Society of Authors Interviews Chris Rhodes about his eco-parable, “Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus”.

I was among several authors, involved with "sustainability", who were interviewed by The Society of Authors (UK) recently, as part of their “Tree to Me” sustainable publishing campaign. Interviewer: Teddy McDonald. 

“A modern day eco-parable (for 5-8 year olds), with themes of family, community, sustainability and diversity: aimed to help young children with reading English, and to see that cooperation, empathy, and being inspired by Nature, are the best ways to live in a massively changing world.”

Awarded as a Winner in the Authors Show's "50 Great Writers You Should be Reading" contest.

The Interview.

TM. I guess maybe the best place to start would just be if you could just tell me a bit about your sustainable journey and what got you interested in sustainability and then how you heard about Tree to Me.

CR. I've always loved nature. I grew up in the countryside, first in South Wales and then in Gloucestershire, and then I moved to Banbury and then to London and became a city boy. But I've always had this love, the love of walking in nature and all that sort of thing. Yes, I was a university professor in chemistry, this is probably about 20 years ago, and I really found myself gravitating towards environmental matters, if you like. Then I got the opportunity to set up an independent consultancy and I got involved with energy and, in my deliberations about energy, I came across a phenomenon called Peak Oil, which didn't mean that we're about to run out of oil any time soon, but we've got this hugely oil dependent society. And if we can't maintain the flow of oil into it, then what do we do? And so I started writing a blog about this, called “Energy Balance”, which has got quite a few million hits over the years. And I was really thinking around energy and what do we do about fossil fuels? Can we get enough renewables, etc., etc..

And it struck me that we are going to have to relocalise a lot of our activity if we don't have all this oil dependent transportation, in our own lives, but also importing food and energy itself and so on. And it occurred to me that children are going to be challenged in all sorts of ways in the time to come and I put this story together about a little Hippo for my niece who was four then – she's 29 now, so we're going back a few years.

And the story of the Hippo. 

He's got the mind of a five year old boy growing up in Africa. And it's his interactions with his family and human creatures and so on. And it just struck me that it would be nice to bring out this story, not in any preachy way, but just to sort of get over the ideas that cooperation rather than conflict and connecting with nature are probably the best ways of solving where we are at the moment and going into a happy kind of future.

And also I sort of wrote the first story - I've written quite a few other stories in the hippo-series since - but I thought to myself that it might take a while to get a publisher for it. So I thought, okay, I can write words, but I can't draw to save my life, frankly. So I tried to look around friends, and then somebody said, “Ah, Jeanette Cole, she's really good”. So I was put in touch with Jeanette, and Jeanette drew the illustrations for that, and we've done lots of outreach in schools, and she lives in East London and in a lot of the schools there, the kids don't have English as their first language. And the teachers have said, “You know what? This is really so easy for them to read from, to engage with”. I met kids who normally don't have a lot of confidence in reading out loud, and they do, they take to it. I think it’s down to Jeanette's lovely illustrations, which draw them in to the stories, and the words. So that's kind of all part of my view of sustainability.

I mean, I do a lot of different things. I still continue to write academic papers. And regarding this campaign [Tree to Me] – well, kind of interesting – here is a paper of mine, just accepted, entitled, “Trees - protectors against the changing climate”, which is going to be published in an academic journal, and I'm pointing out that we should stop destroying nature. Keep the trees preserved. Protect the trees, and the trees will protect us. So I'm kind of carrying on with the academic work, but also community related stuff, and things to do with nature.

And we came up with something called “For Our Children’s Earth”, the idea being that we need to protect and rebuild the soils, and we're having a film screening in Reading. It's part of a national screening of “Six Inches of Soil”, and being shown by Transition Town Reading, an organisation that I have become chair of, mainly because nobody else wanted to do it at the time. But we're doing this screening, and it's all sort of going on with our other activities.

And what I found with the Hippo stories, is they naturally bring up discussions from kids about nature, about the environment and so on. So all these things, although that wasn't quite what I was thinking when I put the stories together for my niece, along with all the sustainability topics that I've got involved with since, it's all become kind of interleaved.

And that's probably expressed in a slightly haphazard way, because there are a lot of complex things that have happened, coming in from different directions, but if any of it proves useful at all, I’m glad.

TM. So you obviously wrote it for your niece was there, was it always in your head that you were going to publish it in some way? And what was the experience of publishing it like? Was it on a big scale to begin with?

CR. Not at all. The first shot we had, we used Lulu - you are probably familiar with that, a sort of online print on demand, right? Yes. Here we are. It's one of the original ones [CR holds up book to the camera]. It's an unusual sort of size. It's one of the American sizes. But I think we did an initial run of  50, and since then we've sold about 2,000 copies altogether over the time, but just in small runs, basically.

So there's not been an issue of having a great pile that we needed to do something with, or God forbid, dispose off. I would never want to be in that position. But yes, we've just done it – and it's moved almost by, it's too much to say, an underground movement, but word of mouth. And then people get in touch with us and say, “Oh, would you come along and...” you know, give some sort of outreach somewhere.

