves
Romanias robust environment is home to over 3,000 wolves, the largest population in Europe
European Grey Wolf, Romania Staffan Widstrand/CORBIS
B
Whats at stake in wolf conservation? eware the wolves of Chiantishire, warned
a recent Daily Mail headline. Tuscanys
It isnt just the survival of the species idyllic landscape of rolling fields and
but the survival of wilderness, writes poplar-lined hills, the article continued,
which in the past proved irresistible to the great, the good
Ros Coward and the very rich, have in recent months become home
to a savage predator packs of marauding wolves which
are growing increasingly brazen. Politicians in Chianti-
country, we are told, have called on the government to
take action. There are growing fears that the wolves could
attack humans.
Nature unsubdued, then suggestions of managing wolf needs to be a way of talking about wolves without
populations are inherently problematic. Management succumbing either to scaremongering and ethnocentric
implies Nature on human terms. Of course, resistance to notions of human management on one hand, or impossible
wolf management has some strong rational grounds because ideals of prehuman wilderness on the other.
management covers a multitude of sins. At its softest end, There are signs this is happening. Jean-Marc Moriceau, a
it can mean supporting traditional pastoral techniques wolf expert and the author of Man Versus Wolf: A 2,000-
like working with the dogs, and allowing farmers to fire year War, has advanced the idea of a wolf parliament,
warning shots, or even kill wolves that threaten their flocks. bringing together shepherds, ecologists and government.
But at the other end, management can sometimes be used to That would require a new unfamiliar language around
justify wolf persecution. Monbiot has pointed out that this beasts, a language of needs, rights and interests, mitigation
is not only the case in Norway but in Canada too, where the of harm, and negotiated settlements.
killing of wolves is explained as part of a management plan Management by another name need not be disastrous.
for caribou. In fact it appears the level of threat to caribou Take Romania, which, with 3,000 wolves, has the largest
has been entirely exaggerated and is being used to support numbers in Europe. It is one of the few European countries
another agenda, namely the exploitation and destruction that dont pay compensation for wolf kills. Nevertheless
of the wolfs environment. the wolf isnt particularly persecuted there and its easy to
Its also hard not to feel repulsed by some of the language see why. Flocks are never left untended. They move with
employed around managing wolves. Some of the American shepherds and dogs in close and continuous attendance.
states even very enlightened ones like Minnesota use the Insofar as money comes in from wolves, its not from
term harvest for the sporadic culling of wolves. Sweden, compensation or bounties. Its from tourism drawn to the
which has just controversially given the go-ahead to the idea of remoteness.
culling, repeatedly uses the expression managing at sustainable Language describing whats happening there, namely
levels, even though the Swedish wolf population is already low-impact human activity in areas where wolves still
considerably reduced. In both cases these feel like euphemisms have stronghold, may not have the emotional resonance
for certainly in Swedens case unjustified killing. of the old polarisations, but it might just have a much
Yet if the wolf population grows, management will have happier outcome.
to be addressed; the fears are too deep, and the losses too
painful for some rural communities. But to be acceptable, Ros Coward is Professor of Journalism at the University of
a new, less loaded language may have to be found. There Roehampton and is a long-time contributor to The Ecologist.
W
e are using more of the planets minerals, backing this approach in principle and the Commission is
metals, forests, fuels, water and land than proposing adoption of the indicators, so whilst there is still
ever before. The environmental damage is a long way to go were quietly confident that were a step
increasingly linked with social injustices closer to getting Europe to measure and then reduce its
from land grabbing and toxic pollution to water shortages environmental impact.
and the destruction of fertile land and the seas. But however much we try to reduce our resource use, the
These are big challenges and Friends of the Earth is fundamental issue is that we have an economic system that
looking to identify key interventions that can start to put drives us towards ever-increasing levels of consumption and
us on a different pathway away from resource conflicts dogmatically pursues economic growth no matter what.
and the headlong pursuit of economic growth at all costs, There is fantastic work being done in this area by the likes
towards a greater global quality of life for all. of Tim Jackson, and we are now focusing on three key
Over the next 10 years we aim to reshape the UK and EU interventions that will start to put us on the right path:
into economies that rely far less on oil, coal and gas, protect
Transforming finance
Nature and get consumption under control. Key to this is to
The rapaciousness and short-termism of our finance system
understand that the economy should work for people and
have led to ever-widening gaps between rich and poor,
planet, rather than pitting one against the other.
and created the enduring economic crisis. But it could be
Given the scale of the challenge, were focusing on two
radically transformed and put to work for people and the
key areas:
planet. Were working in partnership with a wide range of
How can rich countries reduce their overconsumption of other organisations to find a way through this financial maze
the worlds scarce resources? and recently staged a major conference called Transforming
How can we ensure we shift the economy to make the Finance, which we will now be following up.
transition to a sustainable use of the worlds resources?
Transition to a green industrial policy
On the first question a key issue has been establishing We need to develop the industries of the future, not those of
what the European resource use footprint is in practical the past. The whole economy needs to be green not just the
terms. We have been working with the Sustainable Europe bits of it that are making clean energy and green technologies.
Research Institute in Vienna to work out an effective way Government needs to have a supportive environment policy,
of measuring how much of the worlds resources Europe a long-term commitment to decarbonisation, and a green
actually uses. We looked at four different areas to measure: industrial policy. We are working to form a broad coalition
our land footprint, carbon footprint (this considers all to develop and promote this green industrial policy,
global-warming gases), water footprint, and the overall initially focusing on UK political parties as they develop
amount of materials we use. All these indicators are their manifestos for the 2015 elections. Civil society and
consumption-based, i.e. they consider the global amount progressive businesses have already been lambasting the
of resource that we use; for example, land in Paraguay that government for not living up to its promises we need to
is used to grow the soya that is fed to European livestock help them keep up that pressure.
is included.
A focus on quality of life, not quantity of growth
The European Union as a whole uses around 1.5 times
Is it possible to redirect the economy so that it focuses
its own land area every year, with 60% of this coming
on wellbeing, or quality of life, rather than GDP growth?
from outside the EU. The UK alone imports more than
And not just wellbeing in the UK or Europe, but around
three times its surface area. This land demand, combined
the world with an equitable distribution of the worlds
with misguided policies on biofuels and biomass for power
resources? We are only just starting our work in this area
stations, means that Europe is helping to drive land grabbing
and are keen to hear the views of Resurgence & Ecologist
around the world.
readers. Join our Economics and Resource Use programme
But should we be using so much of the worlds land? If
hub at forum.foe.co.uk/campaignhubs
not, how can we reduce our land consumption? Options
include dietary changes (reducing animal protein,
increasing vegetable protein), reducing wastage of textiles Michael Warhurst heads the Economics and Resource Use
(through reuse and recycling), and stopping the dash programme for Friends of the Earth.
towards biofuels and biomass. The European Parliament is Follow him on twitter @mwarhurst
My Green Life
The quality of all our lives will depend on
how we protect our forests and rivers, says
Ruth Padel. Interview by Sharon Garfinkel
Ruth Padel photo by Mary Tziraki
What is your relationship to Darwin? does not go to just one bush. It takes here in the UK dont see that the quality
My mothers mother was one of his a few berries from one tree and a few of our lives will depend, in the end, on
granddaughters, which makes me one from another. That is what we need protecting the forests and the rivers.
of his 72 great-great-grandchildren. to do. Whenever I am put up in a
What can we learn from Greece?
hotel, Im always so shocked that the
What do you think he would have You have to pay your taxes, because if
lights are always on. Now in England
made of climate change? you dont you dont get the services. The
we have air conditioning. Surely we
He would have been very interested. He further you are away from the cities,
dont live in a climate where we need
was always trying to think of imagined the more chance you have of a decent
it. There ought to be legislation that
causes at the deepest possible level. For life. If you live near land, you can grow
controls everybodys use of electricity.
example, when hes on a coral reef in food, and I think people in Greece are
Everybody should be entitled to the
the Indian Ocean he looks at the spray realising the importance of land.
same amount, rich or poor.
beating on the rocks and he thinks
Who are your environmental heroes?
nothing can withstand the power of Which political party do you think
It would have to be a wildlife
this ocean, but then there are other does the most for the environment?
conservationist. For instance Jonathan
organic forces at work to counter that The Green Party, obviously. Ive
Baillie, Director of Conservation
power. He was amazing at gathering always voted Labour, but the last
Programmes at the Zoological Society
data, and bringing everything he knew Labour government did nothing to
of London, wrote a wonderful book
to bear on one particular thing. help the environment.
called Stories for Our Children: The
What one piece of legislation would Which politician does the most to World in 2050; he is a hero. George
you introduce to positively impact on put climate change at the top of the Schaller is a great, great conservationist
climate change? political agenda? who has written a fantastic book
Can I have three? One would be to There was an environment minister about pandas, gorillas and tigers. He
control the human population. Second in India for a while who was trying said that all over the world there is a
would be to control how we use energy. to save the swamps but didnt get great dying and all you can do is go
The third would be to make sure that anywhere against the vested interest and to the places that need you most and
the use of energy does not benefit only corruption. I think Obama is probably help to conserve the wildlife there. My
those who already have money. trying. Credit to him for trying, because brother Felix is on the human-rights
thats where it needs to come from side of India and has written a book.
