Restoring Land, Restoring Hope: Faith Voices on Regeneration - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Good afternoon, everyone.
I hope first you can hear me over the rain.
Thank you so much for joining us for this session on Faith Voices on regeneration.
Rain is a blessing in many faith traditions, so we're blessed by the rain.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Whether you're here on purpose or seeking refuge from the rain, faith has always indeed been a refuge for billions around the world.
So we're grateful to provide one more space of refuge for you today.
Today's session is to introduce it.
My name is Star Kaley from the G 20 Globan Initiative.
I'll be moderating.
Today, we're joined by Amy Acheva from the Columbia missionaries.
We have Tom Barasa from the W Bs and Belief Program.
We have Anyta Lodge from the Brahma Kumaris, and we also have Hugh Locke, on my furthest from Pre Earth Farming, representing the Bahai communities.
Together, they represent not only just hopeful stories, but also are really examples of what deep wisdom incredible technical excellence as well when it comes to land restoration, and fantastic human beings can be when it all comes together.
So it's really a deep privilege and an honor to share the stage today with them all.
And you'll get to hear their stories, their communities, and their insights, both the impact and also the aspects of inner restoration as well today.
I'm also grateful to you as the audience.
You could have been at any session, any side event.
You could have been having your lunch right now, but you chose to be here, or indeed the divine ordained you to be here by the rain and it was the closest pavilion to you.
But I want to kind of set the scene on why faith based organizations, why are we talking about faith and why the G 20 Gobern Initiative invested in engaging faith based organizations.
So one I'll set out the technical case.
Faith based organizations steward around 8% of the world's habit of land, 8%.
They steward and run 5% of the world's commercial forests.
They run the majority of the world's infrastructure of schools and hospitals.
And they are the third largest investment group in the world.
So by any measure, when we're talking about serious restoration efforts, we can't meet our goals of reversing land degradation, 40% by 2040 unless we're engaging faith based actors.
We know this scientifically and economically.
At the same time, there is a deep commitment to restoration by faith based organizations within the UN CCD process.
So in support of the real action Agenda, the G 20 GI launched the Rio Trio Multi Faith Declaration last year, which was endorsed by organizations from faith organizations representing over half 1 billion believers worldwide.
So there's a very deep commitment to this process, a very deep commitment in terms of the spiritual and faith based infrastructure, and that commitment has been best expressed through values.
We know that when faith organizations restore ecosystems, we do it in a way in which reclaim our ability to collaborate with nature and to revive our relationship with nature itself and the ecosystems we call home.
There's this very deep commitment to kinship, this very deep commitment as well to the more than human world.
And it's a very deep values based approach on why we are restoring as faith organizations.
So restoring land for faith organizations is restoring hope in many ways, and we'll get into that today.
And I think ultimately what makes faith organizations so successful in restoration efforts, and you'll hear from some today, is that they think and act in generations.
We were at a meeting with the Vatican recently, and they shared that when they invest in nature restoration, they're investing for eternity.
Now that's not something you're going to hear from many private sector organizations here today.
And it's a very different approach to conventional restoration.
It's faith restoration at the speed of the time, at the speed of pollination, at the speed of how the creation has been developed.
And to support faith led restoration today, I'm very happy to share that the G 20 GbalLn Initiative is launching face for and face for land.org, which will host and support an independent civil society coalition grown out of two years of work with the G 20 GLI and the ONCCD.
It'll host the resources, the capacity, and the needs of faith based organizations to engage in faith led restoration efforts.
It'll also host a Faith for and online master class that's been developed in collaboration with WF International and Brass will be talking about as well today.
And the reason why we developed this is because in a faith led stock take from the last Cp and Rad, we found that 76% of all faith based organizations have a gap when it comes to technical capacity in terms of restoration, and the masterclas and Faith for and as a hub exists to close that gap, the technical gap, the scientific gap, the capacity building needs of faith based organizations, and to be a oom and place for faith based organizations to engage within the ONCCD for years to come.
So I hope you'll visit face for land.org and share it with your local monastery, congregation, temples, and faith based groups as well.
But all of that is a little bit of a framing for what we want to go into, which is all of this is best expressed through a story.
And faith led efforts can best be told by beautiful stories, and we want to start with the power of story with our panel here today.
So what I've asked our speakers to do is to start with a five minute opening to tell us one story about maybe one piece of land.
So what did that land look like before your faith communities did your work? What happened, and what does it look like now? And I'll first pass it on to Amy from the Colombians to lead us.
Amy, over to you.
Thanks, Terri.
Good afternoon, everyone.
It's so nice to be with you.
I would like to speak to share with you about an area of land in the southern part of the Philippines, in the Mindanao province, and more specifically in the area of Cagyan Doro.
Our restoration story actually began in 2011.
You may remember that there was a massive Typhoon endang at that time.
And tragically, approximately 1,500 people were killed and 181 people are still missing from that tragedy.
So that's the context for how our community came together to create this restoration project.
In 2017, to mark the anniversary of this very tragic event, the indigenous community that is of that area, the Haganon, they reached out to Colombans and asked for a dialogue about how we could mark this anniversary.
Through this dialogue with Colombans and with the chiefs of the Haganon community, The decision was made together to plant 100 trees to remember the lives lost and missing.
They chose two areas of land, relatively small, in total, about seven hectors divided into two separate areas.
The first smaller lot, which is that's the bigger one.
This was the land before we began our tree restoration project.
And so in the smaller area, it was a vacant lot.
There was some corn planting, but it was a pretty abandoned space.
Then in the larger area, which is the one on the screen, because of the logging industry, A exotic tree, the lina was planted there and that exotic tree was very dangerous or destructive to the land, the soil.
And so it was a very unhealthy piece of land, even though it did have tree coverage.
We chose these areas of land that belonged to the Heganon and what we did was, we initially planted 100 trees.
Um, this is a kind of ground view of that aerial view.
So the coverage was quite poor.
And here you can see some of the initial sapling trees that were planted in 2017.
This was in 2017.
Um, Through the tree planting process, we developed an ongoing and you can see here the trees have grown.
There are about 1,000 trees planted between the two areas.
