Our world is defined as much by what we forget, as what we remember. The billions of memories lost to time distort our perceptions with their absence. Add a healthy dose of lies and half-truths, and the past becomes a murky place, the truth almost indecipherable.

It isn’t just a problem for historians. Ecologists continuously try to decipher what landscapes once looked like, back when they were pristine. What was once grassland, and what was once forest? Are the highlands of Scotland or the moorlands of England natural? Or are they the sign of ecological collapse — a degraded landscape? And, where do we draw the line? In a changing landscape, who gets to say what the natural world should look like? For instance, you might be surprised to learn 40,000 years ago, a straight-tusked elephant (Elephas antiquus) once roamed Europe; we might have forgotten, but the trees haven’t, it’s why they are so strong, they’re elephant-proof!

In North America, the now heavily polluted Potomac river boasted sturgeon up to eighteen feet long and shoals of herring, such as alewife and shad, in the millions. Such abundance wasn’t in the mists of deep history, but a few centuries ago, when colonists landed in the New World. It was a vision only their ancestors in Europe had known, long, long ago. Now no one even remembers the Potomac’s millions. We’re all suffering from ecological amnesia.

The oldest written story known to man — the Epic of Gilgamesh — is an ode to our raw unadulterated power over nature.

Imagine a cedar forest so dense sunlight never hits the ground, wherein the shadows a lion or a tiger prowl. Most picture Africa, and not dusty Iraq — the cradle of civilisation, or Mesopotamia as it was once known. Here Gilgamesh ruled as the King of Uruk — one of the earliest cities -, feared by the Gods; one day, he set out on a quest to prove his majesty. Heading deep into the mythical cedar forest, he fought Humbaba the Terrible, the mighty forest guardian, who had the paws of a lion and a body clad in thorny scales and smote him dead below the boughs of a cedar tree. Victorious the god-king wasted no time cutting the forest down, but time always laughs last. Devoid of trees the land eroded, flooding gradually salted the fields, and eventually, civilisation crumbled.

All that followed suffered the same disease — the Gilgamesh syndrome. But as we face growing populations, climate change, soil erosion and droughts, can the process be reversed? And if so, how do we green the world?

Life on The Loess Plateau

The Loess Plateau of China was amongst the earliest areas to discover agriculture. The rich soil, from which the plateau draws its name, was highly fertile for China’s fledgeling farmers. However, centuries of overgrazing, subsistence farming and deforestation gradually eroded the landscape, and the seat of Chinese power, which once fed one-quarter of the country, turned from lush forests and verdant grasslands, into a degraded and dust-ridden land. Gullies carved deep scars in the valleys, as each deluge washed off the mountainside, taking the soil with it, down into the Yellow River — named for its silt-infused colour.

Around 1.6 million tonnes of sediment washed away every year, and ninety-five per cent of rainfall was lost immediately to the Yellow River. Vast floods devastated communities downstream, the enormous loss of life and property earned the river another name — ‘China’s Sorrow’.

When Juergen Voegele, an agricultural economist and engineer, arrived with the World Bank in the ’90s, they were shocked — ‘This was absolute desert.’

Somehow, they had to fix the impossible.

For two years, the World Bank worked with Chinese authorities consulting local farmers, examining the soil, and mapping the landscape. Yet, for all their work, the solution eluded them. After generations, the ground was almost devoid of organic matter, essential for fertility — it’s the difference between the dead vermilion soils of Mars and the living black soils we call ‘earth’.

We often ignore this world below our feet. Yet, without this complex ecosystem, the network of bacteria, fungi, and microscopic organisms, life on earth would not exist. Decomposers, called saprophytes, in the soil, break down waste plant and animal matter into simple molecules, for reuse by plants. Others fix essential elements such as nitrogen from the air into compounds in the soil, imperative for photosynthesis

Mud, muck, dirt — it doesn’t inspire respect, we tread on it after all. But beneath each footstep three-hundred miles of fungal architecture, called mycelium, exists. Fungi, unlike animals which evolved to internalise digestion, leave their ‘stomachs’ on the outside, digesting before absorption, making them ideal for decomposition. First, primary decomposers, such as delicious oyster or shiitake mushrooms, partially breakdown dead matter with enzymes. Next, the secondary decomposers, like the famous button mushroom, arrive and finish the job. Tertiary decomposers do exist, like the distinctive orange peel fungus, though they’re much rarer. It doesn’t help to be a fussy eater, dining down in the dirt.

