Reading Lauren Oakes, “Treekeepers: the Race for a Forested Future”, was a bit of a bi-polar experience for me, with periods of amazement and hope, interrupted by depression and hopelessness….To be fair this wasn’t all a result of the book, as there’s no way I could separate out my reading experience from the roller coaster ride of social, political and economic upheaval that characterizes our current ‘Anthro-Trump-pocene’ period…and the ‘reality’ that climate change is taking on a ‘life’ of its own, no longer a simple linear response to our irresponsible Carbon burning, resource consuming, habit. Oakes is a conservation scientist and a science writer. She is also a mother searching for a way out of the impending crisis that awaits us if we continue on failing to act intelligently, respectfully and with enough urgency, that we can avoid the worst outcome of what is definitely bearing down on us. Oakes spent 4 years interviewing ‘experts’, yes that dubious group of would be influencers, whose work is to head off climatic disaster through the use of the conservation, renewal, restoration and expansion of Earth’s reduced and still declining forest base, the natural systems and cycles that have supported life’s development, what role they could play in forestalling what appears to be on our way and even ameliorating the damage already done. What she tells here is the story of an evolving approach to a ‘solution’, one that has been rife with misunderstanding, conflict, misinformation campaigns, innovation and setbacks, a process that is not just redefining the problem and its potential solution, but the processes and ‘mechanics’ of how we might do this. Trees, once presented as a silver bullet, in a simple replacement program, are not and cannot staunch the Carbon ‘bleeding’. They do, however, still remain an important component of a larger program.

Oakes takes the reader along as she interviews fellow professionals, innovators and other pivotal actors, in the evolution of the idea of using trees effectively as a carbon sink, to soak up and hold atmospheric carbon. She begins from the strategy’s first serious consideration as an effective tool, what that actually means in the real world as technologies, political motivations, financial tools and incentives ‘slowly’ develop into an array of strategies. Here too she covers the internal ‘attacks’ within the ecological and political world as proponents of competing strategies struggle for ascendancy, all of this while a broad political reluctance to change anything drags efforts down. Any ‘solution’ involves the protection of existing forest lands and the planting of billions and billions of ‘new’ trees. This goes far beyond planting a few street trees along our neighborhood streets, although everything we do is a piece. It is a massive undertaking, one that has largely been left on the back burner with countries making abstract commitments in the future to plant so many trees. Just where these will go, what species, or whether they will be a part of producing ecologically functional landscapes, which themselves will provide more assurance that such plantings will be sustainable without being continuously dependent upon human support. And it is that human support, our action, that is lagging behind. Diplomatic agreements and discussions alone cannot get us where we ‘must’ be.

Where will these plantings be made, because every plot of land will present different conditions and will likely be serving some human need to a locale’s physical and economic survival. For example, I live at the nexus of several different bio-regions in what is commonly referred to as ‘high desert’, an arid region, hardly a landscape that can sustain a diverse, carbon rich forest of any single or combination of species. To make such plantings successful here over the long term here, will require a commitment of supplemental water, long term…essentially forever. Promoters and hucksters once claimed to would be farmers-settlers of the North American prairie, that rain would follow the plow, that we, through our efforts to develop a landscape could bring about the wanted climatic changes, simply through the ‘demand’ of our actions….Obviously this didn’t work. While science has demonstrated the role of large forested areas in supporting the intensity of seasonal rains, this is ‘true’ for massive forested areas, contiguous, a part of an intact forested system, with unbroken connection to oceans, not fragmented pockets of trees. While such plantings do serve to modify temperatures and local conditions, they cannot create precipitation from dry air masses.

Other lands, cleared of their forests, have been serving agricultural roles, essential for either local consumption or for the growth of commodity crops upon which a region or nation is somewhat economically dependent. None of these are insubstantial issues and they won’t ‘solve’ themselves on their own and they can’t be solved by some distant authority without the inclusion of the local, dependent, population. Consensus, seems to be forming around the necessity of replanting forests on available lands (What exactly is ‘available’ to planting is itself an issue. What is the appropriate use for a given piece?). Such social and economic aspects of the landscape, and such projects, cannot be ignored.

Single species plantations of rapidly growing trees have also been proposed as part of the solution, species that can more quickly lock up Carbon, as compared to slower growing, although much longer lived species like Oaks. Opponents of these are plenty. They are, it is argued, a solution that parallels that of monocultural agricultural practice, and as such, are viewed as temporary fixes. These are often planted as sources of fiber for industry, and, they are not sustainable, in terms of being a community that over time perpetuates itself as can a mixed species ‘natural’ forest community. They are a ‘crop’ that once harvested wipes out any ‘gains’ they may have once, briefly, provided. Whatever tree planting ‘solutions’ are implemented, reducing our collective Carbon emissions remains essential as well as redefining our relationship with the world around us, which sustains us.

