How to restore a rainforest Willie Smits

I was walking on a market one day with

my wife and somebody stuck a cage in my

face and between those slits were the

saddest eyes I’ve ever seen

there was a very sick orangutan baby my

first encounter that evening I came back

to markets in the dark and I heard and

sure enough I found two dying orangutan

baby on a garbage heap of course the

cage was salvaged I took up the little

baby massaged her forced her to drink

until she finally started breathing

normally this is watchin she’s now

living in the jungle of soon a vine and

this is Mata Hari her second son which

by the way is also the son of the second

orangutan I rescued dodo that changed my

life quite dramatically and as of today

I have almost 1,000 orangutan babies in

my two centers which is no no no no

wrong it’s horrible it’s a proof of our

failing to save them in the wild it’s

not good this is merely proof of

everyone failing to do the right thing

having more than all the orangutans and

all the zoos in the world together just

now like victims for every baby six

having disappeared from the forest the

deforestation especially for oil palm to

provide biofuel for the Western

countries is what’s causing these

problems and those are the peat swamp

forests on 20 meters of peat the largest

accumulation of organic material in the

world when you open this for growing oil

palms you’re creating co2 volcanoes that

are emitting so much co2 that my country

is now the third largest emitter of

greenhouse gases in the world after

China and the United States and we don’t

have any industry at all only because of

this deforestation and these are

horrible images I’m not going to talk

too long about it

but there are so many of the family of

ogia which are not so fortunate to live

out there in the forest that still have

to go through that process and I don’t

know anymore where to put them so I

decided I had to come up with a solo

Oshin for her but also a solution that

will benefit the people that are trying

to exploit those forests to get their

hands on the last timber and that are

causing in that way the loss of habitat

and all those victims so I created the

place some bachelors theory and the idea

was if I can do this on the worst

possible place that I can think of there

is really nothing left no one will have

an excuse to say yeah but no everyone

should be able to follow this so we’re

in East Borneo this is the place up

there where I started as you can see

there’s only a yellow train there’s

nothing left just a bit of grass there

in 2002 we had about 50% of the people

jobless there there was a huge amount of

crime people spend so much of their

money on health issues and on drinking

water there was no agricultural

productivity left this was the poorest

district and the whole province and it

was a total extinction of wildlife this

was like a biological desert when I

stood there in the grass it’s hot not

even the sound of insects just this

waving grass still four years later we

have created jobs for about 3,000 people

the climate has changed I will show you

this climate extremes no more flooding

no more fires it’s no longer the poorest

district and there is a huge development

of biodiversity we got over a thousand

three species we have a hundred

thirty-seven bird species as of today we

have 30 species of reptiles so what

happened here and we created a huge

economic value in this forest so

basically the whole process of

destruction had gone a bit slower than

what is happening now with the oil palm

but we saw the same thing at

slash-and-burn agriculture people cannot

afford to fertilizer so they burned the

trees and have the minerals available

there the fires become more frequent and

after a while you’re stuck with an area

of land where there is no fertility left

there’s no trees left still in this

place in this grassland where you see

our very first office there on that hill

four years later there’s this one green

block

on the Earth’s surface and there’s all

these animals and there’s all these

people happy and there’s this economic

value so how’s this possible it was

quite simple if you look at the steps we

bought the land we dealt with a fire and

then only we started doing a

reforestation by combining agriculture

with forestry only then we set up the

infrastructure and management and the

monitoring but we made sure that in

every step of the way

the local people were going to be fully

involved so that no outside forces would

be able to interfere with that that the

people would become the defenders of

that forest so we do the people profit

planet principles but to it in addition

sure legal status because if the forest

belongs to the state people say it

belongs to me it belongs to everyone and

then we apply all these other principles

like transparency professional

management measurable results

scalability replicability etc what we

did was we formulated recipes how to go

from a starting situation where you have

nothing to a target situation and you

formulate a recipe based upon the

factors that you can control whether it

be the skills or a fertilizer or the

plant choice and then you look at the

outputs and you start measuring what is

coming out now in this recipe you have

also the cost you also know how much

labor is needed if you can drop this

recipe on the map on a sandy soil on a

clay soil on a steep slope on a flat

soil you put those different recipes if

you combine them out of that comes a

business plan comes a work plan and you

can optimize it for the amount of labour

that you have available or for the

amount of fertilizer you have and you

can do it this is how I don’t practice

looks like we have this cross that we

want to get rid of it exudes ayyankali

like compounds from the roots but the

kekkaishi tree is a very low value but

we need them to restore a microclimate

to protect the soil and to shade out the

grasses and after eight years they might

actually yield some timber that is if

you can preserve it in a right way which

you can do with the peels of bamboo it’s

an old temple building technique from

Japan but bamboo is very far susceptible

so if we would plant that in the

