"The threat of nuclear weapons and man's ability to destroy the environment are really alarming. And yet there are other almost imperceptible changes - I am thinking of the exhaustion of our natural resources, and especially of soil erosion - and these are perhaps more dangerous still, because once we begin to feel their repercussions it will be too late." (p144 of The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace: 2002, Element Books, London)
*link
Buenas noches, mis compadres. In anticipation of next month's people's summit in Cochabamba, I speak to you in the language of your people, the 'idioma de madre: English. I implore you to listen to my story. Just for today, walk with me, a campesino woman from Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. I have worked, while pregnant and caring for three young children, in frigid and wind-soaked fields, 11,000 feet above sea level and cooked meals in a clay-firewood-fueled oven, whose smoke filled our home for hours each day with the frightening coughing of mis niños desnutridos.
I am a woman who fought for the rights of her family in the 2000 Cochabamba 'water wars'; who protests the patriarchal social traditions which continue to prevent mis hermanas from access to education and to an awareness of their equal rights as land owners.
For most do not know that, in the past four years, property deeds for 164,401 hectares of land were allocated to 10,299 women as part of country's land reform efforts. Today I speak also to them, mi familia.Link
I am also a proud supporter of Ana Maria Romero, the first female president of our Senate. Yes, I am one of the 'chacha warmi.' empowered by Nuestro Presidente Evo Morales, who in his inaugural address, vowed to his people to build a new state from the bottom up, based on a recognition of indigenous equality, to decentralize power, and to establish a 'mixed economy' recognizing the rights of all citizens to earn a livable wage.
True, I dress still in hand-dyed and pleated pollera skirts, my shoulders covered in the warm worn alpaca shawls knitted by my grandmother. Yet today, I reach out to you from common ground, for what we all share is a connection to the earth beneath our feet. The soil itself. Whether your feet are bare, your heels cracked and rough, tough like weathered and brown leather, or pumiced, polished and protected by Jimmy Choo, still, beneath billions and billions of feet, the land is dying.
I ask only that your ears listen, that they open to a voice which speaks with the wisdom and experience gleaned from thousands of years shared with all species on our joint home. For I need to warn you that ancient connections, interactions, and reactions with nature may no longer be sufficient to cope with the scope and nature of the change threatening our existence. Because you, my neighbors, you and yours are not far behind: Within six years the number of people affected by climate-related crises will jump by 54% to 375 million. Link.
First, I present you with some facts, for facts are what have always seemed to resonate with your collective consciousness, although it appears as if now, even in your uber-sophisticated culture, science no longer holds much sway. The language of your science, these words like hydrology, soil architecture, Micro-Climatic Management Systems, they are as foreign to me as the words of the Bantu. I am not fluent in their meaning yet in my heart they resonate with a clear message: our land is in crisis.
So let's begin with a look at el suelo: the soil.
Dirt Facts
"... whether a global crisis is 20, 50 or 200 years away, the point remains the same: We as a species would be wise to take better care of our dirt"
"If you don’t already know the bad news, I’ll make it quick and dirty: We’re running out of soil. As with other prominent resources that have accumulated over millions of years, we, the people of planet Earth, have been churning through the stuff that feeds us since the first Neolithic farmer broke the ground with his crude plow. The rate varies, the methods vary, but the results are eventually the same. Books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse and David Montgomery’s Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations lay out in painful detail the historic connections between soil depletion and the demise of those societies that undermined the ground beneath their feet." Larry Gallagher, The Joy of Dirt, Ode Magazine, March 2010
The story explains that our looming soil catastrophe is not simply due to volume but also to quality. It seems that plants along with microbes within the soil, produce something called 'polysaccharides' that are similar to a glue, a gel or gum. These polysaccharides hold the soil together, so that it can withstand the actions of water and wind. The decline in soil health, which eventually leads to soil erosion, is like the build up of a dust bowl. As the amount of humus(degraded organic materials) drops, so also does the quantity of polysaccharides. Ultimately, soil content drops, loosing its innate ability to stay in place.
Dirt stats
*Since 1936, the US government acknowledged that almost all soils in the United States were depleted of minerals, a point once again reiterated at 1992's Earth Summit. Link
*Human Activity, since 1991, has degraded 7.5 million square miles (19.5 million square kilometers) of soil; the world loses 83 billion tons of soil each year. International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC)
*The UNs Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the value of South Asia's lost soil nutrition at $10 billion a year.
*The U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) estimates that 60 million people will be forced to migrate from Sub-Saharan Africa within the next 20 years. Borrowing soil fertility to meet the pace of growing demand for food will come home to roost.
* "....building community resilience means enhancing existing development approaches, such as improving agricultural techniques or water supply systems. At other times, the challenges will be new and different. For instance, due to rapidly melting mountain glaciers – creating unprecedented floods now and leading to scarcer water supplies in future years – communities must build flood warning systems in the short term, while changing over time the kinds of crops they grow."(Oxfam)
*Poor women and men throughout Bolivia are already experiencing the consequences of climate change, but in most cases are ill-equipped to adapt to the present and future impacts. Women are often the hardest hit.