And I talk about the environmental aspects, and read the stories. Jeanette helps the kids to draw the pictures, of hippos and everything else, and we sell them that way. But it is also available via Amazon. And we produced it that way. And it's available in various independent bookshops, including a local one, Fourbears Books in Caversham. 

So it's been relatively low-key, but steady, and it's more all the other things that have come from it, basically. The way it sort of fits in with the community stuff, with the kids and really where we're all going as a human society, and how their future is likely to be.

TM. So I suppose obviously you didn't have to worry too much about print run in that case. But what about the other stages of the production process? Did you have did you have control over, for instance, the use of inks or finishes, trims and cover materials? Were any of those things a consideration when you were trying to make it a sustainable book?

CR. To be perfectly honest, when we started this, even despite my developing thinking in terms of sustainability, until the Tree to Me campaign came along, I hadn't – I don't know why I hadn’t – but I hadn't thought, “Wow, the publishing industry producing books, and of course this has sustainability issues in terms of where the basic wood comes from to make the paper, the inks and all that”.

So what I'm doing now, I mean, yes, we've had sort of total control of the thing in a general sense, but we've just used commercial printers. But now I'm looking to people, printers who swear that it's all ecologically sound, to use recycled paper, or paper that has not had a huge detrimental impact in its production, that sort of thing.

And also I saw something the other day, I don't think it works so well for printing books, but for the fliers and so forth – this is paper with seeds incorporated into it. So you could tear that up and put it in the ground. It's a bit like this sort of guerrilla gardening activity where somebody casually goes along with a handful of seeds and chucks them in a hedgerow somewhere, the idea being to grow flowers to help the pollinators, this kind of thing. I mean, you would certainly hope not to have to be shredding and disposing of books. But certainly all the advertising stuff, if you did that in that way, it's even better than composting it because you could actually bring forth new life basically and help out the local environment.

TM. Did you find the Tree to Me questions useful in relation to your book before or after publication? Obviously you didn't send these questions to a publisher as some authors would use the campaign, but was it a useful prompt just to think about issues around your book’s sustainability or how you might do things differently?

CR. Yes, I think, sort of, from going forward now. Despite my activities in sustainability, for some reason I've not really thought of the fact that this of course applies to producing and distributing books. But now I'm aware of these aspects of where the basic materials come from, what happens potentially to them afterwards and throughout the whole production and distribution process. Yes, I think the way you set that out is very useful and I would certainly pay attention – if we proceed forward carrying on under our own steam, then I will take account of those indicators. But I think seriously, to expand this on the scale that we would like to... I mean, I would like to have a million kids reading Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus, and the other Hippo stories, because it's such a strong and positive message.

And the feedback we've got from teachers and parents and everybody is wonderful and that gives me heart to carry on with it. But I think this is going to be a, well... I think in general, the whole publishing industry is going to take all that stuff on seriously from now on. It’s with us. It's part of modern life. It's almost criminal. And in some cases, probably what happens in grabbing resources really is criminal in some parts of the world. But yes, it's a sort of offense against society to not take sustainability as an issue in terms of everything we do.

TM. I was going to ask you – and you may not have comment on this, but I was just wondering – if you had any thoughts about how it could be made easier for authors to ask these questions of their publishers? I know that you've had you've obviously had other books, and you’ve gone through independent publishers with those. Because these are difficult conversations for authors to have a publishers.

CR. Yes, and authors don't necessarily want to put publishers off, I would imagine, by making their job sound more difficult. Yes, you're right, I've worked with lots of different publishers, I've worked with a lot of academic publishers, for example, like the tree paper I’ve just shown you, in publishing in journals. I had a black comedy novel called “University Shambles”, that was published by a small press near Cambridge. They have sadly gone bust, so either I try and find another publisher for that, or if we go it alone, then I will make sure that the printing is operating in a sustainable kind of way. So, there's a bit of a question mark to that one.

But I think it should become part of the package from the publisher, a set of questions about sustainability or along the lines of what you have with your campaign – like the frequently asked questions (FAQ) kind of thing. Where the publisher explains what the situation is in regard to these issues, to give the author an idea what they are getting involved with and what the impact of their book is likely to be if they go with this particular publisher.

TM. So in terms of the questions, which of them felt the most pertinent or relevant to you?

CR. Well, actually the deforestation and water use there, for example, I said I've just had this paper about trees accepted. 

And basically what I'm saying, in a nutshell, is if we carry on destroying the forests, destroying the natural environment, you can forget about zero emissions targets in terms of cutting fossil fuels. I mean, this might sort of encompass the whole thing a bit better in terms of my thinking, it's called ‘carbon tunnel vision’, because the message that comes over all too often from the government, and generally speaking, is as long as we decarbonize our energy system, we can carry on as we are. Everything is going to be hunky dory. But that's nonsense, because, if we got to zero carbon energy, if we're still using that energy to destroy the forests and the soils and overfishing and polluting the oceans and shoving plastic everywhere, we're still doomed, frankly. 

So we need a whole, more integrated, way of approaching this. And I think that set of questions was nicely integrated, because you talk about renewable energy, you talk about deforestation, you talk about water use. It's the bigger picture.