beginning we would have a very high risk

of losing everything again so we plant

it later along the waterways to filter

the water provide the raw products just

in time when the timber becomes

available so the idea is how to

integrate these flows in space over time

and with the limited means you have so

we plant the trees we plant these

pineapples and beans and gingers in

between to reduce the competition for

the trees the crop fertilizer organic

material is useful for the agricultural

crops for the people but also helps the

trees the farmers have free land the

system yields early income the

orangutans get healthy food and we can

speed up ecosystem regeneration while

even saving some money so beautiful what

a theory but is it really that easy not

really because if you look what happened

in 1998 the fire started this is an area

of about 50 million hectares January

February March April May

we lost 5.5 million hectares in just a

matter of a few months this is because

we have ten thousands of those

underground fires that you also have in

Pennsylvania here in the United States

and once the soil gets dried during a

dry season you get cracks oxygen goes in

flames comes out and a problem starts

all over again so how to break that

cycle fire is the biggest problem this

is what it looked like for three months

for three months the automatic lights

outside did not go off because it was

that dark we lost all the crops no

children gained weight for over a year

they lost 12 IQ points was a disaster

for orangutangs and people so these

fires are really the first thing to work

on that was why I put it as a single

point up there and you need the local

people for that because these grasslands

once they start burning it goes through

it like a windstorm and you lose again

the last bit of Ash and nutrients with

the first rainfall going to the sea

killing off the coral reefs there so you

have to do it with the local people that

is the short term solution but you also

need a long term

solution so what we did this we created

a ring of sugar palms around the area

the sugar palms turn out to be fire

resistant also flood resistant by the

way and they provide a lot of income for

local people this is how it looks like

the people have to tap them twice a day

just a millimeter of slice and the only

thing your harvest is sugar water carbon

dioxide rainfall and a little bit of

sunshine in principle you make those

threes in two biological photovoltaic

cells and you can create so much energy

from this because they produce three

times more energy per hectare per year

because you can tap them on a daily

basis you don’t need to harvest organs

than any other of the crops so this is

the combination where we have all this

genetic potential in the tropics which

is still unexploited and doing it in

combination with technology but also

your legal side needs to be in very good

order so we bought that land and here is

where we started our project in the

middle of nowhere and if you zoom in a

bit you can see that all of this area is

divided into strips that go over

different types of soil and we were

actually monitoring measuring every

single tree in this 2,000 hectares 5000

acres and this forest is quite different

what I really did was I just followed

nature and Nature doesn’t know

monocultures but a natural forest has

multi layers that means that both in the

ground and above the ground can make

better use of the available light that

can store more carbon in the system it

can provide more functions but it’s more

complicated it’s not that simple you

have to work with the people so what we

do is also just like nature we grow

fence planting trees and underneath that

we grow the slower growing primary

rainforest trees of a very high

diversity that can optimally use that

light and then what is just as important

get the right fungi in there that will

grow into those leaves bring back the

nutrients the roots of the trees that

have just dropped that leaf within 24

hours and they become like nutrient

pumps you need the bacteria to fix

nitrogen

and without those microorganisms you

won’t have any performance at all and

then we started planting only a thousand

three is a day we could have planted

many many more but we didn’t want to

because we wanted to keep the number of

jobs stable we didn’t want to lose the

people that are going to work in that

plantation and we do a lot of work here

we use indicator plants to look what

soil types or what vegetables will grow

but what trees will grow here and we

have monitored every single one of those

trees from space this is what it looks

like in real you have this irregular

ring around it with strips of a hundred

meter white with sugar pumps that can

provide income for 648 families it’s

only a small part of the area the

nursery in here is quite different if

you look at the number of three species

we have in Europe for instance from the

URL up to England you know how many 165

in this nursery we are going to grow ten

times more the number of species can you

imagine you do need to know what you are

working with but it’s that diversity

which makes it work that you can go from

this zero situation by planting the

vegetables and the trees or directly the

trees in the lines in that grass they’re

putting up that purpose own producing

your compost and then making sure that

at every stage of that up growing

forests there are crops that can be used

in the beginning may be pineapples and

beans and corn in the second phase that

will be bananas and papayas later on

there will be chocolate and chiles and

then slowly the trees start taking over

bringing in produce from the fruits from

the timber from the fuel wood and

finally the sugar palm forest takes over

and provides the people with permanent

income on the top left underneath those

green stripes you see some white dots

those are actually individual pineapple

plants that you can see from space and

in that area we started growing some

acacia trees that you just saw before so

this is after one year and this is after

two years and that’s green if we look

from the tower

this is when we start attacking the

grass we plant in the seedlings mixed