Nuclear power or renewable energy?
the very top. Al Gore, who made An The environment is for people as well
Renewable energy. I know that there
Inconvenient Truth, is a brave and as animals, and thats what Felix is
are arguments for nuclear power, but I
honest man to put out that film. trying to put forward.
cannot see that its not all going to go
horribly wrong. Which country do you think is leading How does Nature influence your own
the way? work?
What can we do in our own lives to
Bhutan is pretty good. I went to Bhutan Its the touchstone. Managing Nature
really make a difference?
for my tiger book theyre small because theres so little left of it is what
Firstly, stop our total waste of energy.
enough, remote enough and theyve weve got to do. Weve got to understand
We just take electricity for granted
got enough forests. Sadly theyre not it. Nature is an inspiration.
(just as we take water for granted)
very nice to some of their migrant
and we forget that it is made by things
workers. But the politicians there Ruth Padels new book is The Mara
that deplete the worlds resources.
know the value of their environment Crossing. Sharon Garfinkel works for
A fennec fox eats a lot of berries but
and are going to try to save it. People The Resurgence Trust.
A Healthy Economy
A healthy body sees old cells dying and new ones being born. A healthy
financial system also has to allow for decay and renewal, writes Hugo Dixon
H
ealth is an interesting to be aimed at either. Hell, for example, of the current financial crisis have been
ethical concept because might be sustainable provided the caused by a distortion of free enterprise
of the way it links to our devil found a renewable source of rather than too much freedom.
human nature. We are energy for his furnaces but that Sickness number one was Alan
animals, albeit rather special ones. wouldnt make it any more desirable. Greenspans habit of lowering interest
It is almost self-evident that we need That said, the concept of health rates at the first sign of trouble during
healthy bodies and healthy minds. shouldnt be fetishised either. But the the pre-crunch era when he ran the
Otherwise, how else are we to realise concept of health can shed light on US Federal Reserve. This numbed
our potential as organisms? By why both growth and sustainability the fear of investors and left greed
extension, it becomes important that have their limitations. Health does untrammelled. The natural emotional
we live healthy lifestyles and inhabit not imply that things stay as they are. balance of a healthy organism
healthy buildings and environments. Health implies positive wellbeing, and which is useful in guiding it to good
And, with another stretch, that all actually, truly healthy bodies are in a outcomes and away from bad ones
our socio-economic institutions state of continual regeneration. was distorted.
marriage, government, companies or, Central bankers do have a role
indeed, society and capitalism should in mitigating the extremes of the
also be healthy. economic cycle. But it is vital that,
So could the very term healthy in doing so, they dont just stoke up
become more widely deployed as an A healthy system more trouble. They need to have the
ethical concept? And in particular, can expertise to recognise bubbles, and the
it help shed light on the current debate
is built not just for courage to prick them.
over how to reform capitalism in the the good times The second malady was caused by
wake of the financial crisis? an excessive willingness to bail out
To answer this we will first need to bankrupt banks. In a well-functioning
ask what, though, health is. The best- free market, investors would bear
known definition is the World Health Health also brings other ideas to the consequences of poor decisions.
Organizations: Health is a state of the table that are useful in examining Shareholders would be wiped out and
complete physical, mental and social any complex system. One is the bondholders would suffer. But, with
well-being and not merely the absence notion of disease and linked to that, the exception of Lehman Brothers and
of disease or infirmity. Thats fine, diagnosis and cure. If the economy is a few much smaller cases, bondholders
as far as it goes. But it may also be sick, you first need to understand why were bailed out instead of being bailed
useful to flesh out the concept with (diagnosis) and then go about making in during the crunch.
other qualities such as vigour, balance, it better (cure). This was understandable, given the
shock-resistance and resilience. There are many ways in which fear of knock-on effects. But a healthy
One way of seeing whether the term capitalism could be considered body sees old cells dying and new
healthy sheds useful insights on the unhealthy for example, its impact ones being born. A healthy financial
goodness of complex systems such as on the environment. Capitalism itself system also has to allow for decay and
economies is to compare it with other with its basis in free enterprise and renewal. Propping up zombie banks
more conventional yardsticks such as private property can certainly be debilitates the whole economy. This is
growth and sustainability. While vigorous, but the bigger question is why reforms in the pipeline to allow
both have utility, it would be a mistake whether it can also be balanced, shock- banks to be wound down without
to fetishise either. resistant and resilient. causing the entire system to collapse
On the one hand, growth can After the tribulations of recent years, are so important.
easily be unsustainable say, because the conventional wisdom is that the The third illness was caused by the
of a bubble, or because society is problem has been that capitalism has heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bets that
consuming capital or natural resources had too much freedom. That, though, financiers and traders were able to
as if they were income. On the other is a misdiagnosis. Most of the diseases enjoy during the upswing. If things
hand, sustainability isnt always a state that have become apparent as a result went well, they made a fortune; if
Embroidery by Linda Miller, for details about summer workshops by Linda visit www.lindamillerembroideries.co.uk
Linda will also be exhibiting at MADE, London 25 to 27 October www.madelondon.org
C
are homes normally only get headlines when too often the spiritual side of care has become the lost
there is a scandal involving the inhuman dimension of modern service delivery. When this happens,
treatment of patients by care staff working in the humanity implicit in care can disappear entirely.
conditions so degrading that they could bring Not at the Holy Cross Priory in Heathfield; this newly built
out the dark side in anybody. complex in the East Sussex countryside is run by a religious
So it is unusual to find a national newspaper medical community called the Grace and Compassion Benedictines.
correspondent treading the warm, welcoming corridors of Holy Cross offers an alternative way ahead. But it also
a care unit where support is patently delivered with calm harks back to the roots of our hospital system, much of which
compassion. But this is a detective mission: I am on the trail was founded by religious institutions. The accommodation
of spirituality in health care. ranges from sheltered homes to a high-dependency nursing
Hundreds of scientific studies show how spiritual support unit, but you dont have to be religious to live here.
can boost patients recovery and increase wellbeing. But Pam is a typical resident. We meet in one of Holy Crosss
Summer Dreams
Susan Clark introduces the art of botanical cooking
O
ne of the unexpected hazards of about natural health under the umbrella title
living with a botanist is that you What Really Works. Today, Id change all their
are never quite sure what you titles to What Really Matters.)
will find when you open your I like to cook in old-fashioned, time-consuming
fridge especially in those scrunched-up, mud- and slow ways: ways that get the beta waves of
splattered bags hidden on the bottom shelf at my brain settled into a quieter and more gentle
the back where your everyday vegetables are rhythm. I wont say meditation, but I will say
supposed to be. mindful. I like to cook to music, not noise. And I
I have learnt mainly the hard way that am never happier than when a recipe says pick
the best approach to this is to always expect a pound of these and then spend an hour stirring
the unexpected and then make the best of these them slowly around a battered old pot that has
free ingredients by finding delicious ways to seen you through so many different stages of
cook, bottle and preserve them. I say the hard your life. I like to cook with ritual and that
way, because what I have actually learnt is that usually starts with putting my apron on and
foraging and wild food cooking both of which giving thanks for the time to cook, the food to
have become ber-cool is cook and the knowledge
all very well, but unless you gleaned over years, some
step in, you are in danger from experimentation and
of being offered something The cooks job is to much from others, on how
that whilst green, often to cook and what to do with
looks fairly bedraggled and,
embody generosity these amazing ingredients.
if I am completely honest, Edward Esp Brown I think of this as a kind of
doesnt taste much better gentle and genteel botanical
than it looks. cooking, and for me, often
So I have spent the last few years on a mission the way it starts is like this:
to find and create recipes that benefit from the A specific plant its leaves, its flowers, its
vitality of wild and foraged foods but actually fruits or its seeds will catch my eye and then
TASTE NICE too and the result is this new start to demand my attention. I may see it in
column, which combines the joys of cooking up the hedgerow or it might be in a book or even
a storm using ingredients from the hedgerow part of a company logo. Before I know it, I am
(or the botanists fridge) alongside other things seeing this same plant everywhere I call this the
that taste good, in order to make dishes that are eyeing-up stage and this goes on until I begin
100% Foodilicious! researching and daydreaming about how I can
Well make tinctures and tisanes, stews and use it in the kitchen.
scones, jams and jellies, puddings and pies This is the start of getting-to-know-you, a
anything that I think is worth taking the time bit like dating. I like to read about the plant,
and trouble to plan for, to prepare, to cook and its folklore, its medicinal properties and its
to share and all of which I have made myself. It traditional culinary uses. I like to see how
wont be a bish-bash-bosh, that will do and lets botanical artists have painted it, and I may even
slop this in the pan as quick as we can style of have a go at drawing it myself. I like to learn
cooking, because thats not why or how I cook. what the Maori think about it and how European
I cook to connect with Nature, with the people herbalists use it, and to discover its role, if any, in
I love and with strangers who may be just one Ayurveda or other disciplines. I have an eclectic
delicious meal or gift pot of jam away from library made up of herbals and pamphlets and
becoming friends and loved ones. I cook because magazine cuttings and I use all of this and more
it is one of the things I love most of all to do, and to make a lasting relationship with the plant I
doing what you love is the fastest track I know am going to work with.
to reconnect to a deeper sense of what really And only then am I ready to take what I have
matters. (Ten years ago I wrote a series of books learnt into the kitchen.
Vitality notes
Rose petals are uplifting and soothing, especially for tired or irritated skin
A homemade rose water is soothing for the skin, especially after
exposure to too much sun. It is also good for dry and more mature
skins, which is why you often find rose as the key ingredient in
expensive body lotions and moisturisers. To make your own rose
water, simply infuse 100g of rose petals with 300ml of boiling water.