*Bolivia can expect five main impacts as a result of climate change: Less food security; glacial retreat affecting water availability; more frequent and more intense ‘natural’ disasters; an increase in mosquito-borne diseases
and more forest fires
Organic farms maintain soil quality by using manure and field waste which are converted into usable nutrients by organic matter. In turn, worms, bacteria, mycorrhizal funginematodes, and other organisms interact with the organic matter to nurture soil. Non-organic farming, in contrast, often lacks soil biota, where 'phenolics serve as pest repellents. Plants sprayed with pesticides eventually produce less nutritious foods. Fewer phenolics are produced when chemical pesticides are used, according to The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The nutrients in our food are severely curtailed by soil depletion. According to Dr Richard Drucker (of Drucker Labs) healthy, nutrient-rich crops need 70 trace minerals, but conventional farming is only replacing 3-5 of these. link
Bolivia's Suelo
They say that in the time of the Inca Empire no one went hungry. The stockhouses commonly held a five-year supply of freeze-dried potatoes and dried llama meat called chaique, which word gave rise to "jerky" in our language. In the Andes, a land of extreme climate and equally extreme topography, food security is predicated on diversity. Although there are only a dozen or so major crops, there are literally thousands of varieties of those crops. A given family will have five or six potato fields scattered throughout the area, at different elevations and on different slopes and orientations. Some will be cultivated with rows that follow the curve of the hill, some perpendicular to it, some diagonal-wise. Each plot will hold something like five to twelve varieties of potato, perhaps interplanted with fava, oca, or maize, depending on the elevation, year and interpretation of bioindicators.
In eastern Bolivia, due to the mechanization and natural compactation of annual cropping in the Santa Cruz lowland, 50% of the soil is experiencing serious root restriction and losing pores for both transmission and water-storage. In a 2009 study by the US National Academy of Sciences, sodium deficiencies in tropical soils was identified as instrumental in the decline of sustainable carbon cycles. Link
In a study on the impact of increasing water stress in eastern Bolivia, researchers determined that the combination of erratic rainfall patterns and soil compactation resulting from excessive disc plowing and tillage have combined to decrease the soil's ability to adequate absorb moisutre and for plants to adequately root. The ensuing decrease in soil water accessible for crops result in significant decreases in the organic materials necessary to sustain soil nutrition and thus drastically impacts food security. Link
Degradation has made the soils increasingly susceptible to moisture stress due to the combined effect of (i) restricted rooting as a result of compaction and the hardsetting characteristics of the soils, (ii) reduced rainfall infiltration due to the loss of transmission pores and surface crusting, and (iii) a decrease in available soil moisture caused by the loss of storage pores, the incorporation of wind-blown fine sand deposits, and soil organic matter losses due to accelerated decomposition rates. The loss of transmission pores has also made the soils more prone to waterlogging in periods of high rainfall. The degradation tendencies of these soils are exacerbated by the greater variability of seasonal rainfall during the last 20 years that has led to a greater frequency or extremely high or extremely low rainfall events than hitherto. link
Reviving an ancient irrigation system in Bolivia
An Oxfam project in Bolivia introduced the use of an ancient pre-Inca agricultural system which faced environmental challenges caused by flooding and drought while at the same time improving both soil fertility and productivity.
"Elevated fields of up to two metres high, known as camellones, are constructed to be above the height of floodwaters, and are surrounded by water channels. The elevated fields are somewhat like the raised beds that some vegetable gardeners construct, though on a much larger scale. During the rainy season, the surrounding channels fill with floodwater, preventing the crops in the fields being washed away. The water can then be used to irrigate and provide nutrients to the camellones during periods of drought. "The ancient cultures in Beni did not try to fight against the flooding," explains Oscar Saavedra, executive director of the Kenneth Lee Foundation. "They saw it not as an obstacle but as an opportunity."
The program is being replicated in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazi and evaluated for implementation in regions of the world with similiar characteristics -- Bangladesh, India and China.
The camellones (or ‘camel humps’) system was last used 3,000 years ago. But communities in this jungle region of Bolivia are now reviving the system – with impressive results.
The camellones are raised platforms of land, surrounded by water. The relationship between the land and the water rapidly increases the fertility of the soil – in stark contrast to the traditional local system, which involves farming a small area intensively for 3-5 years until the land is infertile, then slashing and burning the area before searching for new land elsewhere.
Because the land is raised, the crops and seeds are protected during floods – an big benefit in an area which was hit by serious flooding in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, families from both communities we visited (in Loma Suarez and Copacabana) were forced from their homes – some living in a school, others in a ‘protection zone’ organized by the local government. Adapting to climate change in Bolivia: reviving an ancient farming system
En conclusión
At last December's Klimaforum, Bolivian negotiator Angela Navarro, speaking at The People's Tribunal on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice, said that "Developed countries have forgotten what a healthy relationship is with Mother Earth. In the south we are still listening to her."