One of the things that the Haganon community members are noticing is that animals, species, insects that had been missing from the area are returning.
The soil has improved.
The water has improved.
The Hagon spiritual life they have been able to practice using their sacred trees and other elements.
Fruit has returned to the area.
So the communities are enjoying the harvesting of their fruits and herbs and using them for medicine and nourishment that are significantly culturally important and spiritually important for them.
So these are just some images of the community.
These are the community leaders, the man in the hat with the red jacket.
He is the chief of the community, and so we continue to gather since 2017, we continue to gather and explore other projects that we want to do.
So the trees were the thing that brought us together.
Well, the commemoration of this tragic event and then the hopeful response of planting new life.
Um, So this is also an interfaith inter spiritual community project.
So I think that's Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jamie, and I'd love to pass it to Hugh at the end.
Hugh, please tell us the story.
How's that? Well, there we are.
I'd like to tell you the story of one piece of land called Adicea.
At the turn of the last century, Adicea was a patch of 2000 acres of thorny wilderness that was in the Jordan Valley and at the time, it was described as the most inhospitable place on Earth.
Then in to make sure this works.
There we go.
Then in 1901, Albdaa shown here, who was one of the three central figures of the Bahai faith, purchased the land and recruited 32 experienced farmers who also happened to be Bahas from what was then known as Persia.
To over a 20 year period 1901-1920, they transformed that land into a thriving, prosperous farming community.
They did this by bringing together four distinct elements into a new farming system.
It started with the farmers that came in to work on this land and they brought their own indigenous and spiritual traditions with them.
That included looking at how crops can be grown in harmony with nature, but also bringing a traditional system of fair land allocation and profit sharing.
Then Abd Baha introduced sustainable methodologies, many of which would be recognized today.
But that included things like bringing nitrogen fixing, crop rotation, agroforestry, which brought together perennial trees in combination with crops and integrating livestock with soil management techniques.
And to this was added science.
Basically, this was science at the time.
Remember, this is the turn of the last century.
And so what this involved was Abdula introducing, for example, a trial system for introducing new crops that was based on serious protocols that could be replicated and introduced things like bananas.
But it also involves attention to what we would now call soil microbiology.
In fact, interestingly enough, remember this is more than 100 years ago, Abdulahi stated that the more microscopic animals exist within soil, the better for the plants to thrive.
Interesting that we would now take that for granted, but it was pretty revolutionary in its day.
It turns out that these three things, indigenous and traditional wisdom, various sustainable methodologies, and then the application of science in support of the first two, not overriding them, but in the supporting role.
This is what constitutes regenerative agriculture today.
It makes it interesting because it predates even the term regenerative agriculture.
But I mentioned that there were four elements.
What's interesting is that Ab Dah brought in the spiritual dimension into this new agricultural system that he led.
The context here is that the Bahai writings deal extensively with agriculture specifically, and the tone was set by our founder, Bahahola who stated that Special regard must be given to agriculture.
And for Bahais, agriculture is the foundation for both the spiritual, social and economic well being of humanity.
And it's represented in more than 100 different references within the Bahai writings to food, farming, rural community life, Yes, we agree.
And so that set of references comes together to form a fairly comprehensive framework that looks at the relationship between humanity and the natural world.
So the Although the community of Ada no longer exists because of political changes in that region of the world, what's interesting is that the combination of the Bai writings on agriculture, which, as I say, are fairly extensive, plus the direct application of a new agricultural technology, um, that also implements those spiritual traditions within the Bahai writings really makes an interesting contribution, I think, because Asia represents historically one of the world's first fully comprehensive implementations of all of the practices and principles that currently constitute regenerative agriculture.
I think I would speculate that it's fair to say that Ab Adbja was a regenerative pioneer.
And so this combination, I think is an example of the faith based approaches that I think represents both the hope for restoration of land and just a general hope for the future.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, ugh.
I know you have.
He has a beautiful new book coming out and we'll be talking about that later that really encompasses many of these aspects.
Next, I'd like to pass it to Aat and for those who are maybe in the previous session, so that Anya with the Brahmin Karis is leading daily meditation sessions here.
With those sessions, they always hand out one card to each participant at random.
The card that I pulled out a couple of minutes ago was Hope is not something we wait for.
It's something we grow like a seed through pure thoughts and actions.
The question to all of us is what hopeful thought Can I plan in my mind right now? I know you plant many thoughtful hots, hope thoughts, and many hopeful actions as well in your work, so please do share with us some of the work that the Prak Karis are doing as well.
Greetings of peace and greetings of love.
Thank you very much for having us here.
Yes, I would like to share a story of a land, but it is actually the story of the heart.
I would share a few short stories which have the same thread of love.
What we do in Brahmakumar is, we practice yoga meditation.
Actually, it's not only a meditation, it's a lifestyle.
It's understanding and it's a practice that we embed in our lives.
We have done it also in farming agriculture.
Now I would like to speak to you about something what we call sustainable yogic agriculture.
There are so many stories.
So many farmers in India, they have their own stories show very beautifully the way that actually the heart and the mind of the farmer can make a big difference when we speak about the land and then the crops.
One story that I would like to share today is about a smallholder farmer in Maharashtra.
He was actually having this four acre farm of sugar cane.
And he was using a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Then he recognized after tens years of using those chemical inputs that the land became degraded and fertile and also the costs were increasing because of this chemical input that has been increased and also all the seeds that are modified and hybrid has to be bought every year new Then he thought, it happened that he was a meditator.
He was a practitioner of ja yoga and he felt the benefits of this practice on himself.
Then he thought, let me experiment.
Let me do the same but with the intention of healing the land.
He started to meditate.
Meditate means to consciously create positive thoughts, thoughts of peace, thoughts of love, thoughts of compassion, thoughts of power.
So he did it early morning before the sunrise, then during the day, and then in the evening.
He did it for this one acrel out of four, for six months, he left it without any other input.
He was just giving this spiritual input of meditation.
Then after six months, he noticed some differences in the soil.
Then he thought it may work.
Then he used this spiritual technology for the whole process of farming in the whole cycle of seed.
Then he recognized that actually there were some visible changes.