Leave to cool for 15 minutes. Drain. Use the rose water as a skin tonic.
Susan Clark is Associate Editor at Resurgence & Ecologist. She writes a regular food column
for The Ecologist website and is co-author, with Erick Muzard, of The Sunday Times Vitality
Cookbook. She is also the author of the What Really Works Insiders Guides to Natural Health.
A Spirited Debate
Does whisky, like wine, have a terroir? Robin Lee goes looking for the answer
and finds the history of whisky bogged down in myth and romanticism
D
istillation is one of the most evocative metaphors the immaterial, so as to make the body more spiritual, the
in the English language. Whisky is anglicised unlovely lovely, to make the spiritual lighter by its subtlety,
Gaelic for water of life eau de vie in France to penetrate with its concealed virtues and force into the
and aquavit in Scandinavia the all-important human body to do its healing duty.
fifth element (quintessence), which, alchemists believed, was The flavour of whisky is completely immaterial: its
necessary for life. This concept has outlived alchemy itself, all about the smell. Flavour is made in the brain, and it
and the analogy has become an accepted part of everyday bypasses the realm of language. Flavour is therefore difficult
speech, used unconsciously in phrases such as distillation of to describe in words. It is a mysterious mosaic of memory
the truth, and the word spirit as a synonym for the soul. and imagination, which is difficult to objectify.
In Liber de arte distillandi simplicia et composita (1500), At a recent London Gastronomy Seminar hosted by the
the first printed book about distillation, Hieronymus Institute of Philosophy at the University of London, Jim
Brunschwygk describes the separation of the gross from McEwan of the Bruichladdich distillery on the Hebridean
the subtle and the subtle from the gross. The breakable island of Islay made an impassioned case that terroir exists
and destructible from the indestructible, the material from for malt whisky in a debate moderated by the wine writer
FROM FRAGMENTATION
TO WHOLENESS
E
volution is a process of adapting to an environment. world having a spiritual existence in the other realm. The
It is environmentally driven: a reaction to and shaman, assisted by teacher plants such as ayahuasca,
reflection of the living environment. Culture evolves can inhabit both realms to maintain balance between the
as an interpretive map of human experience, and is two. He, or often she, consults the spirit world to learn
inescapably tangled with this thing we call knowledge. the supernatural origin of diseases, and the spirits tell, or
In Britain, our co-evolution with the natural environment he/she simply sees, which plants or other treatments to
stopped when our forests were cut, and the pagans and prescribe. This is the way they profess to learn of medicine,
herbalist witches enflamed. Economic, religious and other but we disregard the explanation because it contradicts the
forces destroyed not only our traditional knowledge very axioms of our particular cultural routine for attaining
systems, but also the very means of their evolution the knowledge. That routine constitutes external observation,
wild environments. In other areas of the Western world, measurement, causal isolation, theory, and prediction;
even where wild areas remain, traditional communities, and ultimately the existence of these spirits cannot be proved,
traditional knowledge, have been irreparably altered by the and so the idea is ridiculed by our rationalist culture.
cultural dominance of our industrial ideals. To discredit their knowledge through reasoning that their
In the tropical forests of the world, however, Indigenous spirits are simply not real is insufficient, however, for
peoples continue to co-evolve with a complex natural belief in them clearly delivers a very real knowledge. Real
environment, retaining traditional knowledge systems in its application to not just physical but also psychological
from which we might learn new, or perhaps old, ways to and spiritual illness for millennia shamanic cultures have
humanly experience. The medicinal practices of Indigenous practised relaxation and massage, aromatherapy, hypnosis,
forest peoples, for example, offer a helpful illustration. visualisation and dietary prescription, yet to us these curative
Some 40% of drugs on the commercial market are therapies have only recently started becoming acceptable.
extracted directly from plants, and 80% are derived Such practices indicate a long-held understanding of the
originally from plants. Nature really has the answers. great power of the mind over the body, which we are
Native groups of these forests know too, indeed knew first, only now beginning to accept in the West (and this despite
that plants have the power to heal. They know which plants consistently documented hints such as the placebo effect).
have the power to heal, and they know how to combine The reality of Indigenous medicinal knowledge is further
plants in what were subsequently found to be very specific supported by the fact that, contrary to popular belief, these
chemical relationships, such as the ayahuasca mixture societies are actually some of the healthiest anywhere in the
that ingeniously marries an understorey shrub containing world. If sufficiently isolated from outside contact, cause of
the active compounds with a climbing vine containing the immature death among forest peoples is rarely illness, but
necessary enzyme-inhibitors to allow absorption of the traditionally animal attack or warfare. Life expectancy can
remedy through the gut. be low due to these factors, but mature death commonly
The Indigenous people also know that preparation is occurs in the nineties or upwards, the elder generations
critical, simmering some remedies for hours, whereas boiling remaining strong and healthy until an astounding age.
would denature the active components. And treatment is The real consequences of their supernatural beliefs
highly particular: in many cases plants are not ingested, but warrant a reassessment of our customary dismissal of such
rather applied as a poultice, or infused and inhaled or bathed notions. I would not claim that trial and error was not a
in. From an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 plant species in a factor in the development of this knowledge, but I would
forest such as the Amazon, each producing a complex mixture claim that it is not its basis. It is, literally, not that simple.
of metabolically affecting compounds, native societies extract Shamans continue to discover medicinal uses for plants
a multitude of remedies for almost every conceivable ailment. previously unknown to their cultures, and undescribed by
Their evolved knowledge is of a depth and complexity no ours, and their ongoing discovery is still explained in terms
chemist could ever hope to obtain. In practical terms they of spiritual conference. Regardless of millennia past, what
understand the chemistry, and yet without knowledge of we observe today is that trial and error is not the tradition,
chemistry. The question remains, how? but that a real practical intelligence is apparently derived
The routine answer cites a millennial process of trial and from non-rational levels of experience.
error. Indeed, such explanation seems axiomatic, but it We are faced with a problem of cultural incompatibility:
overplay humanitys part in the global system, attempting to considerate behaviour simply makes sense.
dominate it, and so cutting a swift path to self-destruction. Beyond the political implications, we must assess whether
This perspective is both symptom and cause of the gross our science, so institutionalised and universal, really is a
disconnection with Nature that has occurred in our sound method for finally understanding this world. Perhaps
societies, to the point now that we most value the Earth in it is only separating us from the world, distancing us from
monetary terms. true understanding. It challenges the revelatory nature of
We forget even that we are natural beings, and thus sex pure experience, by fragmenting it and transmuting it into
becomes twisted pornographic fantasy, almost every natural abstract theory, damaging our capacity to experience the
process becomes taboo, and it is even strange to see women whole of anything. And this is surely what life ought to be
breastfeeding publicly. We do not feel this connection to about, the full experience of experience.
the sensuous world around us, we do not feel a part of The goal of science is understanding; the goal is not flawed:
any natural system, and so we blindly destroy. This is not only the method is. We are caught up in explanation, which
success and we are not flourishing, which is very clear if is merely the communication of understanding. But true
one looks at even the most immediate consequences of our understanding is intuitive, and true experience subjective
unsustainable way of life. it ultimately cannot be shared. Its conclusions can, however,
Indigenous forest peoples feel a connection with the such as environmental consideration, starting with basic
world around them, an energetic affinity that is expressed protection. We must divest ourselves of the fear that there
and maintained in the supernatural aspects of their cultures. be unknowable things, for there are not: only inexplicable
It is this recognition that is pertinent to their unprecedented things, and those we must leave as they are; such is their
understanding of and flourishing in their environment. In nature, and our own.
the West we have conceptually and physically separated To engage these ideas, only go out and find beautiful
ourselves from the wild Earth, just as we separate all things things. Encounter a natural beauty and explore the feeling
to understand what is irreducibly unified. In this way we this entails. Beauty is, after all, only a word, a symbol
limit our experience of existence to what is rational, and that becomes limiting as soon as it is uttered, but what
verifiable, and we destroy the very means of our survival. it represents is a feeling, a raw sensing perhaps, of the
Rational enquiry is undoubtedly a useful tool, but its connection we have with the world around us, particularly
doctrinaire claim to an unsettlingly religious monopoly the natural world. It is the feeling of communion with the
on truth renders it flawed. It condemns my own field of sacred. Therein lies the full experience of humanity, therein
conservation to the desperate realm of mitigation, lagging the understanding, therein the guidance. The idea of human
forever behind the fundamentally damaging attitude we beings as an embedded part of Nature is self-evident; we
have towards the biosphere. The damage will only continue must only, if we have forgotten, start remembering how
until we deprioritise rationalist methods of knowing, and that feels.
acknowledge our sacred affiliation with the natural world.
