Chris Nash's Talk About Pachamama, A Land Restoration Project in South Africa

Camp Appalachian Renewal:

Nearly 1.5 million acres of land in the Appalachian region has been disturbed by surface mining of coal. Reclamation laws lead to practices which stabilize ground conditions, including intense surface grading, heavy compaction of soils, and the establishment of ground covers that establish rapidly. However, the unintended environmental consequences of these practices are now widely observed including:

  • High tree mortality and stunted tree growth
  • A move away from forestry reclamation to hay/pasture land reclamation (due to tree mortality and to more quickly meet SMCRA bond release requirements)
  • Broad introduction of fast growing non-native groundcovers that outcompete native plants leading to pastures overrun with invasive, exotic species
  • Flooding as the result of reduced topsoil water infiltration rates and increased run-off

Although stable, reclaimed Appalachian mine lands are mired in a state of arrested ecological succession, they maintain depleted levels of soil organic carbon (SOC), and offer marginal economic value. The aim of The Appalachian Renewal Project is to demonstrate approaches to return these sites to sustainable, productive use, which begins with large-scale ecosystem restoration.

At 1:33:00 Chris asks about financial models for funding land restoration and how to unify the top-down and bottom-up approaches to the problem. Peter Barnes has been trying to tackle these issues for decades. See his books: https://peter-barnes.org/books/. 

John Liu's response to Chris' question is at 1:37:06. At 1:39:00 he mentions the problem of stranded capital, ...

I think we need better models of human knowledge and communication: see Lattices Everywhere. Specifically we need to find ways in which we  can meaningfully speak about the value of a billion US dollars in "stranded capital", ... to do this one needs some kind of convention and so we need a logical framework in which such conventions can be compared.

At 1:43:34 John Liu talks about UNHCR Camps in places like Eritrea, ...

Subscribe to Ecosystem Restoration Camps.

See https://www.pachamama.co.za/.

Subscribe to Pachamama Project.

I missed most of it, ...




The questions afterwards were really good:





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