How John Dennis Liu creates space for those coming after us
Happyplaces Stories (video)
Last September, my 14-year-old son sent me a profile of a man and said, ‘This is one of those guys you would typically interview for your Happyplaces Project.’
He showed me an article about John Dennis Liu. As an ecologist and filmmaker, he proves that you are never too small to make a difference as an individual. For over thirty years, he has contributed to restoring severely degraded landscapes worldwide. John also founded Ecosystem Restoration Communities in 2017, a growing movement of more than 20,000 people regenerating dozens of areas on six continents. I looked up John on LinkedIn and sent him a message explaining why I contacted him. I thought that a 14-year-old boy who is busy with the world and soil is awesome. I asked John if he would be in the Netherlands again soon.
His swift reply was: ‘I am in the United States but will leave after the New York Climate Week. Perhaps a good idea is to talk with both you and your son. The coming week is difficult, but perhaps later this month. Be well and happy.’ I proposed John’s suggestion to my son, and even though he liked the idea, it turned out quite impossible to make that happen in his busy daily schedule with school, sports, and more.
I met John on a beautiful sunny day near Utrecht a few weeks later. We met at a house where he stayed, with a wonderful garden. As we walked through the garden towards a shed in the back of the field, I got updated on the status of the local bee population, its role and its place in nature, and we looked meticulously at nature’s little marvels like plants and flowers. When I asked if I could use the toilet, he proposed that I’d better find a beautiful place in the garden and would donate my nutrients to nature. I accepted the invitation.
In the following hours, I learned so many things from him. We recorded a good portion of it, too.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Focus on ecology space
I had an epiphany in the mid-90s and early ’90s. I’d been working as a journalist, focused on geopolitical events, economics, and culture. Then, the World Bank asked me to conduct a baseline study of the restoration of the Loess Plateau in the upper and middle regions of the Yellow River.
In terms of the importance to human civilisation, myself, individuals, families, or humans as a species or all life, studying ecology was much more important than the geopolitical, economic and cultural events. So I’ve devoted the rest of my life to it.
When I did this, I immediately had to compare the importance of ecology to the importance of the geopolitical, economic, and cultural events I’d been covering. Like for example, the rise of China from poverty and isolation, international terrorism, Tiananmen, the collapse of the Soviet Union, bilateral and multilateral summit meetings and that sort of thing. I’d been working at the highest level of television journalism with CBS News, Radio Televisione Italiana, and Zeitschussdeutsches Fernseh. And so when I did this, I realised that many people were jostling for positions to report on geopolitical, economic, and cultural issues. But while studying the Loess Plateau, I was standing on a mountaintop alone. And very few people knew about this or were engaged in it. I calculated and just analysed that in terms of the importance to human civilisation, myself, individuals, families, or humans as a species or all life, this was much more important than the geopolitical, economic and cultural events. So I’ve devoted the rest of my life to it. It is 30 years since I started studying ecology.
Rehabilitating large-scale degraded landscapes
After starting to study this, I found that it was truly important. And many people didn’t know that it was possible, or almost maybe no one knew that it was possible to rehabilitate large-scale degraded landscapes. And I went into working on that and not just studying it. I had some success in Africa. When I had some success in Africa, I thought I would convince political leaders and countries to reform their laws and change to do large-scale restoration. I thought this would cause a massive change around the world. But it took much longer than I thought.
By 2009, I was getting frustrated and impatient. I had the opportunity to speak in Sweden at the Tällberg Forum. And at the Tällberg Forum, there were many important people. The audience was the United Nations Undersecretary General, the European Environment Agency head, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Chairman, and 500 of their closest friends. It was a fairly important audience, and I had a chance to get to know them. People like Johan Rockström presented his pre-publication work on the planetary boundaries. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway, was the head of the World Health Organization. He also wrote the Brundtland report for the United Nations Secretary-General. It was the first time the subject ‘sustainable development’ entered public diplomacy. They were all there. It was a fairly depressing meeting because of the planetary boundaries and how we’ve exceeded them. And Gro Harlem Brundtland was talking about the conservation movement with ‘Earth Day’ and, even before that, about the limits of growth, the Club of Rome and the Stockholm meetings, and then the creation of the WWF and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and so on.