This way a deeper experience presents itself, and a truer Kester Reid is a tropical conservationist and writer.
understanding in which we feel that environmentally kspreid.wordpress.com
Latent Healing
Charles Eisenstein explores how technology could better
be used to support the unfolding intelligence of Nature
T
he purpose of this essay is not to instruct the of Nature? Surely not. After all, all beings use their physical
reader on the fallacy of the technological fix. capacities to influence and cocreate their environment. What
We can assume that by now the environmentally is different about what we humans have been doing? How
conscious person has seen through the delusion of can we embrace technology, and not reject this uniquely
applying technology to remedy the problems that have been human gift?
caused by previous technology. We environmentalists decry human exceptionalism
It is obvious that a new pesticide wont finally eliminate when we criticise the ideology of endless growth, linear
the superweeds that evolved to resist the previous pesticide; extraction and toxic waste, but to say that our capacity for
that new and more powerful antibiotics wont bring a final technology has no useful purpose on this planet is another
victory over the superbugs that evolved to resist previous kind of exceptionalism.
antibiotics; and that massive geo-engineering projects Ecology says that each species has a gift that enhances
such as seeding the stratosphere with sulphuric acid or the the wellbeing of the whole. The extinction of one species
oceans with iron to combat climate impoverishes the whole. Humanity
change will likely cause horrific is no different. The problem isnt that
unanticipated consequences. we have the power of technology. The
What is less obvious is how Thus begins the healing problem is that we have not used that
pervasive the mentality behind the power in the spirit of a gift. We have
technological fix is. In the United
journey, out of the not used it in the spirit of ecology. We
States, we respond to the failure of old story, through the have not asked: How might we best
metal detectors, lockdowns and other space between serve the totality of all life on Earth? In
forms of control in our schools by contemplating a nuclear power plant,
calling for even more control. stories, and ultimately an incinerator, a subdivision, a mine,
European countries unable to pay into a new story even a new patio behind our house, we
their debts are lent even more money, are not in the habit of asking: Does this
with the proviso that they try even best serve the wellbeing of all interested
harder to pay their debts. Imperialist parties? Our costbenefit analyses do
powers apply military violence to fight the terrorism that is not include the trees, the water, the fish or the birds.
a response to previous imperialism and violence. Doctors Why not? Is it because we are Natures big mistake? Is
prescribe drugs to address the side effects caused by other there something wrong with us? To think so would be to
drugs. Urban planners address traffic congestion by building invoke human exceptionalism once again. It would imply as
more roads (which leads to more development and more well that the way to live in harmony with the planet would
traffic). And millions of people manage the emptiness of a life be to conquer or suppress this badness. How different is that
of material acquisition by buying more material possessions. from the mentality of spraying pesticides and exterminating
As the word fix implies, the logic of technology has wolves, damming rivers and levelling mountains? The war
very often been the logic of addiction. Feel bad? Have a on Nature, whether internal or external, is part of the
drink. Feel even worse the next morning? Get drunk again. problem; it is not the solution.
Depressed because youve now lost your job, your marriage One simple explanation for why we fail to use technology
and your health due to drinking? Well, why not do what in the spirit of service to all life is that we have lost touch
made you feel better last night? Have another drink. As with our unity, or as Thich Nhat Hanh terms it, our
with agricultural chemicals, ever-increasing doses become interbeingness, with the rest of life. Seeing Nature as separate
necessary to maintain what was once your natural, normal from ourselves, of course we see it as inconsequential to
state, and all at the cost of everything precious. our wellbeing. We might acknowledge our conditional
Where does the mentality of control come from, and what dependency on Nature, but not our existential dependency.
is the alternative? Is technology fundamentally a violation We might therefore imagine that someday we may become
Sustainable Wellbeing
Stephen Lewis introduces a new Robert Costanza outlines
series to show that economics the parameters of a new
need not be a dismal science economic paradigm
W
T
e all know that many of the ecological and he world has changed dramatically. We no longer
social problems confronting the world today live in a world relatively empty of humans and
are in large part a consequence of the way our their artefacts. We now live in a new geologic era
economic system operates. Thus economics is of known by some as the Anthropocene, a full world
central importance. Yet the unfortunate fact is that where humans are dramatically altering our ecological life-
the type of economics that has become dominant support systems.
seems unable to contribute anything to finding Our traditional economic concepts and models were
solutions to the great questions facing humankind developed when the human population was relatively small
and the planet. Indeed, worse than this, economics and natural resources deemed abundant. So if we are to
is itself a significant part of the problem. This is both create sustainable prosperity, we need a new vision of the
because it doesnt have much to do with how real economy and its relationship to the rest of Nature that is far
economies and markets actually work, and also better adapted to the conditions we now face.
because it provides an ideological screen for rampant We are going to need an economics that respects planetary
self-interested capitalism. boundaries, that recognises the dependence of human
But there are many other types of economics. wellbeing on good social relations and fairness, and that
Some are relatively new, but others go back at recognises that the ultimate goal is real, sustainable human
least 200 years. Although they are very different, wellbeing not merely the endless growth of material
what they have in common is that they all try to consumption concentrated in the hands of a few. This
understand the world as it really is and not how new economics also recognises that the material economy
it theoretically should be, and unlike the current cannot grow forever on this finite planet.
system of economics they do not ignore moral The time has come when we must make a transition. We
questions and issues of social, economic and have no choice. Our present path is clearly unsustainable.
ecological justice. Paul Raskin, founding director of the Tellus Institute and
In this new series I have decided to ask some the Global Scenario Group, has said: Contrary to the
more holistic economists to contribute their views conventional wisdom, business as usual is the utopian
to show that economics neednt be a dismal science fantasy; forging a new vision is the pragmatic necessity.
and could be part of the solution. What we do have is a very real choice about how to make
The first contributor is ecological economist this transition and about what the new state of the world
Robert Costanza. Robert is co-founder and past will be. We can engage in a global dialogue to envision the
president of the International Society for Ecological future we want (the theme of the UNs Rio+20 conference),
Economics, and was chief editor of the societys and then devise an adaptive strategy to get us there, or we can
journal, Ecological Economics, from its inception allow the current system to collapse and rebuild from a much
in 1989 until 2002. He is also founding editor-in- worse starting point. Obviously, the former strategy is better.
chief of Solutions, a unique hybrid academic but To do this, we need to focus more directly on the goal of
popular journal (www.thesolutionsjournal.org). sustainable human wellbeing rather than merely GDP growth.
His transdisciplinary work integrates the study of This includes protecting and restoring Nature, achieving social
humans and the rest of Nature to address research, and intergenerational fairness (including poverty alleviation),
policy and management issues over multiple time stabilising population, and recognising the significant non-
and space scales from small watersheds to the market contributions to human wellbeing from natural and
global system. social capital. And to do this, we need to develop better
Ecological economics has a long pedigree and is measures of progress that go well beyond GDP and begin to
one proof of the fact that economics can be part measure human wellbeing and its sustainability more directly.
of the solution rather than a significant hindrance. We need a new model of the economy based on the
worldview and principles of ecological economics. Ecological
Stephen Lewis is acting Commissioning Editor for this economics starts by recognising that our material economy
Economics series of articles which will appear periodically in is embedded in society, which is embedded in our ecological
future issues. life-support system, and that we cannot understand or
Earth Paradise
Jeremy James takes a fictional flight to the moon
and discovers the true majesty of the Earth
D
r Obruchev (call me Vladi), the mission not been a hard so much as a steady climb, and my oxygen
leader, pointed to the plateau. Go straight up. intake was low.
Dont turn around, he said, or youll break Vladi had been right about the other thing: once you
the spell. To look back before you reached the turned round, the experience was vertiginous. The first time
plateau would spoil it: you wouldnt get the full impact. it happened to him he very nearly fell off the plateau. I was
Whats more, Nature had conveniently placed a flat-topped careful to sit down, to follow his advice.
rock at the back of the plateau, like a municipal bench, As soon as I opened my eyes, I slewed from the stone,
he said, put there by some obliging council officer with an dropped forward and landed with a crump on my hands
elegant sense of duty. A perfect viewing platform. Besides, and knees, walloping my head against my visor. It was
there was another thing. the most peculiar sensation, as if I had been pulled, and it
The plateau was about 400 feet up. You could see it clearly left me reeling for a good five minutes, lying on my side.
from the bottom as you approached. Quite why it did that, I do not know.
It looked as if it had been deliberately I crawled back onto the rock and this
cut from the rock, as did the track up time I looked up slowly, carefully,
to it. Vladi shook his head: That too clinging on.
was a freak of Nature. Who could The Sahara shone like a Views have different effects on us,
have made it? depending on the place, your mood,
I could hear my feet crunching on
vast freckled ingot your age, the time of day or night, who
the brittle stone as I climbed. My youre with. I like being alone. Some
breath seemed loud. Sweat ran down views evoke memory, others arouse
my spine. There wasnt a single sign of images from half-remembered dreams.
life anywhere, though it didnt stop me Some make you relax. Others alarm.
looking. I kept thinking I might see a mountain goat, or a Some take your breath away. This one nearly took my life.
hare or a lizard, but I knew there couldnt be any. The rock My heart stopped. I know. I felt it skip a beat and stop.
was a mix of basalt and some other igneous composite that It gave a great thwack and got going again, but not before
had been subjected to enormous temperatures, split and making me completely light-headed. I thought Id had a
crumbled into these ragged shapes amongst the slabs. stroke, a blood clot Id given my head a hard thump
The temptation to turn round all the way up had been when I fell.
strong; I could feel the image rising behind me, could I could see all of Africa. All of it. From the Straits of
sense its presence composing itself as I ascended, step by Gibraltar to the Cape. I could see the Nile. It sparkled
gritty step. suddenly in the sun, just as I was watching, in a flash that
The plateau was exactly as Vladi had described: perfectly ran all the way along its length right to its delta. The Sahara
level, and at the back of it was this convenient municipal rock. shone like a vast freckled ingot, while beneath, equatorial
My feet crunched loudly as I crossed the gravelly floor. Africa was ribboned in a living, green mantle. I couldnt stop
I stopped at the rock bench, breathed in, closed my eyes, looking, couldnt tear my eyes away. But the seas! The seas,
turned around and sat down. I kept my eyes closed and with the oceans; the reefs and shallows, atolls, islands and depths
my hands on my knees allowed myself to calm down. It had described in such a bewildering palette of blue and turquoise
Agents of Change
Bill Plotkin reveals what it means to be a part of the Earth and
shows how we can tap those inner resources
I
ts time to take another look at ourselves to re- up, rise up and become genuine agents of cultural
enliven our sense of what it is to be human, to transformation and, in doing so, experience the most
breathe new life into ancient intuitions of who we profound fulfilment of a lifetime.