When I first started writing the “Energy Balance” blog, which is now getting on for 20 years ago, and I give lots of public lectures and sometimes I lecture at universities. 

I've not been formally employed by a university for 20 years and don’t miss it at all. I still interact with universities around the world. I do all sorts of things. And people have said to me, “Well, you know, the problem is we're in overshoot.” So I kind of casually replied, “Yeah, that's right.” And then I got sent a paper a couple of years ago by Bill Rees, who was one of the originators of the ecological footprint analysis, you know, Earth Overshoot Day is the 2nd of August – so in other words, we’ve used up a year’s worth of resources by then and I hadn't really got what this meant until I saw that. And then – bloody hell – the penny dropped, and it just framed the whole picture of our overconsumption of resources and the fact that the waste we're producing in how we use them is overwhelming the capacity of the Earth to absorb it. So it's a real double whammy.

So yes, it's energy, it's resource use, it's how we use those resources and the energy in terms of the waste, greenhouse gases, but plastic pollution and really all the whole show.

TM. Did the questions spark a wider conversation with those around you or with people who you've worked together with on the books? So colleagues, for instance, or anyone close to you – were the questions sort of a prompt to talk more about sustainability?

CR. Yes, perhaps not those precise questions because I hadn't seen them before we started doing this. But, Jeanette Cole, the illustrator of Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus, and I have got a couple of other books in the series so far... and she is very much into environmental matters and sustainable energy and so forth. And, I know a lot of people, and this is what they are talking about... you may remember, I said my father was ill.

Now, I wouldn't have imagined Dad becoming any sort of environmentalist, but I phone him up, and my God, he's well aware of the places that are on fire or flooding and everything else. So I think it's becoming that almost everybody is aware of climate change and environmental damage, and certainly people that I know from all walks of life are. I've also written quite a few articles, mostly about sustainability and energy, for a journal called Science Progress. 

I was on the editorial board of that journal – still am, actually – and everybody involved with it is deeply and definitely aware of the sustainability aspects in their own lives. So yes, I don't think I know anybody who isn't concerned, right? I guess there are a few people... I don't know what Mr. Trump thinks, for example, about the coal industry. I seem to recall him saying that, no, we can't cut our use of coal because it disadvantages our economy against other countries that are producing coal like China and Russia. But the trouble is, I think we have a fear of giving things up; there is a reluctance, because it almost seems like you're stepping back. You know, you're giving up something that you've earned through your hard work. And so on. You're sort of stepping back toward the dark ages, if you’re not careful. But of course, if we stay on the path we are on, then we're all going to lose everything.

So we have to change our behaviour. I'm coauthor of another paper which says that Overshoot, as I was talking about, our overconsumption of resources, and also overwhelming the Earth by the waste we produce, is down to a kind of behavioural crisis, and a lot of it is driven by advertising. 

You're told to buy more and more and more, etc., etc. So it's going to be tackled in that way. But I do think there is a sort of splinter movement of awareness that is moving away from this kind of thinking.

TM. Have you communicated [your book’s] sustainable credentials as an object with your readers? Have you communicated that in the pages of the book or via other channels to like let people know?

CR. Well, as an object rather than the concept to the message? No, because I think until I signed up for this present thing we're talking about I wasn't really quite aware of the impact of the publishing industry on the environment. So, now it’s more of a going forward stage, but I think it will add a lot to the environmental, the sustainability message in the book to say, “...and hey, here it is, this object, it's been printed sustainably…” Sustainable is one of these words... it’s so overused, sometimes people don't quite know what it means and yet it's a good word because it covers everything, doesn't it? So I use it, but I don't totally like it. But yes, if you could say, well okay, this waste paper has been produced from the book’s advertising literature, it's got seeds in it so you can tear it up and plant it in the garden and so on and so on. I think that that would be fantastic.

I think there are different ways of estimating carbon emissions and so forth, but they're quite difficult. It wouldn't apply to me and what I've done so far. But of course, I can probably do some calculations to come up with something to address that aspect of it. And I would do, because going forward it's important to address the sustainability issues of the object itself, how it was produced and to come into your hands literally.

So I think that's going to be an important part of the message and it's often, I think, powerful to give practical examples of things. You can say things, you can quote things, and there's so much doom and gloom in the world. And I think sometimes, if you've actually got something like this and you can say it was sustainably produced and the other aspects of it in a in a real tangible, practical sense, I think that would carry the message forward more powerfully.

TM. The next question I had was, has the Tree to Me questions and sort of engaging with the campaign – has it changed the way you might think about the next book that you produce if you've got one lined up or if you're thinking about producing another book. And is there anything you do differently next time?

CR. Yes, for sure. Okay. In terms of printed copies, we just have "Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus", but there are two more in electronic form, other books, "Hippy Eco-Hippo" and "Visitors for Hippy". We are planning to get those printed, for sure the three books; we would intend to use a printer that can guarantee that the materials have a low environmental impact in all respects. So yes, that's going to become a critical part of it. Or, if we do eventually manage to get a publisher, then I would engage in discourse to make sure that we get the right one, who is also on board with this kind of thinking, and how they produce it would have minimal environmental impact. But yes, that's going to be a critical part.

