Mr. Savory we know historically that the deterioration of food production systems in past civilizations and their inability to cognize encroaching complexity of population growth and governance in a holistic context leads to unbroken chain of civilizations’ collapsing. Do you think we still have time to avoid this on a global level now? Is there a way to create a new hope and new vision?

We we do not know, but Britain did not know if they could survive after the fall of France and most of Europe – but with good leadership, pushing aside egos and personal gain and acting on a war-footing they more than survived. Never has human civilization faced a graver danger than now with global finance and ecological illiteracy of our institutions driving the massive environmental degradation destroying our only habitat. Ordinary people know that all species, including humans cannot survive without suitable habitat. If world leaders (heads of governments and UN) put the massive environmental degradation that culminates in global desertification and the climate emergency on a war-footing and lead we have great hope for future generations.

Can you elaborate on the different impacts that ‘policy’ vs. ‘practice’ has on this impending problem of reforming agricultural systems worldwide?

Yes. Without agriculture there is no city, church, university, army, business or government – no civilization. Without a new regenerative form of agriculture (not crop production, but the production of food and fibre from the world’s land and waters) global civilization will fail. This is because all forms of agriculture historically have led to the failure of civilizations in all regions of the world and now the same threat is global. Few things in my life have taught society more clearly how interlinked our survival is than the present pandemic. Armies change civilizations. Farmers, foresters, fishermen, pastoralists destroy civilizations. So, we face the situation in which mainstream institutional, industrial agriculture led by our universities, governments and corporations supported by global finance, is the most destructive and extractive industry ever in history. And all forms of organic, sustainable, permaculture, grass production of livestock ever known led to failure of many civilizations in all regions long before chemicals and machinery.

So, if we keep discussing different practices and people keep vying for validity and funding for their favoured practice we know we will fail. What world leaders on a global war-footing need to do is to address agriculture at the policy level by focusing on the cause of agriculture, throughout history, being so environmentally, socially and economically destructive (while feeding ever growing numbers of people).

By governments and all large institutions addressing at policy level the cause of the ever-growing environmental destruction reflected in global desertification and climate change all nations will rapidly develop the required new regenerative agriculture. Very little new knowledge, not already available amongst the world’s farmers, fishermen, foresters, wildlife and livestock managers, universities and environmental organizations, is required. We do not lack detailed knowledge, we lack the ability to manage the social, cultural, environmental and economic complexity. That ability we only gained in 1984.

“If the Greta Thunberg generation are to have any hope I am again going to use my statement “We have no option but the unthinkable. By every means possible we have get enough public demand to force quicker change by insisting institutions develop policies to address problems in a holistic context.”

We know most of the organized structures of our modern world can be represented as silo’s, inhabited by true believers (Eric Hoffer author), and authoritarian demagogues.  Do you believe that Holistic Management training will become widely acceptable at upper levels of organizations or will occur because of collapsing regional agricultural ecosystems at the level of farming being our next crises?

I don’t know. All we do know, from good research and history, is that when counter-intuitive or paradigm-shifting change is involved, it is impossible for democratic leaders or any organization (institution) to lead. No change is possible until public opinion shifts and demands that change. And this holds no matter how serious, no matter how many million lives are lost or what the economic cost. Institutions, including elected leaders of such, take on a life of their own as complex systems. Institutions reflect the prevailing beliefs of society and lead the way with such thinking. However, when truly new knowledge emerges (which has happened very few times in history – Coppernicus, Galilleo, Semmelwiess are examples) institutions lead the ridicule and rejection until public opinion shifts. I cannot find any case in history of any institution accepting paradigm-shifting change ahead of its public.

Addressing the cause of all that ails us involves two paradigm-shifting concepts – known and developed by thousands of people over sixty years, including thousands employed in institutions but acting independently of their institutions – the Holistic Management framework has been blocked from rapidly gaining public awareness by the world’s institutions that became aware of it – environmental and agricultural organizations, universities, governments and international agencies. Only time will tell if programs such as this interview, social networking and the efforts of many people mainly engaged in developing regenerative agriculture will prevail over institutional aggression and inertia.

