A J Mithra- Recording Bird Calls

A J Mithra, a music teacher at MCC Campus Matriculation School, Chennai, India chats with Preethi N Kumar at EWTT about his musical journey with nature, birds and wildlife. He conveys how his passion for wildlife and his profession as a music teacher lead to the discovery of the niche domain of zoomusicology, which is the study of music and communication by non-human animals.

He also shares his experiences about creating beautiful pieces of music from bird calls, his collaboration with Cornell lab of Ornithology, USA and about his recent research determining the health of ecosystems through zoomusicology.   A J Mithra is working to create awareness within the teaching community on how to integrate their individual subjects with Nature. He believes that teachers have a bigger role to play in creating environmentally aware citizens for the future.

EWTT: How did you develop an interest for wildlife and birds? And how did the whole concept of creating a new genre of music from wildlife originate? 

A J MITHRA: Since my school days, I always had a liking for nature as a whole. But never did I know that there is so much in store to learn from nature until I downloaded a ringtone for my mobile.  That sound file was a dawn call of birds. Whenever I get a call while driving my bike,  I used to park my bike to attend the call. Invariably 75% of the time I found that it was not a call from my mobile but, it was natural bird calls that I had heard. Until then I was under the impression that birds did not co-exist with man. This ignited the interest on birds and its calls.

During the same time, the fifth grade students of our school asked me to give them a project in music.  Immediately, without a second thought,  I split the class into two groups and asked them to collect bird calls from four different landscapes – desert and seashore bird calls for one group and grassland and mountain bird calls for another group.  I asked them to do a PowerPoint presentation.  Then I thought, as a music teacher,  I too should do a bit of homework on this project.  That’s when I thought, why not try and compose music using natural bird calls?  I just browsed on the internet and found some interesting bird calls, wrote to the bird call recordist for permission to use them, which he happily shared and that’s how I did my first musical piece using about 15 different bird calls and named it “A walk thru the woods”

A J Mithra’s first musical piece “A walk thru the woods”

Video link here

EWTT: Can you explain what are the instruments you use to record the voices of animals and birds. What kind of places do you actually visit to record their sounds?

A J MITHRA: In the beginning I used to record the bird calls and frog calls with my mobile.  Though I was not satisfied with the result, I had no other option but to go on with my mobile, as bird-call recorders are quite expensive and beyond my budget (Remember, I am working as a music teacher in a school).  During these hard moments I met my old student Ms. Jothi Krishnaswamy on Facebook after more than two decades.  She was working in Australia and when she heard my music, she immediately turned into an avid bird watcher.  It was during one of her birding trips t hatI asked her to record bird calls and send to me.   She immediately went and bought an Olympus WS -650S recorder.  Every time she went for birding, she used to record bird calls with it and mail them to me.  I have done a few pieces with her recordings too.  She gifted that recorder to me when she came to India and since then I’m using Olympus WS-650S.  I have lots of recordist friends who willingly share their recordings for my music.

Our school is situated inside Madras Christian College, which is a 350 acres of tropical dry evergreen forest.  This campus is a home for more than 120 bird species.

I record calls during my morning walks inside the campus and a few other birding spots around our area.  I also record calls whenever I go on conservation trips to Bangalore, Coimbatore and elsewhere.

EWTT:  What are the challenges you face while converting animal sounds into a beautiful piece of music and how long does it take for such each song to be developed?

A J MITHRA: Technicality is the only challenge I face.  I use primitive softwares to make music.  If only I could have better software and a better recording instrument and a laptop, this kind of music can be taken to the next level, in the sense, the music can be made more pleasing.  Since there is a lot of background noise in my recordings, those noise disturbs the bird and animal calls found on the foreground. Composing a piece can take from a couple of hours to a week, depending on the inspiration I get from the bird calls and animal calls that I work with.

EWTT: How have your virtual collaborations with Photographers like Clement Francis, Harvey Schmidt and animator Nancy Landrum for your projects like Ontirio’s opus, Magpie Rockers, Rock Rustic Bunting helped you put across your message to wider audience?

A J MITHRA: The virtual collaboration with Ms. Nancy Landrum of USA, was the turning point in my life.  It was one of her animation of a Blue Jay playing the guitar that attracted me while browsing Celebrate Urban Birds, a web portal of Cornell lab of Ornithology, USA.  I downloaded that animated picture and made music using natural Blue jay sounds and sent it back to that website. They were so impressed that they created a webpage called A virtual music video collaboration for my work with Nancy Landrum helping me on the animation of bird pictures.  Nancy passed away on June 5^th 2012.  I miss her a lot. It was her animated Blue Jay that changed my life and here I am being interviewed by Eco Walk the Talk.

Almost 70% of the kids who had watched those animated videos with the bird call music on the background,  have started taking serious interest in not just birding but conservation of nature as a whole. I have seen kids record bird calls with their parents’ mobile.

Here is one of A J Mithra favourite compositions, ” Inspiring Iora”

Video Link here

EWTT: Who inspire you in the field of wildlife conservation?                

A J MITHRA:  My students are my first inspiration.  They are so full of questions and their thirst for ecology as a whole is second to none. Their questions help me learn more.

In spite of being seen as a threat to government policies on conservation issues by the so called bureaucrats and politicians, I also see Mr. Bittu Sahgal’s perseverance and uncompromising attitude on ecological issues as my other inspiration.

EWTT: What kind of platform do you think you would require for your music to create awareness about wildlife on a larger scale?

A J MITHRA: Media can break or make a platform. I am grateful for all the leading newspapers for having covered my music. But sadly, our country has more viewers  and listeners than readers.  If television and radio could step in and start playing this kind of music, I am sure people will start listening more to nature.

If a doctor doesn’t listen to his patient, he will not know the patient’s pain. If a lawyer doesn’t listen to his client, he will never be able to get justice. It is only when people start listening to nature that they will know the pain and agony that nature undergoes.

But are we teaching people to listen to nature? This music can inspire the general public to listen to nature.

EWTT: Though you are a music teacher by profession, can you tell us how your passion for zoomusicology has influenced or increased awareness about wildlife and birds among students? What do you think has to be done to increase awareness about depleting wildlife among students?

A J MITHRA:  I have seen so many out there who are still not able to listen to a bird call or even a cricket call that exists in our environment.  It is not that they are deaf but its because their ears are not tuned to nature.  I was deaf to nature until I started using the ringtone of dawn chorus. That ringtone dawned on me and I started noticing the existing bird calls that I had thoroughly missed for several decades. Almost all the students of my school come running to me if they find an insect, a bee, a caterpillar, a moth, a butterfly, a bird, a spider, frog, a toad or even a cocoon.  In fact after every weekend, at least one student would come up with a story of an encounter he or she had with a wild life species. We have even created a sparrow map of our municipality and have contributed to the sparrow census of India with the help of our students.  Thanks to birds and animal music, they have stopped hurting even an ant.  In fact one of our fourth standard student, Jemima stopped her mom from killing a mosquito.  The reasoning she gave was that is that it’s part of our food web and we should not snap our food web.

Here is the video called “Freaking Froggy” along with facts about the importance of frogs in the food web:

Video Link here

Zoomusic can bring people back to the basics of listening to nature.  While I was talking about zoomusic to a young naturalist Angel Merlin,  she remembered how her parents use to say that their hens they reared at home would soon incubate, just by identifying the change in their calls.

Every subject on the face of the earth right from Mathematics to Material science and Politics to Philosophy is not life-oriented.  Environmental Science is the only subject that is life oriented that we use in our day-to-day life.  But sadly, Environmental Science is not considered as a “must” study subject.  If only the education department takes up this challenge and drafts Environmental Science as a compulsory subject, I am sure students will be exposed widely to environment and environmental issues, which would surely make an impact not only among students but also among teachers too.

More than 75% of the teachers are not aware of even the basic ecological issues like saving paper, water and food.  A Headmaster of a reputed Higher Secondary School in urban Chennai, requested me once to conduct an orientation program for female teachers on disposal of sanitary napkins, before creating an awareness to the girl students. He said that even teachers do not know to dispose them and how often he had to bring in men to flush out the block in the staff toilet.

Most of all, no matter what subject she or he handles, every teacher should understand that they also have a role to play when it comes to preservation of environment.  I would say it’s wrong to say that only science teachers should handle environmental issues.  Any subject teacher can teach their subject through nature.  A physics teacher can take the students out for a bird walk and can teach air thermals.  A maths teacher can teacher the angle of elevation and the distance between the predator and the prey during the course of a nature walk.  All that the teachers need is the same passion that they have for the environment as they have for their own subject and a little bit of creativity. It’s after all the teachers who play a big role in the making of good citizens, isn’t it?

EWTT: Can you share some of the ‘wow’ moments, moments where people were very fascinated, inspired about your idea or where people actually became aware of the importance of wildlife preservation, about biodiversity through your music?

AJ MITHRA: After doing my first bird call music,  ”A walk thru the woods”,  out of curiosity I googled and yahooed to see if anyone had done this type of music, and I found that Jim Fassett ,  a renowned musician had done an album using bird calls. But the biggest difference between his work and mine is that, he had stretched and skewed the bird calls and had composed music.  But I have never tampered with the bird calls and I use them as they are, pure and unadulterated.  The only manmade musical sound that I add is percussion instruments and that is only to create more interest by showing how clinical the wildlife species are in terms of rhythm.  In that sense, I would boldly say that I am the first one in the world to compose a whole piece of music using natural bird calls.  This was my first “wow” moment which spurred me on to do more of this kind of music.

Sharon, who works for an NGO and the daughter of a Professor at Madras Christian College, had been living inside the campus since her birth, but once she heard my bird music that I had composed using sounds recorded in and around the same campus said, “HOW DID I MISS ALL THESE WONDERFUL SOUNDS FOR THIS LONG?”

Dr. Michael Faraday, Head of the Department of Tamil language, Madras Christian College (MCC) asked me to give a presentation on the bird music that I do. I chose to give a talk on  “ The influence of bird calls in poetry and music of MCC”. During the talk I showed how the poets and musicians of MCC had derived inspiration from the bird calls that exists around them using audio files. I was able to convince those poets which included the Head of the Department as well,  and the musicians how they had used the rhythmic phrases of the babblers, White browed Bulbuls, Pied Cuckoo and Oriental Magpie Robins in their compositions. They were stunned.

Dr. Hollis Taylor, calls me a Bird DJ and christened me Zoomusicologist for the first time in my life and entered my profile in her website “Zoomusicology” among all the most accomplished Zoomusicologists of the world.

Recently I got a mail from the editor of the Limca Book of Records (LBR), the Indian version of the Guinness Book of Records, asking me to send my work on bird and animal music and also my profile. She said that though the last date receiving of entries for LBR got closed almost two months back for the 2013 edition, she still wanted to include my work this year itself.   This I would say is the icing on the cake.