I would also say the novel “University Shambles”, as we take that forward out of the wreckage of the publishers - who were based near Cambridge - going bust, then we would certainly make sure that the materials, not just tick the boxes, but are genuinely of low impact. I would look into that as deeply as possible.

TM. So what’s next for you? Do you think you will be writing another book or is there anything there anything else in your sights in terms of a next publication?

CR. Well, we’ve got the three books so far in the happy Hippo series, which we want to take forward as described, and then the novel already written. New books to write… I may do. Of course, it's an enormous amount of effort to go into that. People keep saying to me, you ought to write a book about energy. Well, yes, I'm probably well qualified to do that. But there are other good books on energy by very well qualified people. I think I might produce a book about trees because I have a growing love for trees. I wanted to get an actual academic article out to try and get the message to governments to say, look, this is where you need to put your money, change the law if necessary on that level. But it's a matter, I think, also of what we can do as individuals, as communities at the local level, which is what the Transition Towns movement is about. But I think, until I decide firmly on that, I will continue writing articles, I'll write my blog, I will cooperate with people on the scientists warnings topics, papers, things like that. When something ignites me sufficiently to write another book, I'll write it. There are a few things on the drawing board, actually, and I will probably go with one of them when the muse strikes me and I have enough energy to focus on a particular thing. I'll just say I'm involved with a lot of different things in the world, so I might have to put some of those to one side if I were really to focus on a book in regard to what sustainability activities I'm engaged with at the moment.

TM. If you one tip for authors – whether in their personal lives or professionally – about sustainability, what would it be?

The phrase that comes to mind is “think global act local”, which of course was from Fritz Schumacher’s book, “Small is Beautiful”. 

But it’s true, while many of the problems confronting us, like climate change say, and all the rest of it, are global... that's to say, they affect everybody, there is a lot you can do at the local level to ensure some resilience, so you can insulate buildings yourself. You can grow food, you can do a bit of guerrilla gardening. Because we need some resilience against supply chains failing, for example. You know, as I said, my thinking in this way began around the fact we might not be able to... well, we almost certainly won't be able to maintain the oil supply. I don't think we can run this civilization all on renewable energy. But we shouldn't do it either because of all the other impacts on the environment. So I would say our focus should on the local, you know, what you can actually do in your own community yourself, but be aware of the global picture.

TM. What would be your tip for readers about sustainability?

CR. Yes. Well, you know, the tips for readers are not so different. But if I can say then for readers, use less stuff, produce less waste. The two things are not disconnected. And so, as I say, overall, the problem is we are in overshoot. We're using up too much stuff and we're using more than the Earth can provide. We're producing too much waste in how we use those resources, more than the Earth can absorb, basically. So in this time of rising costs of energy and everything, of course, everything you do to try and save money, if you like, does reduce the environmental impact. So that would be one metric. How could I save some money?

So, use less energy, do things more locally, try and get hold of a patch of land, if you can, and grow local food. It also helps to bring communities together and build communities and in a very healthy and positive way.

"Wilding." Film Screening at the Reading Biscuit Factory, Monday, November 4th (2024), 8.00 pm.

Due to the October 14th screening being fully booked, there is now a second screening of the film on Monday, November 4th, at 8.00 pm.

Here is the booking link: https://www.readingbiscuitfactory.co.uk/movie/wilding-intro

“An inspiring call to arms to protect and restore nature.”

As part of Reading International Festival, in collaboration with Transition Town Reading, join us for a  screening of Wilding including post-film panel discussion. To be held at the independent cinema, "Reading Biscuit Factory," at 8.00 pm on Monday, November 4th (2024), 1 Queens Walk, Reading RG1 7QE.

                                                 Here is the booking link

The Film.

Based on Isabella Tree’s best-selling book by the same title, Wilding tells the story of a young couple who battle entrenched tradition and bet on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate.

Ripping down the fences, and hoping to renew the growth of mycorrhizal fungi deep in the soil, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals, both tame and wild. This is the beginning of what will become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe.

Over time, the soil replenishes itself – with a little help from some charming pigs – and there is the miraculous return of rare species like the purple emperor butterfly, white stork and turtle doves, who make their homes at Knepp.

It is a transformation far beyond anything anyone could have dreamed of, captured in intimate detail by five-time Emmy Award-winning documentarian David Allen and multi- BAFTA & Emmy Award-winning cinematographers Tim Cragg and Simon de Glanville.

Reviews.

"Wonderful…An inspiring true story that shows how we can revive nature and restore hope"
— Patrick Barkham, The Guardian

"Nature is healing in this soul-enhancing, hopeful ode to the British countryside" ★★★★ Time Out

"Visually stunning... a life enhancing experience" ★★★★ The Arts Desk

★★★★ The Daily Mail

“A lyrical hymn to the self-healing of the English countryside.”
— Dog and Wolf

                                

Post-film Q&A panel:

Professor Alastair Driver, Director of Rewilding Britain, and Specialist Advisory Board Member for the Knepp Estate.

Jane Ibrahim, Director of Wild Oakingham Rewilding Project.

Professor Chris Rhodes, Chair of Transition Town Reading, and Director of Fresh-lands Environmental Actions.