Yes, we plant trees and restore lost forest lands. But this alone is insufficient in itself as a solution. While her focus is on trees, she and other ecologists she interviews, acknowledge the other major carbon sinks that play an essential role in any solution that will be effective, including the massive amounts held in healthy organic soils in the form of decaying organic matter and the countless trillions of organisms that live within it. Such soils are an integral part of intact native landscapes be they grassland, or characteristic of estuaries, peat lands and other intact systems. To do this requires a transformation in the relationship between the peoples of ‘developed’ countries and place, so that we recognize and respect the value and contributions of those ‘undeveloped’ sites, something we have largely ignored. Landscapes which haven’t been ‘developed’ serve key roles in the carbon balance. Even so planting everywhere we can, without reducing our emissions, AND changing our relationship with nature around us, that source of and absolutely essential core of life, we are still very much at risk. It is, she writes, not just about carbon sequestration, it is about defending and building on all of the ongoing, related systems that keep life on this planet within livable margins, about homeostasis and health. It is not as she comes to understand, about which strategy is the correct one, it is about implementing whatever works, locally, to improve the vitality of local PLACES, through tailored strategies, what she sometimes refers to as ‘boutique’ strategies.

Oakes takes considerable page space to discuss the practice of offsetting carbon credits and the ‘industry’ that has sprung up around it. These are financial instruments which assign a dollar value to a tree and its landscape. The idea being that an investor/business can purchase credits that offset their own carbon footprint, the money going to the planters and maintainers of said trees to insure their long term survival. In some cases, especially early on in the development of the credit process, credits were also used to set aside, defend, existing forested lands. You can imagine the problems inherent to such a system. Of course a trading system sprang up, mostly speculative, in which profit could be made through the trading of existing credits. Credit values were often initially set too low to actually implement reforestation projects, while in others, the trees themselves, became abstractions, of secondary value to the profits that could be made through paper trading. Stronger ties, it became quickly apparent, were necessary to assure that values were set high enough to actually create and maintain the project. Oakes goes into considerable detail with those on the ground laying out what is required, long term, in order for this approach to be successful. By the time I completed the book, I was more convinced that carbon credits could be a successful strategy for getting the work done well while supporting the local communities upon who’s lives and the trees themselves depend.

That local element has to include the people who live in and near each place, those who are to some degree, dependent upon that place for their lives, who have certain expectations, which if ignored will undermine the long term viability of whatever ‘positive’ work has been done in their name. Without local participation and commitment, inclusion, in the planning and implementation of such projects, anything done will be only temporary. She presents examples of incorporating the local economies of the community in the effort, collecting seed, growing on that stock, preparing sites and ‘husbanding’ them over the years, providing the local community with income that the land’s former use once did. The work, she points out again and again does not end with a tree’s planting, it extends over its and its community’s entire life. No effective long term solution can be achieved without such participation and consideration. The solution must be multifunctional and inclusive. If it isn’t over the long term, it isn’t really a ‘solution’ at all. The changes must be permanent at least over the human scale. It is not a simple fix achievable by someone else’s work. It must be of the place and people. It is an expansion of the gardening dictum right plant, right place, to include as well, right people, and by that I mean their inclusion and a redefining of their relationship with that place…in total. By the time I finished the book, which took me some time, because of my own yo-yoing state of mind, it occurred to me that what Oakes was writing about, more broadly, could be called a strategy of ‘place-keeping’.

Place, carries with it, an understanding of uniqueness, of relationship with, of being a part of….Western societies have largely abandoned our relationship with ‘place’ along with the limits and dependence it would impose on us. We are no longer committed, dependent upon, a particular place for our lives. Our global economy has obliterated the individual and community links that once joined us, but not their necessity. Our dependence on cheap energy has enabled it, but what we are finding is that this independence from place, this capacity to live anywhere and still benefit from the resources and support the economy brings us, really isn’t as inexpensive as we’ve been promised. That ‘bill’ is now coming due in the form of a loss of system’s resilience, global warming, climate change, and an unimaginable re-shuffling of the living world and its conditions. Hubris threatens. A storm awaits. Growing in severity, the longer that we deny its coming.

Indigenous peoples were by necessity tied to place. Limits were harshly imposed when the capacity of one’s local system, landscape, were exceeded. Trade, a tool that can be used to overcome the limits of local place, can put those other places under stress and our response to that distant stress is slowed as our experience of it is remote. Today’s western economy denies the local, but can do so only when there is some other place from which to take, however, if one recognizes the limits of place, and lives within them, life is ‘comfortable’. Without recognition of such limits the concept of ‘more’ commonly overwhelms that of ‘enough’. An economic restlessness can then dominate. Why shouldn’t I have more?
The limits of place in indigenous cultures went to shaping their ‘philosophy’ and relationship with nature and place. They came to see place and ‘other’ as connected, a part of a whole, summed up in oft noted reference to ‘All My Relations’. Respect, reciprocity, investment in place act to assure that life continue on in a healthy, vibrant way, while a philosophy of endless more and taking, is one of death.