How is the lack of validation affecting positive change in local communities to holistic principles?

Firstly, there is really only one holistic principle. Intuitively known by all earlier people who in most cultures recognized humanity’s inseparable tie to our habitat. And the principle was brought into Western thought in 1926 by Jan Smuts who wrote Holism and Evolution. That principle is that nature works in wholes and patterns – not as mechanistic world-view and science believed. Knowing all they did, including Native Americans thinking seven generations ahead before taking any action, did not help them. Wherever humans were we still damaged our environment and least so in regions of perennial humidity. This was brought about by two things. First human decision making has always been to meet our needs, desires or to address problems basically. Reducing the unavoidable web of social, cultural, environmental and economic complexity to such things as the reason or context for management and policy is “reductionist” in a holistic world. What we finally discovered in 1984 after decades of work, was how to address the cause of past and present failures – by going to where the rubber hits the road.

That point is where actual decisions are made in any policy or management practice. Here, two points become important for the survival of civilization. One- all management and policy needs to be in a holistic context. Second -it is simply not possible, as tool-using animals, for humans to prevent or address global desertification and thus climate change using the only tools institutional scientists who advise world leaders accept or recognize. Those tools available to institutional scientists (and world leaders can only act through institutions) are technology in its many forms, fire, or conservation (resting our environment to recover). Three tools. That is why in a 2013 TED Talk I said “we have no option, but the unthinkable, and that is to use livestock as a tool to address global desertification.”

So, yes, none of this can come about until we have a better-informed public insisting that our governments and large environmental organizations in particular develop policies in a holistic context. It cannot be done until there is public insistence is what we learn from both research and history. So this we need to focus on.

After so many years of educating farmers has a training model emerged that can be web based and integrated into real time data collection to establish the validity of rethinking management in agriculture?

We do have a great deal of training material from simple self-help to more sophisticated coaching and mentoring in collaborating groups of people and organizations that are beginning to change. That can and will keep growing. However, that is the normal process of incremental change against institutional blocking and according to research we can expect to take about 200 years. Just to get the Royal Navy to accept lime juice would end scurvy cost over a million sailors lives and took 200 years – and nothing has changed in institutions since.

If the Greta Thunberg generation are to have any hope I am again going to use my statement “We have no option but the unthinkable. By every means possible we have get enough public demand to force quicker change by insisting institutions develop policies to address problems in a holistic context.”

The downside of public demand for this is Zero – there is absolutely no risk whatsoever and the only blockage is professional and institutional egos. Over now sixty years of development there has never yet been any financial vested interest oppose or ridicule the idea of managing or developing policy holistically. The upside is that we might just address global human habitat destruction in time to save civilization as we know it.

One of your key observations that attracted me years ago to your work was the “herd effect” and grasslands regeneration. Has that observation become an empirically established fact at this time?

When I consider this question, I ponder whether it is an empirically established fact that water flows downhill? Science is fundamentally a process of observation, interpretation, deduction and experimentation to gain knowledge of nature. That enabled us thousands of years ago to accept water flows downhill and later the theory of gravity, and experimentation there gave explanation as to why water flows downhill.

By this “scientific” process over thousands of years before academic scientists people developed all the domestic varieties of plants and animals making civilization possible. Since the recent dominance in management by academic scientists we are losing species, losing languages, losing cultures and accelerating human habitat destruction.