Aleuria aurantia — the Orange Peel Fungus

However, we can’t add any old species to the mix. Like animals, soils denizens are picky about where they live. Nematodes or roundworms are so ubiquitous, that if we were to eliminate the entire universe, except for them, then almost all the features of the world would still be identifiable — from the hills and mountains to the trees which line our streets. They represent 80% of all individual animals on earth. A key indicator of soil health, they control bacterial numbers, thus regulating decomposition, as well as mineralising nitrogen for plant use. But they are as adapted to their environment as the lion to the savannah. For instance, Scottnema lindsayae is endemic to the dry volcanic and stony soils of Antarctica, it alone can withstand the frigid conditions.

Without this menagerie of species — a real living soil, working in concert to cycle organic and inorganic matter through the ecosystem — life stops. Seeds won’t germinate, animals migrate or starve. The land dies.

To fix this and trigger growth, the team took a further year of study; finally, a plan formed. For starters, they divided the land into economic and social, one part for work, the other for the community and nature. Open-grazing of livestock stopped, allowing the little remaining vegetation a chance to stabilise the denuded landscape. Following the devasting 1998 floods, indiscriminate felling of trees was banned.

On the slopes and most degraded land deemed uneconomical for agriculture, 270,000 hectares (ha) of trees, shrubs and grasses helped improve the stability, especially in the arid north, where grasses were planted in grids to anchor the dunes. ‘Arbor trees’ such as black locust, Chinese pine, spruce and poplar were the trees of choice; as successional plants, they fixed nitrogen in the sandy soils, and encouraged other species to colonise the area.

While land ownership was not possible in communist China, the team managed to established 20–50-year leases, depending on the type of land, spurring a sense of stewardship. Residents, who had been difficult to convince, began to assist with the broader project. They built over 72,000 ha of terracing, doubling the grain yields compared to sloped land. New wider terraces allowed road access, and conserved water, preventing erosion.

Loess Plateau, Early September, 1995

Loess Plateau, Early September, 2009

Several thousand sediment control dams aimed to prevent silt washing through the gullies; as the years passed, these deep gullies filled, forming arable land used for wheat and other cash crops.

Revitalising almost 16,000 km2 doesn’t come cheap. $500 million in restoration funds was ploughed into the region, a small price for such astonishing results. Since 2000, forest-cover increased by over 7.5%, with more than 90% of the plateau showing increased carbon sequestration, turning the region from carbon source to carbon sink. Additionally, soil erosion was reduced by 57 million tons annually.

The large-scale planting of orchards has turned the region into a leading apple producer, exporting to the rest of country and beyond. Poverty fell dramatically, with a 17-point uptick in employment, to 87 per cent. Agricultural production value boomed, growing to Yuan 577 million in 2001, almost seven times larger than in 1993. Even, school enrolment is up, and healthcare is improving.

As Voegele says, ‘Even after hundreds of years of complete devastation, the seeds were still in the ground and things began to happen very quickly.’ The seeds were also in the minds of the millions of farmers, who believed in the vision. Now the region is blooming — a miracle for development and ecology.

Loess Plateau, Early September, 1995

Loess Plateau, Early September, 2009

The project ended in 2001, yet efforts such as the ‘Grain for Green’ program help expand its legacy, buying areas susceptible to soil erosion from farmers and converting them to natural vegetation. It has involved 124 million people, and by 2010 had transformed 32 million ha of land back to wilderness. As with everything in China, only from space can the scale be appreciated. Around the world nations have taken note, they can hardly say they missed it.

Erosion in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, the government has invested $1.2 billion annually to restore the landscape to health. Like China, Ethiopia has an agricultural history lasting millennia, back to the Axumite Empire, a contemporary of ancient Rome. Nevertheless, recent population pressure, cultivation of steep slopes, clearing of vegetation (including deforestation — removing nearly ninety-seven per cent of native forest), and overgrazing left Ethiopia with a severe case of Gilgamesh syndrome.

The Ethiopian Highlands tower above the rest of the continent, gaining the nickname ‘the Roof of Africa’. The Blue Nile, which accounts for up to 80% of the total volume of the Nile proper during the summer monsoon, finds it tail high amongst imposing peaks. Downstream the river turns almost black from soil which bleeds into its water, giving it its name.