Of course, it was not only meditation, he also started to use natural input.
What we do, what we practice in Brahmakumaris, is actually natural yogi farming.
He started to prepare all the inputs in terms of fertilizer and if needed pesticides from whatever was available at his farm in the village.
Things like cow dung, cow urine, maybe jaggri, maybe milk, he would mix it in a proper way and create his own fertilizer.
And this natural farming and yogi farming actually was so good that after two years, he decided to do it for his old farm and he continues this way till today.
This is just one example of at least 4,000 farmers that have been practicing this way of agriculture for the last 15 years and a Okay.
I will come back to this later on, but I would like to play one testimonial of one farmer who has also decided consciously to try with this spiritual farming, and this is what he would like to share with us.
I hope I can play it.
No, I cannot earlier, we used chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow crops.
But for the past ten years, we are harnessing pure energy from the Supreme to vibrate seeds, soil and nature.
Along with this, we use organic manure and organic preparations that we prepare at home and spray them to control.
The yield through yogic farming is more than the yield of chemical fertilizers.
We see a great difference in the quality as well.
The amount of proteins, vitamins, and caloric value has risen 2-5%, along with the increase in the soil fertility.
What we call organic carbon is also increasing.
Excuse me.
Okay.
I think I will not waste my time.
Maybe I can finish the story.
The story goes that after using natural farming, natural inputs, and doing this conscious meditation, actually his output was almost the same as chemical based output, but the quality of the produce was much better in terms of the protein values, in terms of calories values, in terms of all different nutrients.
Also the soil quality improved a lot.
So the microbial load was increased and it became much more fertile soil.
Also what happened, the cost of production decreased significantly because he didn't have to buy all these very expensive chemical based inputs anymore.
Then the quality of the vegetables also improved a lot.
So he was able actually to ask more money for this fruit or vegetable than what he did before.
At the end, his profits also increased.
That is a real story that I would like to share.
And then this was just the beginning actually.
From this one acrel from one farmer, we scaled it up to the whole country.
Right now we are having in our headquarters in India in Rajasthan, an Excellence training center where every month hundreds of farmers from all over India come and they are trained.
They know how to create, how to make this natural inputs in terms of fertilizers and pesticides and also they learn how to meditate.
And they go back home and then they start using this.
And again, it doesn't stop here.
It goes even further because then this natural yogic farming became a foundation for holistic village development.
In India, we have a program which is called Rat refi Gokram which is about helping villages to grow in terms of all sustainable development goals.
So This spiritual input becomes a foundation for creating better livelihood for people, for empowering women, for educating youth and children, for making the villages much cleaner and much more sustainable.
I think my time maybe up.
This is where I would like to stop.
But yes, I think it's very simple thing that can be very easily replicated.
I just would like all of you to start and to experiment with it because it doesn't cost anything to think positively.
Then there are two benefits.
One is for the crops, but another one is for the mind and the heart of the farmer who becomes much more resilient, peaceful, clear, and courageous to do something what others think is not really sensible, but actually it works once you start doing it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Jetta, and it really is an incredible program.
I know there's also been independent PhD researchers who have been looking into this and have found that the results of the program are quite astounding.
It is exactly as you say, meditation and power of positive thinking applied in those clear frameworks can increase yields.
It's something that sounds very strange for an agro economist.
And we'll also go into it later of how we can indeed work with other partners as well to bring this approach.
Thank you so much, Jata.
I'd like to then hand it to Tom Bara from WF.
Brassa is one of the key architects of the Faith for Land masterclass that we're launching today.
It's based on the WF Key Growing Guide, and Brassa has been supporting communities around the world, particularly across Africa to bring this approach.
So Brassa, please do tell us the story.
Thank you, Tariq.
It's my pleasure to present to you the Marragoi Hills.
Margoli Hills is a 400 acre hectare piece of land not far from the fresh Lake Water Victoria in Kenya.
And as you can see, that for from 2011 is full of rocks and bare soil, and it has a history tested background.
It was actual forest way back in the 80s, but in the mid 80s, it suffered encroachment, unsustainable agriculture and human settlement and erosion and deforestation and anything unsustainable that you can think of.
And being a watershed of the Lake Victoria basin, the streams and the rivers that used to flow, and the springs that the community depended on and the wildlife in the forest, they all dwindled, as they were eroded.
Over time, what was a biodiversity hotspot became a bare land and livelihoods were destroyed because the communities relied on these hills for their food, wild fruits, and it was also a spiritual center because the local community will hold their circumcision ceremonies within the forest, and the Christians would go there for prayers and for meditation.
But somewhere in the mid 80s up to the early 90s, that forest was cleared.
And so the result is what you can see, massive erosion in certain sections.
You can see settlement in very uncommon areas, and you can see maize growing in very unlikely places.
But then the Catholic Diocese of Cakmega took an initiative from the early 2000, but up to 2022, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the county government of Bahia, which is a local government there for five years to restore ten acres of land of that ecosystem.
Those five years lapsed and they did another MOU recently.
Now, their work was basically to mobilize the faith actors within the landscape.
They brought together 16 Muslim and Christian groups to work together to care for nature and specifically on that hill.
The beliefs and values program from WF was instrumental in securing a seed fund from the Uni Faith Forth Coalition, which just started them off to make the framework for collaboration among the faith actors, but also to bring on board the government agencies, NGOs, as well as the private sector within the landscape to carry on the restoration work.
And So we did some tree planting and tree growing over the last three, four years.
The Catholic bishop has been very instrumental working with the governor of the Baha County where the ecosystem is.
And you can see that both Muslim and Christians have been caring for that ecosystem for over those years.
And the current status is that there is a nursery that is at 30,000 capacity to channel seedlings throughout the year.
We have so far planted 3,000 trees officially as a partnership, but countless number of trees have been grown by the local community members and schools around the ecosystem, and we've witnessed a survival rate of 70% because we do tree growing and not tree planting.
And we have mobilized those faith actors still very active on the ground, and we're very happy that the private sector actually two banks have joined the restoration effort.
And what was very unique with the faith actors is that they brought the trust that was lacking initially.
