What you would like said and done on that day? Please consider writing your ideas and emailing them so they can be shared. Below are some thoughts of mine – Ricky

As you may know ICCM member Jere Locke has taken leave of Chiang Mai to campaign to Save the Earth and is presently working against Global Warming in Texas.

Jere’s latest report indicates the dire state we have reached and says unless radical cuts to carbon dioxide levels begin within the next 2 years it will become impossible to save civilization from destruction.

There are two human factors driving global warming. They are firstly population growth and secondly human use of energy intensive technology.

As examples of the first consider Australia a sometime major grain and meat exporter. Two decades ago a study concluded Australia’s human carrying capacity at 8 million. Today the population exceeds 20 million and governments there continue to promote immigration and population growth. Recent years have seen Australia’s worst drought since the British invasion of 1788 and great metropolises including Sydney and Melbourne are building fossil fuel driven desalination plants.
A second example comes from Arabia where the oil rich Gulf States and cities like Doha also depend on desalination of sea water to build unsustainable cities. The largest country bordering the Persian Gulf is Saudi Arabia with tiny areas of arable land and with a rapidly growing population of 27 million.

In contrast the World’s best performer in addressing over population is the Peoples Republic of China. China’s “One Family One Child” policy for its Han majority (one better than Vietnam’s Two Children means Happiness) over around 30 years, is reputed with having reduced China’s population growth by 400 million. Further this has possibly meant a halving in the death toll from the Sichuan earthquake and must be considered the greatest contribution to human rights and well being in 50 years.

China has shown itself to be capable of being the World’s foremost innovator in the struggle to save the World with its population policy. Now it is time to take the same radical approach to economic policy.

For 30 years China has been following the American model of capitalist growth, over consumption and inequality and has seen many of the same benefits and problems as did the USA in the past. China’s impressive industrial growth, a growth which has seen a substantial de-industrialisation of Europe and North America, puts the country in a position of great strength. Given this new strength and faced with looming World Human & Environmental catastrophe, China can now lead the World to salvation.

The time has come for China to reject the capitalist, energy extravagant model and to insist the whole World follows. By using mandatory population restrictions China has brought a great amount of happiness and prevented unimaginable misery for its people. The same approach applied to production and consumption is essential to solve the second human factor driving Global Warming.

Rather than hoping for a lead from a reluctant USA is time we asked China to return to a sustainable development model and lead the World.

This is an invitation to The Inauguration of “Forests in Chiang Mai City”.

Discussion and Tree Planting. To be opened by Princess Chao Duangdeum na Chiang Mai at 1.30 pm Monday 2nd June 2008.

Venue – Christian Church in the Soi behind Rincome Hotel Heay Kaew – Irrigation Rd Intersection opposite the Christian cemetery beside Huey Keow bridge – later a walk downstream to the planting site.

Program:

• 1:30 Registration of participants
• 2:00 Opening of the project by Chao Duangdeum na Chiang Mai
• 2:30 Discussion with invited notables
• 3:30 Afternoon Tea
• 4:00 Tree Planting

First the good news. If you read HEAT by Monbiot you will see that we presently have all the technology that we need to solve the problem. Other good news is that moving from a carbon-based to renewable economy will create a lot of jobs thus solving another problem– our economic downturn. Finally imagine how wonderful it would be to see people all over the world working together to solve a problem of this magnitude as opposed to continually waging war against each other.

However, we don’t have much time left as the following two quotes suggest:

Dr. James Hansen of NASA

“We have at most 10 years—not 10 years to decide upon action, but
10 years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse
emissions.” Since he said this in 2006 we have only 8 years by his
timetable. He has argued that the earth’s climate is nearing a crucial
tipping point that, if passed, would lead to “practically a different
planet”.

Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel with Gore, warns
“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the
next 2 to 3 years will determine our future. This is the defining
moment.”

The political deadline for change is December, 2009 when the new UN agreement is signed in Copenhagen to succeed the Kyoto Protocols. This new agreement will take effect in late 2012. This agreement must match what the IPCC scientists are telling us to do– 25 to 40% cuts below 1990 emission levels by 2020. Many governments support 80% cuts by 2050 because it is so far out that nothing is required now. Thus the 2020 cuts are the key to advoid catastrophic change.

Secondly, there are nature’s deadline which are fast approaching. There is a scientific consensus that we are very near the point when the changes will become large and abrupt rather than gradual as they now are. One such tipping point is that the Siberian permafrost will thaw thus releasing the equivalent of over 70 years of present emissions in the form of methane gas stored beneath it. There are other tipping points. When we hit them nature will be a runaway train. The permafrost in the north as already started to thaw but we still have time to reverse this.

What to do— educate yourself, write letters and emails to politicans demanding that they pay attention to the recommendations of the IPCC scientists in their national bills and the UN negotiations, change your habits to conserve however you can, and spread the word.