with the bananas the papayas all the

crops for the local people but the trees

are growing up fast in between as well

and three years later 137 species of

birds live in here

so we lower the air temperature three to

five degrees Celsius the air humidity is

up 10% cloud cover I’m gonna show it to

you is have rain follows up and all

these species and income this eco lodge

that I built there three years before

was a empty yellow field this

transponder we operate with the European

Space Agency that gives us the benefit

that every satellite that comes over to

calibrate itself is taking a picture

those pictures we use to analyze how

much carbon how the forest is developing

and we can monitor every tree using that

satellite images through our cooperation

but we can use this data now to provide

other regions with recipes and the same

technology you actually have it already

with Google Earth if you had you would

use a little bit of your technology to

put tracking devices and trucks and use

Google Earth in combination with that

you could directly tell what palm oil

has been sustainably produced which

company is stealing the timber and you

could save so much more carbon than with

any yeah measure of saving energy here

so this is the sambar Jellison airy area

you measure how the trees grow back but

you can also measure the biodiversity

coming back and biodiversity is an

indicator of how much water can be

balanced how many medicines can be kept

here and finally I made it into the rain

machine because this forest is now

creating its own grain this nearby city

of Balikpapan has a big problem with

water it’s for 80% surrounded by

seawater and we have now a lot of

intrusion there now we looked at the

clouds above this forest so we looked

the reef for a stationary see me open

area an open area and look at these

images I’ve just run them very quickly

through in the tropics raindrops are not

formed from ice crystals like it’s the

case in the temperate zones you need two

trees

with my guests chemicals that come out

of the leaves of the trees that initiate

the raindrops so you create a cool place

where clouds can accumulate and you have

the trees to initiate the rain and look

there’s now 11.2% more clouds that was

already after three years if you look at

the rainfall it was already up 20% at

that time but let’s look at the next

year and you can see that that trend is

continuing where first we had a small

cap of higher rainfall that cap is now

widening and getting higher and if we

look at the rainfall pattern above

somewhat you’re sorry it used to be the

driest place but now you see

consistently a peak of rain forming

there so you can actually change the

climate when there are trait winds of

course the effect disappears but

afterwards soon as the wind stabilizes

you see that again the rainfall Peaks

come back above this area so to say it

is hopeless it’s not the right thing to

do because we actually can make the

difference if you integrate the various

technologies and it’s nice of the

science but it still depends mostly upon

the people on your education we have a

farmer schools but a real success of

course is our band because if a baby is

born we will play so everyone’s a family

and you don’t make trouble with your

family this is how it looks we have this

road going around the area which brings

the people electricity and water from

our own area we have to zone with the

sugar palms and then we have this fence

with very thorny palms to keep the

orangutans that we provide with a place

to live in the middle and the people

apart and inside we have this area for

reforestation as a gene bank to keep all

that material alive because for the last

12 years not a single seedling of the

tropical hardwood trees has grown up

because the climatic triggers have

disappeared all the seeds get eaten so

now we do the monitoring on the inside

from towers satellites ultralights each

of the families that have sold their

land now get a piece of land back and it

has those nice fences of tropical

hardwood trees you have to shade trees

plant the near one then you’re under

planted with the sugar bombs a you plant

is thorny fence and after a few years

you can remove some of those shade trees

the people get that occasi timber which

we have preserved with a bamboo peel and

they can build a house they have some

fuel wood to cook with and they can

start producing from the trees as many

as they like they have enough income for

three families but whatever you do in a

program it has to be fully supported by

the people meaning that you also have to

adjust it to the local cultural values

there is no simple one recipe for one

place you also have to make sure that it

is very difficult to corrupt that it’s

transparent like here in somebody else

nari we divide that ring in groups of

twenty families if one member trespasses

the agreement and does cuts down trees

the other 19 members have to decide

what’s gonna happen to him if the group

doesn’t take action the out of 33 groups

have to decide what is gonna happen to

the group who doesn’t comply with those

great deals that we are offering them in

north Luisi

it is the co-operative to have a

democratic culture there so there you

can use the local justice system to

protect your system so in summary if you

look at it in year one the people can

sell their land they get income but they

get jobs back in a construction in the

reforestation working with the ARIMA

tents they can use the waste food to

make handicraft they also get free land

in between the trees where they can grow

their crops they can now sell part of

those fruits study orangutans project

they get building materials for houses a

contract for selling the sugar so we can

produce huge amounts of ethanol and

energy locally they get all these other

benefit environmentally money to get

education it’s a great deal and

everything is based upon that one thing

make sure that forest remains there so

if we want to help the orangutangs

what I actually set out to do we must

make sure that the local people are the

ones that benefit and I think the real

key to doing it to give a simple answer

integration I hope if you want to know