are, and to learn again to celebrate, as we once
did, our instinctive affinity with the Earth community The Four Facets of the Self
in which were rooted. Theres a facet of the Self associated with each of the
We are all called now to rediscover what it means to four cardinal directions: north, south, east and west.
be human beings in a wildly diverse world of feathered, Describing the Self in this way is in keeping with
furred and scaled fellow creatures; flowers and forests; traditions around the world that have mapped human
mountains, rivers and oceans; wind, rain and snow; nature onto the template of the four directions (and the
sun and moon. closely related templates of the four seasons and the
In Western culture, weve enclosed ourselves within four times of day: sunrise, noon, sunset and midnight).
continuously mended fences of excessive safety, false As a brief introduction, the North facet of the Self
security, and shallow notions of happiness, when is what I call the Nurturing Generative Adult, the
all the while the world has been inviting us to stride compassionate and competent aspect of our psyche
through the unlocked gate and break free into realms of that is fully capable of providing for the wellbeing of
greater promise and possibilities. Our human psyches others and ourselves and of caring for the habitats that
possess, as capacities, a variety of astonishing resources sustain us and for all species that collectively make up
about which mainstream Western psychology has had Earths web of life. This North facet of the Self is what
very little to say. By uncovering and reclaiming these enables us to empathically and courageously serve
innate resources, we can more easily understand and our human and more-than-human communities as
resolve our intrapsychic and interpersonal difficulties leaders, teachers, parents, healers, builders, farmers,
as they arise. designers, scientists and artisans. The Nurturing
The alleviation of personal troubles is, of course, Generative Adult is at the core of archetypes such as
important to all of us, but our innate psychological the benevolent King or Queen, mature or spiritual
resources are of even greater significance and relevance. Warrior, Mother and Father.
Our untapped inner resources are also essential to the The South facet is the Wild Indigenous One, the
flowering of our greatest potential, to the actualisation sensuous, emotive, erotic, playful and instinctual
of our true selves, and to the embodiment of the life of dimension of ourselves that loves being embodied
our very souls. These natural faculties are what we must as a human animal, celebrates the experience of
cultivate in order to actively protect and restore our all emotions, is fully at home in the more-than-
planets ecosystems and to spark the urgently needed human world, and enjoys a visceral and deep-rooted
renaissance of our Western and Westernised cultures. kinship with all other creatures and with the diverse
And these innate human resources are precisely those ecosystems we inhabit the rivers, mountains, deserts,
that enable each of us to identify the unique genius plains and forests of our local bioregions. The Wild
and hidden treasure we carry for the world and, in Indigenous One is resonant with archetypes such as
this way, to participate fully and consciously in the Pan, Artemis/Diana (Lady of the Beasts) and Green
evolution of life on Earth. Man (Wild Man).
These resources which I call the four facets of the The East facet of the Self is the Innocent/Sage an
Self, or the four dimensions of our human wholeness amalgam of the Innocent, who perceives the world
wait within us, but we might not even know they purely, simply and clearly, and the Sage, who possesses
exist until we discover how to access them, cultivate a lighthearted and big-picture wisdom about the world.
their powers, and integrate them into our everyday The Innocent and Sage actually have much in common
lives. Reclaiming these essential human capacities of they both, for example, love paradox. Consequently my
the Self ought to be the highest priority in psychology, name for this East facet is the paradoxical fusion Innocent/
education, religion, medicine and leadership Sage. Our Innocent/Sage sometimes takes the form of a
development. Doing so empowers people to wake Sacred Fool (who lives beyond the rules and norms of
Perennial Wisdom
M
any years ago, at the time when the Green our ability to think morally, creatively and imaginatively are
movement first emerged as an organised now seen as increasingly marginal to finding solutions to the
political force, calling itself the Ecology Party, problems that we face. With the soul so besieged, the spirit
a book was published by the distinguished denied and the ground of human decision-making thoroughly
Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr entitled Man permeated by computer-compatible rationality, we are in
and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man. In it, danger of becoming strangers to truly human values, insight
Nasr warned his readers: The ecological crisis is only an and wisdom. More computing power and more technological
externalization of an inner malaise and cannot be solved interventions seem to be the answer rather than the one thing
without a spiritual rebirth of Western man. that is actually needed, which is a change of heart.
At the time, this was not a perspective that many activists It may therefore be timely for us to revisit the
were prepared to take on board, and this philosophical, religious and visionary
remains the case today. Nasr, though, tradition that was swept aside by
understood that if the ecological crisis those thinkers who ushered in the
is of our own making, then clearly
We have succumbed to scientific revolution. There is a stream
we need to see what it is in ourselves a drastically diminished of wisdom that goes back at least as
that has brought it about. This is not
instead of taking much-needed actions,
view of what it means far as Plato and Plotinus, and that was
also expressed in the visionary poetry
but rather as a precondition to ensure to be human of Dante and in the mystical writings
the actions that we take are wise ones. of Meister Eckhart, to name but a few,
One reason why it can seem to be a and which is often referred to as the
luxury to address the question of our own collective inner perennial philosophy, or philosophia perennis. In it we find
malaise is that we are still under the thrall of the Cartesian a view of Nature as a manifestation of spirit, and a view of
worldview, in which what is out there in the world is seen human interiority as opening towards the divine.
as having no connection with what occurs in our inner life. In this wisdom tradition, the interiority of Nature and
Nature has been relegated to the background of our all too the interiority of the human being ultimately coincide,
absorbing human dramas, and many struggle to feel a genuine for the originating source of both is the one universal
link between what takes place within the human sphere and spirit manifest throughout creation. Within this tradition
what is occurring in the natural world. This feeling of human reverent contemplation of Nature makes complete sense,
separation from Nature belies the fact that the condition of while to persist in treating Nature merely as a resource
the natural environment indubitably reflects our collective to be exploited, controlled and manipulated is actually to
values, and indeed our underlying worldview. undermine what is most precious within the human being.
The prevailing worldview of the West was defined in the To reacquaint ourselves with this tradition does not mean
16th and 17th centuries by such thinkers as Galileo, Bacon that we should attempt to put the clock back, but rather that
and Descartes, who inaugurated the scientific revolution. we should reconnect with our cultural and spiritual roots.
Displacing the older, traditional reverence for Nature as Instead of prioritising financial gain and technological might,
a manifestation of the divine, the new scientific method the perennial philosophy emphasises ideals such as beauty,
prioritised mathematically precise quantitative thinking truth and goodness as the basis for wise decision-making.
over the older qualitative approach to understanding and There is a dangerous hubris in continuing to think we
relating to the natural world. can eventually solve our ecological problems by simply
Spiritual intuition and a feeling of empathy for Nature increasing the computational and technological power
which had underpinned the older sensibility had no place we throw at them, while at the same time dismissing
in the conduct of the new science. From its inception, the with condescension our own spiritual heritage. Of course
new science allied itself to a technological view of Nature as the perennial wisdom is not a panacea for the enormous
a resource to control and exploit as efficiently as possible, challenges we face, but it does offer guidance as to how we
cutting itself loose from the older, reverential view of Nature as might find a different orientation to these challenges, and
a living organism imbued with spirit. This meant that a large a grounding in values and ideals that promote rather than
part of what lived in the human being was denied legitimacy subvert what is truest and best in the human being.
as providing a valid way of knowing and relating to Nature.
It is for this reason that the current plight of ecosystems Jeremy Naydler is a tutor on the Temenos Academy Foundation
needs to be seen as reflecting back to us a fatally reduced Course in the Perennial Philosophy, which begins in London in
conception not only of the world but also of the human being. October 2013. www.temenosacademy.org
Wild Wales
So many talk of change as if it is something to be feared, but in
her account of walking the mostly deserted new Wales Coast Path,
Julie Bromilow embraces the challenge of what lies just ahead
Sometimes I hear the whisper of old drovers on bare and empty hills
In Search of Ramonda
Sue Kindon describes a plant-hunting excursion that turns
her expectations on their head and leads her to the holy
grail of field botany the rare and elusive ghost orchid
H
ard to imagine, listening to the Cumbrian hail fickle from one valley to the next, but observing for ourselves
beating against my window as I write, the July the wind direction and lack of clouds.
warmth of southern France and the excitement As it is early July, we presuppose heat in the upper twenties,
of last summers botanical quest. take plenty of bottled water in our rucksacks, and make an
In my Grande Flore Illustre des Pyrnes, its portrait early start. From the parking place we set off through shady
hides discreetly, bottom right of the broomrapes. A bit woods, skirting a stream bright with melt-water, where the
of a misfit, being part of the African violet family, or vegetation is decidedly like that of our own West Country red
Gesneriaceae, which is represented in Europe only in two campion, valerian, buckler fern, even the odd Welsh poppy.
