permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

Prince Charles Interview:
Seiten 1 | 2
"We need to make mainstream alternative"
http://www.stern.de/wissenschaft/natur/:Prinz-Charles-Interview-We/700507.html
 © Claudio Onorati/DPA
Kämpft seit Jahren gegen die Zerstörung der 
Umwelt: Der britische Thronfolger Prinz Charles

Von Cornelia Fuchs, London



Your Royal Highness, for decades you have been 
warning about damage to the natural balance of 
our planet. Where has this conviction to protect 
the environment come from and do you feel 
vindicated that your work is now recognized on a 
global scale after years of lacklustre support?

I have always been someone who prefers action to 
words, in the hope that I can, in some small way, 
help to maintain this planet for future 
generations. I suppose more than anything my 
motivation is that I do not want my children and 
grandchildren, or anyone else's for that matter, 
saying to me "Why didn't you do something when it 
was possible to make a difference and when you 
knew what was happening?"


As a teenager in the early 1960's, I felt deeply 
about the wanton destruction of so much of our 
natural and built environment and of the 
imposition of an ideology that saw progress as 
purely linear and mechanistic and which, in the 
process, discarded so much accumulated wisdom and 
knowledge. I felt desperately the loss of balance 
that this entailed, and all I have been trying to 
do for these past decades is to right the 
balance. Hence I believe it is essential that 
from now on we rediscover how to work in harmony 
with Nature, rather than against her. There needs 
to be a balanced and integrated approach to how 
we live on this planet, so that we are a part of, 
and not apart from, Nature and her underlying 
patterns of which we are a microcosm.

Whether I am vindicated or not isn't really the 
point. There is no pleasure in being proved right 
when that means that the world finds itself 
facing such imminent and catastrophic danger. How 
I wish that we had not ended up in the position 
that we now find ourselves. But I have to say 
that, to me, it feels as if we are in the process 
of quite literally testing the world to 
destruction as we accumulate increasing evidence 
of the collapse of natural ecosystems all around 
us - ecosystems on which we all crucially depend. 
What would give me the greatest possible reward 
would be if the world took the urgent action 
needed, as indicated by all the science of 
climate change and by the melting of the Arctic 
and Antarctic ice caps, to prevent the credit 
crunch rapidly becoming an infinitely more 
dangerous climate and ecosystems crunch.

We truly are at a defining moment in history. The 
threat of climate change is simply too important 
to ignore. However, there is still reason to 
believe that there is a short time left to 
improve the situation and achieve greater global 
sustainability. But I fear it is a very small 
window of opportunity that is left open to usŠ

How important were visits to the Amazonian 
rainforest, and other parts of the world, for you 
to understand the climate change issue? Would you 
be so kind to share a memory of such a visit that 
made a lasting impact on you?

Clearly, it makes a big difference to have 
visited rainforest countries if the impact of 
climate change is to be fully understood, but 
during the course of my life I have travelled a 
great deal on countless official visits and have 
kept my eyes and ears open, thus forming my own 
impressions of what was happening. I have been 
lucky enough to meet all sorts of people from 
many different fields and to pick their brains. I 
have seen, and heard of, many different projects 
that are making a big difference to people's 
lives and to their environments, mainly through 
offering an alternative, more holistic approach 
than the conventional form of development which, 
quite frankly, has often been partly the cause of 
the environmental disintegration we are 
witnessing.


This is why I have supported genuinely 
sustainable, "organic" farming for so long; why I 
have battled on behalf of small farmers and grass 
roots communities all around the world; why I 
have equally struggled for a more humane approach 
to the built environment that recognizes local 
and cultural identity, rather than the imposition 
of a monoculture of techno-global uglification. 
To meet the imminent threat of catastrophic 
climate change, I would suggest we need to make 
mainstream what has up to now been dismissed as 
"alternative".