Evening Programme:

8.00 pm - 9.15 pm, film screening.

9.15 pm - 9.30 pm, break.

9.30 pm - 10.15 pm, Q&A panel.

"Six Inches of Soil." Film Screening at the Reading Biscuit Factory, Monday April 29th (2024), 6 pm.

We are now offering a third screening of the film, on the 29th of April (due to the April 15th and April 22nd events being fully booked).

"Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil, and the fact that it rains."

This is a film screening (+ post-film Q&A), arranged with Transition Town Reading, to be held at the independent cinema, "Reading Biscuit Factory," at 6 pm on Monday, April 29th (2024), 1 Queens Walk, Reading RG1 7QE.

Here is the booking link (or just turn up on the door).    

The Film.

Six Inches of Soil tells the inspiring story of young British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, our health and provide for local communities. 

The aims of the film are to sound the alarm on a broken system, but to also give hope that there is a way to fix it; to inspire farmers to adopt agroecological and regenerative farming practices; and to encourage consumers, food corporations and policymakers to support their efforts.

Half the food we eat in the UK is produced by about 180,000 farmers, who manage 70% of our land. Current “industrial” mainstream farming practices significantly contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative farming practices, (within an agroecological system) promote healthier soils, provide healthier, affordable food, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon.

Six Inches of Soil is a story of three new farmers on the first year of their regenerative journey to heal the soil and help transform the food system - Anna Jackson, a Lincolnshire 11th generation arable and sheep farmer; Adrienne Gordon, a Cambridgeshire small-scale vegetable farmer; and Ben Thomas, who rears pasture fed beef cattle in Cornwall.

As the trio of young farmers strive to adopt regenerative practices and create viable businesses, they meet seasoned mentors - John Pawsey in Suffolk, Nic Renison in Cumbria and Marina O’Connell in Devon - who help them on their journey.

They are joined by other experts - Henry Dimbleby, Ian Wilkinson, Mike Berners-Lee, Vicki Hird, Dee Woods, Tim Lang, Hannah Jones, Satish Kumar, Nicole Masters, Tom Pearson - providing wisdom and solutions from a growing movement of people who are dedicated to changing the trajectory for food, farming and the planet.

The 96 minute film, with its original music score and beautiful animation, was completed at the end of 2023, and was launched at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on 4th January 2024. It was also shown at COP 28 in December 2023 through EIT Food Systems.


Post-film Q&A panel:

Professor Chris Rhodes, Director of Fresh-lands Environmental Actions, and Chair of Transition Town Reading.

Pete Wheat, Reading Food Growing Network, and Transition Town Reading.

Dr Frida Mariana, Soil Food Web Analyst at Soil Bio Analysis and R&D scientist at Soil Ecology Lab.

Evening Programme:

6.00 pm - 7.35 pm, film screening.

7.35 pm - 7.50 pm, break.

7.50 pm - 8.20 pm, Q&A panel.

"Trees - Protectors Against a Changing Climate." - Journal Publication.

This article is a much abridged version of a full paper [with 145 references] published (4-3-24) in the journal Ecological Civilization.

Beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) showing “Crown Shyness” (Clayfield Copse, Reading, UK).

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our own emptiness.” — Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931).


1. Tree Huggers.

Although the term “tree hugger” is used, generally pejoratively, to describe someone acutely concerned with protecting the natural environment, its true origin marks the brutal slaughter in 1730, of 294 men and 69 women, members of the Bishnoi Hindu community, who were trying to defend the sacred khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria) in their village from being cut down by soldiers, to provide timber and charcoal to build a new royal palace. By literally hugging the trees, they paid the ultimate price, but this action resulted in a royal decree that no trees could be felled in any Bishnoi village.

It is through this lens that environmentalism and social justice might best be viewed, with trees serving not only as powerful symbols of the current ecological crisis, but as real and essential protectors against a changing climate, and all other symptoms of the current condition of human ecological overshoot.


2. Trees and Forests.

There are estimated to be about 3 trillion trees on Earth, or about half the number that existed before the dawn of human civilization. Trees are vital to at least four major biogeochemical cycles, namely, the carbon, water (hydrological), nitrogen and oxygen cycles, and hence their significant presence or loss impacts dramatically upon the global climate. Since the end of the last ice age, the overall extent of forested land has been reduced from 6 billion to 4 billion hectares, principally from the expansion of agriculture. The majority of trees are present in forests, which currently cover about a third of the Earth’s habitable land surface, and provide habitat for 80% of land based biodiversity.

Forests affect the climate, not only in terms of capturing carbon, as is mostly focussed upon by policymakers, but in maintaining biodiversity, generating clouds and increasing albedo (thus causing cooling), influencing rainfall and weather patterns, and other factors. The loss of trees, therefore, weakens our chances of meeting climate and biodiversity targets.