EWTT: Since zoo-musicology is a unique skill by itself, have you found any like-minded people or forums to discuss your work or to learn new ways to improve your skills?

Photo: Hipporhythmics

A J MITHRA: Zoomusicology is alien to India and Asia as well, since I have yet to come across a zoomusicologist from Asia.  Right now,  I am trying hard to help people see how zoomusic is so very important to determine the ecological status of a given environment.  How I wish more people put up their hands to study the natural birds and animal calls as not just music but perfect signals of degrading environment.

I am fortunate to have zoomusicologist  friends like Dr. Hollis Taylor of Australia and Dr. Allan Powers from USA, with whom I discuss and analyse this very interesting subject.

EWTT: What are you future plans? As you are the first Indian Zoo Musicologist? How do you perceive your passion to be passed onto the next generation to keep the legacy alive?

A J MITHRA: Almost all zoomusicologists are pursuing hard to express the musical nuances found in birds and animal calls. But, I want to go ahead and show how they are not music alone but warning signals of a given environment. The tag of the first Indian Zoomusicologist, has in fact pushed me on to study and to take up research on not just the musicality found in wildlife sounds but, a step ahead on how zoomusic can be  effectively used as a barometer to determine the ecological status of a given environment.  During the course of this research I found only a few people like Dr. Bernie Krause and Dr. Allan Powers are trying to show how the missing sounds of birds and animals once found in an environment can help us find the cause of a depleting environ. I am happy that I am one among them.

Homo Sapiens are the only species in the entire earth whose communication is based around ssues such as love, sex, marriage, money, drugs, business, sports etc., but wildlife communicates only on global warming, disaster, climatic changes and pollution. This research should open new avenues.  But for the younger generation to take up this subject, they need lots of patience, perseverance and dedication.  If only universities the world over,  lays emphasis on the importance of this field for conservation of the environment and with proper encouragement and guidance I am sure the tech savy younger generation would surely come up trumps and create deep inroads with the help of the latest gadgets.

If you wish to assist A J Mithra in any way, please contact him at:

A J Mithra,
3/19, 2nd Cross St,
M E S Road,
East Tambaram,
Chennai – 600059
Tamil Nadu, India.

A J Mithra’s wish:  For an  ”OLYMPUS LS100 Voice recorder and a Laptop” that would greatly enhance the quality of voice recording.

Further links you may be interested in:

ZOOMUSICOLOGY: z o ö m u s i c o l o g i s t s 

TEACHERPLUS: What does EVS have to do with me?

A J MITHRA: Feathered Musicians or Feathered Sound Engineers?

GUARDIAN UK:  A great silence is spreading over the natural world

About The Interviewer:

Preethi N Kumar is a former IT professional, and works as Editor for Eco WALK the Talk. She’s deeply interested in social and green innovations in the world.

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I have just discovered a new fact about America. Most American households do not throw their kitchen waste in the garbage bin; they throw it down their drains. An interesting contraption installed under the kitchen sink called the garbage disposal unit captures the food waste, shreds it into small pieces (less than 2mm) after which it passes into the plumbing. This is in contrast to cities in Asia where most water authorities instruct the people to scrape off all food particles from dishes and throw them in the garbage bin before washing the dishes.

Food Wate Disposer Photo: Designofkitchen.net

In the US, the rationale behind allowing food waste to become a part of the wastewater circuit is that it is a lesser evil than when it is a part of the solid waste circuit. Carrying food waste in trucks for disposal is fraught with public health and environmental risks, it is believed. If burned in waste-to-energy facilities, the high water content of food scraps does not allow it to generate much energy. If it is buried in landfills, it decomposes to generate methane gas which is a potent greenhouse gas.

On the other hand, when food waste is pulverised with water, the existing sewerage network can be used for transporting it into treatment plants, which are well-equipped to deal with organic solids. These can be converted to biosolids and used as fertilisers for soil. Advanced facilities can also recover methane for producing energy. According to one study, food waste produces three times as much biogas as municipal sewage sludge.

In Asian cities, the case for keeping food waste out of treatment plants is that the higher organic carbon load leads to a higher biological oxygen demand which in turn leads to a higher consumption of oxygen. This increases the cost of aeration. More sludge is produced. Treatment plants in Asia are already struggling to meet the needs of millions and cannot be saddled with the load of food waste. Besides, it also contributes to eutrophication and toxicity of water bodies. But by far, the best solution even in an urban set-up, which is only being carried out by some environment-conscious individuals is composting at household level. Composting helps to turn food waste into rich soil, which can be used for gardening and farming. Done at household level, it helps to reduce the volume of garbage to be disposed by municipal authorities as well as the load on municipal treatment plants. Also, the release of methane gas from landfills is avoided.

Unfortunately, not much is being done by authorities to disseminate information about composting, and it does not feature as a waste management strategy in most countries. There is a lack of specific targets and economic instruments to drive waste minimisation. The centralised collection of wastes as well as wastewater has become a way of urban life and the authorities are not interested in thinking out of the box. And yet, it has been demonstrated that composting can be done even in apartments. With food waste forming 10 to 20% of solid wastes in many countries, it is time to take a fresh look at its disposal. Composting is a skill that needs to be taught in schools. Enough waste has been wasted.

About the Author

Sahana Singh is Editor of Asian Water, Asia’s leading trade magazine on  water and wastewater. She is the recipient of Developing Asia Journalism  Award, 2008. Currently based in the US, she continues to write on water related articles in the Asian context.

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: Part 1: How to compost at home – using container pots

EWTT:  Part 2: How to compost at home : Using the Daily Dump

EWTT:  Poonam Bir Kasturi: Designing the Daily Dump

Youtube: Water cycle video by Sahana Singh which won the first prize at the Urban Water Movie Contest organised by Holland’s Delft University of Technology:

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Lester Brown

Lester Brown is the well-renowned author of the Plan B series and recent book World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse.  His distinguished career, spanning agricultural policy, international development and environmental analysis, has seen him found two major environmental research institutes – the WorldWatch Institute in 1974 and the Earth Policy Institute in 2001 – and author or co-author 50 books. He is currently the President of the Earth Policy Institute based in Washington D.C.

He speaks to  Professor John Wiseman who is currently Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Melbourne School of Population Health, on 31st July 2012.

JOHN WISEMAN: If you had just a few sentences to summarise the key messages you most wanted to get across in writing Plan B and World on the Edge, what would you say?

LESTER BROWN: The two biggest challenges, I think, that the world faces right now are the need to stabilise the climate and to stabilise population. Neither of these are easy but we’re well on our way to stabilising population. There are now 46 countries that have, essentially, zero population growth and a large part of Asia that is China, along with Korea, and Japan’s already stabilised its population. China’s going to be there in a matter of years so that’s a big chunk of the world. Then Europe,Western and Eastern Europe, have already stabilised their populations.

North America is moving in the right direction. Latin America is doing surprisingly well. Brazil’s population is projected to grow by 12% between now and 2050, only 12% which means they’re getting the brakes on pretty nicely, too. So the two big areas we have to concentrate on now are the Indian subcontinent, which has a total of 1.6 billion people. That’s India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and so forth, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are the two big population growth areas. They are also the two areas where most of the poverty is concentrated so we need to really concentrate on getting the brakes on population growth in those two regions of the world.

If we can do that, and it’s a combination of, of course, making sure reproductive healthcare and family planning services are available but it’s also education, making sure that children everywhere get at least an elementary school education, girls as well as boys. Then, we can begin to bring the birth rate down in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Then, we’ll be on the way home.

JOHN WISEMAN: And in relation to climate?

LESTER BROWN: Climate is a much more difficult issue. In contrast to population where 46 countries have already stabilised populations, there aren’t too many countries that have stabilised carbon emissions yet so that’s really a global challenge for us.

The good news is that in the United States, carbon emissions are starting to drop and I think are going to continue to drop very substantially during this decade.

The two big sources of carbon emissions in the US, as in most of the world, are coal and oil. We have, currently, 492 coal-fired power plants in the United States. Of those, 109 are scheduled to close within, if not this year, next year or very soon and there are more coming. We have a national campaign now that’s led by the Sierra Club called the Beyond Coal Campaign and the goal is to close every coal-fired power plant in the United States. Sierra’s working with many local groups, health groups, environmental groups, hundreds and hundreds of them across the country to close these plants. Mayor Bloomberg of New York in July of last year gave the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign $50 million. This is important, not just because it’s $50 million, although that, obviously, is important in and of itself, but it’s because Michael Bloomberg, one of the most successful businessmen of his generation, almost a household name, is the one who’s fuelling this effort. So I’m very optimistic on closing coal-fired power plants.

Now, with gasoline use, we have a number of trends coming together, some economic, some social, some political. One is that the US automobile fleet has started to shrink. In 2008, it was 248 million. 2009, it dropped to 246 million, 2010, to 242 million. That’s the last year for which we have complete data but I think it continued in 2011 and is going to continue in 2012. So in the United States, the growth of the automobile fleet’s been underway for a century now, is starting to decline.

Beyond that, the fuel efficiency of cars is increasing very fast in the US and this is partly because of the goals created by President Obama. When he was bailing out Detroit a couple of years ago, he got some commitments from them and one was to double the fuel efficiency of new cars sold by 2025 or, stated otherwise, new cars sold in this country in 2025 will use only half as much gasoline as those sold in 2010. So in 15 years, we’re cutting fuel use per car in half.

Beyond that, there’s now a cultural shift occurring in this country with young people. They are not part of the car culture in the way that my generation was and we, particularly growing up in a rural community, the car was how we socialised. When you’re 17 you’ve got a driver’s licence and you’ve got a car, or a pick-up truck, something you could drive, and that’s how you got around and got to see your friends in a rural community.

Today, we’re a largely urban society and so young people aren’t part of the car culture in the way that we were. There’s a real shift going on. They live in cities, most of them, and they use public transportation, they use bicycles. The Bike-Share Program, if you look at the people on these bikes, they’re between 20 and 40. They’re not between 60 and 80. No, it’s young people who are really taking to bikes and seeing them as their transport mode. So the combination of bikes and public transportation is where young people are today.

Two generations ago, the dream was to have a house in the suburbs and a car and so forth. That dream doesn’t exist anymore for young people. They’re not going to the suburbs. They don’t really want anything to do with the suburbs. They want to live in town.

JOHN WISEMAN: You’ve described some extremely optimistic indicators around energy efficiency and the shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy. If I was to ask you the biggest obstacles – the one or two biggest roadblocks in relation to solving the climate challenge, how would you describe them? 

LESTER BROWN: It would be the vested interests of big oil, and big coal and the influence they have, particularly in the Republican Party. They put a lot of money in political campaigns and now there are no limits on what they can put in so they’re just buying everything in sight.