They brought their networks of the private sector to collaborate with them and they brought harmony and peace working together because the government had tried before and the community literally approve the trees after the planting exercise.
But for the last more than five years, this restoration story has been going on.
Now, currently, if you saw the first photo and you can look at this, it's a completely different story and just to refresh your mind, if you look at what was in 2011 and you look at what it is today, you can see that there is a greening aspect and all this because of the work of interfaith collaboration.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you so much Visa.
I also want to come back later to what that collaboration actually looks like when civil society, faith based organizations, and also government come together.
I'd like to circle back to you, Amy, and start to me, we go into some of the, I think the more challenging issues that faith communities also willing to engage in.
So of course, the Colombians, as you said, work alongside communities.
And you also work alongside communities defending the land, a lot of times from the mining industry.
And I know mining has been a very big topic as well here in the SOP and people who defend their land are often harmed very intentionally.
And I want to maybe ask you both spiritually, but also maybe in a more practical sense, what does your faith ask of you when your work becomes dangerous.
Thanks for that question, Tag.
If I'm not mistaken, using the example that I shared about the Philippines, the Philippines has the highest number of environmental defenders who are killed annually.
It's something that we're very familiar with that we have lost people, friends, colleagues, partners in this work and struggle to protect the land.
I think from a Christian perspective, We would say that our lives are not our own.
And so with our lives not being our own, when we turn our lives over to God, to a higher calling, it moves us to be in places that can be violent, that can be dangerous, that can be remote.
And so it can be a scary journey to go into places that are dangerous.
But if our lives are not our own and our call is to solidarity and walking with people, communities, and the land itself that are under threat, then that's where we go.
And then in those kinds of scenarios, can you maybe explain as well for percents of the audience, what does it look like where, you know, faith communities can support environmental defenders? What do those kinds of partnerships look like and where do you think, you know, faith based organizations like the Clemons can support, you know, existing land restoration efforts from, you know, wider communities and vice versa.
What are the lessons that you've learned and what's I think especially for people in the room that have maybe never considered a faith organization as a potential partner? What would you tell them? Hm.
So just more specifically to put some flesh on this going wherever the need is in the place that I spoke about and in other places where mining is a major threat, um, Faith communities and Colobans are able to put our bodies on the line, the mining companies are able to reach the land or the indigenous communities, the environmental defenders that are under threat.
And so we can serve as a barrier because it would look pretty bad if a company were to harm you know, a religious leader or people of faith.
So in that way, at times, we have placed ourselves in front of projects or like, you know, in front of communities where mining companies might be trying to access that land.
So that's kind of practically one of the things that we have done.
In terms of that I think we've learned and what others can learn and working with faith communities are a few things.
One, the Christian community has a concept, one body, many parts.
I think part of that concept and the one body is not just our individual selves, but the entire human family, the entire all of creation.
We recognize that every individual, every creature, every ecosystem has its own intrinsic value, its own beauty, its own right to life, its own gifts and talents and contributions, and so In recognizing that and respecting and honoring that diversity, that unity and diversity that as Christians, we believe, we recognize our limitations.
That's the other in working together, we're not scientists.
We're not technicians, but we know that we need people who have those skills and I people of other spiritual traditions that might experience and see the world in a different way.
But has, you know, that a common core of, you know, respect and dignity and valuing life.
So, I think, you know, that's part of our approach is that we value and we recognize the unique contributions that each person, each community, and, you know, expanding out to the whole the whole earth of all creation, um that we need each other.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Amy.
Beautifully said.
And in that unity, Pugh you spoke as well about viewing the planet as one connected system and the Bahai tradition.
And of course, your book, its whole premise is based on that whole Earth farming.
I wonder if you could maybe introduce the book, some of the thesis as well of what you talk about.
Certainly.
Thank you very much.
Well, the book, which comes out next month, what I've done is to bring together three ideas.
One is around the potential for smallholder farmers.
The second is the role that regenerative agriculture could play in helping them reach that potential.
The third is the role of the Bahai spiritual teachings on agriculture to help inform that process.
So just taking that apart one by one.
First of all, smallholder farmers.
There are currently 570 million farms around the world.
Out of those in terms of the actual size of farms.
You've got 570 farms and then 475 million of those are smallholder farms with less than five acres or two hectres and that entire group of farmers have been marginalized and literally abandoned for about the last 60 years as industrial scale agriculture has become a major force in the world.
But at the same time, even though they've been marginalized and have very little support, they currently produce 30% of all food in the world.
So it's not an insignificant contribution, but they do represent one of the largest underperforming segments of the global economy.
And this really caught my attention when I began working directly with smallholders in Haiti about 16 years ago, something which I continue to do.
But then looking at regenerative agriculture, most people have not heard the term regenerative in the population at large.
But it's something which brings together, as I talked about earlier, three distinct elements.
Indigenous and ancestral wisdom in terms of farming, combined with the sustainable methodologies, things like organic, permiculture, biointensive agicology, these have all contributed valuable components to what is now termed regenerative agriculture.
It in itself represents a more holistic approach than necessarily any one of those sustainable methodologies.
Then combined with science, science in a supporting role, so it helps to measure impact and really explore the dynamics of, let's say soil microbiology.
So given that most people haven't heard of it, you might be surprised to know that there are approximately 15 million smallholder farms around the world, and the majority of those are in the global South, small holders in the global South.
But it's also interesting to note that, again, although it's not widely known, um, Over half of all the major global food and beverage companies are either supporting or purchasing from small holder or larger size regenerative farms.
That's companies like McDonald's, Unilever, Walmart.
The list goes on.
There's a little bit of greenwashing in there, but I'm one of the voices trying to help keep them on the straight and narrow.
But To me, what becomes interesting is when you look at this potential for smallholders, that one of the things that's missing is a overarching framework that helps keep the whole thing together.
To me, that's where the spiritual principles come in.
I drawing on these from the Bahai tradition, these are not theologically based.
These are core spiritual principles which we look at as open source technology.
You know, you don't have to sign up, you don't have to do anything other than acknowledge that these are useful.
Things like identifying the farmer as what Abdul Baja, again, one of our three central figures, referred to as the farmer as the first active agent in society.