It was a simple observation by me over twenty years of tracking people and animals that where people, or animals, crowded in one another’s body space or were hungry, lost or wounded the effect on the soil and vegetation was different – more soil surface disruption, more course plants trampled more dead plant material laid horizontally on the soil ( slowing water flow, slowing rate of application of water from rainfall to the soil surface, increasing water penetration,..) more seedlings, closer plant spacing holding litter – all of this dramatically affecting the ease or otherwise of tracking. How much easier tracking was where fewer herds, more fire, more bare soil, more erosion and so on. And it was simply observation that any large herbivores (buffalo, bison, elk or whatever) when not apprehensive and defensive against pack-hunting predators spread, walked gently, did not tramp on course plants, did not lay much litter, etc. etc. And from there we simply recognized if we are to use animals as tools we have to do so largely through behaviour and their feet not mouths, and not mere presence. I have frankly not wasted my time worrying about empirically proving any of this that can be observed at any time – just like water flowing downhill. That academics sitting in offices relying entirely on peer-reviewed publications have a problem with this I have no doubt. Thank goodness the pioneers like Leopold, Smuts, Bennet, Howard and others engaged in science mostly in the field as did my own mentors.

Where you aware of the fact that research based on NASA satellite sequential space photos of the Great Plains area in the United State, a major bread basket of the world, is showing a significant destabilization of grass cover? Desertification is a major issue isn’t it.

I was not aware, but am not surprised. The desertification of the United States is terrible and is a major contributor to climate change as well as the increasing droughts, floods, poverty, collapse of the Western Culture (which will eventually be kept alive only by rodeo athletes and cowboy poets). I have always been saddened by the extreme opposition to my work from cattlemen’s organizations and environmental organizations in the US. But again, people are not being bad and are not to be blamed – that is what institutions do -ridicule and oppose any truly new insights.

Could you explain what sustainability means in a holistically managed paradigm, and what that would look like in greening the planet?

Let me try. First I must say it will not be Holistic Management because that is not agriculture but is purely a way to manage complexity in anyone’s life or business. It will be a new agriculture (crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management) that regenerates the world’s living soils and biodiversity on the land and in our waters including oceans. Regenerating societies, cultures, towns and economies based, as they need to be, on the photosynthetic process – not paper wealth or wealth based on extractive industry. This new agriculture will be made up largely of many of the practices we see today in organic, sustainable, permaculture, pastoralism, wildlife, fisheries and forestry management. It will include some new practices (like the Holistic Planned Grazing process or holistic policy development) to reverse desertification that only became known and possible with the development of the Holistic Management framework. The practices that will “float to the top” as it were will be those that are socially, environmentally and economically sound both short and long-term all determined by policy developed in a holistic context reflecting what all humans want. Regenerative agriculture is what it will be. Management and policy developed in a global holistic context is how it will come about.

How can farmers best usher in a post industrial ecologically balanced food system?

They can do their best to learn how to manage holistically ensuring those practices that improve their own immediate environment, society and economy as many are doing today. However, this will not succeed because, as the corona pandemic has highlighted, we are a global community. Most of our population lives in cities and the economic and political power has shifted to cities totally disengaged from ecological literacy and ability to connect the dots. Corporate, shareholder, political game playing, celebrity desire for popular appeal, institutional and professional egos will persist in supporting veganism, vilifying meat, investing in manufactured meat, factory production of animals, university/corporate led crop production based on chemistry and marketing of technology (not on biological science) and of course planting billions of trees. All of which is leading to climate change and none of which addresses the cause. And the UN will continue to promote its 17 Sustainable Development Goals that almost all address the symptoms of desertification and not the cause and so are doomed once more to failure.

With such facts the best we can strive for is to use social media to educate the public in cities as well as rural environments to the fact that agriculture has to be regenerative and can really only be brought about in time by demanding policies be developed in a global holistic context – soaring above politics, stock markets, national power aspirations – to what all humans want and need for civilization to survive.

In addressing a world audience what would you say is the most important take away from your many years of astute observations of regeneration of natural systems?