areas: the Balkan peninsula, and the Pyrenees, the mountain After crossing the stream by means of a substantial
range where France merges into Spain. wooden bridge, the path takes a steep uphill turn through
Its Ramonda pyrenaica Im after. Ive studied the black the beech woods, alongside a wall of exposed rock to our
and white drawing in the Flora, all crinkly leaves and proud left. Were getting warmer
flowers, and have long harboured a desire to see it coloured I cant help thinking of how it must have been for the
in. Now Im on the trail hardly a pioneer: the mountain early botanist about to make a discovery for the first time.
valley Im about to explore is well known as a habitat for this The identification of this plant is credited to Jean Michel
emblematic endemic, and word has come that its in flower. Claude Richard (17871868), and here I have more
In the mountains the weather can change with great speed, detective work to do. All I have found so far is that he was
and thats particularly true here in the Arige, where wisps gardener-in-chief in Senegal, so what he was doing in the
of cloud encroaching on a gentian-blue sky from the Spanish Pyrenees remains unclear. In naming the Ramonda, he pays
side can soon become disorientating mist. In this knowledge tribute to Louis Ramond de Carbonnires (17551827),
my companion and I have chosen our day with care, not only a colourful figure and Renaissance man who trained as
paying attention to the weather forecast, renowned for being a lawyer, wrote historical fiction and went in for politics
We are in the
presence of a thing
of rarity and great
beauty. I mark the
spot with three
large stones
I Will Remember
Piqued by her memories of a time when the
moorland quarries rang out with the sounds of
stone-splitting, Sarah Walsh catches the echoes
of a long-abandoned way of life
T
he sky is a clear luminous deep water. I hope Im like you when
blue; cumulus clouds gather Im fifty, I say.
and stack in huge silent piles As it turns out its not until winter
on the horizon. I can hear that I make it up to the quarry again.
the wind gently rustling the leaves of And this time its too cold to swim.
sycamore, oak and ash in the shaggy During a break in rain-sodden days
hedgerow as I make my way up the I seize the opportunity, as I dont
southerly slope of our hay field, long want to miss this rare crispness, this
fine grasses brushing my shins. Behind wringing-out of damp and mist.
that is the steady drone of farm The rumble of iron shakes and
machinery as haymaking gets under vibrates the car as my wheels go over
way all around us. The breeze makes the cattle grid onto the moor, like
the tips of the inflorescences ripple and crossing a threshold, separating the
shimmer in the sun, their final tremble ordinary world from this ancient place.
before the cut. Before this happens Im Tranquillity descends to my shoulders
looking out for spear thistle, which I like a breath from a benevolent giant
want to pull before a fountain of tiny and Im smiling at the undulating land
seeds make a thousand more, though stretching before me into the blue,
some are left to go over at the edges of the close-cropped grassy hillocks and
the field so that birds can feed. shimmer of bleached flaxen grasses
Im hot from the climb and I stop giving way to the scoured hills of Rough
and look back across the valley. The Tor, Brown Willy and Scribble Downs.
bare granite hills of Bodmin Moor are Its not long before I can see the rocky
in the distance, scattered with slabs outline of Carbilly Tor on the horizon, open the gate by lifting the big thick
of stone. I imagine swimming in the and when I reach the track that leads heavy chain draped over the granite
quarry up there, the water heavy and to it I park in the rough layby. Getting gatepost, a regular ritual of weight
cold, our voices echoing back to us out into the cold air, Im entranced by and sound that marks the entry to yet
from the steep vertical sides of granite. the quietness, an unusually windless another world.
Then I remember, further back, my day on the moor. The sky is high and Splitting, sawing, scappling, axing,
father swimming in the River Wey in a pale blue, with a narrow tail of cirrus dunting...
wide pool tucked away at the bottom clouds far away; the sun floods brightly ...the sounds of metal on stone,
of a steep woody bank. Made by a and obliquely, bouncing and sparkling which rang out over this hillside in the
natural weir, the suddenly fast-flowing wherever it lands. past. Pausing, all I hear now is the call
water makes a powerful current on In the stone-built hedge bank next of a crow, the ping and chatter of small
which to ride. to the road, a lonely hawthorn reaches birds and the faint murmur of farm
At the edge of the pool a sandy bank out, winter branches metallic bronze, machinery, though I can almost sense
makes a beach under the dappled a plethora of whippy young shoots the ghostly shouts of the quarrymen
shade of crack willows and Im sprouting from its most recent flail carrying through the air. And there
sitting on that beach with my friends, and just a few dark red berries left, on the slope is the ruin of the smithy
watching my dad make a dive into the crumpled and brown at the edges. I where the tools were sharpened, its
My Allotment
Peter Jewel shares an engaging sense of wonder over the
plants that will emerge from tiny seeds or pips on the
allotment that has become such a part of him
A
bitter wintry morning, the
ground soggy from several
days heavy rain, yet covered
with a crisp frost, like icing.
The white on the branches of the little
apple tree stands out against the dull
grey sky, and my breath condenses in
the still air. A shiver runs up my spine
part cold, part anticipation as I
walk to my plot. In their neat rows,
the cabbages, kale and chard look limp
in the dampness. By the overflowing
water butt the foxs sodden droppings,
and on a bare branch a solitary
magpie, squawking. Its 8.30 am on
my allotment, and Im the only one
here working, all the other plots a
silent empty patchwork. My winter
landscape.
I left my warm bed with the cat
snuggled into the hollow left by my
head. But Id rather be here than almost
anywhere, a place that I have created
and nurtured, one of a small group of Paintings by Chris Cyprus www.chriscyprus.com
weedkillers, and very gradually what looked like rich, pristine even part of the excitement. I had no desire to grow show
soil was exposed, full of large plump worms. The excitement vegetables or compete with the other allotment holders.
of seeing beautiful beds of clear fertile earth! I had at last got I would gratefully accept any tips they might offer, and
the ground ready for planting, hoeing and raking to achieve a perhaps in time I would become a good enough grower of
fine tilth, and this felt like a great achievement in itself. I had vegetables myself.
carefully prepared the canvas and was now rather nervously One of the joys of having an allotment is the sense of
ready for the first brushstroke. camaraderie with other plot holders. I can think of no
It was very daunting too. I had no particular gardening other human activity where one meets and works alongside
skills or horticultural knowledge. Over the years, I had people from completely different backgrounds, and all are
tended various gardens attached to houses I had lived in, accepted and valued for themselves. People often offer each
and I had enjoyed doing that. I had sometimes bought and other some of their vegetables, or share seeds. Around my
planted flowers, shrubs and even occasional vegetables plot there are a Spanish husband and wife, whose plot is
chosen from garden stores. But this was very different. impeccable and who each year present me with some of
It would all be trial and error. And that felt fine it was their pepper plants; a company director who plants by the
The Power of Silence: use. They soothe and persuade us into taking silence more
The Riches That Lie Within seriously. The power comes from the book being written
Graham Turner by a coolly detached intellectual rather than a fully paid-up
Bloomsbury, 2012 member of one or another sect. In a territory that is full
ISBN: 9781441182234 of dodgy characters and cults, Turner provides a piercing
and no-nonsense intellect. His book is a quest for the inner
meaning of silence, prompted initially by an experience he
had when on national service in Singapore.
Turner wanted to find whether others too had experiences
of interior locutions, or direct instructions from God.
He sets out on a journey that takes him across the world,
encountering some of the wisest and most thoughtful
people alive today. He travels to India, where he meets the
story-telling holy man Morari Bapu, and an 80-year-old
nun called Usha who tells him: Not speaking conquers
the senses, but not thinking conquers the mind. When
the mind is empty and we have no desires, something fresh
arises in the air and we merge with God.
Turner explores the world of music, where Stephen
Varcoe of the Royal College of Music tells him that silence
is extremely important to music. It is not only a lack of
sound. It is the canvas on which the whole thing is painted.
He learns how Mozart used silence to heighten drama and
create expectations, and Beethoven used it to hold tension,
whilst Chinese and Japanese music has even longer and
more meaningful silences.
In his chapter on drama, Turner notes how modern British
playwrights, including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and
David Storey (most noticeably in his play Home), use
Flotilla (oil on board) by Stuart Buchanan
silence to great effect. Shakespeare too was a master of
Paintings by this artist available from Lena Boyle Fine Art www.lenaboyle.com silence, as in the pauses in Hamlets soliloquy To be or not
to be, or the ominous silence that follows Lears retort to
Cordelia: Nothing can come of nothing. Turner probes
A
book about silence? You must be joking. Why a the utilisation of silence by analysts and therapists to heal
book? Surely it would have been better to have had troubled minds, the unity with Nature that can be found
a tome of 254 pages, all entirely empty, the literary in silence in the mountains, and the use made of collective
equivalent of composer John Cages silent composition silence by Quakers.