3. Forest Loss - deforestation and forest degradation.

Forest loss represents the sum of deforestation and forest degradation: deforestation is where trees are removed completely for changes in land-use, such as for agriculture, mining, or urbanisation, and are not expected to re-grow; while forest degradation is a more general “thinning” of trees, e.g. from logging, shifting agriculture, or wildfires, and which can be expected to recover eventually. However, it cannot be overstated that, in parts of the globe, particularly the tropics, the deterioration of forests is severe, as a result of a confluence of different human impacts, which vary from region to region in their relative proportion and scale. Thus, globally, around one quarter of annual forest loss is from deforestation: in Latin America, the major driver of deforestation is clearing forest to graze cattle, mainly by corporations, while in Southeast Asia it is “freeing-up” land to grow crops, for example, tree plantations to produce palm oil.

The Brazilian Amazon is found to have been a net emitter of CO2 for the past two decades. Although the Amazon as a whole, which extends across 9 different nations, has absorbed a net 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the past 20 years, the Brazilian portion alone has emitted a net 3.6 billion tonnes during the same period. On the basis of satellite monitoring data, it is concluded that the best chance for preserving the Amazon, and its ability to buffer against climate change, lies in placing formally protected areas and lands in the charge of indigenous peoples.

It has been estimated that forests keep Earth around half a degree (Celsius) cooler than without them, and help to stabilise the climate. This is due to a combination of effects, including carbon dioxide uptake, and evapotranspiration, but also the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from trees, which create aerosols and aid cloud formation, with a consequent increase in albedo (thus causing global cooling). Thus, we can neither reach “net-zero” emissions targets, nor keep global heating to within the limit of 1.5 ^oC above pre-industrial levels, if deforestation is allowed to continue. In fact, according to the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an increase in the global forest area of 10 million square kilometres (equal to the land area of the United States) by 2050 is necessary to avoid exceeding 1.5 ^oC.

4. Should we simply Plant Trees, on a Colossal Scale, to Offset Deforestation and Avert Climate Change?

Since forest eco-systems are far more complex than mere assemblies of trees, simply establishing new tree plantations might prove an incomplete, and potentially counterproductive, strategy in regard to stabilising climate and promoting biodiversity. The global area of near natural peatland (over 3 million km2) sequesters an annual 0.37 Gt of CO2, while peat soils contain over 600 Gt of carbon, which is as much as 44% of all soil carbon on Earth, and more than the amount of carbon stored in all other vegetation types, including the world's forests. The need to preserve grasslands has been emphasised, and it was noted that savannahs are not “inferior forests” but store large amounts of carbon in their soils. Indeed, savannahs hold more carbon belowground than do forests. Thus, planting trees on peatlands and grasslands can lead to an overall release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Clearing established forests for tree plantations is especially detrimental, not only in respect of carbon storage but also biodiversity loss. Moreover, many tree planting projects have failed, in part from a tendency to target the numbers of trees planted, with insufficient regard for environmental impacts such as water demand, and a lack of follow up monitoring and legal protection, to ensure that the trees survive. Thus, if planting is to be done, judicious choices must be made at each stage of the process. This is aptly summarised in the context of the European Commission and European Environment Agency’s “Map My Tree” platform, aimed to assist with planting 3 billion new trees, which acknowledges the need for: “Planting the right trees in the right place and for the right purpose.”

Thus, a paper on the potential for global tree restoration sparked controversy, in regard to the prospect of planting trees over the 0.9 billion hectares that might be available globally, without encroaching on existing forests, or urban and agricultural areas. While it was inferred that thus planting close to one trillion trees over such a large area would absorb two thirds of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, this met with strong dissent on various grounds, to which the original authors responded, and then issued an erratum, in which they revised down the amount of carbon that might be removed by global forest and woodland areas.

Furthermore, they emphasised that, overall, tree restoration is not more important than all other methods of environmental conservation, but that “climate change is an extremely complex problem with no simple fix and that it will require a full combination of approaches.”


5. Proforestation.

Proforestation is the primary strategy of protecting existing forests from human disturbance, so that they can continue to grow naturally to reach their full ecological potential, thus maximising the absorption and storage of carbon, while increasing biodiversity and structural complexity, including soil, mycorrhizal fungi, insects, plants, lichens etc. The critical factor of timescale also applies, since active reforestation, or even natural regeneration strategies, assisted or otherwise, will take time to grow new biomass, whereas proforestation builds on what is already there, particularly the larger trees. In one forest, these number only 3% of the total trees present, but account for 42% of its carbon storage; hence, preserving them exerts an immediate, positive impact. Indeed, due to the tardiness of our actions to repair the Earth and its climate, severe restrictions to the cutting of mature trees must actually be enabled globally.

There is some controversy over whether an intact standing forest continues to absorb carbon once it has become fully established, or reaches a kind of “saturation” state, but there are strong indications that the accumulation process remains ongoing on a scale from decades to centuries. Intact forests also may accumulate half or more of their carbon content as soil organic carbon or in standing and fallen trees which eventually decay and contribute more soil carbon. Some older forests are found to continue accumulating soil organic carbon, while soil organic matter is bound more tightly in older, rather than younger, forests. During the period 2001-2019, global forests were found to have sequestered about twice as much CO2 as they emitted, and to provide a “carbon sink” that absorbs a net annual 7.6 billion tonnes of CO2. This is 1.5 times more carbon than is emitted by the United States each year. However, keeping forests intact offers far more than just carbon sequestration and accumulation, but also contributes to maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and building forest and community resilience.