My view is coloured by my years of struggle to first understand, and then find solutions to why humans so consistently destroyed their own environment or habitat. A struggle that led to me from being a government research officer to being an independent scientist, a farmer, rancher, game rancher, international consultant, soldier, member of parliament, president of a political party, exile while throughout collaborating with thousands of concerned individuals in all walks of life. From that broad perspective enjoyed by few if any scientists the two most important thoughts I would love to convey would be:

That we have to work at scale through governments and that all forms of governance -communism, socialism, capitalism, dictatorships, populism – have failed us. Our best hope lies in democracies but only when democracies ban all political parties that make it impossible for democracy to function. In this view I was preceded by George Washington (with some parallels in our lives) some 200 years ago.

Secondly governments need to form all policies in a national holistic context to ensure that all people feel well governed and secure, without which no one is.

If these come about I can see the human spirit fly as never before. If we continue supporting political parties and reductionist management and policy the future will be grim beyond imagination and the greatest suffering will be in cities.

Polish people are taking their government to court over its failure to protect them from worsening climate impacts. The cases are the first to expose the emerging effects of climate change on people living in Poland and ask the courts to find that the country’s inadequate climate policies violate individual rights.

The country is already seeing droughts, wildfires, severe flooding and crop failures due to changing weather patterns and these impacts will worsen with further global heating.

Five individual cases – three of which were filed today, with a further two to be filed later this month – are being brought before regional courts, seeking to take the national government to task over its ‘regressive’ climate stance and failure to slash emissions.

The claimants include a farm owner, a plant wholesaler, an ecotourism business owner, parents and a youth climate campaigner, all impacted directly by the intensifying weather events the country is seeing as climate change worsens.

The claimants are supported by environmental law charity ClientEarth and leading Polish law firm Gessel.

The claimants will ask the court to find that the Polish Government must commit to a 61% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (on 1990 levels) by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2043.

Piotr Romanowski, one of the claimants, is a farmer, father and 40-year resident of the Warmia region of Poland. Last year, he lost revenue after the land became too dry for part of his nursery stock of shrubs and bushes to survive.

He said: “I can see climate change, and feel it on my own skin and the skin of my farm. Among other things, I am losing water. There are three ponds on my farm – all three are practically dry already.

“I fear for the future, the future of my sons and my farm. I am filing this lawsuit because the Polish Government is doing nothing to prevent this situation, to prevent climate change.”

The Polish Government is notable internationally for its outdated stance on climate action. Poland still produces 70% of its electricity from coal, the most climate-damaging fossil fuel worldwide, and subsidises it heavily – PLN 8bn (€1.75bn) from the public purse is set to go to fossil fuels in 2021. The country is home to one of the world’s biggest coal power plants, Bełchatów, which emits approximately as much carbon dioxide each year as Slovakia.

The Polish Government foresees coal mining continuing until 2049, 20 years after the date scientists have set as the absolute deadline for coal-burning in Europe. Its reliance on fossil fuels is a sticking point in EU policymaking – and it has recently positioned itself on opposition to an EU court decision demanding a halt to the operation of the Turów mine.

Małgorzata Górska, from the Podlaskie voivodeship, runs an ecotourism venture with her husband. It is being affected by flash flooding, which has damaged her home and property and polluted their water supply.

She said: “I decided to take this lawsuit because the time for talking and thinking is over and the time for action has come. I believe that Polish politicians have been passive for too long – they have not taken action to protect us, the citizens, from climate change. I believe that this is currently the greatest challenge facing politicians and the greatest threat to humanity.”

The claimants are aiming to prove an infringement of their fundamental rights due to the Polish government’s conspicuous lack of action to protect the climate by reducing emissions. They are among the first in the world to ask a court to find that climate inaction violates their  right to a healthy environment, which the claimants argue includes the right to live in a safe and stable climate.

The cases will hinge on Polish civil law but also make reference to ECHR human rights provisions.

The cases aim to force ambitious policy by the Polish Government and make clear that the legal right to live in a stable climate exists, and can be upheld in court.