4'33'' or dramatist Samuel Becketts play Breath, consisting The author is gently teasing of those he considers lacking
entirely of silence. Because words can drown out silence. in gravitas, but is laudably free of malice. He is unstinting,
I love the old Jewish joke about a group of rabbis who however, in his praise for those he considers his heroes,
heard that other religious groups were going away on none more so than Father Damien, who until recently was
retreats, which were all the rage. The rabbis met together abbot of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky,
one Sunday morning and decided they too had to have a USA, where the mystic Thomas Merton spent so much of
retreat. But what should our focus be? asked one rabbi. his time. Father Damien told Turner about his own spiritual
Silence, said another. Great, said the first rabbi. Lets evolution: It was as if God had been waiting for all the
spend the time talking about silence. For those like me busyness to be over, so that he could really talk to me.
who have spent eight and more hours on Yom Kippur (the In the same chapter on Gethsemani, the author quotes
Jewish Day of Atonement) drowning in a barrage of words, psychiatrist Carl Jung arguing that humans need noise
silence is indeed a welcome idea. As the outgoing Chief because it stops the inner voice of the conscience from being
Rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, acknowledges in these heard. People, Jung wrote, become habituated to noise as
pages, Were not very much into silence in Judaism. they do to excessive alcohol: Just as you pay for this with
The words in this book, nevertheless, are put to very good cirrhosis of the liver, so in the end you pay for nervous
stress with a premature depletion of your vital substance. It is easy and perhaps trite to pick out omissions in the
The most moving chapter in the book describes the impact text. But, that said, I would have liked more on mindfulness
of silence in war-torn Lebanon, where it has encouraged and the work of medical advocates of meditation such as Jon
Islamic and Christian fighters to want to build bridges and Kabat-Zinn in the USA. Nothing, however, can detract from
peace together. the fundamental value of this book. Nowhere in it is the case
Silence, a Zen master explains, exists on five levels. The first for silence made more clearly than by another of the authors
is the absence of words and talk. Then comes inner silence and heroes, Trappist monk Thomas Keating, who is mystified by
the stilling of the endless internal monologue inside our heads, the widespread hankering after noise across modern society.
then a total absence of self, then a discovery of the state Our nature is absolute silence, he says. Everything comes
of pure energy, and finally the realisation of oneness with from silence, including God. Silence was not something you
the entire universe. This book is light on such analysis, and had to go and get. It was something you were.
it might have been helpful to have broken up the essentially
descriptive text with more such analytical passages. Anthony Seldon is Master of Wellington College.
A Sense of Vocation
Russell Warfield urges us to bring dignity to handiwork
The Case for Working with Your Hands: gushing tap is a hell of a lot smarter than their respective
Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and standings in society would credit. From here, he meditates
Fixing Things Feels Good on how the works of thinkers like Aristotle, Marx,
Matthew Crawford Heidegger and Arendt come to bear on a toilet that
Penguin, 2010 wont flush resulting in far-reaching conclusions on
ISBN: 9780141047294 morality, economics and culture. His points are frequently
convincing, with the books best chapters shot through with
insight on each page. When he paints todays job market as
I
m young enough to testify that our education system still a vacuous, dystopian extension of the Taylorist logic that
looks down on qualifications leading to a living earned led to the assembly line a century ago, it feels as if he is
by trade. But Im also old enough to be among those pointing towards a blueprint for a far better way of living
visited by anxieties about ones sense of self as an employee where the apparently competing demands of capitalism and
in the knowledge economy, where one of the most fearsome community are reconciled, while restoring a sense of agency
questions to be asked at a party is So, what is it that you to the individual.
do? The point at which these two fault lines meet gives Crawford is specifically rallying at the dehumanised
rise to Matthew Crawfords highly stimulating book The homogenisation effect of globalisation and new capitalism,
Case for Working with Your Hands, which stands up for but his repeated calls for personal responsibility betray a
the intellectual demands of handiwork, as part of broader libertarian streak, placing him in a margin of the political
anti-zeitgeist philosophising on education and employment. spectrum. But any reader with an eye on environmental
Surnames like Baker and Miller suggest that ones vocation issues cannot fail to build the bridge from Crawfords
was once something that one was, rather than something that arguments to something resembling the fabric of a
one simply did. They suggest a recognised purpose within a more sustainable culture one built around humanised
community, and a strong sense of identity. Today, by contrast, community, localisation and reconnection with the things
it is becoming increasingly in vogue to talk about ones work/ that we rely upon.
life balance, as if one were not plainly a subset of the other. So whether or not youre convinced by the nuances of
(And consider the likelihood of one of my descendants ending Crawfords philosophising, The Case for Working with
up with the name of Russell Communications-Assistant.) Your Hands remains an engaging and radical book simply
Examining how this shift occurred, Crawford argues that by virtue of calling into question the legitimacy of holding
most jobs have been drained of the need for intellectual certain means of employment in higher esteem than others.
engagement, to the point that workers valued for their As a catalyst for rethinking our attitudes towards work,
ostensibly superior education are becoming actively stupider. how work shapes individuals, and how individuals engage
And with individual jobs being subsumed into globalised with society, Crawfords book is a lonely, yet powerful
processes, he concludes that we are divorcing ourselves from voice within the narrowing parameters of the knowledge
the things that we rely upon, to the detriment of our moral economy but a voice as welcome as it is vital.
and intellectual character.
Crawford begins from the obvious (if rarely articulated) Russell Warfield is the sustainability communications assistant
point that the plumber who can fix the BA graduates for NUS (National Union of Students).
Radiant Silence
Peter Reason reflects on the evocative
quality of Kathleen Jamies Nature writing
Sightlines
Kathleen Jamie
Sort of Books, 2012
ISBN: 9780956308665
T
hose who have read Kathleen Jamies first collection
of essays, Findings, will remember the close-up
quality of her writing: always quietly observant
and thoughtful, sometimes domestic, often linked with her
experiences as a mother of young children. She watches
peregrines nesting from her kitchen window, writes about
spiders and fever, and visits Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh
to examine pathology specimens, as well as following trails Gannet, Shetland Islands Jouan & Rius/naturepl.com
and visiting islands and clifftops. This is Nature writing as
intimate encounter rather than as heroic adventure.
In the London Review of Books she rather caustically, silence that radiates from the mountains, and the ice and
and some would say unfairly, criticised Robert Macfarlanes the sky, a mineral silence which presses powerfully on our
book The Wild Places as the writing of a lone enraptured bodies deep and quite frightening. The silence becomes
male, too conservative, too romantic, and indeed too self- not just what is heard and not heard, but a synaesthesia: the
centred for her taste. Not wild-minded enough. She is aural is interpenetrated by the visual and the kinaesthetic.
interested in the wild not as something we stride over but as We are taken directly into her experience of silence that is
a force that requires constant negotiation. The wild will so close to, and that illuminates, our own.
come to us, she argues, in childbirth, in fever, in the smaller So what is it about this writing that is so compelling? It is
and sometimes darker moments of life. partly Jamies presence. In all the stories, she is completely
Jamies second volume, Sightlines, like Findings, consists of there, with her observations and reflections, yet never
a dozen or so essays describing and reflecting on the world obtrusive. She never insists, never forces us to see through
about her. This takes her further afield, to the Norwegian her eyes, and yet she leads us to do so. She draws what
Arctic, a gannetry on Shetland, cleits in St Kilda, and wildlife is familiar towards us, so we see it afresh, and she makes
and ancient remains on Rona but also to a pathology lab the unfamiliar feel as though it could become known. The
in Dundee and to watch an eclipse of the moon from the writing is close at hand, with detailed reflections that are
window of her house. Whether it is icebergs, whale skeletons, not unnecessarily decorative or over-elaborated; yet on
the corpse of a dead petrel, or Helicobacter pylori studied close study they are full of evocative metaphor: radiant
on a microscope slide, the reader is taken to an intimate silence, gannets interrogating the sea, the Earths
view. We are brought not just to see through Jamies eyes but shadow eclipsing the surface of the moon translucent, like
to feel through her perspective as well, which often means black silk. Hers is a poets eye, in this prose just as in her
connecting the wild that we reach out for with a wild that is poetry: the award-winning collection The Tree House and,
always with us. just published, The Overhaul.
I am an unashamed Kathleen Jamie fan, and have been Reading Kathleen Jamie shows us that we are participants
returning often to her essays with the question, What is in our world. Her writing teaches us that we make false
it that makes this writing so beautiful and so evocative? distinctions when we separate the wild and the not-wild,
Just to open the book and read the first lines Theres no the extraordinary and the everyday. She brings together the
swell to speak of, just little lapping waves All along the world of rocks and icebergs and aurora with the world of
shoreline lie trinkets of white ice, nudged up by the tide emotions, memory, hopes and fears. She does not preach,
we are led into the gentle adventure. The party from the for there is here no heavy or explicit environmental message
ship cruising the Norwegian Arctic are taken inland across indeed, she seems rather wary of environmentalism. The
the hummocky goose-plain to a higher spot, where their wonder, the strangeness and the beauty stand for themselves
guide invites them to sit for a while, keep quiet and listen. and remind us how precious they are.
Jamie tells us how she found herself listening not just to
the silence, but through the silence, which she describes Peter Reason is completing his book The Call of the Running
first simply as extraordinary, but then more startlingly as a Tide. He blogs at peterreason.posterous.com
Allegorical Storytelling
Peter Ainsworth is not convinced Narnia needs defending
W
e tend not to burn or behead archbishops these
days, but the Anglican Church is still capable
of making a nuisance of itself, as Rowan
Williams knows only too well. There have been rows over
the prospect of legalising gay marriage; rows over the
appointment (or not) of women bishops; difficulties with
handling the vibrant though culturally disparate branches
of the Christian faith in Africa and North America.
Narnia is a far cry from all of this. Or so one might think.
The magical world created by C.S. Lewis in a series of seven
Narnia novels for children has never been out of print, but
neither has it avoided controversy. Williams strides into the
row, robes flowing, with academic relish.