If you take that as a principle, then anything that involves farming or agriculture or food consumption should involve farmer input, no matter at what level.
I You also take something like consultation, which is another spiritual principle applied to agriculture within the Bai context.
Because if you involve farmers from the outset as a voice in what is happening To them and with them, then they become owners of that process and it's not some external thing.
Another key principle is the equality of men and women.
That's something that we take for granted now in much of the global North, but it's still a very contentious issue in the global South.
But if you're dealing with agriculture and you leave half of the entire agricultural population to one side, don't give them access to finance or support or leadership roles, you're really shooting yourself in the foot because you're never going to reach full capacity.
This is what I'm looking at in the book is how do these things all come together and I look at some of the existing mechanisms that could be used to implement a larger scale implementation, existing things like biological corridors that are already transnational models for cooperation.
But the core premise of the book is that out of the 475 million smallholders in the world, If half of them, that would be about 240 million smallholder farm families in the global South, were to implement regenerative agriculture methodologies, they could grow all the food the world needs to feed 1.5 billion more people by 2050, understanding that all of those additional people, 100% of the additional global population by 2050 will be in the global South in the same localities where the smallholder farmers already exist.
So give them the support with regenerative agriculture to increase their output, at the same time as making a contribution to reducing climate change, not just being neutral, but going beyond that to a positive measurable impact to reduce climate change.
I'm trying to take this message out to as many people who will listen at whatever level and see where it goes.
And if you wanted to purchase the book, there's the QR code and you can pre order starting next week.
Sorry for the pitch.
Of course, thank you so much here.
Maybe just to touch on that last point, because essentially the frame that you're saying is that moving through gentle methods for smallholder farmers would both raise food production and repair local ecology.
Now, that's an argument that policy often feats as a trade off.
Can you maybe just explain why in this case, it's not a trade off? A lot of policymakers are influenced by economists and I mean, I've met some lovely economists, but often when you get right down to it, these economists, again, they're very well intentioned and some lovely people.
But their idea of progress is that smallholder farmers should give up what they're doing, move to the city, make the equivalent of widgets, and then buy cheaper imported food from large scale industrial farming.
That really misses the point.
I mean, despite all of this pressure, there are still 475 million smaller farmers around the world.
From my own experience in Haiti, where we have 10,000 farmer members across the country.
And what we've found, and I do this with my colleague, Timot Georges, who's a Haitian agronomist, and working with these family farms, when they get the most basic form of support in the form of higher quality non hybrid seeds, tools to work the land and basic training, The yields go up an average of 40% and as a result of lower income input costs, their average household income goes up by 50 to 100%.
There's no necessary trade off there because what they're doing by implementing, at the moment, mostly organic, although about 15% of our members are transitioning now to regenerative and we're working to improve that.
It goes beyond do no harm.
To a positive, measurable impact in reducing climate change.
So I think that really, we have to educate these economists and, you know, get them looking at the larger picture.
I put that out to a challenge to economists everywhere.
Thank you so much, ugh.
And I want to move to you and the attend just also to make that connection.
Um You at the Brahma Kumaris ran a beautiful and powerful side event yesterday.
I want to actually just bring up some of the things you were talking about yesterday because you were speaking about farmers.
You're also speaking about the challenging situations that they face.
I'm a Muslim, coming from the Muslim tradition, there is also a phrase that they say that the greatest terror is to be a farmer.
Because there's nothing more as a profession which you need to surrender to creation, in which from yield to yield, season to season, you're really just holding your breath in the terror of what may come and not knowing how to feed your family and community or whether you're going to create abundance.
And it's often only at the last minute that you may know, and of course, it can be wiped out in a second.
And, you know, Annette, you spoke yesterday about the community that you're working with.
And the many challenges that those who are both doing farming and also land regeneration are facing from alcoholism to potential suicides as well, and just how desperate sometimes the situation can be.
And I wonder if you can maybe speak to that, some of the challenges that you see, how you also work as the Brahma Karis in supporting, I think those communities.
And I say that because whilst I know there's farmers in the room, I'm sure.
I must say that probably to be at a cop is one of those terrors, as well, because you're so aware, of course, of the situation that we're facing.
You're aware of the signs, you're so aware of what's at stake and whether you can also share words of wisdom for this community as well that is facing day to day on the front lines of ng degradation.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Actually, we and I believe that the current crisis in any sphere, but also in food system, agriculture is not because of the lack of resources, but it's because of disconnection.
We became disconnected from each other, from the nature, and from ourselves.
So we understand that this is really the root cause that we would like to address.
Again, we see that if we do it, then there are multiple benefits for the individual, for the community, and for the land.
So yeah, in the spaces like this, of course, we want to have scientific evidences and we understand this and it's okay.
But there is science Then there is silence.
Actually, they both have to go together.
Only when there is science and silence, we can have truly benefits for the world.
Both are important.
We cannot disqualify none of them.
This is what we combine in the Brahmakumaris, we combine silence and science.
Still, not everything can be measured through scientific methods.
But then we have these wonderful, very inspiring real stories that show us that actually it works and we cannot also disqualify those stories.
The first thing that we believe is important to bring about the change is to reconnect with the self.
So to reconnect with my original self, my true self, and it sounds maybe very elevated, but actually it's very simple thing and very basic thing.
For farmers, this is also the first step that we propose them to do.
If they are open enough, if they were inspired by other farmers, even maybe they were skeptical before, the first thing, what we would like to do is to show them how to rediscover the self.
Through spiritual understanding and also meditation.
On the basis of this as an output of this inner farming process, we can see very beautiful fruit, fruit in terms of a farmer who is becoming more peaceful before maybe he or she were angry and that created a lot of conflicts in the family and maybe in the community.
Thanks to Raja yoga meditation.
But any spiritual practice, if someone really puts effort into it, we can see the change in the mental state and then in the behavior.
Person becomes peaceful, calmer, clear, more open for something new, and then also empowered to make it happen because one thing is to understand and another one is to continue with this.
For example, practice of accditation also gives self discipline, which is very helpful in order to follow through what we believe is important.
