I thank all of the speakers, as well as the many questioners and listeners, for their inspiration over the past day. Being sandwiched between David Perrys opening talk yesterday and Merve Wilkinsons workshop tomorrow is quite an honor, although I feel more like the slightly spoiled mayonnaise than the meat or cheese.
I would like to put these stimulating talks into a synthetic framework, relating them directly to ecoforestry by using keywords from the talks. Then, I will try to add the kind of things that might have been overlooked or neglected from our discussions in this conference. Finally, I will make a few suggestions for goals for local, regional, and global actions for ecoforestry. I would like to set up the framework by describing ecoforestry as various things. First, I would like to define ecoforestry as poetic activity.
Richard Atleo described how native Americans used metaphors in teachings to know relations and change people. Science itself makes extended use of the metaphorical process to construct its models. For example: "a tree is a machine" according to Smith and others, or "the brain is a computer" according to Michael Arbib. This kind of metaphor has been used to create our images of nature as resource. In fact, Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare presented forests as resources.
The use of the word "ecology" by Ernst Haeckel implied that the natural world was a place to live, that is, a house, rather than a machine to control. Making the earth into a house is fundamentally a poetic activity, according to Gaston Bachelard. Poetry also is a way of understanding the universe through metaphor, a literary device that transfers the characteristics of one term to another, sometimes enriching both frames of reference.
Poetry is communicative of the quality of things. Like science, it discriminates the unsuspected in the commonplace. It is not different from science, but more diffuse; it is not better than science, but more comprehensive. It accepts ontological parity, that is, the equality of beings, which Arne Naess reminds us of; aspects of the world are not negated or reduced by one another. As metaphorical knowledge, which may be prerational or metarational, poetry can still avail itself of scientific references. Poetry can measure a whole qualitatively and mimetically, a germ or the cosmos with its imagery. Poetry is a tool for comprehending partially what cannot be known totally. A poetic language could include a view of the interrelatedness of all existence in a sublime ecology.
Poetry does this through metaphor, which can be understood as the connection of a focus and a frame. A metaphor itself can be understood as consisting of two parts, according to Max Black: A focus and the frame. The focus (or figure) designates the figurative term signified through the process, and the frame (or ground) refers to the subject or context. Using this distinction, it can be seen that most of the fuss in forestry has occurred at the focus level. Foresters have so long focused on trees that they forget that the forest is a frame that holds many foci (or points of view).
Perry and Audrey Pearson both considered the importance of patterns in forestry. A pattern can be defined as "process applied to components," where the process is actually prior to the components. The elements of a forest are related psychologically, by foresters, as focus or frame, as contrast or uniformity, as dominant or recessive, or in a number of other pairs. For instance, forests can be considered by scientists as either matter systems or energy systems, but the focus on either frame permits subtle differences and limitations in interpretation. Some ecologists describe organisms as being configured by energy through time, but organisms are material patterns in space as well.
We have neglected slow patterns in forestry, those that move across landscapes over thousands or millions of years. We have neglected the importance of relationships. Perry suggested the metaphor of sailing for us to consider, that foresters are like sailors. This is an excellent metaphor because it reminds us that we cannot control all the forces of nature, only understand them and move with them. And to understand, we need some kind of biological unified field theory.
Perry, Pearson, Nattrass, and Altomare all mentioned the importance of principles for creating sustainability. The agenda of ecoforestry can be presented through a number of characteristics, principles, and standards. Characteristics are qualities that distinguish unique individuals, systems, or patterns; Gregory Bateson calls them differences that make a difference. Principles are fundamental rules or laws, based on the unique characteristics of forest systems that we can use to create models to meet stated objectives, which are goals towards which our actions are directed, e.g., a healthy forest. Perry mentioned how spirituality could be combined with other principles that lead to harmony in society (and doubtless in forestry). Atleo showed how harmony prevails in many Native American stories. Standards are models or examples of quality or value established by authority or consent, which can be repeated as procedures.
For example, one characteristic of a mature forest is its wildness. The corresponding principle is that forest is self-ordering without human control or management. Our objective for a forest is to allow the foresting process to continue, whether we take resources from the forest or not (although forests can be influenced or interfered with by acid rain, pollution, and other industrial effects). We can set local standards that are likely to keep mature forests wild: Limit biomass removal to 2 percent of the total forest; use appropriate techniques, e.g., single tree selection, horse skidding; retain mature structure, e.g., 19 snags per hectare, 23 nurse logs per hectare (in mature Ponderosa pine forests in Eastern Washington for instance); and preserve surrounding landscape patterns.
Other characteristics of forests include death, disturbance, and exploitation. These characteristics contribute to the health and self-ordering of a forest. Pearson described how succession is set back by disturbance in forests. But, disturbance is a normal occurrence. The problem in forests is the scale of disturbance caused by industrial clearcutting--this is actually interference with the process of self-ordering in forests.
As a unified field theory of forests, ecoforestry understands changes in scale and employs appropriate techniques. Ecoforestry understands the crucial difference between local and global operations. Insect infestations are local phenomena; clearcutting all forests is a global problem. Jim Smith emphasized total forest design. This means that we must address many levels at the same time, as if we were good doctors.