I am not sure that he does Lewis any favours by doing
so. As one might expect from such a distinguished pen,
this is a thoughtful and serious book. On one level, it is a
contemplation of Christian faith as seen through the prism
of Lewiss undoubted genius at story telling. On another, Rowan Williams Tony Kyriacou/Rex Features
Another Education
Mary Tasker finds hope for education in humanity, not the market
The Life and Death of Secondary Education for All in the provision of secondary education we have failed to
Richard Pring articulate these aims, let alone achieve them.
Routledge, 2012 Before the 1944 Education Act, secondary education in
ISBN: 9780415536363 Britain was the privilege of the few, and the majority of
working-class children attended the non-fee-paying elementary
school or central school up to the age of 14, to receive a basic
R
ichard Pring was formerly Professor of Education and training in skills. After 1944, all children were entitled to a
Director of Educational Studies at Oxford University. free secondary education up to the age of 16. But the division
He is a distinguished philosopher of education, an of schools into a tripartite structure grammar, secondary
advocate of the practice and philosophy of the American modern and technical led to the separation of children into
educator John Dewey. He is also a those who went to grammar school and
patron of Human Scale Education and those who did not, with the result that
a believer in the importance of human 20 years later a government report stated
scale in the education of children and
Other countries have that half our future had not achieved
young people. The Resurgence Trust pinned their faith in the aspirations of 1944. The new
chair, James Sainsbury, in his New children and teachers comprehensive schools of the 1960s and
Year message last January, urged that 1970s were intended to bring together
human activities must be on a human children of all abilities under one roof,
scale, not an industrial scale, if we but the industrial scale of these schools,
are to lead good and purposeful lives in harmony with and their reluctance with some notable exceptions to
Nature. Pring argues that education has a crucial role to develop new approaches to learning and school organisation
play in developing in young people the values and attitudes again led to frustration and failure for large numbers of young
that will enable them to lead such good and purposeful people. The dream of universal secondary education that
lives. He restates the true aims of education and shows how would develop the talents of all children and prepare them for
the democratic life and community living remained unrealised.
Today it would seem that the dream is even more remote.
Comprehensive schools remain, but the cohesiveness of
the school system has been shattered by the introduction
of state-funded independent schools. These are academies,
which have increased from 200 in 2010 to 2,400 today and
are either converter academies or sponsored academies
free schools of every description, including faith schools
and technical schools. It is a chaotic mix. Local Education
Authorities are in a state of free fall, and the control of the
whole system of 20,000 schools is vested in one person: the
Secretary of State. In 1944 the Minister of Education had
but three powers. In 2013 the Secretary of State has over
2,000. The fragmentation of the system has brought with
it the entry of business interests, and the future may well
lie with chains of for-profit schools being run by business.
The language of business now shapes policymaking, and
Pring is coruscating in his criticism of the language of
deliverology and management speak.
Into the moral vacuum of a market-led education system,
Pring injects the values of a person-centred education. He
believes that the fundamental question to ask is: What does
it mean to be human? In Prings view the essence of being
human is understanding, capability, community mindedness,
moral seriousness and sense of dignity, and the purpose of
education is to develop these human attributes. Against this
backcloth education takes on a different light. The experience
of the learner becomes central and informs a wider vision
Illustration by Robert Hunter www.robertfrankhunter.com
of learning that combines the academic, the artistic and the created. It is not yet too late. The effect of government policy
practical to forge a common culture accessible to all children. in this country over the last three decades has been to create
Other countries have pinned their faith in children and a fearful and demoralised teaching profession and a growing
teachers and turned their backs on the quasi-market in divide between those students who can achieve in the
education with its tests, targets and league tables. Finland, system and those who cannot. This is morally unacceptable
for example, has achieved the highest levels of educational in a democratic country. In this carefully argued and uplifting
attainment in the world without constant testing and book Richard Pring tells us that there is another way.
inspection. Pring sets out the steps whereby a locally managed
and democratically accountable system of education could be Mary Tasker is former chair of Human Scale Education.
W
alking keeps me fit, makes my dog bouncily
happy and unfailingly lifts my spirits too. Its
also wonderful for thinking things through, and
sometimes understanding, ideas and inspirations come to
me. Blissfully, there is the feeling of being in touch with
Nature and often with something mystical or spiritual.
How welcoming to read in the introduction: Dont
set out to do some thoughtful walking. Just walk. So I
started reading The Art of Mindful Walking with no fear of Cover illustration by Clifford Harper courtesy Ivy Press Limited
prescriptive demands, stern teaching or pressure: I would
simply read, just as I simply walk, step by step. But the book is more than a philosophical and spiritual
And a beguilingly enjoyable journey it proved. Just like journey. It reminds us of practical considerations. What to
a walk, as the pages progress the views change; there is wear? What to take? And in both his company and others
always something remarkable to catch attention where you we are vividly shown places where we may never have the
are now, and a pleasant anticipation of new interests and chance to walk. We meet Kierkegaard, who wrote that daily
insights to come along the way and over the horizon. he walked himself into wellbeing and away from illness,
Throughout the book there is the comforting, humbling into his best thoughts and away from burdensome ones.
and yet at the same time awe-inspiring sense of being part Sections on great travellers such as Robyn Davidson and
of a timeless tradition. Our oldest human ancestors would Bruce Chatwin made me want to read more of their work.
have been mindful as they walked when searching for food, As we walk with Adam Ford in the countryside, through
while the first written records we have of mindful walking cities, along the waterside, memories of walks taken in the
are by the peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece. past flood back. The feel of the track, beach or road beneath
It also made me tingle with recognition to read that the our feet, the things we saw, conversations, thoughts. So
concept of a sacred path is at the heart of many religions: many feelings. Such richness, echoed here as the pages turn
for example, early Christians were followers of the Way, and the path unfolds.
Taoism is named after the Tao the Way and the mystery There is a delightful section on walking in moonlight. Oh,
behind the world while for Buddhists mindfulness is how good it is to walk in the light of a moon lets do it
the seventh element of the Eightfold Path in our journey more. Lets walk more day and night.
towards understanding and peace. To read this book is to enjoy the company of Adam Ford
There are some profound thoughts on life and its as he walks, generously and charismatically sharing his
dichotomies. Adam Ford writes: I was very aware of the thoughts and anecdotes. I loved the journey and learned
transitory and vulnerable nature of my own existence and much along the way.
later mentions the immortal dignity of the human being.
He is also illuminating on the questions of loneliness and Jenny Hare is a poet, counsellor, artist and author.
solitude, and on walking alone or in company. Her latest book is Unlock Your Creativity.
We welcome letters and emails commenting on Resurgence & Ecologist articles. These should
include your postal address. Send your letters to The Editors, Resurgence & Ecologist, Ford House,
Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE or email editorial@resurgence.org
Letters may be edited for reasons of space or clarity.
Readers Crossword
A brain teaser full of ecological clues
Across 1 2 3 4 5 6
Down
1 The ------ Canyon spilt its oil off Lands End 12 The UK is crisscrossed by these ancient paths. (3,5)
in 1967. (6) 14 Do only this, a byword for a holistic approach. (7)
2 This is moral in the title of a Radio 4 16 This bird is the symbol of the RSPB. (6)
programme. (4)
18 The lowest class of worker in Norse society. (6)
3 The F in CIWF. (7)
19 Intuition represents this sense. (5)
4 Milton, first President of independent Uganda. (5)
21 Long for a larch? (4)
5 Teddy Goldsmith published a blueprint for this
The answers will be published in the next issue and available online
in 1972. (8)
www.resurgence.org If you have any comments about this new feature
6 Om mani padme hum is an example. (6) please email Tim: ecores_crossword@hotmail.co.uk
Please send to The Resurgence Trust, Rocksea Farmhouse, St Mabyn, Bodmin, Cornwall PL30 3BR, UK
ACCOMMODATION 25 Sept. 110 per person. Residential option FOR ALL READERS
recommended. For further details please contact who are considering a trip overseas, we would
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Wed like to hear from others interested HOLIDAY COTTAGE ON COTSWOLD
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smallholding/growing food, with separate Lovely south-facing holiday cottage at the end of
www.ancient-arts.org/training.html
residences and shared undertakings. One the track. Woodburner, old Indian furniture, farm
of us is Anglican and a member of the Iona shop and caf to visit, the whole farm to roam.
TASTE THE PAST
Community, the other a Quaker. Wed hope See www.theorganicfarmshop.co.uk for details.
Two days of brewing ancient ale using hot stones
to find ways of sharing worship (possibly
and a pit and gathering and cooking food with a
of different kinds), and serving the local RUGGED, BEAUTIFUL PEMBROKESHIRE
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community as well as finding a way of life Two eco-friendly converted barns on smallholding.
www.ancient-arts.org/training.html
consistent with global justice and a flourishing Each sleeps 4. Coastal path 2 miles. Tel.
earth. For more information or to chat 01348 891286 holidays@stonescottages.co.uk
please contact Tim or Gill: 01647 24789 or EVENTS www.stonescottages.co.uk
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ECOHESION MID WALES
offers freelance lectures in 2013. The Ecology Earth, Air, Water, Fire... Walk wild hilltops, breathe
COURSES of Economics the assumed separability of the fresh air, explore streams and waterfalls, snuggle
ecologically cohesive (ecohesive) world, of which we down by the woodburner. Cosy, bright, peaceful
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GREENSPIRIT ANNUAL GATHERING Rob and Pip: 01686 420423
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TAUNTON VEGAN FAIR and markets, river nearby, wine-growing area,
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food tasters, cafe, stalls, local producers, ethical or email webb@wanadoo.fr
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