Then also, A matter of service, sharing whatever I know, whatever I see it works with others, with the community.
Then the next step would be actually, naturally, other benefits.
If this is a farmer, we can see the benefits in the way he farms his land because he changes his attitude.
He becomes more attentive, he becomes more observant, and he becomes more in harmony with the nature.
Then he starts to challenge the things that he has been doing before and starts to really do what he believes is beneficial for the land, what is heating the land.
Then this one is the first step.
From there, actually we can go further.
In the farming industry, in agriculture, today we speak about agroecology, which actually recognize this interconnection that everything is interconnected, soil, water, seed, and also the human being.
So this is fine.
It's already understood.
But then there is another level which is important, which is only now becoming a matter of research.
We call it subtle agroecology.
Subtle agroecology is a new body of research that would look into something what is not visible.
The inputs or things that influence output.
But here we cannot see it and it's very difficult maybe to measure it, but it works.
These are things like vibrations, maybe even light, like sound, and this is also then an input of positive thoughts and pure feelings, which we believe is part of this subtle agrocology input.
This is what we want to Now, experiment with and this is what we have been experimenting with.
It was actually measured by different universities, but it's a process.
We never say that this is something that will replace the traditional agriculture.
This is something what we do in addition to bring even more benefit for the farmer and also for the nature.
Thank you so much, Anita.
I think that's a wonderful example.
And I'll take your phrase and also say that I think Bara, your work is often bridging between silence and science in much of what you do.
I mentioned before you helped build the face for Land masterclass.
You have been in the field building capacity for faith organizations to do this work.
And I want to maybe ask you when you're doing that kind of training, where do you see some of the missteps maybe from faith organizations as they start out? What do you see as the common traps? Where do you see the best practice when it comes to that training? And I know you often use your WAF Faith tree growing Guide, and Hanna maybe use that as an example because I get the question a lot of what's the difference between planting a tree and growing a tree for a faith community and what may be involved in that process? Yeah.
Thank you so much, Tarek.
I'm so happy that we can speak about the faith growing tree guide here and talking about the masterclass.
My role is to breach faith in science like he says, and I'm hoping that the faith leaders who will enroll in this masterclass who will be able to assess the state of their own land, the level of degradation because through the course will be able to wear a lens of seeing degradation that they've not been seeing before.
After assessing the level of degradation of their land, they should be able to draw a roadmap.
Now that our land is degraded, what do we need to do? They need to draw a vision out of that.
The vision statement is simply saying we are here and we want to journey to reach a place.
An example, I'm saying, maybe you're talking about a restored green space for gathering, for reflection, for meditation, and for prayer as well.
And so starting off there, the next step will be thinking about who to work with because restoration work is never successful taken solo or as an individual organization.
So after going through the class, they should be able to develop partnerships with technical partners, the NGOs, the government agencies, the private sector who come in with the strength of funding and much more the local community without which no restoration process can succeed.
Then after that, they need to draw up a plan, an action plan which is collaborative because then it's not working simply, it's working as a partnership.
And in that restoration plan, they should be talking about what do we want to do? Which trees, if they are trees to be grown and where are we going to grow them, and what scale are we talking about? Where do we get the resources to do this and who will steward those trees after we plant them? If it is assisted natural regeneration, who is going to do the fencing and what other restorative measures are we going to undertake? Basically, those are things I expect anybody who goes through the course should be able to accomplish that in a short time one week.
Thank you.
Yeah, I did want to ask you this as well because I know this has come up and I wonder if you can speak to it a little bit around both the differences in the WF approach, especially when it comes to faith communities.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
We At WWF, we breach the science and faith.
From the science perspective, we talk about stewardship, caring for nature.
For many years, from the science perspective, we've been talking about planting trees, and as you know, planting a tree is only about the start of the journey.
A tree has two phases of life.
It has the first phase where you put it in the ground, but the next phase is the naturing, the stewarding, the taking care of until it grows.
So Basically, we encouraging now tree growing because then that is a recipe for a successful restoration process if you're thinking about using trees as a tool to do that.
And so for many years, governments and organization will start with tree planting as an end in itself.
But for as we're saying, you've only started the journey you've given birth to a baby, you need to nurture that baby, you need to take care of that baby.
Personally, I think that maybe tree planting is just about 45%.
The rest goes to stewardship and a successful tree growing initiative for restoration must allocate resources towards nurturing.
That tree until it thrives.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Russo.
We really appreciate that.
If you'd like to hear more about the way of work, please do approach him as well after this.
I want to pass it to the audience in a moment for any questions, but also, I'd say even more than questions, we'd love to hear your own reflections.
I know many of you also come from faith traditions that we may not have had a chance to represent here on the stage.
So it'd beautiful to hear your reflections on what has been shared.
We've covered inner and outer restoration.
We've covered silence and the science and the bridges in between.
We also covered the moral courage that it requires as well to often do this work and to partner.
And maybe before I hand it to the audience, I wonder if there's anything else from our speakers who maybe in just reacting to each other and what you've shared, was there any other thought, feeling, positive emotion that came off that you'd also like to express to each other and what you've heard from your fellow panelists? Well, I guess I would like to just start by expressing gratitude and a feeling of connectedness.
I think each of our stories in some way are so different, different parts of the world, different communities, different, um, Yeah, approaches, but yet there is such a deep sense of recognition in each other, a deep sense of unity and honoring.
And I think at a time when in our world when fractured, we're fractured, we're siloed, we're defensive and violent with each other, I think just being on this panel is so hopeful.
It's restoring hope because I think when it comes down to people, communities on the ground, lived experience, that we really do desire a better world.
And so, I just a feeling a lot of gratitude and unity.
Thank you.
Yeah, for me, I think it's been interesting to hear from her that the challenges of climate change and degradation we face today is a question of disconnection.
And I think from the scientific perspective, sometimes it doesn't make sense.
But from the faith perspective, I think she put it so well that we disconnected from ourselves, we're disconnected from nature, we're disconnected from one another.
And I would add that from the Christian perspective, we are also disconnected from God, and so things go hay way.
So thank you.
That has been very inspirational.
Thank you for adding this main disconnection.