A lot needs to be done to make ecoforestry into the practice of forest ecosystem medicine. For a start, there is no standard forest, for measurements, as there is a standard human for human medicine. Also, forests are far more complex than humans, especially since they include humans as part of the system.
One thing we need is more data, as well as a framework to interpret it, rather than less data, as Smith suggested in his talk. We need far more research into fire, biomass, and species interactions.
Walter Briggs said in his talk that thinning from below improved the genetics of the forest. Alas, it is more complex, since the only way to be sure that thinning from below improved the DNA would be to test the DNA of every tree taken as well as every tree remaining.
Our language is confused; we talk about improving forests as if we knew what we are doing--we do not know much at all. We talk about numbers as if we are collecting every number of everything in the forest. We are not. In a simple instance we sum the number of acres cut (6 million in the US) or the number of cubic meters cut (3 billion in Canada), but neglect to say how many trees are cut or what the impact is on the surviving land. How many trees are cut? 4 billion? 5 billion? How many woodpeckers die? How many owls or salamanders move or die? We discuss the forest in terms of "resources," "waste," and "pests." Do we really know what these words mean? What is a pest? A bear? A porcupine? Bark beetles? Hikers? Skiers? Perry quoted Thomas that nature may be more complex than we know; this idea has been presented many times, by Barry Commoner, James Jeans, and perhaps first by George Perkins Marsh in 1864.
Perhaps it is time for thought experiments about how we use language. We need to think about what would happen if we recast forestry in medical terms rather than restricted economic ones. Perhaps even medical terms are too limited, simply because medicine itself uses the wrong words and images. The goal with attaining health is not to rid ourselves of all pests or symptoms: It is to balance those things that exist anyway with human requirements.
Medicine bridges the scientific study of symptoms and diseases as well as human values. Medicine is a discipline of practical experience arising from clinical interactions, e.g., interhuman events. Medicine has the goal of restoration of health of the body (as psychology addresses the mind and religion the soul). Medicine is beginning, in a few cases, to consider the entire spectrum. In disease, the harmony of the body is disrupted by some event. The disruption is a symptom (not exactly). It becomes objectified, "it," a disease. But, the disease is a conceptualization of the disharmony of the patients world, that is, a form of self-image and human image. Medicine has to consider multiple etiologies of disease, from environmental causes to social, genetic, somatic, and psychological ones. Health, being a complex harmony of the environment, society and individuals, has to be considered by medicine as a suite of individual, social, and environmental goods, all of which are rooted in living bodies. Environmentally-related diseases are hard to recognize. There is no classification scheme or surveillance mechanisms for them. The impacts of environmental illnesses are rarely calculated. Medicine focuses on individuals, and less on populations, the chemistry of toxic agents, government regulations, or environmental effects (or backgrounds). Perhaps the practice of ecological forestry can pull medical practice further into a holistic approach.
Less than 30 years ago, the environment was of little concern to most people. Now it is the primary issue for most people. Because of the intricate way that the environment inter works with human health and well-being, not only health-care providers but foresters, miners, traffic engineers need to be knowledgeable about the effects of the environment on their areas, as well as on human and community health. A new category of professional is needed: People who address the health of ecosystem themselves (please refer to my upcoming article in Pan Ecology next spring). Human physicians may need to be able to identify critical environmental conditions that affect human health, but others are needed to identify the health of those systems themselves. Human physicians need to know the basic principles of diseases related to environmental change or chemical exposure; others need to know the principles of ecosystem health and how that is related to human actions.
In his talk, Tom Milne mentioned that corporations have certain responsibilities. Yes, they do, and they also have real ecological responsibilities, set in the context of an industrial ecology that can recycle materials almost indefinitely, creating links and relationships with other industries and groups. Right action can get complex. Chris Bailey stressed the importance of sustainability. Nothing, not forestry or cities or toy consumption, can ever be sustainable unless the entire system is designed so that needs, wants, waste, and use are minimized and balanced. Nattrass considered the effects of population in his talk. Smith discussed design. These things are interlinked in important ways.
Perry talked about how the beings in a forest are adaptive. We humans are also adaptive. But, as Rene Dubos pointed out, we may be able to adapt to pollution and habitat destruction, simply because, like rats and bacteria, we can adapt to radical changes, even if other plants and animals that we value cannot adapt and perish.
But, we can also design our systems to minimize radical change, to allow those elements that cannot adapt to radical change to keep to habitats that are not altered so dramatically by logging or cities or tourist activities. We can promote this through education, but it has to be an ecological approach.
Education takes place in communities; it is the means for communities to continue. As Plotinus and Novalis recognized, education has an outward, social and civil, aspect as well as an inward, personal and self-revealing, aspect. Education has at least four ends: 1. the appreciation of the richness of nature; 2. the comprehension of human existence; 3. the understanding of the nature of human society, and; 4. the training for a position in human society.