Nonetheless, the trends are pretty clear and the gains in fuel efficiency, the cultural shift in young people regarding cars, is happening and it’s very difficult for them to alter that.

I saw an article about NASCAR recently…you know, automobile racing, car racing, and they’ve suddenly begun to panic because young people aren’t going to the races and so they’re seeing a shrinking audience. It’s an interesting question because I don’t think NASCAR’s going to last forever. Years, maybe, but not forever because the idea of having a powerful car with a lot of horsepower under the hood, it’s just not where young people are today. So these cultural shifts are more difficult to measure, usually, than economic shifts and they’re more difficult to anticipate as well but we’re clearly seeing a cultural shift and young people in this country are not, most of them, not part of the car culture.

JOHN WISEMAN: So do you feel, therefore, that the cultural shifts that you’ve talked about are sufficient to overcome the vested interest roadblocks that you’ve mentioned? 

LESTER BROWN: They are. The automobile industry, behind the scenes, do things… to prevent heavy investment in public transportation…they insist that we need to repair the roads and not build new transit facilities, so they’re behind the scenes and they’re doing things but the tide is pretty strong and it’s clear.

John Wiseman: Which leads me to a question about urgency. Many people will say that, yes, there are many good things happening in relation to energy efficiency and renewable energy, but we also know how quickly greenhouse gas emissions are rising and what the science tells us about the global temperature changes locked in and so on. When people say to you, “that’s all good …but it’s too late” what do you say to them? 

LESTER BROWN: When we use the term “Is it too late,” we have to say, “Is it too late for what?” Is it too late to prevent climate change from spiralling out of control? I don’t think anyone knows. We have to hope it’s not and then act accordingly with the urgency that that implies.

We’re seeing evidence now, almost every day, that the climate system is changing and this is obviously affecting the food prospects because agriculture, as it exists today, evolved over an 11,000 year period of rather remarkable climate stability. I mean, there were a few blips here and there and a mini ice age in the 13th century, but basically 11,000 years of pretty stable climate. So agriculture systems are designed to maximise production with that climate system but that climate system is now changing so with each passing year, the climate system and the agricultural system are more and more out of sync with each other and that is a very difficult thing to analyse and anticipate.

We know it’s happening. It’s inevitable and the question is can we get carbon emissions coming down soon enough to avert the worst consequences of climate change? We’re not going to avert all of them. We’re already experiencing them. I guess the question is, can we keep climate change from spiralling out of control? I don’t know the answer to that question but we certainly have to try.

JOHN WISEMAN: Returning to the point you’ve made about energy efficiency and the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, how much do you also think that the third element in that transition that needs to change is a reduction in the aggregate growth of the consumption of goods and services? How important is that in the mix? 

LESTER BROWN: Well, another interesting thing about the cultural shift is that the idea of acquiring property…starting with a small house and getting a bigger one and so forth, that acquisition of material things doesn’t exist with young people in the way it did with an earlier generation; the generations that were shaped by the Depression and World War Two, for example.

There was a period when growth was everything and more material possessions was everything but I think we’re beginning to leave that behind now. Values and attitudes are changing. The acquisition of material wealth is not something that looms very high in the minds of young people today. They don’t want to be bothered with it.

JOHN WISEMAN: How much of that is true, do you think, outside of the developed world – in China, Korea and India, where there is still considerable poverty and – many people would say – considerable need to expand material consumption?

LESTER BROWN: Well, the interesting question is what these countries are facing. I mean, their desire is to be like us and so they’re trying to adopt a 20th century economic model in the 21st century. Now, what if we sat back and said, “If you were designing an economy for the world today or some component like a transport system, if you were designing that for the 21st century, what would it look like and how would it be different from the one we’ve inherited from the 20th century?” The answer is it would be very different. If you were developing a new economy today, you’d have to take into account land scarcity, water scarcity, carbon emissions, a whole series of things that were not of particular importance in decades past but now they are.

So the question is how fast that rethinking will come.I remember doing a seminar for graduate students at Tsinghua University which is sometimes referred to as the MIT of China. It’s located in Beijing, and we were talking about cars and the future and I said, “Well, you know, you’re not going to be able to do what we did.” One student said, “But that’s our dream. That’s what we want, we want to do that,” and I said, “You know, in the United States, we have three cars for every four people. If you get three cars for every four people in China, you will have nine hundred million cars. If you get all the cars in the world today squeezed into one country, one third of one country because two thirds of China is uninhabitable,” I said, “that will not be a dream. That will be a nightmare.”

These are engineers, they should be thinking about how you design a transportation system for the 21st century, not how do you copy one that evolved during the 20th century. Forget the imitation. Be original. Be yourselves. Ask the relevant questions for today. Don’t ask how could we do what they did in the last century. That’s not where you want to be.

JOHN WISEMAN: I’m interested in your views about theories of change – how change happens. Can you talk a bit more about your view about the importance of cultural and social change as opposed to the importance of technological innovation? 

LESTER BROWN: Well, Malcolm Gladwell pioneered the concept of social tipping points, of political tipping points, and the interesting thing about tipping points is almost by definition, they’re difficult to anticipate, at least to anticipate accurately. Sometimes we don’t even see them coming. I mean, who saw the Berlin Wall coming down, you know, until it actually went down or I look at the Arab Spring of 2010 and it changed the government in almost every country in a large part of the Arab world and it happened in sort of several countries simultaneously.

These weren’t sort of random events. They’d reached a kind of tipping point suddenly. Things began to change. Partly it’s political, part of it is demographic; a lot of young people in the 15 to 30 age group. It’s technological; they have the internet now so they can organise, they can exchange information. It changes the whole ballgame. It’s not just a few adjustments here and there. It really fundamentally changes things.

We have an effort in Italy right now, led by a comedian, Beppe Grillo, to challenge the existing political structures, not of any particular party, just the traditional political structures, and they’ve begun running candidates for office just a week ago, two weeks ago. A 31-year old was elected Mayor of Palma, for example. They’re running candidates for all the local elections and everything. I mean, it’s amazing to see it happen and we’re going to see more of that.

We’re really on the edge of some fundamental changes that we can’t anticipate associated with the internet and information moving on the internet. It will override some of the traditional constraints of the systems but in ways that we cannot now easily imagine.

JOHN WISEMAN: So, given that, I’d like to ask you to put on your most optimistic hat and imagine we are sitting here in 2030 and we are discussing a world in which a really serious shift has begun towards the kind of changes which would have a real chance of preventing runaway climate change. Bearing in mind your point about how unpredictable the future can be, can you tell me how that change has occurred? 

LESTER BROWN: Most of us don’t like to change. I don’t like to change and I’ll go to great lengths to avoid changing sometimes but you reach these tipping points and then everything changes.

The United States before World War Two, if you’d conducted a poll on December 6th 1941, the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, and said, you know, “Should we go to war?” probably 90% would have said, “No, we don’t want to get involved in another world war.” If you’d conducted that poll on Monday, December 8th, probably 90% would have said, “Yes, we’ve got to go,” and so it was just one event, that surprise attack. It was very successful from a military point of view on Pearl Harbour. I mean, the Japanese sunk half our Pacific fleet there in just one fell sweep but everything changed and we mobilised, we totally restructured the US industrial economy, not in decades, not in years but in a matter of months. Part of the key to that was banning the sale of automobiles.

President Roosevelt, early 1942, I think it was April 1st, and it wasn’t April Fool’s Day, I mean, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, he said, “We ought to ban the sale of automobiles in the United States.” Then the car companies realised that they weren’t going to be making cars for a long time; they were going to be making tanks and planes. It created an extraordinary military machine and turned the tide in the process.

So it’s these tipping points that are difficult to anticipate but I think within the next five years, we’re going to be surprised at how fast things have changed and how fast we have changed, whether it’s in response to climate change and recognising the need to stabilise climate. I mean, up until now, climate change has mostly been someone else. You know, we see it on TV. It’s a flood or a heatwave in Moscow but suddenly this past summer was sort of like that.

In this country, we started with a drought and then the wildfires in Texas and then flooding in the Mississippi and then Hurricane Irene and so forth; the tornado in Tuscaloosa and then in Joplin. I mean, it largely destroyed two middle-sized towns. I realised that the news channels were becoming weather channels. set aside on a Saturday afternoon, 1.30 to 3.00, to watch the world track and field championships in Korea on NBC. This was on a Saturday. I turned on NBC channel at 1.30 and I didn’t get the track and field championships. I got Hurricane Irene. This is a major news network that had gone into around-the-clock coverage of the hurricane. It was a huge hurricane and it affected a lot of people on the East Coast. That, I think, is a sign of the times when news channels become weather channels and if you look at channels now and sort of think about it, they spend a lot more time on weather than they used to and people are interested in it. They’re concerned about that.

JOHN WISEMAN: Although the challenge then becomes how to join the dots between the weather and climate. Do you think people are starting to join those dots?

LESTER BROWN: They are. I liken it to recognising the link between smoking and health 20 years ago and the tobacco company CEOs are under oath saying, “There’s no proof of a link between smoking and health,” and get away with it. Then, within a year or two, everything had changed and they couldn’t say anything because no one would listen to them and no elected member of Congress would be seen in public with a tobacco company CEO. It just changed that fast. The Tobacco Institute used to be here in town, staffed by 300 people. Totally dismantled; forced to dismantle by NGOs and public opinion. I mean, it was amazing to see it happen. It happened very quickly…it had reached the tipping point and suddenly it was an entirely new ball game.

JOHN WISEMAN: Bearing in mind everything you’ve said about tipping points and given that at the end of the day tipping points are, by definition, to some extent, unpredictable, what’s your view about the highest priorities for action by people who would like to ensure, that when the tipping points occur, that responses can be as effective as possible? What are the most important things to be doing at the moment?

LESTER BROWN: The question I get most often as I travel around the world is, people ask me, “What can I do, what can I do?” and I think they expect me to say, “Recycle your newspapers, change your light bulbs,” and so on. Those lifestyle changes are important but we now have to change the system and that means becoming politically active, not for one party or another but to support the Beyond Coal campaign, for example. And be prepared to write letters to your Congressman to lobby, to demonstrate, you know, in front of a coal-fired power plant if necessary or in front of a utilities office. It can embarrass companies. There are banks in New York, investment banks, that if you threaten them with a demonstration, they’ll almost certainly think twice about going ahead on something because whether it’s Goldman Sachs or Bank of America or whoever, they don’t want their image smirched.

Having demonstrations and people with signs walking around creates that image that something is wrong and for people to start thinking something is wrong with a bank is not healthy for the bank. So we see environmental groups getting investment banks to agree not to invest in coal or any company that supports the development of coal. These things can become important and the coal-mining companies can’t raise capital as easily as they used to. No one wants to be associated with it. So those are the kinds of things that have happened and they happen quickly and they can have extraordinary consequences.

