The forest is everywhere
Recognizing our role within nature, the role entrusted to us as complex living organisms, and the search for action that is in harmony with that knowledge is necessary to restore balance and ensure that people and the planet prosper.
At any given time, any individual of any species and generation is equipped to fulfill its function. It arrived where it is, genetically, through the symbiotic process of co-evolution between its ancestors and all other organisms. It plays a role within a larger structure, and by doing so, it adds beauty to it in whichever form we might consider: complexity, resilience, balance.
The beauty of the forest is the same beauty of the cosmos, it is the beauty of everything that we still don’t know and understand. In the forest, everywhere we look, we witness the same principles at work, the same homeostatic forces act upon all organisms and their intraspecific (within the same species) and interspecific (between different species) relationships. The biosphere is guided by unconditional love.
All organisms act instinctively in ways that benefit their ecosystems, all except for the modern human. We forgot the undeniable truth that we are not the intelligent species but that we are part of an intelligent system that delves into forms of complexity completely out of reach for our understanding. We calculate and premeditate, we try to control the system, to extract from it, to explore it. By doing so, we abandon our role within this system and create a rupture in our relationship with it. If, instead of controlling it, however, we were to reinforce its processes, using its principles and following its ethics, we would enable a syntropic (energy accumulating) relationship to bond us to our environment. If we fulfill our function, we create abundance all around us and live joyful lives, just like any other organism.
Ecological disruption has become the norm within the time of one human life: omnipresent pollution, accelerating habitat loss, and erratic and volatile climate change are now the truth that everyone can see.
Most people have now landed into two fragile points of view, either they got used to the fact that the ecologic system is collapsing and made peace with the idea that the other system, the economic, cannot compromise, or they hope that the solution for the ecological collapse is economic growth and technological development. Either 1) the economic system will keep growing, and technology will keep developing unrestricted, the corporate regime will cling to power, and we (the people) are powerless, so we are doomed, or 2) the economy needs to keep growing, and that is the only way for any of us can ambition to a better life.
As the system shows us, however, the ecological one, growth, or even the presence of life for that matter, is not guaranteed. The system will grow when it has the right conditions for growth; it will grow when it is supposed to be growing. When it reaches its climax, growth stagnates, and the system reaches a steady state. An old-growth forest is in balance, individual organisms grow and reproduce, but collectively all that growth is compensated in equal measure by natural death and decay. In this impermanent balance, complexity arises through the process of evolution. Evolution is not about growth, it is about constant adaptation and transformation, it is about the optimization of life systems.
An urgent optimization of social, political, and economic systems is therefore needed, an evolution of the global society to face the challenges of the present. The biosphere is now giving us all kinds of signals that it is reaching a critical turning point. In the cosmos, everything happens first gradually, then suddenly. If the ecological system collapses, nothing will be sufficient to avoid the end of civilization and possibly of the human species, this is a decision that we take collectively in the next 5 to 7 years. If we fail, the biosphere will endure, some organisms will thrive in the dawn of extinction, as has happened many times before, and evolution will find a way.
This is not a prophecy, however. Another situation might arise in nature, where growth that should be happening is not, when there are no conditions for growth. If there is no water, no organic matter, macro and micronutrients, the system stops, if there is no biotic structure, no stratification, and no diversity, the system decelerates and waits for the conditions to be there again. If the conditions are not reached very important invasive organisms (commonly called pests, diseases or invasive species) will come to optimize life processes, they will emerge so that the conditions for growth are present again, so that there is fuel for growth. When these organisms are present, they are trying to create a new balance in the face of change. That is the way the system has of healing itself.
Humans have the tools, resources, and knowledge necessary to enable ecosystems to grow, regenerate and heal much faster, almost immediately, adopting a symbiotic behavior, and designing agroecosystems that are resilient to change. That feed us and all the life around us, which are in balance sustaining human culture and the natural world. The ingenuity of humanity and the connectivity of the world allow for this regenerative action to be carried out in an unparalleled way globally right now, but, many obstacles prevent that from happening. Agroecology is, therefore, political.
The beauty of the forest is everywhere. It wants to be everywhere. In the microbiome and the mycorhizosphere, in wild shrubs growing in the shade of emergent trees, in rivers and oceans, in bees and leopards, and in humanity.
Thank you for reading!
A note on the next Forest Residency:
It was not possible to arrange for a residency to happen before the Summer, which is very harsh in Alentejo, so the next one is expected to happen in late September; I will share more information soon.
Please reach out if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas you would like to share.