But if you follow that timeline, it just gets worse. There’s more biodiversity loss, more climate change, more toxicity. So, that wasn’t a really good story. It was interesting when I presented how you could restore large-scale damaged ecosystems. That transformed the meaning, and I could see how interesting it was for people to say, ‘We don’t have to accept degraded states.’ We can transform and transform human civilisation. Willem Ferwerda, the country director for IUCN Netherlands, who left IUCN later and created the Commonland Foundation, was in the audience. After that meeting, he said: ‘We should work together for the rest of our lives. And what do you need? What do you want to do?’ I said: ‘Well, COP15, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, was coming up in December of 2009 in Copenhagen. The world, the press, and even the conservation movement were talking about a global agreement on climate mitigation and adaptation. But actually, they weren’t talking about climate mitigation or adaptation. They were talking about money. They were talking about carbon sequestration, which they thought was mechanical. You create a vacuum cleaner or something and suck carbon out of it. Those things are ridiculous.
I said I wanted to make a strong statement. Willem helped to raise money to make a film. It was broadcast on the BBC one day before the Copenhagen COP15. It’s called ‘Hope in a Changing Climate’. The film became the basis of ‘Green Gold’, the re-edited film by VPRO with some new footage from Jordan and interviews with Jeff Louten, a prominent permaculture designer and teacher. That’s how I got to the Netherlands. Then, I was supported first as a research fellow with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature for several years. Then, I started working with Commonland. I founded the Ecosystem Restoration Camps Movement, now called the Ecosystem Restoration Communities.
The idea of space is also a concept of time. It is also a concept of the context because we think we’re here on Earth, so we must be the centre of the universe. But we’re a stardust in a vast universe. I would say that, at least as far as we know, this is the only planet that has an oxygenated atmosphere, a freshwater system, fertile soils, and amazing biodiversity. We should be very clear about that because everything else is secondary. If that didn’t exist, we wouldn’t exist. Life wouldn’t exist. The concept of space, I think, is not necessarily exactly easy to describe. It is broad, and there are different ways to interpret it.
Consciousness
Consciousness is the issue. In studying ecology, evolutionary succession emerges. To understand evolutionary succession, you have to go into different dimensions of time. Time is not only temporal time, ‘now’. Now is a particular moment, but the context of how we got to where we are now is connected to the long historical or cosmic time, geologic time, evolutionary time, or human history. And the future spreads out in front of us. So, the concept of life included death and generations. Constant creation and renewal are facts. The idea of space is also a concept of time. It is also a concept of the context because we think we’re here on Earth, so we must be the centre of the universe. But we’re a stardust in a vast universe. I would say that, at least as far as we know, this is the only planet that has an oxygenated atmosphere, a freshwater system, fertile soils, and amazing biodiversity. We should be very clear about that because everything else is secondary. If that didn’t exist, we wouldn’t exist. Life wouldn’t exist. The concept of space, I think, is not necessarily exactly easy to describe. It is broad, and there are different ways to interpret it.
We’re able to communicate across generations. Many fascinating ideas come to us from people who have long passed but have had insights and understandings that inform us as a species. And I think this is a wonderful niche. It’s also humbling because if we understand it, we know that we’re just passing through and have this duty to learn, communicate, and teach.
If you’re seeking consciousness, I think this is an important part of humanity. Or, potentially, we have an evolutionary niche. We are the species that have language abilities at this level. Other species can communicate with each other. The birds talk to one another, and the bees always communicate. But we can use language to realise and understand our own death. We’re able to communicate across generations. Many fascinating ideas come to us from people who have long passed but have had insights and understandings that inform us as a species. And I think this is a wonderful niche. It’s also humbling because if we understand it, we know that we’re just passing through and have this duty to learn, communicate, and teach.
A world that consists of materialism, which has saturated society and civilisation, is not true. It’s an illusion. It’s an imagination that material things are the basis of life. However, the oxygenated atmosphere, fresh water, fertile soils, and biodiversity are the basis of life and the symbiotic relationships between all living things. Getting our understanding and priorities right and making that understanding the basis, the central intention of human civilisation, can change everything.
Also, what are we doing if we’re not expressing our superpower of consciousness and language? You can see it in some analysis: people imagine that humans, or that theoretically, the Earth could be better off without humans, without creating pollutants, without destroying ecological systems. In that scenario or that way of thinking, humans are essentially acting as parasitic epiphytes and in the process of destroying their host, which is grotesque. I don’t think that’s our requirement. We don’t need to do that. We should be expressing that we are ‘homo sapiens’. Not that we are ‘homo economicus’ or something like this. That’s not who we are. That’s not true value. A world that consists of materialism, which has saturated society and civilisation, is not true. It’s an illusion. It’s an imagination that material things are the basis of life. However, the oxygenated atmosphere, fresh water, fertile soils, and biodiversity are the basis of life and the symbiotic relationships between all living things. Getting our understanding and priorities right and making that understanding the basis, the central intention of human civilisation, can change everything. That has come to my mind, certainly.