My bottom line feeling is things are going to change much faster than we realise and I think that change is probably more evident here in the United States right now where carbon emissions are dropping very fast as coal-fired power plants are closed and as gasoline use drops. Another interesting linkage between the two…42% of the diesel fuel used in the freight sector, rail freight sector, is used to move coal. If we’re not moving coal anymore, suddenly the demand for diesel is going to drop markedly.

JOHN WISEMAN: I’m very interested in what you’ve been saying about the United States because, certainly in the Australian media and to some extent in Europe, the story is sometimes told that, “Well, look, you’ve got a congress that’s controlled by very conservative forces, Tea Party Republicans and so on. There’s no sign of Cap and Trade coming back…the United States is not in a leadership position.” You’re telling, to some extent, a different story there, at least about the level of cultural change and, indeed, the harder indicators of shifts in energy usage and so on.

LESTER BROWN: Yeah, and the interesting thing is it’s happening because of a mix of things. If I were to pick the two most important things underway right now, one would be reducing gasoline use by cars, of new cars sold, by half, between 2010 and 2025. That’s the US government-designed policy.

The other is the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, closing coal-fired power plants. Now, there’s some overlap because EPA issues, restrictions on mercury emissions from coal plants, what-have-you, that makes it more difficult for them to stay in business. So we have two major initiatives, one primarily government, the other primarily in the NGO sector.

John Wiseman: If you had a minute or two with the world’s key decision-makers and you had two or three sentences in which you really wanted to convey very sharply, the most important priorities in relation to climate and ecological challenges, what would you say to them in two or three sentences?

LESTER BROWN: I’d say the biggest challenge we face is stabilising climate and that means closing coal-fired power plants, replacing the coal with wind and solar and geothermal energy.

The second big challenge we face is stabilising population and that’s a challenge that’s really concentrated in the Indian sub-continent and Sub-Saharan Africa and what we need to do there is to eradicate poverty, which we have the resources to do now, eradicate poverty and make sure that women everywhere have access to reproductive healthcare and family planning services.

John Wiseman: Thank you very much.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:

Professor John Wiseman is currently Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Melbourne School of Population Health.

This interview originally appeared in Post Carbon Pathways, a website which aims to strengthen the understanding of the actions needed to create rapid, large-scale transitions to a just and sustainable post carbon future. 

Photo Courtesy: Lester Brown from Wikipedia/Creative Commons

FURTHER LINKS on EWTT YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN:

EWTT: Dr Tom Crompton: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Values in Environmental Communication
EWTT: Joe Brewer: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding complex issues
EWTT: Aubrey Meyer: Contraction & Convergence: An urgent global imperative to tackle climate change
EWTT: Pen Hadow: Melting Arctic Ice and How it will affect Asia
EWTT: Whither Go Climate Refugees?
EWTT: Who cares If Bangalesh drowns?

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The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

– Chinese Proverb

By Bhavani Prakash

What is this life if full of care, we have no time to plant a single tree?

And what better way to express our gratitude to Mother Nature, compensate for our heavy footprint, and restore the land for generations to come, than to plant a tree? He who plants a tree, as Lucy Larcom the 19th century poet said, plants hope. He plants a joy, he plants peace, he plants youth, and he plants love.

Today, 5th June 2012 is World Environment Day and we take this opportunity to pledge our support to Project Green Hands, an inspiring grassroots initiative of the not-for-profit organisation, Isha Foundation. Its ambitious mission is to restore the green cover in Tamil Nadu, India to 33% by planting 114 million trees.

The programme was lauched in 2004 on World Environment Day, and has enabled the planting till date of more than 14 million saplings in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, with the help of more than 1.5 million volunteers.

In 2010, Project Green Hands (PGH) won a national award in India, the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar award in recognition of its efforts to create environmental awareness and reverse ecological degradation. PGH also has a Guinness World Record of planting most number of saplings in three days: 8,52,587.

Listen to Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Founder of Isha Foundation, share his thoughts about Project Green Hands and the urgent need to reforest the earth.

Video link here

A single sapling costs only Indian Rupees 50 (less than 1 USD and just over 1 Singapore dollar). Every little counts by way of your contribution. 

By donating just Indian Rupees 50 per sapling through giveisha.org/pgh Project Green Hands (PGH) will plant trees on your behalf in Tamil Nadu, India.  The saplings will be provided to farmers for planting in their farmlands. PGH tracks the exact location of their trees and the details of the farmer who will plant and take care of it.

Project Green Hands hopes to plant 300,000 trees for World Environment Day 2012. The World Environment Day campaign will run for June and part of July 2012. PGH continues beyond that period to achieve its larger objective of planting 6 million saplings in 2012.

Your help to spread the word, and contribution, however small, really matters in achieving these goals to reforest Tamil Nadu. 

FAQs (as provided by Project Green Hands of Isha Foundation)

1. What is Give Isha?

GIVE ISHA is an online fundraising portal through which people can support for Isha Foundation’s social initiatives in Education – Isha Vidya, Health – Action for Rural Rejuvenation and Environment – Project GreenHands.

The featured project currently on Give Isha is:

World Environment Day campaign – Project GreenHands

2. Who plants the trees and where are they planted?

PGH is providing trees to farmers for planting in their farmlands. PGH has been working with farmers in Pudukottai, Erode, Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.

3. How can trees be tracked?

While taking saplings from PGH, the farmer has to register his name, contact details and location. This is stored in the PGH database. After the plantation is done, a survey will be carried out by PGH to confirm whether the saplings have been planted. So when an individual donates for a tree, he will be assigned a tree from the PGH database.

4. Will we get anything if we donate?

Once you make a donation, you will get an email with tree certificate indicating the total number of trees planted by you.

5. How can we donate?

You can donate online: log on to giveisha.org/pgh and offline: or send an Indian Rupee DD/ Cheque drawn in the favour of “ Isha Outreach” to Project GreenHands ,  Isha Yoga Center,  Velliangiri Foothills,  Semmedu post,  Coimbatore – 641114.

6. How much is the minimum donation?

One Sapling: Indian Rupees 50/- (about 1 Dollar)

 7. After I donate, what is the next step? How do I know what is happening and when the sapling planted?

Once you make a donation, you will get an email with tree certificate indicating the total number of trees planted by you. A tree tracking code will be specified on the certificate. Using this code you can track your tree starting Jan 1st 2013, on projectgreenhands.org/track

8. Why this time gap – why can’t I track the tree immediately?

The planting season begins in the month of September and trees can be planted till December. After the plantation is done, a survey will be carried out by PGH to confirm where the saplings have been planted. After which each donor will be assigned a tree from PGH’s database.

9. If I donate at separate occasions, will I get different certificates? Can I have it in the name of someone other than me?

Yes, you will get a different tree certificate each time you make a donation. If you want the certificate in someone else’s name, please fill in their particulars in the Donor details.

10. Are there any centers/stalls where something is set up for this campaign? If so, where?

No, the donation can be done only Online or a DD/ Cheque needs to be sent to PGH directly.

11. As someone who has donated and is interested in this campaign, how can I help? What can I do?

1. Many people may get inspired just by seeing your enthusiasm for the project. Spreading the word is the most important help you can do to us. You can take the message to all your friends and relatives by send them emails and videos, sharing on facebook, twitter and other social media.
2. Create your own campaign page on the Give Isha site and get all your colleagues and friends to join you.
3. You could also like the PGH Facebook page

About the Writer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

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Dr Tom Crompton

By Bhavani Prakash

Dr. Tom Crompton is a Change Strategist at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) UK, and if you’re intrigued by his job description, suffice it to say he has been involved in some cutting-edge research on going to the heart of what should be the approach of communication campaigns – of environmental organisations and those of the non-profit sector in general.

Dr. Crompton stresses the importance of engaging people’s intrinsic or non-materialistic values, versus extrinsic or materialistic ones, to achieve lasting and positive behaviour change. He is one the people behind the project called Common Cause: The Case for Working with Cultural Values.  Much of his work can be found on the thought-provoking website called Values and Frames.org

EWTT: How did your interest in human psychology and environmentalism evolve?

Dr. Tom Crompton: I have worked at WWF-UK for ten years .The first five years, I worked on international trade and investment policy – for example, World Trade Organisation (WTO) law. I was convinced then and am still convinced now that the international trade regime is crucially important from the sustainability perspective to ensure that we are producing and trading in more sustainable products with lower carbon footprints. Several senior negotiators were themselves deeply convinced for the need for more fundamental change to the trade regime on a sustainability basis but they’d say, “look, our hands are tied, we don’t enjoy the political space, we don’t experience public political pressure for more proportional change” and as a result the change that we saw was small.

I think that forced us really to reflect on what is it that creates  political space and pressure for more proportional change, what is it that motivates people to engage with the political process, whether it is to lobby with members of parliament or to demonstrate on the streets or however else they may express their political frustration. Some social psychologists came back to us and said that one of the things they see as missing at the moment from environmental campaigning or indeed third sector campaigning generally, is an understanding of values and the importance of values in underpinning people’s commitment to engage in political process and to express concern about social and environmental issues.

EWTT: In this context can you introduce the work you do with the Common Cause Project? 

Dr. Tom Crompton: We’re working to open debate with a wide range of third sector organizations – not just environmental organizations but also development and disability organizations, children’s charities and animal welfare charities – about the cultural values that seem to consistently underpin expression of concern about a wide range of social and environmental issues.

One implication of this work is that we should be designing or shaping our campaigns and communications, and indeed our entire external engagement, in a way which helps to engage and strengthen those values. These are values which almost everybody seems to hold already. It’s a question of bringing them to the fore, because they underpin not just our concern about environmental issues,  but also the concern about a wide range of other social issues.

It seems that when we activate what psychologists call extrinsic values -which are concerns about things like wealth or social status or image, those values tend to suppress the importance that  people attach to intrinsic values, or values associated with social and environmental concerns.

So there is an antagonistic relationship between these two sets of values.  From that we suggest it is important that NGOs think carefully about the occasions in which they may be drawn to appeal to extrinsic values in the course of pursuing a particular campaign outcome. For example, drawing attention to the money that might be saved through increased energy conservation measures like turning down the central heating thermostat or drawing attention to the social image or status that might be achieved through buying a luxury hybrid car. These are messages that may be effective in encouraging uptake of that particular behavior but are likely to have collateral damages.

This work also points to the possibility of beginning to work across a wide range of NGOs in new coalitions, with groups which hitherto have not really collaborated. Many NGOs can find common cause to engage those more intrinsic values and begin to tackle and remove those things which tend to engage and strengthen extrinsic values.