6. Natural Regeneration.

In contrast to proforestation, in which existing forests are preserved intact to reach their full ecological potential, natural regeneration is the natural re-growing of forest on land from which trees have been removed (e.g. through logging or agriculture), or the expansion of current forest area. Thus, woodlands are restocked by trees that develop from seeds that fall and germinate in situ. The prospects, and also challenges for using natural regeneration as a means for large scale reforestation in the tropics – where deforestation is particularly severe - have been surveyed in detail. This is particularly important, since to achieve necessarily challenging forest and landscape restoration goals will require cost-effective natural regeneration at the global scale.

In regard to natural regeneration, Rewilding Britain propose the following strategy:

“Natural regeneration should be our default approach to woodland expansion. Most natural regeneration takes place within a couple of hundred metres of existing trees, even for highly mobile seeds like birch. We propose a Three Step Natural Regeneration Hierarchy as a practical model for decision making. This should be part of a broader rewilding approach where species-rich mosaics of woodland, scrub and grassland habitats are allowed to regenerate over large landscapes. The hierarchy starts with natural regeneration as the default approach, with tree planting as a support option where the natural regeneration of diverse habitats will not happen without it.

Step 1. Let nature lead: Allow natural regeneration as a default approach unless a natural mix of trees and shrubs are unable to establish or would take too long to arrive.

Step 2. Give nature a hand: Kick-start the process by assisting natural regeneration (next section) if needed.

Step 3. Plant trees: Plant locally sourced tree saplings only where still considered necessary.”


7. Assisted Natural Regeneration.

Assisted natural regeneration (ANR), sometimes termed “managed regrowth”, can provide a cost-effective method for forest restoration, regenerating biodiversity and ecosystem services, in areas at intermediate degrees of degradation, while simultaneously generating income for rural livelihoods. The approach utilises either residual seeds and plants, already available at the specific site to be restored, or as dispersed from neighbouring vegetation. Low-cost methods are employed, to assist in the natural re-growth of vegetation, for example: providing fences to keep cattle, deer and other animals from grazing on new growth, selectively removing vegetation that can threaten the survival of resprouting saplings; avoiding practices, such as mechanical disturbance, logging and burning; thinning of competing vegetation, as required, to promote the growth of tree saplings; and, if and where necessary, planting seedlings. ANR has most often been used to enhance tropical forests, but is now being used, more widely, to restore forests across a range of ecosystems.

The following summary has been given, to gauge the appropriateness of ANR for a given situation: “Assisted natural regeneration doesn’t work for every landscape; it’s critical to assess the local context. For example, ANR works best in areas that are not highly degraded but are surrounded by forest remnants and where seeds are living in the soil. Where intensive farming and overgrazing have heavily degraded or compacted the soil, tree planting/seeding usually makes more sense.”


8. Trees and One-Planet living – a Summary Set of Guidelines.

• Protect existing mature (primary) forest ecosystems – stop deforestation - and allow them to grow to their full potential (this has an immediate effect).

• Natural regeneration, assisted if necessary. Expand areas around mature forests, allow secondary forests to grow (cheaper, easier, and richer in biodiversity than planting).

• If planting is to be done, plant mixtures of “native” tree seedlings (“whips”) or seeds in areas where forest previously existed; avoid projects that convert grasslands or peatlands to forest, or clearing established forest to grow tree plantations, e.g. for palm oil.

• Avoid introducing undesirable “alien” species, of trees or parasites.

• Mangroves, and ocean “forests” of kelp and seaweed to be established and protected.

• Still need to reduce carbon dioxide (and other GHG) emissions at source, and not rely on natural climate solutions alone to continue with Business as Usual. The overall problem is “overshoot”.


9. Conclusions.

There are estimated to be about 3 trillion trees on Earth, or about half the number that existed before the dawn of human civilization. Trees are vital to at least four major biogeochemical cycles, namely, the carbon, water, nitrogen and oxygen cycles. In addition to absorbing carbon, and releasing oxygen through photosynthesis, trees are critical for maintaining biodiversity, providing habitat for 80% of land based wildlife, feeding the soil, generating clouds and increasing albedo (thus causing global cooling), influencing rainfall and weather patterns.

The loss of trees, weakens our chances of reaching climate and biodiversity targets, and so proforestation and other practices to stringently preserve the functionality of and holistically restore forest ecosystems, must be adopted as a matter of urgency, paying due attention to soil, and species diversity including mycorrhizae; not being limited to insouciant “tree planting” solutions. Indeed, due to the tardiness of our actions to repair the Earth and its climate, severe restrictions to the cutting of mature trees must actually be enabled globally. It has been concluded that the best chance for preserving the Amazon, and its ability to buffer against climate change, lies in placing formally protected areas and lands in the charge of indigenous peoples.

Nonetheless tree growing [with a focus on (assisted) natural regeneration, rather than just tree planting] alone is not enough to offset climate change. It must be integrated with all other forms of land, wetland, grassland and agricultural land protection and restoration. Taken together, such Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) could provide more than one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed by 2030 to keep within the 2 ^oC global heating limit.