ClientEarth lawyer Sophie Marjanac said: “Climate change is having tangible impacts on people in Poland, today, and will only worsen in future. The government must take responsibility and reduce Polish emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to protect the claimants from the severe effects of climate change.

“These lawsuits make it very difficult for leaders in Poland to ignore the serious effects of climate change in their country. The Polish Government must guarantee people the right to a healthy environment and the right to live in a safe and stable climate – it has a legal duty under its civil code and under human rights law to do so.”

The Polish government has long been labelled a climate laggard, and its outdated position has left it the only EU Member State not to commit to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.

The rate of emissions reduction in Poland has lagged far behind other EU Member States, putting it near the bottom of international rankings on climate effort.

Ilona Jędrasik, ClientEarth energy lead in Warsaw, said: “The Polish Government is setting regressive policy that is seemingly blind to the dramatically shrinking carbon budget, and Poland’s significant contribution to global emissions.

“Our government can take three steps to show it is serious about climate change: commit to a date when the country will stop using coal for electricity, rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% by 2030, and get to net zero emissions by 2043 to ensure that the goals of the Paris Agreement are met.

“Even some energy companies in Poland are acting faster than the government, investing in developing renewables. Our leaders’ position is directly at odds with reality, and with the needs of the people – this is why we’re turning to the courts.”

The formal defendant is the State Treasury represented by: Minister for Climate and Environment, Minister for State Assets, Minister for Development, Labour and Technology, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Minister for Funds and Regional Policy.

ClientEarth, a not-for-profit legal group, is able to represent the claimants under an article of Polish civil law that allows individuals to delegate legal action to an NGO for the purposes of environmental protection.

Three cases have been filed today (Monika Stasiak, Małgorzata Górska and Piotr Nowakowski) with the other two (Piotr Romanowski, Maya Ozbayoglu) to follow imminently.

Sophie Marjanac is an Australian-qualified lawyer.

Claimant profiles

 Małgorzata Górska, ecotourism business owner, Podlaskie Voivodeship

 Małgorzata has been living near the border of the Biebrza National Park for 15 years. Together with her husband, she runs an ecotourism business on their farm. They were the first tourist facility in the Podlaskie Voivodeship to be awarded the Polish Ecotourism Certificate.

But increasingly heavy rainfall is threatening her home and livelihood. The rain now creates a temporary river knee-deep and several metres wide. This started happening around eight years ago and is becoming more frequent – last year it happened twice in one summer, waterlogging the terrace of some of the tourist dwellings, flooding her basement and polluting her water supply. As well as these dangerous flash floods, drought conditions in the region are on the rise, increasing the risk of wildfires in the nearby Bierbrza Valley peatlands.

Piotr Romanowski, plant nursery owner and farmer, Warmia

 Piotr Romanowski lives in a region which was once lush, fertile and dotted with ponds. On his farm, he runs a nursery selling shrubs and trees. Now, water levels in the region are down. Last year, he lost stock because his land dried out. The increasingly unstable and unpredictable climate is affecting neighbouring farms too – adapting crops to climate change can be difficult and uncertain. Piotr worries about his sons and the difficult future they face.

Piotr Nowakowski, grandfather, Greater Poland

 Piotr Nowakowski lives in a forest in the Greater Poland region. Stronger storms and forest fires are an ever-increasing threat to him and his home. The same drier conditions making forest fires more frequent mean he has had to dig a deeper well for water. Piotr says the Polish Government is failing him, his children and grandchildren, so he is taking them to court.

Maya Ozbayoglu, youth climate activist, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship

 Maya doesn’t know what her future holds. She often wonders if there is any point in studying. She believes the Polish Government is condemning her and other young people to an unstable and frightening future with more fires, floods, unstable weather, rising food prices and a wave of refugees fleeing the climate crisis. She began attending climate protests when she was 15 – she believes the lack of decisive government action is a threat to health and life.