"Our President is preparing a surprise for us," she said. "We need your help to make this process inclusive from the bottom up. Thirty nations don't have a right to impose a solution."
La sorpresa? Nuestro Presidente Morales announced soon after COP15 his intention to host the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The April's event takes place in Cochabamba, where ten years ago Bolivians fought and were victorious in the battle for the human right to free water. Bolivia welcomes the people of the world to join us in Cochabamba to support the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.
"Cochabamba will be the scenario for diverse social movements to discuss the consequences global warming brings about, how we harm our environment and every single hazard jeopardizing planet Earth," explained Evo Morales. "My idea is to summon everyone on April 19th, so as to conclude the summit on International Day of Mother Earth, April 22nd."
Morales also insists the United Nations create a Climate Justice Court and organize a world referendum on climate change and its direct link to "the irrational development of industry." Link
And in the end? Against all invaders, be they human or creation of human industrialization, of an unfettered belief by a select few in the boundless quest and right of global manifest destiny, I am prepared to assume the role of a modern day Bartolina Sisa. I am prepared to fight to the death for the rights of Planet Earth, for the rights of the Uru Chipaya.
¡Nos vemos en Cochabamba.
Driving through Bolivian fields in the rainy season (December to March) is rather like passing through a Van Gogh painting, a mosaic of color and texture. Potato flowers in multiple shades of purple, pink, and white, blue lupines, yellow sunflowers, green maize growing at two or three heights, dark fava beans, yellow oca flowers, sprawling peas, even some amber waves of wheat or barley. Bright flowers edge the beds. Sheep and pigs tend to be tethered at odd intervals, while mixed herds of llamas, alpacas, sheep, donkeys, and pigs are liable to wander into the road and in front of your bus at any moment.
(snip)
Right now, just two things stand between highland Bolivia and the Green Revolution: extreme poverty, and the Andes.
On one hand, this is a country where some 65 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, where many farmers are growing their food primarily to feed their families, and where middlemen sprout like mushrooms on the muddy roads between farm and market. There is little money to be spared for luxuries like pesticides, fertilizers, and tractors.
On the other hand, cultivation often occurs on slopes too steep to comfortably stand on, on soils too rocky to reasonably dig in, or within elaborate systems of terraces that have been in place since before the Incas. In short, this is no place for a John Deere. The machines that Idaho potato farmers use to put a few thousand potatoes per hour in the ground are patently ridiculous on a 10-acre plot with a 25-degree slope. The economics of scale as we know them simply do not quite apply. Instead, the farmers here use a foot-plow that has not changed in design or use in several thousand years, with the exception that the blades that used to be made of stone are now usually salvaged metal.
My liberal anti-industrial sensibilities tend to cheer at this turn of fortune, because the fields are beautiful and the biodiversity involved is quite simply staggering: some 5,000 varieties of potato, 600 of fava beans, 500 of maize, and the list goes on. The truth, however, is that poverty is not romantic: Lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child under age of five. And when the resources are available, many farmers are quite eager to purchase chemical inputs, particularly in the form of nitrogen fertilizer. As population and economic pressures increase, fallow times are being reduced or eliminated. This is, after all, land that may have been in production for a few thousand years. Soil fertility is not a minor issue.
(snip)
As we travel from place to place in our rickety bus, we meet and speak with growers and professors, nonprofits working to preserve biodiversity, conservation biologists, farm workers, technical experts, and children. Each connection builds a sense of community, an emerging image of power: We are not alone. They speak of fighting against corporations and working to preserve their traditions in the face of global influences; we speak of the same. We are able to tell the Asociacion de Productores de Tuberculos Andinas de Candelaria, a group working to maintain diversity in potatoes and other traditional tubers, about Native Seeds/SEARCH, a group working to maintain diversity in beans and other traditional Southwestern crops in Arizona. We are able to mirror each other, through stumbling translations, through cultural barriers, able to see each other and recognize: We are not alone. From Caitlin O'Brien, "Farms in the Sky: Bolivia's Farmers Contend with Modernization."
Photocredits:
soil energy by anja
Planting further up the mountains by Oxfam International
il colore che non ho by La Manchù
Amish Farmer Tilling the Soil by chocolatepoint
The floating island of Uros by Christian Haugen
"La Paz, Bolivia, 12.30pm by Avaazorg
4002085_L by riavoorhaar
Working on the Camellones at Puerto Al Mecen by Oxfam International
Roots - Self Portrait by Henry Petrides
Matrix_final
Everything In Transit. by Jeroen van Eerden
another Irresistible photo from Bolivia by yaari
Life on Mars by ~ Bron ~
Proteção by mansurvinicius
GreenRoots is an environmental series created by Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily for Daily Kos. This series provides a forum for educating, brainstorming, discussing and taking action on various environmental topics.
Please join a variety of hosts on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6 pm PDT. Each Wednesday is hosted by FishOutofWater.