For example, we might find common cause in tackling an influence which currently serves to strengthen unhelpful extrinsic values at a cultural level, namely, the impact of advertising. We have begun to build a coalition of NGOs working again on a very wide set of issues to ask what’s the role of advertising in potentially frustrating emergence of greater public engagements and more  stronger expressions of public concern on all of our issues. But we might also work to help strengthen intrinsic values – for example, working with those who set the standards for teacher-training to introduce work to help children reflect on the importance of kindness in their lives.

Image Courtesy: ValuesandFrames.org

EWTT: Our society has become so materialistic. Is there a danger that there may be no common ground if we don’t address the ‘what’s in it for me?’ Are people going to listen to messages for less materialistic values?

Dr. Tom Crompton: There are several dimensions to that question and it is a very critical question.  You wouldn’t embark on what we are suggesting unless you are convinced that the problems we confront are really quite immense and will require really fundamental changes in terms of the level of ambition we show to respond to those problems.

If you really believed that a few behavioural changes in the private sphere in terms of domestic energy efficiency savings or a bit of green consumption were going to be sufficient to tackle a problem like climate change, or if you believe that increasing people’s willingness to donate to development charities was really going to be sufficient to tackle the problem of global poverty, then you probably look at what we are proposing and suggest that it is too ambitious.

So the first thing to say is that the scale of challenge that we are confronting at the moment would require an ambitious response and at the moment we are not seeing that level of ambition.

The second thing to say is that whilst it’s true that on some indicators, it seems that some cultures are becoming more materialistic, and are holding those extrinsic values to be more important, in most nations, people still hold intrinsic values to be more important. In the UK, if you ask people what’s important to them they first and foremost mention those intrinsic values. They voice the importance of the connection to friends and family, they talk about self- direction, the importance of self -determination and creativity, they talk about sense of social justice and the sense of environmental concern. Extrinsic values such as wealth or power rate less importantly.  The evidence also seems very clear that these intrinsic values are there in everybody to be engaged.

We recently conducted a study with psychologists from University of Cardiff where we took 750 ordinary citizens from the Cardiff community, and asked them what values were important to them, we gave them a value survey and we picked the top 10% for whom the extrinsic or materialistic values were most important.

We then asked half of these people to reflect for a few minutes on the importance of affiliation to friends and family, the importance of  broad-mindedness. We made no mention of the environment. We asked the other half to reflect on the importance of wealth or popularity. Then we interviewed each participant about climate change, amongst other things.  We transcribed the interviews and sent them a linguist who analysed the interviews without knowing whether a participant had been asked to think about intrinsic or extrinsic values.

We found  that even though these people were by disposition more inclined towards extrinsic values, simply asking them to pause for a few minutes  to reflect on the importance of affiliation towards  friends and family or broadmindedness led to a statistically significant increase in the extent to which they saw climate change as being something that they felt they had some personal responsibility to address and something that they wanted to see addressed because of its importance for a wider society and not just for their own self- interest.

What we take from an experiment like that, and it corroborates several other lines of evidence, is that those intrinsic values matter for a lot for people and that it’s possible to engage them even in the short term. We are not necessarily talking here about changing in values. It’s more about thinking carefully about which values people already hold, which of these underpin a greater commitment to express social or environmental concern, and engaging with these in the course of our campaigns or communications.

EWTT:  Companies often say they are bound by short-term results, such as sales targets or increasing shareholder returns, which relate to the extrinsic values you talk about. They tend to initiate sustainability initiatives only if it makes financial sense. How do you convince them to undertake them because it’s the right thing to do?

Dr. Tom Crompton: It is a challenge certainly. What we are suggesting goes beyond the business case for sustainability. It goes beyond simply pointing to those things that it’s in a business’s short-term economic interests  to do, for example increasing energy efficiency or supply chain efficiency in a way which will simultaneously save money. We need to move to a situation where the responsibility that companies have to the societies in which they operate is seen to extend beyond simply making money.

Many companies are already demonstrating willingness to go beyond the business case for sustainable development and are taking unilateral action. It is of course easier for family owned companies or cooperatives to do that than it is for publicly owned companies, but even in the case of publically owned companies there are examples where at the very least they come together and demand a regulatory intervention or legislative intervention in order to shift the level of the playing field.  In the UK, The Prince of Wales’ Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change calls of government to enact new and longer-term policies to tackle climate change. Members of this group recognise that some steps to tackle climate change incur economic costs. But if together they can change the level of the playing field then these competitive costs could be equally shared across the competitors.

The other thing is to widen our concept of what corporate social responsibility means, to recognize that companies have a responsibility not just with immediate material foot prints of their activities –  how much carbon do they produce, how much tropical rainforest is cut down in the course of them sourcing their raw materials – but also with what you might call mindprint. Mindprint includes impacts on cultural values, and that’s affected in a whole range of ways: the way in which a company advertises, the values that are activated in the course of using the products it manufactures, or how a company manages decision making processes. These include their HR practices and internally recognizing that many people work for business and that it is an important part of their lives. When you spend 40 hours a week in a business, the culture of that business is likely to impact your values as an individual. So there is a whole range of ways in which we are arguing businesses have a responsibility to look at not only their footprints but also their mindprint, which may be even greater than the impact that they have through their direct environment impacts – their footprint.

EWTT: Can businesses exploit intrinsic values in their advertising, and can this cause harm?

Dr. Tom Crompton: Many businesses are well aware of the importance of intrinsic values in building a loyal customer base and clearly those intrinsic values are the ones often reflected in terms of a company’s brand or its advertising. A lot of advertising appeals to intrinsic values in terms of strength of family relationships or connection to nature. The report we produced last year called ‘Think of Me as Evil’ was an attempt to open some of these ethical debates as they relate to advertising. Nobody knows for sure what the cultural or social impact of advertising that appeals to intrinsic values are, but some of the social psychologists we have worked with constructed quite persuasive arguments that actually such ads may be unhelpful. What these ads may actually serve to do is to increase people’s cynicism about intrinsic values or to create the impression that those values, when they come from elsewhere, are being deployed manipulatively in order to get them to do something; whether that’s to buy a product or to show some act of kindness.  So it seems that there are dangers in deploying intrinsic values in pursuit of commercial interest.

EWTT: What about the behaviour or governments? How do you convince governments to look for alternative indicators of growth outside of GDP or overcome their fear of losing competitive advantage?

Dr. Tom Crompton: I agree with you fully on this. Those were precisely the constraints we hear from senior policy makers or decision makers in the trade regime. We would be arguing that at least for us in the UK we should be taking a unilateral stand in multilateral negotiations in order to help change the regime. What we hear constantly is that, “Oh well, we don’t have the political capital”,  or “there would be competitiveness costs to the industry”: exactly the arguments which you have just been advancing. I suppose I just come back again to our starting point. One of our responses to that degree of political paralysis is that the change we need isn’t going to occur without far more vocal and powerful citizen engagement. It isn’t going to happen unless more people are writing to their MPs, or unless more people are out in the streets demonstrating; unless it is made clear to the political leaders that their own political future depends upon being more ambitious in responding to these things – even though there are economic costs. So our question at the outset was: What is it that underpins increased citizen engagement? What is it that underpins citizen concern? And this brings us back to values.  If a diversity of third sector organizations come together to ask how it is that our cultural values influence our collective responses to social and environmental problems, they could have a profound impact on public debate.

Policy makers don’t enjoy the political space and public pressure for more ambitious change. So this whole work from the outset has been premised on the grounds that we need to find ways to increase public engagement on these issues. I don’t think governments are ready to embrace the scale of response that is necessary to respond to the challenges. But that said, there are certainly opportunities for governments within this and we have been engaging several governments on precisely this agenda.

The Welsh government is, for example, currently asking what are the narratives they have set down nationally within Wales around sustainable development?  They have recognized that they have adopted a series of environmental policies in a piecemeal fashion, so we have a charge on plastic bags, for example, but they recognize as  well that there are some fundamental limitations to what you can achieve by picking individual actions which are often quite modest in terms of their environmental impacts. They see the need for some sort of national narrative around sustainable development. Should this be constructed around the economic opportunities early investment in green technologies such as wind provides, that might give a country a competitive edge? Or should it be built around a sense that Wales has something important to contribute to the world as a small country that is light on its feet and has a strong sense of community and social justice? Clearly, I would argue for the latter.

In the case of the UK government, we are hearing that they too are frustrated by the limitations of a piecemeal approach to reducing individual’s carbon footprint for example. So they are confronting the fact that whilst they may urge people to insulate their loft on the basis that they will save money, they are finding at the same time that if people are insulating their loft solely to save money, there is no particular reason why the money that they save shouldn’t be spent in turning the central heating thermostat up and enjoying a warmer house or flying off to enjoy a weekend break: all of which are more carbon intensive activities. We have to look carefully at the values we are appealing to in trying to change private-sphere behaviours.

EWTT: What do you have to say about the way one should engage on social media?

Dr. Tom Crompton:  Social media is only one way in which third sector organizations impact on cultural values, albeit an important one, and the most easily changed. I think that there are many others, including policies that they are campaigning for, the way in which they campaign, the way in which they organize their own organizations and their own internal policies.

Online groups might begin to look at the values that they appeal to in the course of constructing their online requests for people to sign petitions: what’s the impact of these values on the longevity of people’s engagement, and the success with which they encourage people to actually sign the petition?

My expectation would be that they would be likely to build a more loyal relationship with their supporters when that relationship is premised on connecting with people’s intrinsic rather than their extrinsic values. There may be instances where you can successfully encourage large numbers of people to sign a petition on the basis of their self- interest, but I would argue that those supporters are likely to express a less general, or less systemic concern about a wide range of social and environmental issues,  particularly where those depart from their immediate self- interest, and they are likely to make for less durable relationships. They are likely to be more fickle.

EWTT: How do you intend to take your studies forward? What’s the broader vision for the kind of work you do?

Dr. Tom Crompton:  Our aim is to engage in the first instance a wider swathe of NGOs in this debate. In the UK at least, there is a huge appetite for this at the moment. We have already run over 60 workshops for different NGOs in UK from a very wide range of different issue groups and interest groups. That work will continue in terms of engaging third sector organizations in this conversation. It’s increasingly becoming an international conversation. We recently ran a series of workshops in a number of Scandinavian countries as there is an appetite there to begin to put together hubs of NGOs who are working on these issues and building a conversation in those countries. We are going to be running workshops soon in Australia; we have got workshops in Brussels, possibly in Canada so there is an increasing international interest which we haven’t really gone out to court, this is interest which has come to us really.

Part of what we are doing is deepening our already extensive relationship with academics on the evidence. Hitherto that evidence base has been drawn largely from social psychology but we are aware that social psychology represents only one route into this discussion. So we want to increasingly work with people from other disciplines, political science, psychotherapy, anthropology, and neurosciences and we are beginning that process. We are doing more research ourselves in terms of taking real NGO communications and asking what the impacts of those are. For example, we have put together a consortium of all the main UK conservation groups and we will be working with a psychologist and a linguist to analyse our entire external communication over a 6 month period to ask “what are the values that we are activating at the moment in the course of those communications”.

