Regreening the desert

If we were to restore the vast areas of the planet where we humans have degraded the soil just think what an impact we would have on taking carbon out of the atmosphere. As much as a quarter or the world land mass has been degraded and much could be rehabilitated in the way we have seen on the Loess plateau. And we have only just began to recognise the real value of natural capital. Surely investing in the recovery of the damaged environments is a cost effective way of solving many of the problems we face today. The source of wealth is the functional ecosystem. The products and services that we derive from those are derivatives. It’s impossible for the derivatives to be more valuable than the source. And yet in our economy now as it stands the products and services have a monetary values, but the source - the functional ecosystems - are zero. So this cannot be true. It’s false. So we’ve created a global institution of economic theory based on a flaw logic. So if we carry that flaw in logic from generation to generation we compound the mistake.

The lives of 20mil people have been directly improved in China by applying the lessons of the Loess plateau. This extends the growing season and gives high value produce.

The floods, mud slides and droughts are not inevitable. Here on the Loess plateau I have witnessed how people can lift themselves out of poverty. Without vegetation cover on the hill sides when the rains come, the water doesn’t soak into the ground but flows away in a flood, then it’s not available for agriculture during the rest of the year. This leads to drought and famously for Ethiopia, famine.