April 9, 2002

Talk to Albuquerque Lawyers Club
Allan Savory, Founding Director, The Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management

Thank you for the invitation to talk to you about the grazing controversy and land deterioration – or desertification. Perhaps for some of you this is a tedious argument between environmentalists and ranchers and who knows, some people may not have come today to listen to a talk about so mundane an issue. Well, as I will explain, nothing could be further from the truth. The conflict over grazing on our public lands associated with their obvious deterioration is but the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Land deterioration or desertification is a symptom of biodiversity loss and is perhaps the oldest and greatest problem humans have ever faced. It has destroyed more civilizations, both in the Biblical world and on this continent, than armies have done and now threatens humankind on a global scale. And since September 11th it has taken on a new urgency and proportion.

Many people say that September 11th changed the world – I sincerely hope they prove right because the stakes are high and in many ways we face potentially darker days than we did in WWII. And the high stakes now are directly associated with biodiversity loss and land degradation in a way I will explain.

When the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor it brought us into WWII and changed the world as we know. Now our leaders and the press talk of the infamous attack on September 11th changing the world again. But are these similar events, situations and times?

In the first instance, the Axis powers were a clearly defined enemy seeking world conquest and domination. And intellectual giants like Churchill and Roosevelt who understood the situation all too well led the enraged democracies of the British Empire and U.S.. The enemy was clear and defined as were the issues in the minds of our people and our leaders.

Now we are being led into a war against terrorism in which the enemy is in every country including the US and Britain. In which the enemy does not seek world power and domination – does not even seek the downfall of the US and Britain – and we are led by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. In this case, neither our leaders, the press or our people appear to be aware of the issues or magnitude of the threat. If we judge President Bush’s advisors by his speeches and actions it would appear there is little comprehension of the nature of the threat or its causes beyond the obvious knee jerk military response. Frankly the first of several mistakes was calling it a "new form of warfare for the 21st Century" and a war "We would win in a time and place of our choosing" I think were the words.

Guerilla warfare, which is what we are engaged in, far from being new is the oldest form of warfare. A form of warfare that governments have never to my knowledge won by military means.

Already the world would be better for it if President Bush shortly after the attack had stated that he was determined to bring the perpetrators to justice while announcing that he intended to lead the world in "a struggle for worldwide peace, prosperity and justice". Who on earth would have mounted a jihad against that?

How many other wars have our politicians promised to win?

Wars against drugs – - poverty – - soil erosion – - urban crime & violence – - noxious weeds – - soil erosion – - desertification – - biodiversity loss – - And so on endlessly.

As you well know, none of these wars have been won no matter how many billions of dollars were thrown into the battle.

There is a reason first discovered through its connection to the land that explains why such "wars" (if one insists on using the warfare metaphor) cannot ever be won and thus are better never fought. Let me explain, as I did not come here to be critical but rather to be constructive. I believe we are all deeply concerned about the situation and the security of our families, communities and nations and I, like you probably, have no patience for ill considered destructive criticism in such a time of peril. Over thousands of years of history we have learned that - poor or deteriorating land (desertification) is a symptom of biodiversity loss. And that poor land inevitably leads to poverty – social breakdown and conflict (ie environmentalists vs. ranchers) – violence – rising crime – increasing soil erosion – droughts and floods – invasions of noxious plants – blaming and scapegoating – religious fundamentalism – genocide and war – and eventually the downfall of entire civilizations. We have no exception over last ten thousand years where deteriorating land has led to prosperity, peace and harmony.

As your common sense will tell you, it is useless to expect success if you tackle the symptoms of a problem but never address the problem itself.

Tragically governments and bureaucracies are not known for their common sense. Research by John Ralston Saul on the performance of bureaucracies from the time of Voltaire and the birth of the age of reason led him to conclude that anything coming out of any bureaucracy, no matter how brilliant the people in it, always had two common characteristics – it lacked commonsense and lacked humanity. Saul’s case studies included some all too painful for us – Vietnam, World Bank blunders of enormous magnitude and so on right through to some fairly mundane policies with always the same outcomes.

Were we to use commonsense we would want to ensure that we address the cause of biodiversity loss that leads to land degradation and all the other symptoms and violence that follow as certainly as night follows day. Without addressing this root cause of violence and the breakdown of civilizations it will not be possible to prevail in any struggle for world peace, prosperity and justice if such is our aim.

This cause of worldwide biodiversity loss I am sure the Bush and Blair Administrations are not even thinking about as they launch us all into an ever-escalating military quagmire. And if they did understand the need to deal with root causes, all their advisors would assure them that we knew the causes but that no government had either the power or money to be able to deal with them.

What are those causes the President’s advisors would outline that are so costly for any government to deal with?

Let us take African countries like Somalia where desertification is severe, genocide is serious and law and order unimaginable today in our sense of the words. According to all experts worldwide the land degradation is due to these causes:

Overpopulation – overstocking with livestock – communal tenure of land (the tragedy of the commons) – lack of access to capital – lack of access to western technology and knowledge – lack of education and extension services – poor and corrupt governments – and so on and on goes the list but I have covered the main things you wild find in any report of World Bank, IMF, UN, American universities and government agencies as well as international consultants. Experts will only argue the hierarchy of causes but not the fact that such things are the cause.

Yes, these things are beyond the power and money of governments to address. But what if all the experts were wrong? Remember we once had equal certainty that the world was flat and would tolerate no other view. Frankly we have another such situation today.

Let us look at an area of America that is similar in climate to much of Africa. I will take President Bush’s home – West Texas and see what the practices are and the results.