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About the Interviewer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

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Further links you may be interested in:

WWF: Common Cause Report

Values and Frames.org 

Video link here

EWTT: Joe Brewer: An Interdisciplinary approach to understanding complex issues

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Michelle Desilets

Michelle Desilets is Founder and Executive Director of Orangutan Land Trust, a UK-based NGO which supports sustainable solutions for the long-term survival of the orangutan in the wild.  She is also Founder of Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK, and Member of the Board of Borneo Orangutan Survival Germany, which supports the largest primate rescue and protection project in the world.

She was in Singapore recently when she talked to us about the threats to orangutans, especially from the palm oil industry. Orangutan Land Trust is a key player in the campaign for sustainable palm oil, and Desilets shares some of the nuances in the debate about sustainable palm oil, the challenges in the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) process, and what would be more effective to save the rainforests – boycotting palm oil, or more direct action through petitions which influence industry and government behaviour.

Watch the interview with Michelle Desilets here:

Video link here

Desilets aim to secure at least 1 million hectares of rainforest for the continued and long term survival of the orangutan. Support Orangutan Land Trust’s efforts here

Please support the campaign to save Tripa Peat Swamps.

Join the Facebook page : Save the Tripa Peat Swamps, and sign petitions via Avaaz, Change.org or Care2

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: The fight for Borneo’s soul

EWTT: Nestle buckles to Greenpeace pressure on unsustainable palm oil

EWTT: How to find Hidden Palm Oil in Supermarkets

EWTT: Engaging local communities in S.E.Asian Peat Swamp Regeneratio

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Aedes aegypti

By Bhavani Prakash

In Dec 2010, 6000 genetically modified (GM) Aedes aegypti sterile male mosquitoes were released in the unhabited forests of Betong, Malaysia, according to the statement by the government run Institute of Medical Research (IMR).  

The GM mosquitoes were developed by the UK biotech company, Oxitec. The purported aim of the company is to work with governments around the world to combat dengue disease caused by the Aedes mosquito. It had already “released 3 million GM male mosquitoes as part of an open release field experiment in the Caymen Islands in 2010,” according to the press release by UK’s Gene Watch entitled, “Oxitec’s genetically-modified mosquitoes: in the public interest?”

The mosquitoes released in Malaysia were genetically engineered in such a way that when they mate with females in the wild, the resulting mosquito larvae die young (although this will only happen in the absence of the antibiotic tetracycline).  Oxitec claims that this will drastically reduce the population of disease causing mosquitoes. However not everybody is of the same view with many scientists arguing that this practice is fundamentally flawed.

Prior to the experiment, Malaysia’s Third World Network (TWN) had already raised concerns and submitted their objections about genetically modified or engineered (GE) mosquitoes. They sought answers to the following concerns:

 1) Could female mosquitoes be accidentally released?

TWN’s concern was about the possibility of an accidental release of female GE mosquitoes that could in turn raise further concerns, as females act as vectors for diseases such as dengue and chikungunya. Their argument was that the sex selection process prior to release may not be fully accurate or effective. They claimed that the available information does not indicate whether the reliability and efficiency of the sex selection process can be guaranteed.

 2) Could GE mosquitoes and GE larvae survive and persist in the environment?

Oxitec mentions that mosquito larvae that are produced after the GE males mate with females will only die if they do not encounter tetracycline in the environment. TWN’s concern is that since Tetracycline is a fairly common antibiotic used in animal husbandry, there is a possibility of the larvae surviving. TWN claims that the available information provided does not indicate whether the use, presence and persistence of tetracycline in the environment at the proposed release sites have been assessed.

In addition, TWN is also concerned that about the possibility that the conditional lethality trait may not be 100 percent effective, meaning some of the GE larvae produced will not die.

All this implies that it is reasonable to expect at least some GE mosquitoes to persist beyond the first generation in the environment. While the number may be small, a proportion of these would be female, and thus capable of transmitting disease. TWN is concerned that there is a risk of an increase in the disease burden of the communities at the inhabited release sites.

3) Could there be a surge of other disease-transmitting mosquito species if Aedes aegypti populations are suppressed?

Aedes aegypti is not native to Malaysia, but is an introduced, invasive species. Nonetheless, it has become part of Malaysia’s complex ecological ecosystem. It would be important to consider the implications on other species that interact with Aedes aegypti in the receiving environment.

Aedes albopictus is an indigenous species of mosquito to Malaysia, which also transmits dengue, as well as chikungunya. If the GE Aedes aegypti mosquitoes successfully achieve their aim of suppressing wild populations, there could be a surge in Aedes albopictus, with potential increase in incidences of chikungunya and possibly also dengue.

There may also be other ecological implications of long-term suppression of Aedes aegypti populations. This could include effects on food webs and ecological functioning or impacts on the abundance of other species that feed on mosquitoes. The available information provided does not indicate whether there are baseline ecological data on mosquito and other ecology in the proposed release sites that could inform the assessment.

 4) Could there be gene flow and effects on non-target organisms?

 While the available information suggests that gene flow through mating of closely related species (Aedes albopictus) will not produce fertile offspring, the possibility of gene flow between different Aedes aegypti populations and perhaps other mosquito species cannot be absolutely discounted.

This possibility may vary depending on the genetic elements used in the specific modification, which may to a greater or lesser extent be genetically unstable, especially under field conditions. If horizontal gene flow happens, non-target species may be adversely affected by sterility-inducing genetic elements, increasing the risk of ecological harm.

5) Are the monitoring and control measures proposed adequate?

While the applicant has proposed control measures to prevent the GE mosquitoes from persisting in the environment, the monitoring of these mosquitoes is dependent on the adequate functioning of the fluorescence marker gene. Because genetic expression can vary, the production of the fluorescent marker may be diminished and some GE mosquitoes may not be identifiable by fluorescence. If this happens, the GE mosquitoes may persist in the environment without our knowledge.

Furthermore, given the possibility that some GE mosquitoes could persist beyond the first generation in the environment (see point 2), the proposed period of one month for application of the control measures may not be long enough.

Therefore, an assessment must also be made as to whether the monitoring plan as proposed by the applicant is adequate and whether complete removal of GE mosquitoes and larvae from the field release sites is possible.

 6) Has the prior informed consent of local communities at the release sites been obtained?

As the experiments are also proposed for inhabited sites, local communities living in these areas have the right to be specifically informed, consulted and their consent obtained before any field release occurs. This is especially given the possibility of the risks as highlighted, particularly in relation to disease transmission.

 7) Is there sufficient risk assessment and regulatory experience?

The only reported environmental release of GE insects to date has been in the United States, of a transgenic pink bollworm, an agricultural pest that is not involved in intimate contact with humans or disease transmission as Aedes aegypti is. There may have already been field experiments with GE mosquitoes, but little information is available; however, this proposed release would be certainly be one of the first such releases in the world.

The experiment drew flak from several organizations in Malaysia. Following the news of the release of the GM mosquitoes in Malaysia in December 2010, a coalition comprising of 21 NGOs demanded that the government disclose full details of the trial release and its results and to identify the existence of any adverse effects. They also “criticized the government for “silently” conducting the experiment despite making a public announcement that the trial had been postponed pending public consultation.”

Following the experiment, the MP of Sungai Siput, Dr D Jeyakumar, who is also a respiratory physician called the using of laboratory mosquitoes to fight dengue “a catastrophic mistake” in this article by Free Malaysia Today.  Some of the points he raised were:

• the release of large numbers of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes into the environment could cause the transformation of the mosquitoes  or even some other insects in some unanticipated manner that might be difficult to control.
• the process of producing the male GM mosquitoes was not foolproof and that  3% to 4% of them would be female which could copy the role of the wild female Aedes to spread dengue. (This is also raised in Consumer Association of Penang’s Memorandum dated Dec 20, 2010 titled, ” Malaysia’s Planned Release of Aedes Mosquito: ethical, legal and human rights concern)
• the means of biological suppression cannot completely eliminate the species from the environment and the government would have to go on purchasing, releasing and killing the GM mosquitoes. “We would need billions of these transgenic mosquitoes for an average sized city. Wouldn’t it be more logical and productive if that same sum were spent in improving the drains and sewerage systems in our urban areas?”

On January 12 2012 , civil society groups  Friends of the Earth U.S., GeneWatch UK and Third World Network in a joint press release titled, “Genetically modified mosquitoes survival rate concealed,”  revealed a confidential internal document by Oxitec that showed that genetically modified mosquitoes described by the company “as “sterile” are in fact not sterile and their offspring have a 15 percent survival rate in the presence of the common antibiotic tetracycline.

The antibiotic tetracycline is widely used in agriculture and is present in sewage as well as in industrially farmed meat. Mosquitoes that carry dengue fever are known to breed in environments contaminated with sewage where they are likely to encounter widespread tetracycline contamination.

Even in the absence of tetracycline contamination, the GM mosquitoes are known to survive in the laboratory at rates of around 3 percent. In the field, this would translate into large numbers of survivors, given that continual releases of millions of GM mosquitoes would be needed to sustain the goals of population suppression.”

In January 2012, the US delayed the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes, according to FOE’s press release. Eric Hoffman, FOE’s biotechnology policy campaigner said:

“This delay is welcome and prudent given the risks that genetically engineered mosquitoes pose. Introducing genetically engineered mosquitoes into the environment could destabilize ecosystems, harm human health and scare away tourists, endangering the Florida Keys economy. These potential impacts must be evaluated through a serious and thorough environmental impacts review process. We are confident that any truly impartial, science-based review will lead to the cancellation of this risky experiment.”

It is to be expected that Oxitec will endeavour to rope in more nations into this experiment with GM mosquitoes. The issue is of particular concern to the public in neighbouring countries such as Singapore, and the rest of tropical Asia where there is a prevalence of dengue. Many questions are raised from the way the experiment was conducted in Malaysia and Cayman Islands. Has the public been involved and sufficiently consulted in the process? Aren’t there other non-invasive ways to attack the dengue issue, rather than doing an irreversible experiment with nature, especially when there are several unanswered concerns?

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About the Writer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

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Further links you may be interested in: 

Friends of the Earth U.S., GeneWatch UK and Third World Network’s Joint Press Release: “Genetically modified mosquitoes survival rate concealed,

Consumer Association of Penang’s Memorandum dated Dec 20, 2010 titled, “ Malaysia’s Planned Release of Aedes Mosquito: ethical, legal and human rights concern

UK’s Gene Watch :”Oxitec’s genetically-modified mosquitoes: in the public interest?”