Yes, I also would like to express my gratitude because I can feel the power in this gathering.
I think this is what will make the change.
It's a power of collective intention.
And it's a power of collective action.
That's why actually I see the value for me of going to all those different cops because all those cops, whether it be climate change, biodiversity, land restoration or ocean, these are very beautiful platforms which connect all of us.
Normally, faiths don't come so close so often together.
But Mother Earth is someone connects all of us.
This is very beautiful and very powerful and I think we can do it more.
We can build on it even more.
For example, the power of collective intention, which is expressed through different types of prayers, reflections, contemplation, meditation.
We all have our own ways, but it all comes to the same thing.
And then power of collaboration.
I think there is a lot of opportunities that we can still use, like we have heard so many beautiful and already experienced practices.
Why not to learn from each other even more and again, do it together.
Maybe I can invite everyone to very special gathering, speaking about this power of collective intention that creates actually the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is like a soil in which all the seeds can be sown and then they can grow.
During this scope, Cp 17 of UNCCD we are going to have, for the first time ever at this convention, very beautiful interface gathering in the spirit of Taloa.
So actually, we are going to meet people from so many different faiths, countries, languages.
Altogether, we are going to share what we feel, what we understand, and what we plan to do for our mother Earth, for the land, and for the people.
Tomorrow actually, we are going to have this interface gathering.
The spirit of Taloa.
Taloa is a Fhijiancept, indigenous concept of having a dialogue which brings us to consensus.
Very simple but very effective.
We tried it at so many other fora.
It's just three questions that are being asked to everyone and everyone is invited to respond.
The question, very simple, where are we at? Where do we want to get? The third question is how to get there.
Tomorrow, we will have this beautiful gathering in a beautiful Buddhist monastery who agreed to host us in the city of Umatar.
If you would like to join us, please let us know, and then we will give you more details.
It will be tomorrow at 4:00 P.M.
Everyone is welcome.
Thank you so much.
Well, just joining in a sense of gratitude, but also, I think a sense of potential because there are major changes afoot in the world, and many of them are contentious, many of them are very complicated because of the situation we find ourselves in at the moment.
But when you think of the forces that are right now shaping the next generation and generations to follow in terms of agriculture, agricultural policy, international trade agreements, everything that affects the future of food, farming, and rural community, that This representative group stands for that spiritual dimension in its full diversity.
That perspective needs to have a place at the table, not in a kind of you know, incidental way, not in the kind of, you know, we must have them off on this side because then we've accommodated them.
No, we need to be at the table as participants, bringing that perspective because it's not incidental, it's foundational to the changes that we're going to be going through as a global community over the next years.
And we need to be there and thank you for beginning to give us a place at the table.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Zone for that invitation.
I wonder if there's any reflections.
We have many.
I'll go in the order of where my eyes went.
I saw a sister over here and then the two individuals here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good afternoon high table because we are here.
I want to sincerely appreciate Sister Anita for holding me behind here because I take it as a decree and chance that God designed, I will be here to take home and not go back empty.
When I came here for about five days ago, I did not find my level.
I was lost.
Do I belong to this cop as an interfaith organization.
My name is Bola Usman from Nigeria.
I am the president and founder of Islamic Green Club Empowerment Initiative.
Precisely 2015 in Istanbul, Turkey, 17th of August 18th, there was a declaration International Islamic Climate Change Symposium.
By then I was 57 years.
I went back home, started InterveD.
If you Google globalists report.org, you will see me and my Christian Catholic counterparts.
We started it to neutralize detention of insurgency and insecurity and perspective of mischief makers that Christians and Muslims are not.
We did it.
We started planting trees.
But beyond tree planting, we introduced entrepreneurship.
But our youth are not going to the land to farm why? We found out that our soil had degraded and they needed to restore the land because of misuse of chemical fertilizer.
Hence, I paid myself here with a safe help of the family to come to reconnect with Islamimi relief World, which I've lost connectivity with.
I did not know I was going to find W Islami relief World by the G 20 Global and Initiative.
I congratulate myself.
Secondly, there was an initiative in Kenya in 2015.
This was what brought me here.
2015, there was Islamic F in Kenya sponsored by Alliance for Religions and Conservation.
Anywhere I went since I came, I did not find my mates everywhere, youth, entrepreneur.
Nothing that connects me to this because of my age.
I'm 70 years.
Nothing connect me here.
I was feeling disturbed until I encountered Anita.
And all what I want is now resonating here.
I want to sincerely appreciate you.
My question is, how can we benefit from the faith for and master class Mid not my age.
My youth are there.
Waiting because we want to restore our lands.
Chemical fertilizer have set us to where we are.
Farmers are no fatter, the herdsmen are losing weight.
What happened? Cancer has taken over Nigeria place because of we have disconnected from nature, and we have tampered with it beyond limits through so many ways.
Hence my question, how can I be helped out to reconnect with and sustain this very platform? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, sister and My Sister is also part of the Umma for Earth Alliance, which is the largest Muslim Alliance of climate and nature organizations in the world.
I'll come to your question in a moment.
I just also want to thank you for also really re emphasizing how important this work is, how important it is to engage faith communities in this process for us to find each other and to find each other here.
Thank you, sister.
And I have these two friends and colleagues here.
Thank you.
Yeah, good afternoon.
My name is Angeles Michael.
I'm from India.
I'm part of the World Council of Churches delegation here.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank all the presenters, you representing different faith communities coming together and bringing your different perspectives itself shows a positive sign towards our struggle for the restoration of land and protecting land.
Um I come from an organization called India Peace Center.
We work with different communities, faith communities, the Bahas Brahma Kumaris we have on our board people from Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.
One of my questions is, the faith communities, faith organizations around the globe on a significant and considerable amount of land, and so how they productively make use of the land.
You know, this is my question, and also about the concept of stewardship, which exist in almost all religions and religious scriptures, and it does in Christianity as well, Can we also go beyond the stewardship? Because stewardship is a choice and the religious scripture urges us to be co creator with God and not just taking care of the creation, but to act as if we are the creator.
Thank you very much.
Yes, good afternoon.
