how difficult it is to restore what has been lost

[Anastassia Makarieva]

Dear colleagues,

My apologies for being unresponsive recently, I blame it on the covid disruptions.

I would like to draw your attention to the following video (h/t Antonio Donato Nobre) that describes a decade's long attempt of restoring vegetation in the desert of Saudi Arabia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8

From my perspective, this remarkable video broadly resonates with the recent materials that we have been discussing, the video about forest loss in Colombia shared by Juan, Ilaria and Ugo's book about the emptied sea, Christian's reference to the restoration work of Tony Rinaudo "The Forest Maker".

In the beginning of the video, a local man narrates about how very big trees used to grow in the area "such that one could not see the nearby hills" relatively recently. Now it is a harsh desert and truly extraordinary efforts are needed to green it up by just a tiny bit. (By the way, their first step, trying to keep water in the landscape, reminded me of Michal Kravcik's efforts in Slovakia, see his publication "After us the desert and the deluge" here ).

Biotic regulation theory explains why biotic regulation disintegrates in the state of abundance. In the context of our civilization, this principle means that until we lose almost everything, those people who try to keep our heritage from being lost remain non-competitive as compared to those who profit from its destruction. Only when we are in the desert, those who care about nature will have their word heard. But then it can be too late. So, I see it as an intellectual challenge to recognize this situation and to prevent a tragic global outcome by forcefully changing the rules by which competitive capacity is judged in the society. In a way similar to how efforts are made against monopolization.

Best wishes,

Anastassia