Free Malaysia Today: GM mosquitoes Horror story in the making?

On GM Food: 

EWTT:  China suspends commercialisation of genetically engineered rice and wheat

EWTT:  Better labelling of GM Food in Singapore essential

EWTT: Lim Li Ching: GMO Free

EWTT:  India’s GM Bill: Anti-people, Anti-nature

EWTT: Go GM Free in Australia

EWTT: Dr Vandana Shiva: Traditional Knowledge, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development

EWTT: Dr Mira Shiva: Health Effects of GM Food

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With palm oil companies slashing vast swathes of forest, the Dayaks of West Kalimantan are desperately struggling to save their ancestral lands and way of life

Houses and Mountains. Photo courtesy: Ben Sutherland

On the porch of a wooden house deep in West Kalimantan, a shirtless man sits, staring out at endless rows of palm oil trees surrounding his home like a besieging army. Pak Kabul does not know his exact age, only that he was born in the 1950s. Neither does he know what the future holds – except that life took a turn for the worse when a palm oil company took over the bulk of land nearby. The company chased nearly everyone off their land; only he refused to budge, he said. These days, he and his wife, together with some chickens and pigs, live a lonely existence in the middle of a sprawling plantation about an hour by road from the nearest town, Sintang, 420 km west of Pontianak city.

They eke out a living tapping rubber, earning about 360,000 rupiah (S$51) each month. Their son teaches at a nearby village and visits sometimes. Javanese immigrants brought in to work on the plantation live nearby, but Pak Kabul does not interact with them.

Borneo rain forest. Photo courtesy: Ben Sutherland

He remembers better times when the land was still forested and the villagers could live off its bounty. “When we had the forest, nobody came to hurt us,” he said with quiet resignation. “I have no more hope; I can only hope my son will be good.” According to him, the only benefit reaped from the palm oil company is the road built through the estate.

It was this road on which we were travelling, en route to a village three hours from Sintang, that we spotted Pak Kabul and decided on impulse to stop and talk to him – and heard yet another account of the Dayak indigenous people’s struggle with palm oil companies.

Our group comprised more than 20 people from countries like Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and Indonesia. Led by Dutch-born Indonesian conservationist Willie Smits, 15 young people dubbed the EcoWarriors – of whom I was one – were in West Kalimantan for a project to combat deforestation and illegal wildlife trade in partnership with local communities. Our efforts are to be made into a documentary by Australian director Cathy Henkel.

We were in West Kalimantan for 20 days in September, the first leg of a 100-day project. Accompanied by some Dayaks who have banded together to raise awareness of unlawful land grabs, we visited remote villages in the Serawai and Ambalau – the only two of Sintang’s 14 sub-districts that have resisted the palm oil companies. 

But for how much longer? Already, the locals speak of their livelihoods and communities being threatened by the relentless expansion plans of these companies.

The Dayaks love a good celebration, and we were welcomed warmly with traditional dances, rituals and generous amounts of a rice wine called tuak. Behind the smiles, however, lay deep anxiety for their future. The issue is not simply about the local communities depending on ancestral lands and forests to live, but about deforestation and wildlife habitat destruction – a struggle for Borneo’s soul.

‘TO THE LAST DROP OF BLOOD’

The third-largest island in the world, made up of Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak states, Brunei and Indonesia’s Kalimantan region, Borneo is known for its lush rainforests and stunning biodiversity. But since the 1980s and 1990s, large tracts of forests have been cleared for pulp and timber.

Deforestation in Borneo Image Courtesy: Maps.grida.no

In the past 15 years or so, palm oil companies have moved in; according to a 2009 report commissioned by Amsterdam University’s law faculty, the plantations occupied 3.2 million hectares of land in 2006, with another 2.8 million hectares cleared.

A July report by independent monitors Forest Watch Indonesia estimated that between 2000 and 2009, 1.5 million hectares of forest – an area 21 times the size of Singapore – were destroyed each year, a third of it in Kalimantan.

The villages we visited faced the very real danger of losing land that has been passed down for generations. Nearly every adult villager had a tale to tell – of suspicious tactics by palm oil company staff to survey the land, the bribery of select villagers to create rifts within the community, or the abuse of villagers who vocally opposed the companies. In Duan village in Ambalau, a sacred burial ground is part of the land being eyed by a palm oil company. Duan practises shifting agriculture, moving to a different spot every eight years to allow land to lie fallow. This allows the companies a chance to pounce on seemingly unoccupied territory.

When we visited, the traditional village high priest opened the vault where the bones are kept for us – a rare privilege and sign of trust that our group will tell their story of struggle and desperation when we return to our home countries. He grew increasingly distressed as he told us of seven generations of high priests who have watched over the grounds.

Should the palm oil companies try to take the land, it would be a “fight to the last drop of blood”, he said.

The locals also told of a villager, Joseph Obeng, who was framed by the palm oil company into accepting timber, then reported to the police for unlawful possession of it and thrown into jail.

TAKING BACK THEIR LAND

Over 300km from Duan, the three villages of Lansat Baru, Lansat Lama and Belenyut Sibau have found 80 hectares of their land bulldozed by a palm oil company. The company had also planted saplings on the land and driven their truck in – all without having obtained the necessary permits or completing negotiations with the community, villagers claimed.

Enraged, they confiscated the keys of the truck in September. Hearing of the Eco Warriors’ presence in a longhouse three hours away, the villagers travelled the bumpy, muddy roads to tell us of their plight.

The next morning, some of us drove to the disputed site. We spoke to the village leaders, and watched as they performed a traditional Dayak ceremony to stake their claim on the land, and uprooted several saplings. “Nobody has agreed to this and the palm oil company just steals and rapes our land,” said a leader, Mr Yohanes Aliam.

The palm oil company retaliated – it made a police report and the following morning, another leader in the group, Mr Yunosno, was arrested and taken to the police station. Several of the Serawai-Ambalau action group bailed him out after nearly a day.

Mr Yunosno maintained that the villages had not been properly compensated for their land. But in a report by the news site Kalimantan-News.com, a company representative was quoted as saying the company had followed proper procedure.

THE WEIGHTED DICE

The villages’ struggle to hold on to their land comes about because of lax enforcement and corruption, and overlapping laws and claims for the land. Palm oil companies are supposed to go through a multi-step licensing process – securing location permits, plantation business permits, forest area release and, finally, business use permits – before clearing the land. 

But this is seldom the case, going by what we observed as well as findings of the Amsterdam University report.

According to the Dayaks and Dr Smits, even if the palm oil companies present required legal documents such as environmental impact assessments of the land (known as Amdal), or papers that show the majority of villagers are pro-palm oil, their authenticity could be questionable.

A 2009 investigative report done by several non-governmental organisations found that despite “constitutional and human rights provisions which recognise customary rights in land, most local communities and indigenous peoples in Indonesia lack secure land titles”. Community representatives surveyed in the report were also under the impression that they were temporarily relinquishing their land to the companies – suggesting “community leaders had not received adequate information about the law prior to entering negotiations”.

The report also said that locals who sign away their land do so in hopes of receiving jobs and income. But according to Dr Smits, this is not the case. The locals end up being deeply indebted to the palm oil companies. They are paid about 600,000 rupiah for one hectare of land, and have to borrow the equivalent of thousand of dollars to buy seedlings and fertilisers from the company.

As palm oil trees take seven years to mature, a downward spiral of debt results, eventually leading the locals to lose even the 20 per cent of land allocated to them in a typical agreement with palm oil companies.

GLIMMER OF HOPE?

Having heard so many accounts of injustice and desperation, we searched for a glimmer of hope during our 20 days in Borneo – and found one in the village of Tembak, just after our encounter with Pak Kabul.

The village faced off with a major timber company in 1996 and won; its reply to palm oil is also an emphatic “no”. As a result, roads to Tembak are undeveloped, almost impassable after heavy rains. But the 650 villagers remain united and fiercely protective of their forests, and have developed a system of turbines to generate electricity from a nearby river. They have offered us land for release of any orangutans we rescue and rehabilitate.

If other villages, through dogged struggle and maybe some help from the rest of the world, see an outcome similar to Tembak’s, the future of their children would look brighter. Such victories would also be salve for Borneo’s soul.

To find out more about the Eco Warriors’ project, visit their website here.

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Neo Chai Chin is a journalist with Today Online where this article appeared originally. It has been reproduced with permission. 

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DeforestACTION Live Event – March 28!

On March 28^th 2012, join Dr. Willie Smits for an exciting online collaborative learning event! Be prepared to be taken deep into the heart the Borneo jungle to connect with orang-utans. Hear from Dr. Willie Smits and the Eco Warriors about the work they are doing with the Masarang Foundation, and speak with other schools around the world taking action to stop deforestation. Register for the event here.

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LOROT SALEM, a young Kenyan poet shares with us his deep agony and anguish through the following poem that he has written today on his website, Echoes of the Hills. You may recall his beautiful poem on Wangari Maathai that he graciously allowed us to publish in this space last year.

Let us join him in his prayers to Tororot (which means God in Pokot language) that the fires are quelled quickly. 

My Mt. Kenya is up in Flames Tororot

by Lorot Salem

My Mt. Kenya is up in flames,Tororot,
The forest is being consumed–
the loss in billions, the pain immediate

My Mt. Kenya is up in flames, Tororot,
All my indigenous trees, the species, the ecosystem
All of them reduced to ashes

My Mt. Kenya is up in flames, Tororot,
Courageous souls have stepped up
Yet, the leaping flames are vengeful

I am here, watching the news

Watching good souls putting out the fire with tree branches

But the flames are also burning up my heart

I don’t know what I would tell my children
Of how we lost Mt. Kenya
How will I say the fire consumed it for seven days?
I would look at space with pained expression
And say, “Son, Mt. Kenya burnt before me
That is how we lost her back in the year 2012″

Even before then, Tororot,
Just one wish: Please rain on Mt. Kenya
Please make life grow again
Even if some losses we might never regain.

 

Further links you may be interested in:

It is a sad happening. For more than seven days now, fire has been consuming Mt. Kenya destroying billions-worth of trees and life. This is a serious tragedy.

This is how the disaster has been reported.

Citizen News: Fire in Mt. Kenya

The Star Newspaper: Choppers join in Mt Kenya forest fire fight

The Standard Newspaper:Sh8 billion bamboo lost in Mt Kenya forest fire

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Joshua Freedman is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the US based non-profit organisation Six Seconds.   Set up in 1997 and now operating in 10 countries with practitioners in around 100 countries, Six Seconds has the mission to spread emotional intelligence far, wide and deep by supporting, “people to create positive change.”