Education has become more universal in the past one hundred years, but its goal, the well-rounded individual, has been distorted by its fourth aim, training for the economy. To produce wealth for the state and livelihood for the individual, education has become money obsessed. Ethics, in the second and third aims, has been neglected, since it might limit or contradict its economic obsession. In fact, the first three aims are restrictive to a growing, industrial economy. Education, as practiced by public schools, produces unprovocative individuals, adjusted to an unbalanced society. With its emphasis on play, liberation, and community, an ecological education integrates all four ends.
Ecological education alters and enlarges perception with the selection and presentation of relevant information and forms an ecological consciousness. The survival of human societies depends on the consciousness of the global system in its complexity and connectedness. The Buddhist concept of "right action" recognizes that the individual has to make decisions based on consciousness of the effects of those decisions and actions. As designers (conscious or unconscious) of forest landscapes, we must make informed and responsible decisions.
Poetry and art are undervalued as forms of communication, not to mention as ways of shaping and making. Business has transformed much of art and poetry into advertising, to match the style and attention span of people in industrial cultures. Advertising, quite literally from the Wall Street Journal to college textbooks, refers to its activities as "shaping the American dream." Like art, advertising creates an image of a way of experiencing. Unlike art, it limits its focus for a specific goal: profit. Like art, it mirrors us. Unlike art, it intensifies and glorifies only the positive aspects of culture, ignoring the dark, negative aspects or the complex nonhuman support framework.
The simplicity of advertising is irresistible. Our environment deteriorates according to ecologists, but always gets better according to economists. And their pictures are prettier. People want to hear that it is getting better. Advertising tells them it is. People want to act stupid, greedy, and selfish, and spend the inheritance of their children on themselves. Advertising tells them these actions are rewarded right now. The real issues of life and death, destruction and hope, make people feel helpless and anxious, so advertising draws their consciousness to comfortable trivia.
Despite the ugliness of the dreams of progress and growth, of waste and stylistic frenzy, advertising, using sophisticated techniques and narrowing the focus out of context, makes the dreams desirable and irresistible. People in agricultural and hunting cultures interiorize the abstract industrial vision. African farmers are convinced to buy inorganic fertilizers, even though it degrades the soil; women to buy powdered milk for their children, even if it kills them; tractors replace draft animals in the paddies in the Philippines, even though they are costly and less energy-efficient; French winter fashions are found desirable in tropical Brazil, even if they can only be worn in air-conditioned villas. People in industrial societies are convinced that their children will be ruined without personal computers, even if they become isolated game-players, unconcerned with forests in remote locations.
Yet, advertising may be the most effective means to reshape desires and reform buying habits. Advertising presents the symbols of modern experience, even if they are just the trivial ones. It could present healthy symbols equally well. Advertising does incorporate traditional values, like family, friendship, and love, although they are used to sell beer and cereal and, sometimes, churches and hospitals. And, like art, advertising lies (although Jules Henry thought it was instead a new kind of truth, "pecuniary pseudo-truth," not intended to be believed or proved).
Advertising is beginning to support more informational functions, such as the dangers of drug abuse and smoking. Advertising creates values; fur coats, fast cars, dark beer, slim cigarettes are certainly recent and artificial values, but it could be used to create positive ecological values and new identities that show that our needs for prestige, esteem, and belonging can be met without stylistic waste at mindless speeds. Advertising could promote new attitudes about appropriate technology, the rights of other cultures, and the place of people in nature. Good advertising could be as subversive and conservative as ecology. It could avoid confrontation with peoples values, emphasizing positive connections without negative ones. A good ad could capture and carry the most self-indulgent viewer; for the most part, ads do not require effort, literacy, or consciousness, just attention.
Perry mentioned that forestry has focused on high volumes of low-value products, then suggested that this needs to be reversed. Advertising has been serving the dream of progress, but progress is leading to catastrophe, a long, slow, global catastrophe. When people experience local, sudden catastrophe, they usually respond immediately, with heroism and sacrifice, aiding the victims of earthquakes, floods, or famine. Advertising could bring to consciousness the slow catastrophes of erosion and the destruction of entire forests, and, perhaps, invoke the same altruistic responses to them.
To work towards this service, ecoforestry groups, with conservation groups, preservationists, politicians, wealthy people, sports persons, and actors (these last three often carry more weight because of the virtue of their popularity), could define and promote an integrative mythology as the basis for the framework of diverse efforts to protect life and the environment. Ecoforestry organizations could provide a meaningful philosophical foundation, as well as coordination for other humane, social, and conservation programs. But, the approach must be egalitarian: Respect for life cannot neglect human life and suffering. The approach must also be eutopian: A new image of nature cannot ignore adaptive cultural traditions that arose in place over centuries. Furthermore, in addition to formal education, they could provide re-education through the most effective means, such as advertising. Wildlife groups could spend money advertising "humane consciousness," moderation, and the joy of living frugally and richly (instead of just consuming or winning). Ecological ads would be unique and compelling, simple and effective. They would advertise not a product, but a way; not for a profit, but for a dream.
What should we be advertising now, at and after this conference? Our success. Our goals. The goodness and rightness of our efforts to protect, preserve and restore forests. I urge all of you to continue these efforts. Thank you for your friendship and inspiration.