Author: Jere Locke

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Just to let you all know that the next ICCM meeting will take place on Wednesday 4th June at Y.M.C.A Santitum (off Tanon Huey Keow opposite Shell petrol station – Follow your nose and then the signs to YMCA) commencing at 5:00 pm

R.S.V.P. Ricky Ward

(Ricky Ward visited TREAT in February and spoke on Friday morning)

At the age of 22 in 1968, as a member of a student group, led by the late Jim Cairns MHR, I travelled to Cambodia, the one country in South East Asia not then embroiled in war or military dictatorship.

There we went to see the fabulous temples of Angkor in a great forest dominated by tall straight Yang – Dipterocarpus alatus trees.

In later years as the tragedy which had engulfed Cambodia precluded a return, I would often take a break from the colds and flu of wintry Melbourne to visit Cambodia’s neighbor Thailand. Here, although I travelled widely, the nearest I came to seeing Yang forest was an avenue of over a thousand trees, planted in 1904 on a winding road into Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second city.

Chiang Mai at 18 degrees 47 minutes N. ( Ingham is at similar southern latitude) sits on the largest of about ten wide alluvial plains separated by mountain ranges and gorges across the north of Thailand. Many of the ranges still have forests dominated by trees of Di-ptero-carpeacae*, deciduous at low, evergreen at mid elevations, or by evergreen Fagaceae (oaks and chestnuts) above around 1200m. Pinus species dominate some of the dry ridges.

Great Teak forests which once covered perhaps a third of our north have all been logged, mostly to their complete destruction. Similarly no plains forests remain as most of the land is now paddy fields, roads or urban sprawl. Yet on piecing together a picture from scattered remaining trees and a study of forests along streams in the foothills comes a vision remarkably similar to the forests of Angkor, with an important difference being that the Yang trees are no longer D. alatus but very similar D. turbinatus.

With a background of revegetation activity from Melbourne, I could not resist the temptation to learn how to grow forests when I came to “retire” in Thailand in 2000. With the only native plants here that I recognized from home being Kangaroo Grass and the reforester’s greatest enemy, the fire-loving Blady Grass (Imperata cylindrica), the learning curve was steep. Soon I was battling with the painful Mimosa invisa and Queensland’s newest wildflower Siam Weed (Chromolaena odorata) – root it out , don’t cut – and later Mile-a-minute Mikania sp. – pull, pull, pull – all introduced from America.
The other great shock was the 5 or 6 month long dry season, very un-Victorian. This has led to some strange behavior of mine – putting shades on some trees and on occasions watering them.

My initial work was in Nan province west of Chiang Mai, some 350km by road zig-zagging around the mountains. There I planted seedlings from the local government forest nursery and a few propagated by myself. Much of my tree knowledge was coming from talking to local farmers and hunters but in 2001 appeared an excellent “Forest Trees of Northern Thailand” by Simon Gardener et al. with photos and descriptions of a bewildering number of over 800 native trees.

After moving to Chiang Mai I learn’t of the work of a Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU) at the university, which had received much help and inspiration from TREAT’s very own Nigel Tucker. FORRU gave me some plants but as their work was concentrated on evergreen mountain forest restoration and mine was along the streams in the plains, it was clear that I would have to organize seed collection and arrange for nurseries on the plains to grow trees . I could and did grow some trees on a vacant block near my apartment with the help of a friend but this would not be enough.

Thailand has a very large network of forest department nurseries established in an era when plantation forestry and “watershed restoration” (mainly disastrous planting of pines, like at Kuranda) were well funded. But as their growing of indigenous species was very limited (about 35 out of 77 according to one manual) I approached the provincial manager and we arranged that I would collect seed for his nurseries to grow. The result, although somewhat mixed largely because of a government funding squeeze, was some 20 to 30 tree species which were used in some school plantings and on some friends’ private projects.

It is this loose network of Chiang Mai residents and people from educational institutions I call “Gum Hak Doi Suthep” – The Group which loves Mount Suthep, the largely forested mountain National Park next to Chiang Mai City. We have done some planting near waterfalls in the Park but for the last three years we have concentrated our efforts in an adjacent large and partly wooded Park. As the National Park has none of the plains forest we thought that replanting along streams leading out of the Park would bring back a little lost diversity and improve wildlife habitat.

We have found the military management of the park and their staff very welcoming and happy to have our help and learn from what we do. Much of the planting we do has had assistance from visiting student groups while our little band of up to six do most of the weeding at times with assistance from the Park workers. Our site preparation is a combination of using hand tools to grub weeds, tramping on grass and some spraying with glyphosate.

In three years I estimate we have planted 3,500 trees with survival rates ranging from around 20%, in an area which floods for 2 to 3 months most years, to around 90% where soil conditions are best. In 2007 the army folk tried to follow our example and planted about 5,000 trees on an area which they first cleared with a tractor. They planted in June at the beginning of the rainy season and because they kept weeds down when a fire came through recently most of their plantings and all of ours were spared.

We like to welcome visitors to come and look and give us a hand, so if any members or friends of TREAT are thinking of visiting Chiang Mai we would love to hear from you.

Source: Trees for the Evelyn and Atherton Tablelands Inc [TREAT] Website.