Over the last few decades, there’s been enormous progress in understanding ecology. Still, on the other hand, we have a long way to go because human civilisation has made mistakes, and those serious mistakes have spread worldwide. And while most people are just trying to survive, there are some extreme people and ideas at the edges. They’re fairly dangerous, and they occupy certain important places. The dominant political, economic, and cultural paradigm represents the concept that the purpose of life is somehow to go shopping, that the most important thing is to produce, transact and transport, and that somehow money and wealth are emerging from transactional economics. Well, these are false concepts, and they eliminate certain fundamental truths. In ecology, for instance, in evolutionary succession, there’s always been more biomass and necromass as each generation of life dies and gives up its body. More biodiversity as speciation and differentiation has always led to the infinite potential of variety and genetics.
There are certain fundamental things we haven’t understood that we need to understand. And our collective intelligence, understanding, and central intentions determine the future.
The human historical context goes back to only 50,000 or 25,000 years, depending on which era you’re looking at. And then, of course, from settled agriculture 10 to 12,000 years ago, we have transformed the Earth systems. But I think our earlier impacts were to drive megafauna to extinction, which changed predator-prey relationships and also altered the landscape. These are not good outcomes. There have been outcomes which have been anthropogenic, certainly, but not necessarily in our own best interest. There are certain fundamental things we haven’t understood that we need to understand, and our collective intelligence, understanding, and central intentions determine the future. Where we are right now is that the landscape reflects our consciousness. Whether we have increasing deserts, deforestation, ocean acidification, coastal collapse, riverine collapse, hydrological dysfunction, or all these things, they’re not natural disasters. These are unnatural disasters because we don’t understand how these systems function. But we have enough data and knowledge to understand this. We just are not focused on this. We’re focusing on materialism or power over others.
The way that civilisation has grown has been through colonisation, through genocide, through slavery and domination. This is bizarre. We need to understand this. It’s not like it’s new. It has been told to us through religious teaching and wise teachers throughout the ages, but we haven’t absorbed it and processed what this means. Now, we’re at a crisis point in human civilisation where you have more than 8 billion people, and we’re adding a billion every 12 years. That will continue until we plateau, which probably mostly depends on women’s rights, access to family planning, and access to contraception. Birth rates are flat and in decline everywhere where they are available globally. But where that isn’t the reality, the birth rates are off the scale.
We’re not at a very high consciousness level somehow because we’re expressing all this power, domination, and patriarchal behaviour. (…) The signal of kindness, generosity, forgiveness or consciousness is weaker than the signals of chaos, hatred and self-interest.
At this point, we still focus on materialism instead of equality, justice, or birthright. It is like we say that you have to buy your human rights. If you don’t have any money, you don’t have any status in society or civilisation, and you should die in the street. I know no other species has that as a value system or purpose. We’re not at a very high consciousness level somehow because we’re expressing all this power, domination, and patriarchal behaviour. We’re experiencing the institutions; the precedents are from genocide or slavery or colonisation and domination, and that’s not a very good reason for doing things. Not a good precedent. And we have other precedents. But in a signal-to-noise ratio, the signal of kindness, generosity, forgiveness or consciousness is weaker than the signals of chaos, hatred and self-interest.
Research shows that if you pursue individual interest to the point that it degrades the collective interest, it’s not in your interest anymore. If we absorb this understanding, we will understand that what’s good for everyone is also good for us as individuals. And that is what needs to be the guiding principle for human civilisation going forward. If that’s the guiding principle, then we won’t have people who fall through the cracks and need to be saved or considered unsuitable to take care of themselves. Then, we will recognise them for their unique capabilities as individuals.
There are a couple of things that I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed that there have been two Nobel Prizes, one to John Nash and a second to Elinor Ostrom, and both are essentially similar. Their research shows that if you pursue individual interest to the point that it degrades the collective interest, it’s not in your interest anymore. So, if we absorb this understanding, we will understand that what’s good for everyone is also good for us as individuals. And that is what needs to be the guiding principle for human civilisation going forward. If that’s the guiding principle, then we won’t have people who fall through the cracks and need to be saved or considered unsuitable to take care of themselves. Then, we will recognise them for their unique capabilities as individuals. Sometimes, they might be far superior to what might be possible for others. But we first need to understand them. When we enter another consciousness, we might understand what they can do.