Monika Stasiak, mother, Łódź Voivodeship

 Over the past years, Monika has been suffering with her community through intensive droughts and reduced water levels in the Pilica River. Low river levels have meant local ferries were unable to run, and neighbouring farms have suffered crop failures from increasing drought. The continued degradation of the local environment has meant Monika and her husband have had to abandon their plans for a tourism business. The river, a kayaking hotspot, is no longer consistently deep enough for the boats. Monika fears the future her son will grow up in. She worries that if we don’t stop climate change, people will be forced to struggle for survival as water and food availability become an issue.

About ClientEarth

 ClientEarth is an environmental law charity that uses the law to create systemic change that protects the Earth for – and with – its inhabitants. We are tackling climate change, protecting nature and stopping pollution, with partners and citizens around the globe. We hold industry and governments to account, and defend everyone’s right to a healthy world. From our offices in Europe, Asia and the USA we shape, implement and enforce the law, to build a future for our planet in which people and nature can thrive together.

Times like these clearly show us that our future has to become globally cooperative and peaceful.

Since the beginnings of industrialism, we have ignored and exploited the laws of nature. We are now reaping the consequences of climate change and global pandemics. We have been told by some of the brightest minds in the world that we can no longer continue down the same path we have been on. Education is teaching us, over and over, the failed modality that competition is the only way to win in life. A fact widely reflected in our current systemic failure in business and politics to deal with solutions. With this mindset we are facing, without safety nets, the wide spread failure of institutions and systems to care for life on Earth and for us, to whom we have entrusted our very existence!

By Barry Dossenko and Steven Jay

Since we live in a planet wide connected system of nature and nurture, we must ask ourselves, is there a better way we can go about living here together? What is the approach that will help us achieve such an important shift in outcomes? Today scientists are intensely exploring Bio-mimicry or the imitation of nature with hope to solve some of our biggest problems.

Still many of our scientists, business leaders and government are supporting industries globally with detrimental or toxic consequences on our health and our environment. It’s imperative that new rules be implemented at the top level, as well as for all of us, to take charge of our own actions in becoming sustainable in an ecological and carbon negative life style. The practice of Holistic Management is a tool in which new goals supporting and illuminating a path forward based on local and global consensus can be achieved. Mobilized.news is where that conversation is beginning to take shape. Our weekly participatory conversation, “A Smarter Conversation” brings people together to overcome misunderstandings and find better ways to create a healthier co-existence.

Related Features:

• Allan Savory: How to effect meaningful transformation to address the global climate crisis.

• Utilizing Holistic Decision making to solve our on-going crises

• Barry Dossenko interview with Allan Savory

• For a healthier planet, management must change

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Paradigm System change: From Competition to Cooperation.   

The so-called success of the post-industrial age neo-liberalism means unlimited money and power for the few and planetary ruin for the many.  By continuing to repeat the same failed mistakes over and over again, no one wins.  Humanity will not survive on a dying planet. Ecosystems are webs of life in nature and in society. Transformation or destruction which one do you want to support?

Einstein has said that “mankind cannot solve their problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.” Humanity will need significant paradigm shifts across the board if we are to peacefully change all this in time.  Our place, in it all, is complex and applying the Holistic Management context exercise helps us find an equitable place for ourselves, our family, community and planet. Hope and vision are important aspects of the big picture of life, everything connects and everything is connected to everything.

As inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller has said: “Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.”

Mobilized.news is created by teams of artists, scientists, investigative journalists, show producers, conscious creative’s and social entrepreneurs as a forward-thinking social action network for humanity’s next adventure. We, as humanity, can come to understand the effects of our actions and our decisions on our health and for the well being of all. With Mobilized.News help us create an experience where we learn that we are not separate from one another. A virtual reality with tools, to find how we can help each other, heal each other, and come to a broad consensus of how a new equitable paradigm on earth might be realized through our everyday choices, actions, and visions of the whole.

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