 For instance, what made a lasting impact on me 
was a visit to the Permaculture Institute in the 
Amazon. In little more than a decade, this 
remarkable project has integrated agroforestry, 
aquaculture, and multiple animal systems within a 
restored landscape that had been utterly 
destroyed by deforestation. The whole now forms a 
Virtuous Circle within which all the necessary 
animal feed is grown and biofuels for the farm 
vehicles and machinery are produced. What is so 
deeply impressive is the practical way in which 
the Institute demonstrates how genuine 
sustainability can be achieved by applying the 
principles it has developed.

There is nothing "alternative" in these 
underlying principles. Indeed, I believe they are 
of the greatest importance if we are to chart a 
new and more stable course to live in harmony 
with Nature, rather than trying pointlessly to 
gain mastery over her. Only in this way can we 
hope to mitigate the terrible effects of climate 
change.

  At the meeting of world leaders that you 
convened at St. James's Palace on 1st April, you 
presented US Secretary Hillary Clinton as well as 
several heads of state with the idea of Your 
Royal Highness's Rainforests Project. Why should 
we pay billions of dollars to other nations to 
save their rainforest in a time of a world-wide 
recession?
The conservation of the world's rainforests is 
absolutely crucial for the welfare not just of 
the Rainforest Nations themselves, but of the 
entire planet. Tropical deforestation is one of 
the major drivers of global warming. It is 
responsible for around seventeen per cent of 
world-wide carbon emissions - more than the 
entire global transport system combined. The 
rainforests provide the rainfall that helps crops 
grow around the world as well as helping clean 
the air that we breathe and absorbing carbon on a 
vast scale. They are also the repository of a 
vast array of biodiversity without which humanity 
cannot survive on this planet. Quite simply, they 
are a massive global utility helping to sustain 
life as we know it. Without them, humanity will 
struggle to survive. Therefore, we have no choice 
but to keep them standing, whether there is a 
recession or not. If we lose the rainforests, and 
the essential ecosystem services they provide to 
the planet, then the economic costs we will all 
face - not just those who live in the Rainforest 
Nations - will be far, far greater than anything 
we are seeing today.

As it happens, the experts agree that preserving 
the rainforests is one of the cheapest and 
quickest ways to reduce carbon emissions and to 
mitigate the damaging effects of global warming, 
thereby buying us precious time as we struggle to 
create genuinely low carbon economies by 
developing new, cleaner technologies. But such 
technologies are at least seven to ten years away 
from being implemented at scale and so we have to 
introduce an emergency package to save the 
rainforests in the meantime.

We must also not forget that some 1.4 billion of 
the poorest people in the world depend for their 
livelihoods upon the rainforests, so financial 
support to maintain the forests is essential to 
help these vulnerable communities and to 
establish better integrated rural development 
projects.



And, apart from anything else, since the 
developed half of the world has helped, albeit 
unwittingly, to bring about the problem in the 
first place, not only by emitting vast quantities 
of carbon into the atmosphere, but also by 
creating the demand for soya, palm oil and timber 
which is causing the rainforests to be destroyed 
so rapidly, it surely has to be fair that it 
should now help to pay for the vital services 
provided by the rainforests. In any case, we pay 
for our water, gas and electricity - now we need 
to see the rainforests as a giant global utility. 
And we must never forget that it is the health 
and stability of the global environment that 
sustains our economy and not the other way round.

How do you want to ensure that rainforest trees 
will soon be worth more alive than dead? And how 
will this help prevent climate change?

From the beginning, the aim of my Rainforests 
Project has been to consult as widely as possible 
and to seek out and develop solutions to the 
problem of deforestation by working with the 
private, public and N.G.O. sectors to create a 
global partnership.

Encouragingly, proposals are beginning to emerge 
as to how the 10-15 billion dollars per year 
needed to make a significant impact might be 
raised. One of the proposals being considered is 
my Project's own idea for the issuing of new, 
government-backed rainforest bonds which would 
raise money to support sustainable forms of 
economic development that do not involve 
destroying the rainforests. The bonds would be 
offered to the investment community and could 
provide companies in, for example, the pensions 
and insurance sectors with guaranteed returns 
while, at the same time, making available some of 
the significant resources needed to help slow 
down deforestation. It is perfectly possible to 
structure such bonds so that the repayment to the 
investors by governments is deferred, to 
everyone's benefit, to a future date. This would 
be helpful to governments currently grappling 
with the recession. I think it is important to 
note that the use of a Rainforest Bond means that 
it would be possible to raise much larger sums 
from the private sector now than would ever 
normally be provided from traditional overseas 
aid budgets.