Earth, not countries
Well, you mentioned talking with astronauts. I got to interview the only, at the time, Mongolian cosmonaut. And he’d gone up in a Soviet spacecraft. I was a young journalist interested in what he had to say. The cosmonaut said when he went into space and looked down, he didn’t think he came from Mongolia but from the Earth. I feel that way personally because my father was Chinese. He passed away five years ago at 99. My mother is still alive now, at 104. My father was Chinese; my mother is an American of Scottish descent. I’ve been around the world already since I was 14 years old. I’ve been to more than 90 countries, and I don’t see any difference between any country. The country divisions are artificial. We created them, and we didn’t do a very good job. They’re not reflective of the ancient cultures or our cosmologies. We can learn a lot from the ancient cultures and cosmologies that inhabited the Earth. However, over the last few hundred years, we have created a globalised material economy that is driving this globalisation. I don’t think about globalisation from the point of view of power.
First, we have a kind of primitive post-World War II sphere of influence kind of thinking. It’s not a very high philosophical understanding. It’s more like the great game back in earlier periods, who can manipulate and dominate because of their military prowess or economic ability to usurp. Recently, in Dubai at the COP 28 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, King Charles said something extraordinary. He said: ‘Humans don’t own the Earth.’ That is pretty interesting coming from him. It’s good. It sounds like something Thomas Jefferson said. He said: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men,’ I maybe paraphrase that, to be all living beings, ‘are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Those are true statements, but Thomas Jefferson was one of Virginia’s largest landowners and enslavers. And, of course, Charles is the king of the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, you have some ironic aspects to these statements because they’re fundamentally true. Somehow, you could interpret it as hypocritical because it’s hard to achieve them. It’s heroic or courageous for these people to state their beliefs and tell the truth, even when their situations don’t allow them to live it.
There’s a lot of knowledge, there’s a lot of wisdom, and we have the ability to communicate with every human being on the planet simultaneously and instantaneously. The question is, what do we say?
Need for collective intelligence
It will be what it will be. There’s a lot of knowledge, there’s a lot of wisdom, and we have the ability to communicate with every human being on the planet simultaneously and instantaneously. The question is, what do we say? As someone who’s had many opportunities to speak and communicate with millions or hundreds of millions or even billions of people, I don’t know, and they may not know who I am, but the ideas expressed there reach out. And what we see, though, and I have to say, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been communicating about, I’m not worried about that.
But on the whole, the huge amount of unnecessary information, or even, I don’t know how to say that, unnecessary information, wrong-headed information, or misinformation out there is enormous. We need a type of literacy, media literacy, to understand what’s happening. And we need our own thoughts. We need every individual to consider what they’re thinking and saying fully and to fully consider what we’re thinking and saying to reach collective intelligence and intention as a species.
I am somewhat optimistic that we have all the knowledge and wisdom needed. (…) Communication platforms should be carrying signals, not noise. We have the opportunity. There’s a window of opportunity, but it’s closing fast.
We still have a lot to do. And this is not theoretical. Communication is nice, but it’s analogue. It’s conceptual. How do we act? What do we do? If we’re aware of the importance of soil, water, and biodiversity, we have to act. And in my understanding, we know what to do. We’re just not doing it. We’re doing unnecessary things, and we need to change that. That has consequences. I am somewhat optimistic that we have all the knowledge and wisdom needed. We have communication platforms generally controlled and manipulated by special interests. They should be neutral. They should be carrying signals, not noise. It’s a mixed analysis. We have the opportunity. There’s a window of opportunity, but it’s closing fast.
Reorganise for change
There’s certainly a lot going on politically, but we need to look a little bit differently. We have empowered institutions that are too powerful. We need to realise that humans and other beings have rights and should have sovereignty. We can organise, but we can have different levels of organisation. There is probably an organisation level of about 250, maybe 500, but that might be too big, somewhere in that region where everybody knows everybody. Then, there needs to be some kind of unit like that, a neighbourhood or a community that functions together and shares their understanding and values. They can have differences of opinion, but they care for one another.