Joshua Freedman

EQ( Emotional Quotient), a term used interchangeably here with Emotional Intelligence, refers to the ability to comprehend, navigate and use emotions to get the best possible results. Freedman spoke to Bhavani Prakash of Eco WALK the Talk recently during his trip to Singapore.  He strongly believes emotional intelligence is a valuable competence that can be learnt by all, and has important implications for eco-action.

This interview is special to us because it links something we passionately advocate, namely, behaviour change towards a more sustainable world – with emotional intelligence, an essential skill that is required to create a more empathetic society.

EWTT: How did you get involved with spreading EQ or Emotional Intelligence through Six Seconds?

Joshua Freedman: I was a teacher in a school just south of San Francisco that was dedicated to blending emotional and academic development. Daniel Goleman* visited the school in 1992 and he wrote about it as a model of how to teach emotional intelligence. When his book, Emotional Intelligence, Why It Can Matter More Than IQ became an international bestseller, we received many enquiries saying, “OK, Emotional Intelligence is really important but how do we actually use this, how do we actually teach it, how do we apply it?”  To answer that question, in 1997, the founder and executive director of the school and I started Six Seconds together with another colleague, because we believe that actually learning to use these skills is life changing, and world changing.

*Daniel Goleman is the best selling author of the books such as Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1996), Social Intelligence: The New Science of Social Relationships (2006) and Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (2009)

EWTT: What is the scope of Six Seconds?

Joshua Freedman: Six Seconds has offices in 11 countries. We have a network of certified practitioners in around 100 countries and we work in every sector. We have people who work in prisons, we have people who work in executive boards and government agencies, we have people who work in kindergartens and community organisations. All of these people work in different areas where humans are interacting and wanting to do a better job with that. They are starting to see that emotional intelligence is an invaluable toolset to become better with people.

We know that in all these places, just as in EWTT, people are looking to make change.  We can see it’s not just knowledge that’s missing, everyone now knows the 3Rs, everyone knows they can save electricity, everyone knows that the planet is in peril.  But that knowledge isn’t enough to create a shift – because humans are fundamentally motivated more by emotion than by reason.  So if we can be smarter with feelings then we can be better at change – and better at leading change.

EWTT: Why the name, “Six Seconds?”

Joshua Freedman: Emotions are chemicals, they are neurohormones. The molecules of emotion last in our bodies and in our brains last for around six seconds. So if we’re feeling something longer than for 6 seconds, at some level, we’re choosing to do that. If we believe, as I do, that emotions are valuable, there is this 6 seconds window of opportunity where the emotion is coming and signalling us something and we can pay attention to that. 

There are two sides to this.  First, imagine a situation that’s escalating – let’s take a couple fighting about the usual nothing (like how to load the dishwasher).  Partner A says something that really pushes B’s hot button.  B explodes, says something delibrately cruel, and storms off.  What a waste!  And maybe even a tragedy.  If, instead, they both knew about the Six Second Pause, they would feel the escalation and shift gears.  They’d ask an important question, or express a feeling in an authentic way, or connect with compassion… and the situation would end up in a positive (and maybe very fun) resolution.  Now take that same dynamic and imagine its in a boardroom making earth-spanning decisions, or in the streets of Palestine – we’ve got to create peace in ourselves to send peace into the world.

The other essential point about the six seconds:  If you believe, as I do, that there is real value in our emotions… that there is wisdom and energy that we need to harness… then you’ve got these little six second windows of opportunity to access that.  When we’re fighting ourselves and eachother, when we’re rushing to take another irrelevant step on the treadmill, we miss these gems.

EWTT: Can EQ be learnt?

Joshua Freedman: Yes, we have quite a bit of research showing that all the 8 competencies of the Six Seconds model can be learnt. In a relatively short amount of time, we can see a 10% to 20% increase in competence. We’ve done this with parents, with kids and all kinds of professionals in different sectors.  Most importantly, we’ve seen that after a little training, and a modest increase in the competencies, people experience dramatically different outcomes in their relationships.  Here in Singapore, one of my colleagues named Sue McNamara did a beautiful study on this:  When parents and teachers increase their EQ just a little, the children in their care behave in dramatically different, far more positive ways.

EWTT: How can individuals take the initiative to create change? It may seem to some like too big a task.

Joshua Freedman: As you said, something like reversing 100 years of global desctruction can seem totally overwhelming. Is that a rational analysis that’s telling us that, or is that an emotional reaction?  Is that a fear, or is that a sense of worry, of not being strong enough? If we could recognise the emotions that are keeping us from stepping forward and doing what we need to be doing, and we could also recognise the emotions that do propel us forward.  Then we could create more of the emotions that move us in the direction that we do want to go, individually, and for all of us collectively.

If I talk about change generally, e.g., if I want to improve my health, I know that eating a salad is healthier than French fries, but the French fries look awfully good at the next table, and I order them and eat them and enjoy them, and I feel guilty about that!  Why did I do that? It’s not that I don’t know. The knowledge is very clear, there’s something else that drives my behaviour. It turns out that it’s emotions that drives a large part of my behaviour. If I can create more mastery about emotions, that’s going to create an opportunity to create change. This is at an individual level. Then we can start thinking about it at a relational level – I’m talking to you and I understand that certain emotions are going to engage and enrol you about some idea that I have, then we can build momentum.  Next we can start thinking about it at a group level and at a societal level.  People want to belong and be part of something significant , they want to make a difference, and often what’s holding them back are these doubts and worries and fears, and we can help them learn how to deal with those obstacles so they can step forward to create positive change.

The critical link as we look at creating environmental sustainability is how we identify individual choices and how we engage and enrol others to make more sustainable decisions. People use phrases like ecological consciousness – those phrases scare me as something big and “weird.” What we’re talking about is a simple, practical thing: Let’s look ahead a little bit further at the impact of our choices – let’s be smarter about our actions.

First we each need to think about what we want, and then how can identify choices that will move us towards what we really want. In the Six Seconds model, we have a process framework that puts our emotional intelligence into action – to Know Yourself, Choose Yourself and Give Yourself – to being aware, to being intentional to being purposeful.

In the “Know Yourself” step, we’ve got to tune in and see what we’re feeling and doing.  We tune into the data of our own feelings and use that to pay attention. What happens to many of us is that we want X, but we make decisions that lead us to Y, and then we are disappointed. We can see that happening to the planet right now. There’s nobody who wants environmental degradation, nobody who wants to live in a barren wasteland, nobody who wants to leave these vast swathes of destruction to our children, and yet somehow we are not linking the choices that we make on a day to day basis and the result we really want.  But we have a choice!

In the “Choose Yourself” step, we can identify that our current decisions are not going someplace wonderful, and we can exercise our autonomy, we can say,“I’m not just an automatic operator where this stuff just happens. I am an agent in this world and I have efficacy, I’m doing something, I’m choosing something… and if I know myself better, I can pay attention to what’s driving me to choose what I choose.”   Of course it’s easy to say this, doing it is harder – but we can all learn the EQ skills that enable this process.

Then we go to third part, ‘Giving Myself’ and we connect with a larger vision.  In this step, I think about what I really want in this world and how I can contribute to that.  Then I can line these three parts up and make sure that what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and why I’m doing it, create these long term impacts that are more of what I want.

These are things we can start teaching at a very young age. My children were barely walking, when we started talking about the impact of our choices. Our refrain would be, “Are we adding meanness or kindness in the world?”

I remember when my son was really little, we started talking about, “In our family we take care of….” That was our mission statement that’s part of the “Give Yourself” bit of the Six Seconds model. I was able to say to him when he was pulling the plants off the sidewalk, “Max, are you taking care of..? “ That helped him think about the relationship he wants to have with the world, and how the choices he’s making right now is contributing to that. This is incredibly empowering. It’s a big responsibility and a big burden but it also recognises the power that we have.

I think if more and more and more people have that kind of conversations with themselves and with their kids, looking at what is it that we are contributing to the world and what is that we want to be contributing, what choices are we making so that we can make the world more the way we want it to be. This doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a champion of eco awareness like you at EWTT, though that’s possible too.  But for most of us, we can make this happen in a very simple and practical sense. “I’m in the grocery store, and have a million choices, what am I going to buy?”  We make choices all the time, if we could be a little more thoughtful.  I want every person to say, “I have a choice, and my choice matters.”  This will make a tremendous difference in our lives – and in the world.

The Six Seconds Model

In the Six Seconds Model, one talks about three macro areas:

Know Yourself : Self-awareness

Choose Yourself:  Self-management

Give Yourself:  Self-direction

6 Seconds Model ©2001 Six Seconds, Used By Permission

 

When we line up these three areas, we unlock an incredible capacity for leadership – starting with ourselves.

 

There are 8 specific, learnable, measurabl e competencies that enable that process.

You can read more about this on the 6 Seconds website. 

EWTT: What are your favourite reads?

Joshua Freedman:  One of the books that first inspired me into thinking about the planet was “Ecotopia” by Ernest (Chick) Callenbach. It’s an old book. I grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1970s. Chick Callenbach was a family friend and so I read it when I was young. It really provoked something in me into thinking, “Could we conceptualise the world differently in terms of our relationship with the planet?”

One of my absolutely favorite authors is  Ursula K Le Guin.  You could call her a science fiction writer, but that would be missing the point. A lot of her writing is in this realm of imagination and thinking about different ways that human beings could be in different worlds. She wrote a book called “Four Ways To Forgiveness”. It’s a beautiful story about a planet where the dictator/oppressors leave, and the people are left to find freedom or not.  The book asks one of the most important questions of our era: as we become more free, do people become oppressors themselves or do we create forgiveness, openness and opportunity?

EWTT: What is your vision for the world?

Joshua Freedman: My vision for my work is to see a network of change agents who have the wisdom and support and energy to keep fuelling positive change everywhere in society, all the time. And by everywhere all the time, I mean this is something we can do in our day-to-day life. In every interaction that we have – we can be more intentional, we can be more purposeful, we can be more compassionate, we can be more prosperous – this is not about wealth, but real prosperity.

My personal ‘noble goal’ is to inspire compassionate wisdom. This comes from the recognition that  that “I am having an impact on people” and it’s not enough to be ‘smart’ or ‘right’, which is what I grew up with. It’s more about, “How can I use my insight and my energy to create a space for people to grow and flourish themselves as opposed to being ‘right’ over them?”  I’m tremendously concerned about what’s happening in our planet. My way of working on that is perhaps indirect. It’s about equipping people with tools to make better, more sustainable and more compassionate choices for themselves and for others.

To learn more, follow The EQ Network on LinkedIN and Six Seconds on Facebook.   Joshua Freedman can be contacted via josh[at]6seconds.org, his speaking website JMFreedman.com,LinkedIn,  Twitter @eqjosh and on YouTube 

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About the Interviewer:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk.  She’s a certified coach with Six Seconds, the experience of which has enabled her to see more clearly the relationship between EQ, sustainability, empathy and behaviour change. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

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