Crucially, the payments of money from the bonds 
would be linked to agreed targets for forest 
conservation and countries would only be paid if 
the rainforests stayed intact. This would place a 
substantial value on the standing forests and 
create strong incentives for governments, 
communities and individuals in Rainforest Nations 
to address the drivers of deforestation, while 
giving them the means to pursue sustainable, 
low-carbon development. The meeting I held at St. 
James's Palace a month ago with Chancellor 
Merkel, President Sarkozy, Secretary Clinton and 
other international leaders before the G20 Summit 
led to an agreement to work further on these and 
other proposals so that they could initially be 
considered at the G8 meeting in July with a final 
assessment and, I hope, commitment to action by 
the time of the World Bank Annual Meeting in 
October. If such a commitment emerges, then I 
believe that it could lead to a significant and 
rapid reduction in tropical deforestation and the 
carbon emissions that that entails.


In your key note speech on climate change in Rio 
de Janeiro, you pointed out that the world has 
less than 100 months left to work against climate 
change. Do you fear that the current economic 
downturn will prevent schemes like the 
Rainforests Project's to go ahead as planned?

There is a real danger that the current recession 
will cause a critical delay in addressing the 
urgent issues I have mentioned - and you only 
have to visit, as I did, the Potsdam Institute 
for Climate Impact Research and to talk to its 
eminent team of scientists and economists, led by 
Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, who is a member 
of the Nobel Prize winning International Panel on 
Climate Change, to realize just how incredibly 
alarming the issues are.

This is why I have been devoting so much time and 
effort to building a global partnership between 
the private, public and N.G.O. sectors over the 
past eighteen months and why I am trying to 
answer these questions you have posed me. At the 
end of the day, if we can put together a global 
membership campaign that signs up not only major 
private sector corporations, the Media and 
N.G.O.'s, but also members of the public and 
entire communities around the world in an effort 
to halt rainforest deforestation, then we will 
make it a great deal easier for the international 
leaders gathered in Copenhagen in December to 
take the necessary decisions.

Equally, I believe there is a far greater 
likelihood of persuading India and China and the 
rest of the developing world to agree to what 
needs to be done to address the threat of 
catastrophic climate change, and the collapse of 
ecosystems, if the developed world acknowledges 
its responsibility for creating the crisis by 
making it possible for what the Rainforests 
Project is proposing - in other words, an 
innovative way of paying the rainforest countries 
for the ecosystem services they provide - to go 
ahead for all our sakes.


What I keep trying to convince people is that 
whatever difficulties the world is experiencing 
now as a result of the global financial crisis, 
they are as nothing compared to what will happen 
if the full effects of climate change start to 
materialize: war, famine, social instability and 
shortage of water are predicted by people far 
more knowledgeable than me - many of them at the 
Potsdam Institute. On the bright side, there is 
also a growing sense that many countries are 
beginning to see the creation of low carbon 
businesses as one of the best ways out of the 
recession - and that would be better news for 
climate change.

You just returned from a visit to Berlin. May we 
ask what was the most enjoyable part of your stay 
in Germany?

For me, perhaps the most enjoyable and, indeed, 
remarkable part of our visit was being able to 
stay in the rebuilt Adlon Hotel in what used to 
be the old East Berlin, looking out from my room 
at the Brandenburg Gate. For someone like myself, 
who was born in 1948 and who spent so much of my 
life during the Cold War, feeling deeply for a 
divided German people, witnessing the building of 
the Berlin Wall and visiting Berlin on many 
occasions to see British troops stationed there, 
it was not only an extraordinary experience, but 
also immensely heartening to see the restoration 
and rebuilding that has taken place since my last 
visit. It was also marvellous to be able to 
commemorate the Sixtieth Anniversary of the 
Allied efforts during the Berlin Airlift which 
helped to secure the city's future and in which 
my country played such an important part.