Annually 1.5 million tons of topsoil are lost from the highlands. A study into erosion found croplands accounted for 69% of the total soil loss. Due to severe erosion, by 1990, 1 million tons of cereal production was forgone, enough food for over 4 million people, risking the return of famine to a people tired of hunger.

All that has begun to change. Over the past 30 years, the Ethiopian government has employed new techniques for soil and water conservation. Construction of soil bunds combined with trenches or trees allows water to soak into the ground and prevents soil washing off the denuded landscape. Just like on the Loess Plateau, dams were built out of stone, allowing water to slowly flow through the soil, and encouraging retention in the form of groundwater. Now even in a drought, the water still flows.

Gabion check-dam filled with soil (picture left). The same dam one year later (picture right).

In total since 1991, soil and water conservation activities occurred on 960,000 ha, with a further 1.2 million ha closed off to allow natural vegetation to return. Soil loss was cut by up to 90 per cent, improving carbon sequestration.

For more information regarding Ethiopia’s regreening, see above World Bank/TerrAfrica documentary (13:09 min)

Soil hadn’t been the only thing to erode; people dreams had eroded too. They had left, seeking fortune in distant lands; but with the rejuvenation of the countryside, many are beginning to return.

Enjoying their success, the Ethiopian government launched a paper called the ‘Climate-Resilient Green Economy’ intending to restore one-sixth of the nation’s land by 2030. It’s an ambitious target, necessitating the removal of many bureaucratic obstacles. But as the saying goes Rome wasn’t built in a day, even if Eden only took a week.

Peter Andrews: An Australian Legend

Nowhere has the Gilgamesh syndrome taken hold so quickly, and ecological amnesia erased the past so fundamentally than in the land down under. Unlike China or Ethiopia, Australia does not have thousands of years of agricultural history, except for some ‘fire stick agriculture’ — which used controlled burning to regulate the number of prey species in an environment. But a hundred years of increasingly mechanised and industrialised agriculture have radically changed the landscape. At Mulloon Creek, forty-five minutes from Canberra, the parched and degraded farm was in urgent need of repair.

Tony Coote, the then-executive chairman of Angus and Coote Jewellers, had bought the property in the late 1960s. One night, he watched a documentary about Peter Andrews, a maverick farmer who had developed a system for repairing the Ozzie landscape; he knew his luck had turned. In truth, he was about to meet a life-long friend and long-time partner. The two would rejuvenate Mulloon Creek and trigger an agricultural revolution.

Andrews called his technique ‘natural sequence farming’, it aimed to restore the upland valleys and creeks, filling a chain of ponds and swampy meadows which would hydrate the landscape, preventing erosion. The two men set to work creating ‘leaky weirs’, much like in the Loess Plateau and the Ethiopia highlands, out of rocks, fallen trees and other detritus. Six truckloads of blackberry canes were put into the creek to ‘trigger the fertility’.

The soil woke up, as The Mulloon Institute’s Peter Hazell explains, ‘It’s alive with fungus and bacteria, earthworms, and they’re all processing that organic matter and that litter.’ Despite Australia’s recent drought, the creek still flows, which sparked a visit from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who proclaimed Mr Andrews as a ‘real leader and visionary.’ Deputy PM Michael McCormack declared Mulloon a ‘model for everyone’, to be ‘replicated right around our nation.’

Peter Andrews — inventor of natural sequence farming

Sadly, Tony Coote died in 2018, but his legacy lives on. Martin Royds, a cattle producer in Jillamatong, followed the leaky weir principles; in the face of fire and drought, 20,000 litres of water still flowed every day from the weir system. During the worst of the bushfires, helicopters filled from the weir every forty seconds.

The work of Mr Andrews has now been recognised by the UN, which named Mulloon Creek one of only five sustainable locations in the world. But, as Andrews concludes, ‘All we’ve done is reproduced, what was a natural process in Australia’s landscape.’ He used the trees and gullies, not as carbuncles in need of eviction, but as a sculptor uses their tools. Rather than fighting nature, succumbing to Gilgamesh syndrome, trying to swim against the tide; visionaries such as Andrews and others have gone with it, blazing a way for us all to follow. They’ve taught us how to green the world.

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