Indigenous peoples traditionally are ‘of’ a place. Taking too much would result in the collapse of necessary resources locally and of those systems dependent upon them. Harvest, was therefore measured and respectful. The idea of seven generations, became a gauge by which one measured one’s actions. Is what we do today sustainable, over the coming seven generations? Trade with others can serve to smooth out periodic shortages, but when limits are consistently exceeded, when local resources/species are in serious decline, that should serve as a sign for a serious redirection, a signal that one’s path is unsustainable. Such a burden on elsewhere to maintain one’s own stability, threatens the entire system,. Out of balance trade can thus put other locales at risk, resulting in what was once plentiful being put under threat. It undervalues capacity, the ‘health’ of any place. Profits, in local sustainable economies, are not taken at the expense of a locale’s capacity or those of another. Plenty was assured as long as one recognized and respected the rights and needs of others, all others. All species. All ‘systems’. The foreignness, even the naiveté, of such a concept today to most western peoples illustrates just how far out of balance our lives are. It is not just about over consuming Carbon. Our relationship with our locale, with the Earth and its life, has been forced out of balance. In a sense, the entire Earth has been reinterpreted as our locale and we have placed demands on it that cannot be met long term…demands that we are often unaware of due to our distance and lack of relationship. It isn’t just about the trees and the loss of forests.

This is what Oakes suggest is essential if we are to be successful, regarding planetary homeostasis, over the long term. She refers time and again to the idea of shifting baseline syndrome, the idea that each successive generation’s baseline understanding of a place, of what is ‘normal’, is different. What was lost before you reached the age of awareness, in a sense, never existed. The loss is unfelt. But the loss is none-the-less there in the form of compromised conditions of a place’s living communities which define and shape it. Our engagement is a necessity for the continuing healthy functioning of a place which is what Oakes and those working to implement changes are finding. Solutions, imposed by governments, agencies and companies, without the informed participation of the community, cannot last. This is ‘our’ problem…in its broadest sense.

Solutions are complex and this is at the root of my discomfort with all of this. Were the solution merely technological, I would have more faith in the ability of government’s, NGOs and businesses to provide them. It is the human element that makes this simultaneously simple and doable, while also, given our inability to see past the misinformation, manipulations and unbridled shortsighted selfishness of so many, that keeps blocking and short circuiting our collective efforts to redirect our energies before the problem falls into a cascade of catastrophic changes that we cannot survive. I am often disheartened by my fellows’ responses that there is nothing that they can do, that the necessary changes are the responsibility of others, major others, their denial of their own individual agency; the simple dismissal that the world is too large, too powerful, for us to upset in any significant way, that we needn’t worry; and of those few who simply see this as inevitable, as God’s retribution for our sinful ways. There are other ‘excuses’, other abdications of responsibility, denials of agency, that we have learned and adopted along the way, but the simple fact is that each one of us can make a difference, if we only renewed our relationship with this amazing Earth as a fellow species, acknowledging that if we each behaved as if the Earth mattered, it would, and the entire Earth system would thereby self correct….That is the nature of all power. None of us have the capacity to change the whole world by ourselves. That is both the reason for our current predicament and the source of our ‘salvation’. It should also serve as a sign to each of us, an indicator of the path for us to follow. Each path, will be unique, attuned to our individual capacities and the place on this world on which we find ourselves. It is about remaining ‘true’ to place, not to some cause or other. Truth is always there. Doubt undermines it. Humility and love keeps us true, open and responsive. When we find ourselves on a path demanding that we sacrifice our own health and well being, or that of others, that should serve as a powerful warning that this is wrong and that we should reconsider said path.

The value of any one life, of this Earth, lies in each of our relationships with it. Value, as it is commonly understood today, is a human attribution. Nature does not ‘value’ any one thing more than another. Each simply is. Each is a part of the whole that exists in a state of tension between life and death…in a dynamic balance. Homeostasis. Each serves multiple purposes, cooperative and competitive. Health is an expression of the whole, not that of each individual, but of the entirety of the system…an indicator of its capacity to continue on. Death is a necessity as much as is birth. We, all, are limited and essential. Life happens in between. Whatever tomorrow brings, is a product of the whole. We are, in a sense, each magicians, and by our magics shape the world in small ways. Be careful to whom or what you relinquish your power, your magics.

Everything in nature is beautiful…everything is flawed. What is in doubt, is what we make of it with our limited abilities. Life is a magic we cannot create. We can only strive to understand it, and when done well, live within it. What world will we choose?