The most unique feature of Earth is the existence of life, and the most extraordinary feature of life is its biodiversity.
Welcome to
Unifying Fields
We develop integral solutions for the numarous comples challenges facing our society in the next 20
years by unifying diverse fields of science
Addressing climate change
It is well known that in the last 100 years the rate of biodiversity loss has increased significantly. This has degraded ecosystems world wide. Even with all the attention on the dire condition of our planet, truly addressing climate change seems a quest larger than life.
Reforestation
When we say forest we say regenerative capacity and vice versa. They are two sides of the same coin and here’s why. Forests play an important role in maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, increasing biodiversity and maintaining the balance of the global hydrological cycle. The lack of adequate forest cover on our planet has also affected the thermal balance of the planet, and thereby, also the global climate.
To begin to understand the relationship between forests, the hydrological cycle and the thermal balance of our planet you need to become aware of some aspects of the physics of trees. First, forests have a significant cooling effect because trees evaporate water from the soils on the surface of the leafs. It is accurate to state that forests are highly efficient air-conditioners. As important as this is, there is another characteristic of trees that is very significant for our understanding and it stretches the imagination. Recently, researchers of bio regulation at the University of Moscow a.o., discovered that trees emit bacteria which act as water vapour condensation nuclei. In layman’s terms this means that forests are also miracle rainmakers!
With this knowledge in mind it is evident that large scale deforestation has reduced the cooling capacity of the planet as well as the amount of rainfall on the landmass of the earth. As painful as this insight may be, it also opens the door to effective climate action
Plant-Based Food
Our food production system is currently under tremendous pressure due to the ecological crises that it has caused and that now threatens to bite us in the but so to speak. Farmers, industry and consumers alike need to start moving towards a system that also sustains biodiversity and the soil. At this point, it is useful to look back and ask how we got here in the first place.
In recent history, when the world population grew from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 8 billion people today, about 45% of all the forests in the world was cut. The main reason for this rapid deforestation was the creation of land for large scale industrial farming, mainly producing dairy products and meat. The world currently has about 5 billion hectares of agricultural land. This land is moderately degraded, mostly due to industrial farming techniques. How can this historic perspective inform our decisions now? Actually, when combined with the results of a decade (red?) of research and experimenting in the field of agriculture we can see the contours of a new system of food production.
Scientists have found that plant-based (food-forest) farming requires 4 times less land compared with industrial farming. Food-forest farming regenerates the soils and increases forest cover. If the world population would adopt plant-based food as the main way of taking in calories and proteins only 1-1.5 billion hectares agricultural land would be needed. Such a system will also free op land for (community based) food-forest farming and the implementation of local reforestation projects.