We’re now having a kind of civilisational collapse. I think it is the focus on materialism. Because all the civilisations that have come in the past, when they focused on this kind of materialism or even social organisation, failed to protect the ecology. When they failed to protect the ecology, soil fertility was lost, just like the hydrological and climate regulations. As we are told in the Bible, the consequences are that the wages of sin are death. If civilisation collapses, then in the past, another civilisation could arise in another part of the world. But now we have this globalisation. So, we have to consider how we care for everyone. How do we take care of the children? How do we take care of the elderly? How do we take care of the special needs people? How do we feed the hungry?
If we focus on the central intention of human civilisation as being to restore all degraded lands on the Earth, and we understand that that’s more valuable than buying and selling things, plastic junk that comes in container ships with dirty diesel or chemicals… It’s ridiculous to imagine that that economy is more valuable than a functional ecology on the planet. Those groups of individuals who understand that functional ecology is more valuable economically than transactional economics with stuff can now do quite a lot. We have created ecosystem restoration communities that are flourishing and growing. And we can create botanical sanctuaries. Ordinary people with little scientific understanding can protect and ensure the survival of endangered species. Okay, let’s do that. We now understand that perennial polycultures with high canopies and multi-layered productivity are more functional and productive than monoculture industrial agriculture. Whatever they’re selling you in terms of chemical industrial agriculture, it’s an abomination. It ecologically cannot work because there’s always less biodiversity, biomass, and less accumulated organic matter, leading to desertification, climate changes, high surface temperatures, huge winds, and terrible extreme weather events. If we understand these things, and those people who understand it, get together.
We can have everything. If we share, we have everything. If we continue this materialism, we will have a few who have way too much and a lot of people who have nothing, and civilisation will collapse.
I mean, the real estate thing. The idea that building a giant house or an enormous skyscraper is where the money or value is. What are you talking about? You got a few billionaires, and you got billions of starving people. That’s not going to work. That’s a that’s a recipe for revolution and quite serious civilisational collapse. We need small, sustainable, super-insulated, passive solar, all-natural housing for everyone, and no off-gassing chemical houses. And I’m not sold on the idea that everybody needs to move to the cities. I think the idea of everybody moving to the cities is to have control of everybody. Let’s not do that. Let’s take it easy.
In China, they say, ‘heaven is high and the emperor is far away’. Find a nice place. Find 250 to 500 people who love and care for each other. People who understand that you have to have organic soils, that you have to have free-running clean water, that water in the lower hydrological cycle recycles, and that the canopy is where the solar radiation is interrupted and changes the surface temperature. That’s all we have to do. If we start doing that and living in this way and recognising the true value, we can have everything. If we share, we have everything. If we continue this materialism, we will have a few who have way too much and a lot of people who have nothing, and civilisation will collapse.
Our responsibility as individuals is to learn and help those coming after us. To ensure they can stay alive and have a beautiful life on the only planet we know that has an oxygenated atmosphere, fresh water, fertile soils, and amazing biodiversity.
Cycles
It is a moment for reflection. I’m 72 now. According to Chinese astrological reasoning, it’s the beginning of the seventh 12-year cycle of my life. I can see all the 12-year cycles that have taken place in my life. This one is different. It also suggests that I’m nearing the end of my life. That happens to everyone, ultimately. Our responsibility as individuals is to learn and help those coming after us. To ensure they can stay alive and have a beautiful life on the only planet we know that has an oxygenated atmosphere, fresh water, fertile soils, and amazing biodiversity. How can we do that? Can we do that? Or are we supposed to drive into town to our cubicles to buy and sell stuff, and that’s the basis of life? No, that’s not what we’re meant to do. We’re meant to have dinner a lot. We’re meant to have a good time and to care for everybody.
I would recommend investigating and experimenting with different ways of life rather than accepting the socialisation that’s given and making assumptions about what is normal or correct. Make sure to have a lot of fun, play a lot of music, be healthy, do sports and enjoy nature.
That’s what the ecosystem restoration communities are doing. They’re figuring out: ‘Okay, we can handle all these things. We have to. We’re required to.’ It is not an option to expect the government or the United Nations or something to solve these things magically, and I’ve worked with all of those organisations and observed them closely. If they do their work well, that’s good. But humans and communities have to act together locally. There are many levels of organisation.
The smallest might be the individual, but when you reach critical mass in communities where you can care for everyone and have the type of lifestyle and fullness of life you need, that’s remarkable. I’m seeing that emerge, and it looks better than chaos and trash. There are other ways to live. I would recommend investigating and experimenting with different ways of life rather than accepting the socialisation that’s given and making assumptions about what is normal or correct. Make sure to have a lot of fun, play a lot of music, be healthy, do sports and enjoy nature.