It is also critical to reduce emissions, not only of CO2 but all other greenhouse gases, at source (and not rely on NCS alone to continue with Business as Usual) by implementing both low-carbon, renewable energy, and energy demand reduction strategies, such as insulating buildings, relocalisation, and local food growing.

Finally, even climate change is not the problem, but a symptom of ecological overshoot, which is underpinned by a human behavioural crisis that needs to be addressed.

"Trees - Protectors Against a Changing Climate." Lecture at Braziers Park College, Sunday 25th February, 10 am.

I am giving a lecture entitled, "Trees - Protectors Against a Changing Climate", at Braziers Park College, on Sunday February 25th, at 10 am.

There are estimated to be about 3 trillion trees on Earth, or about half the number that existed before the dawn of human civilization. Trees are vital to at least four major components of the Earth System, namely, the carbon, water, nitrogen and oxygen cycles.

In addition to absorbing carbon, and releasing oxygen through photosynthesis, trees are critical for maintaining biodiversity, providing habitat for 80% of land based species, feeding and building the soil, generating clouds and increasing albedo (thus causing global cooling), influencing rainfall and weather patterns.

The loss of trees, therefore, weakens our chances of reaching climate and biodiversity targets, and so proforestation and other practices to preserve and restore the forests must be adopted as a matter of urgency.

 The loss of trees weakens our chances of reaching climate and biodiversity targets.

Book your free tickets and optional food here

In this Sunday Morning lecture which is part of our winter wider community weekend, Professor Chris Rhodes will remind us how vital trees are for our Earth’s processes and the critical part they play in maintaining biodiversity, providing habitat for 80% of land-based biodiversity, feeding the soil, generating clouds, influencing rainfall and weather patterns.


The Speaker.



Professor Chris Rhodes is a director of the independent consultancy, Fresh-lands Environmental Actions and has advised on low-carbon energy for the European Commission and the governments of many nations. He is the Corresponding Author of the “World Scientists’ Warnings into Action, Local to Global", framework paper, published during the COP26 climate change conference; to date, this has been signed by over 3,000 scientists from 110+ nations around the world. He is a Board Member of Scientists Warning Europe, and Chair of Transition Town Reading. He has published over 250 peer reviewed academic papers, which have received 20,000+ citations, and is also author of the black comedy novel ‘University Shambles’, and an award-winning children’s picture book, ‘Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus’.

"Six Inches of Soil." Film Screening at the Reading Biscuit Factory, Monday April 15th (2024), 6 pm.

SOLD OUT!

"Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil, and the fact that it rains."

This is a film screening (+ post-film Q&A), arranged with Transition Town Reading, to be held at the independent cinema, "Reading Biscuit Factory," at 6 pm on Monday, April 15th (2024), 1 Queens Walk, Reading RG1 7QE.

Here is the booking link (or just turn up on the door).    

The Film.

Six Inches of Soil tells the inspiring story of young British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, our health and provide for local communities. 

The aims of the film are to sound the alarm on a broken system, but to also give hope that there is a way to fix it; to inspire farmers to adopt agroecological and regenerative farming practices; and to encourage consumers, food corporations and policymakers to support their efforts.

Half the food we eat in the UK is produced by about 180,000 farmers, who manage 70% of our land. Current “industrial” mainstream farming practices significantly contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative farming practices, (within an agroecological system) promote healthier soils, provide healthier, affordable food, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon.

Six Inches of Soil is a story of three new farmers on the first year of their regenerative journey to heal the soil and help transform the food system - Anna Jackson, a Lincolnshire 11th generation arable and sheep farmer; Adrienne Gordon, a Cambridgeshire small-scale vegetable farmer; and Ben Thomas, who rears pasture fed beef cattle in Cornwall.

As the trio of young farmers strive to adopt regenerative practices and create viable businesses, they meet seasoned mentors - John Pawsey in Suffolk, Nic Renison in Cumbria and Marina O’Connell in Devon - who help them on their journey.

They are joined by other experts - Henry Dimbleby, Ian Wilkinson, Mike Berners-Lee, Vicki Hird, Dee Woods, Tim Lang, Hannah Jones, Satish Kumar, Nicole Masters, Tom Pearson - providing wisdom and solutions from a growing movement of people who are dedicated to changing the trajectory for food, farming and the planet.

The 96 minute film, with its original music score and beautiful animation, was completed at the end of 2023, and was launched at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on 4th January 2024. It was also shown at COP 28 in December 2023 through EIT Food Systems.


Post-film Q&A panel:

Professor Chris Rhodes, Director of Fresh-lands Environmental Actions, and Chair of Transition Town Reading.

Kath Burton, Incredible Edible Reading.

Professor Tom Sizmur, Professor of Environmental Chemistry, University of Reading.

Dr Frida Mariana, Soil Food Web Analyst at Soil Bio Analysis and R&D scientist at Soil Ecology Lab.

Evening Programme:

6.00 pm - 7.35 pm, film screening.

7.35 pm - 7.50 pm, break.

7.50 pm - 8.20 pm, Q&A panel.