Diversity reduces vulnerability

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

I’m an avid reader of non-fiction literature. But it had been a while since I’d read a book cover to cover.

During the last two days of our recent vacation, when my husband and I were alone, I had the opportunity to read Finding Mother Tree by Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard Ph.D.

Not only is Simard a renowned forest ecology researcher but a captivating storyteller.

The book was part biography/part popular science.

The following is not a book review. I just share some thoughts inspired by what I learned.

Discovery of the wisdom of the forest

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Our health is a reflection of the health of our environment.

Many cultures have long recognized the importance of the natural world to human health.

Current science on the microbiome, the collection of microbes that naturally live on our bodies and inside us, suggests we are suffering from a lack of diversity within.

We have an epidemic of missing microbes, causing us to overreact to food and pollen, leading to autoimmune conditions and increased vulnerability to infection. Why?

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we went to war with infectious microbes, not only in medicine but also in agribusiness - using more antibiotics, herbicides, insecticides, and pesticides. We killed off the harmful bugs using carpet bombs and unintentionally created superbugs over time. We decimated the good bugs that keep the harmful bugs in check.

Trees and plants cannot run away from their prey. They produce defence chemicals to protect themselves. The chemicals can be poisonous or medicinal, depending on the dose and need.

Without natural challenges, trees become less resilient, as do we.

Forests are not just a source of timber and pulp. They supply us with food, water, medicine and fresh air. By acting as carbon sinks that absorb gases, they also help regulate weather patterns.

As in farming, clear-cutting and spraying pesticides to plant one type of fast-growing profitable tree crop that does not have to compete for resources make a forest more fragile and vulnerable to incoming threats and invaders.

Rather than competing for resources, in her thorough research, Suzanne Simard discovered that different species of trees cooperatively support each other by communicating and sharing essential nutrients through an intertwined root and fungal filament network underneath the forest.

Through this wood-wide web, mature trees share nutrients with their offspring and exchange information with neighbouring trees, promoting adaptation, defence, long-term health and sustainability.

Closing thoughts

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

~ Navajo Proverb

We must conserve our forests to help regulate weather patterns and promote the well-being of future generations.

Diversity, or variety in living things, increases resilience - promotes anti-fragility.

Anti-fragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive because of challenges. It means that something does not merely withstand a shock but becomes more robust because of it. It is an investment term coined by a former options trader - Nassim Nicholas Taleb which I find highly applicable here.

Elite, influential, unelected global leaders who know nothing about nutrition yet promote fake, highly processed lab-made "foods" and genetic manipulation of living things to supposedly mitigate climate change and feed the world would benefit from learning about the wood-wide web.

Rather than go to war with microbes, or buy up farms to grow unsustainable mono-crops dependent on fossil fuel chemical inputs, we need to prioritize the protection of the soil and forests and encourage food sovereignty.

Regenerative agriculture will promote the healing of the environment and humanity. Such change will elicit the anti-fragility of living things and reduce the burden on the healthcare system over time.