In West Texas we find opposite practices to everything blamed for biodiversity loss and land degradation in Africa:

A low and falling population (opposite) – - Constant destocking for over 100 years and almost no animals left on the land (all if feedlots) (opposite) – private tenure of land and Texans, including Bush, love their land (no tragedy of the commons) – great and easy access to capital (opposite) – access to all western technology and knowledge (opposite) – good education and extension services (opposite) – on the last I hesitate to talk of exact opposites but basically good government and some control of corruption.

Now to any fair minded person we have opposite practices in a similar climate. If our experts are correct about the things causing biodiversity loss, land degradation, poverty and violence in Africa then we should find the opposite in Texas. We should find abundant life, clean flowing rivers, little soil erosion, few droughts and floods, no noxious plant invasions, thriving rural communities and so on.

If you have been there you will find that everything that is happening in Africa is happening in Texas – sand dunes are forming in many places as I see frequently from the air while I fly around, whole towns and villages are completely deserted and Texans spend billions of dollars on flooding, eradicating noxious plants, poverty and violence. Even the President’s own ranch that he loves is deteriorating like all ranches I have observed over the last twenty odd years in Texas. I only picked on Texas because it is a private land state. Frankly New Mexico is bad, as are vast areas of Colorado, Arizona, California, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Pakistan, India, etc where I have worked on this problem.

Nothing could illustrate more clearly how little our universities, government agencies, environmental organizations, livestock organizations as well as World Bank, IMF, UN and others, understand desertification. It is no surprise that over $200 billion per year invested by Americans into charitable organizations to deal with social and environmental ills is not seeing significant improvement. It is no surprise that despite billions invested internationally in combating desertification we witness deserts expanding.

Nothing could illustrate more clearly how little chance Bush and Blair have of leading us into anything more than a deeper and deeper morass as they try to apply military thinking and solutions to the world’s oldest and greatest problem – understanding biodiversity loss and its symptoms.

The single simple cause.

After years of grappling with this problem, we were, a few years ago finally able to understand for the first time what is causing biodiversity loss / land degradation, and how simple it is to address.

The thing that has been causing land degradation for centuries and still is was we found accidentally the same thing causing almost all problems humans face. It was the use of an unconscious decision-making framework common to all mankind. A framework that had certain flaws that can be corrected.

Arising from this knowledge, and much research and practice using trial and error, we have over the last forty years developed, and continue to improve, a modified decision-making framework that is more holistic and which almost immediately begins to reverse the situation. Using the holistic framework in decision-making and policy formation is profoundly simple, although as is usual, gaining rapid institutional acceptance is not easy. Although some years ago results were erratic today we are witnessing consistent results wherever the new framework is used.

Gaining rapid institutional acceptance is not easy because people were not looking for a new way to make decisions and formulate policies but were rather seeking silver bullets and technological solutions. Not easy because we have produced a society that communicates in short sound bites and people get bored with anything taking more than a few seconds to explain. Not easy because it takes up to 200 years to get truly new thinking into democratic societies according to all available research and experience.

As I have so little time allotted for this talk I will cut right to a conclusion. What could be done right now that would make a difference. What would quickly be cost effective considering the present unwinnable war is costing over $27 million per day and still climbing.

When faced with such situations it is my habit to assume the buck were to stop with me. What would I do? Well, having been engaged in studying this problem and waging a prolonged guerilla war for much of my life from research biologist, to soldier to politician leading the opposition in Parliament, were I in Bush’s shoes I would immediately expand the National Security Council. While not calling it a war, I would accord it that degree of seriousness and put all government efforts on a war footing. I would include in the NSC not only the excellent military minds already present, but also people with a deep understanding of the holistic nature of the effects of such things as the policies of multi-national corporations, our government’s trade, agricultural and educational policies. Our (and our allies) foreign aid policies doing so much damage. There are many Americans and others with exceptional knowledge in all these areas being ignored currently at our national peril.

When last I worked in Baluchistan on the Afganistan border twenty years ago I warned in the strongest terms of the appalling land degradation and its consequences. I could not help but note that every single Pakistani government professional land manager I dealt with was trained in an American land grant college! With this education they were producing policies that can only result in expanding desertification, social breakdown and violence. We need to have our American government understand the military consequences of the teachings of our land grant colleges when our experts are, as I illustrated, in comparing Africa and Texas, so wrong.

Frankly instead of only spending $27 million per day with no long term hope of success we should be putting at least one day’s expenses per year into addressing the root cause – education and training on decision-making and policy formation in all our schools and universities, documentary educational films for government agencies, livestock and environmental organizations and the public. Children’s environmental education programs more intelligent than those directed at saving a few species of rare animals. Retraining of USAID personnel and Peace Corps people to understand how to empower people in all nations to reverse biodiversity loss / desertification. Massive training and assistance to corporations to enable them to begin making enlightened decisions in their own self-interest – to genuinely achieving that ideal of a triple bottom line audit (social, environmental and financial).

Until, and unless, our leaders begin to take this "war" seriously enough to address root causes, I can I believe predict with certainty a very costly (lives and money) dangerous and violent future. And that brings me to my final comment. Something of great concern to me.

While we did face dark times during WWII, the terror the Axis powers were then capable of inflicting on the world pales into insignificance compared with today when the highly intelligent "enemy" scattered throughout all countries in the world is capable of producing low cost chemical, biological and atomic weapons of hideous proportions in a garage workshop.

What are you going to do? I hope you will at least become more actively involved in increasing your own level of knowledge and committed to doing something more than business as usual tomorrow morning. Only when there is a groundswell of demand will our leaders and supporting bureaucracies change their present course that will prove ultimately so disastrous for everyone.

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