I am Angelique Walker Smith, and I am president of World Council of Churches from North America Turtle Island with my dear brother, our delegation from World Council of Churches.
But again, I'm coming from North America Turtle Island.
I want to appreciate everything that's been said.
I'm very grateful to have arrived last night for this journey and to have this kind of presentation.
I So I'm one that is really probing more deeply the indigenous communities in my part of the world in North America, Turtle Island.
So often our indigenous communities are not properly respected or recognized.
This is a failure, and we're speaking through that and to that in this particular season of World Council of Churches.
My question is, well, let me first say an affirmation.
I hear a wonderful thread of the importance of indigenous perspectives in all of what has been said.
I'd be very interested for you to respond two ways.
One, I think I'm right about that, but I haven't heard it explicitly stated necessarily from the presentations or I missed it.
It's quite possible I got in very late last night.
But my second part of the question is, particularly in my part of the world, North America Turtle Island, what do you want to say to us, particularly with your presentations today, that I think also can encourage leadership in our part of the world around what is being said today.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much and also just to say, with the World Council of Churches, Reverend Angelique will be joining us for a Business for Land and Faith presentation next week.
We have a couple of questions as well to close us out.
I will maybe just start with just the faith for and question more broadly, just to respond to the system directly the intention is for Faith for land to be an independent global coalition of faith organizations working around land restoration, racing diversification to work around capacity building efforts.
So the master class is available in eight different languages to be accessed by faith leaders who want to learn sort of the different steps around faith and land restoration, and that will be connected to larger technical support.
It's also exactly as you said, the space is missing at the moment for faith organizations to engage, both in this convention more broadly speaking, and that's what the G 20 has been building over the last couple of years.
But in the many different connected friends and networks, whether it's from dry lands to the wetlands convention beyond, we don't necessarily have an organized faith presence, so the Faith for and coalition will be there to support that.
That's the easy question.
I'll leave the harder questions to the experts.
We have a question sort of more broadly speaking around faith organizations have large land holding.
So what do we do to really take that from large land holdings towards restoration? You also have a question of how can we also go beyond the concept of stewardship, actually acting as creation itself and to participate in creation? And then we have a brilliant question around indigenous peoples and local communities of how and where the faith communities engage in a more positive way and also more direct question around what we say to the people of Turtle Island.
Hugh, your hands I start with you.
If I may respond to your specific question around traditional and indigenous wisdom.
To give you just one example from my own experience working with smallholder farmers in Haiti and they've gone through a lot of challenges.
One of the things that we discovered early on and I began working with smallholders there in 2010 There was a long tradition in Haiti and it was called combit.
It's a Haitian Creole word that means working together.
And so the tradition was that in the farming communities at harvest time and at planting time, farm families would volunteer to help each other without pay, without expectation, but simply, it was a community response that had been a long ancestral tradition, but it had been lost almost completely in Haiti because of the extreme poverty that meant it was hard for farmers to even think about this.
We consciously began to look at how you could reinstitute CombeT as a tradition and not impose anything on it, but simply what could we do to help revive it? And now, and in this particular case, we have about 10,000 farmer members and CombeT has come back roaring and it's a key part now of how the farmers work together.
What we discovered was that our contribution as an organization, this may sound odd, was to provide food.
Because that was one of the components of Combat that one of the reasons that had been lost was that the farmers couldn't afford that contribution.
And so we would provide the meal around which the volunteer service could take place.
But then once that gets restored, then there's a sort of element of dignity that comes back into the community because they see that tradition has come back.
They acknowledge it as a long ancestral process, but now it's rooted in the community and there again.
That's just one example.
But I appreciate.
When you ask how to to advise you and your community.
When I started this work in Haiti with my Haitian colleague, we went around the country and we basically asked farmers what they needed.
And we then took that advice and formed an organization.
Thank you.
I also got to sign.
We have 2 minutes left.
So I'll also sign posts for the conversation.
We'll continue onto those chairs there in a moment.
Any other closing words in direct response to the questions and debuts.
Quick and precise.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I would like to offer an idea to experiment to my brother from India from WCC regarding going beyond the stewardship.
Once one of the astronauts, I don't remember his name, when he saw the Earth from the space, he saw this blue marble, and then he realized, and then he said that Earth doesn't need to be saved.
It has to be loved.
I think it's a matter of attitude, how we look at what is to be done.
For me, it's the power of love that makes me do what I do.
It's not like hardship, hard work.
But this requires that I have this love and this I can get only from the source of love through maintaining this connection, and then treating Earth as mother.
To have really this relationship, and then everyone becomes my brother.
I think this is the matter of an attitude for me.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
I just to assure my sister from North America that at WWF Believes in Values Program, the indigenous people are a very integral part of that program.
When you talk about what we believe and our spiritual values, the indigenous peoples are connected.
In Kenya, we are protecting the Kayah forests where the Mij Kenda people live and WF has supported them even to develop a policy around that and fenced off their forests for their spiritual well being.
That is well taken care of.
And finally, to my sister from Nigeria, Islamic farming is getting widely practiced.
I was involved initially in developing the toolkit by AC in Nairobi, and I'm happy to give you an online version of that toolkit.
I'm happy to share with you the Al Mizan which you know is the Islamic covenant for Earth so that you can do more of what the Islamic faith says about that.
Thank you.
Amy, closing word to you.
All right.
Thank you, everyone and fellow citizen of Turtle Island.
That's a great challenge.
Just practically, I think one of the things within the Catholic Church, some communities are exploring a return of the land to the original people.
Our properties, our parishes returning that land, I can share more with you about that.
But I guess I just want to close by saying that as people of faith, I think probably across all of our traditions, we have a different sense of time and In these cups, I think there's always a great sense of urgency and which is real, which is very real.
And I think as people of faith, what we can do and what we often do is live in that liminal time.
When it's bigger than ourselves, it's much longer in both directions and living in concrete realities that have real urgency.
And so to be able to live in that short and long time.
Thank you.
I think that's a beautiful way to end.
Thank you for your time and thank you for joining us, and the conversation will continue.
Thank you, everyone.
Nick Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick.
N, N.
Nick, N Check, check, check, check, check.
Okay.