Biosphere Earth — 17: Local Priorities

OK, so, local strategy #1 is global strategy #1: Act Globally. In other words, the number one thing you can do locally is help globally; help best practice organizations working on resolving our most urgent global priorities.

Then #2, Go vegan.

Then #3, Act Locally — do things where you live and work that rebuild and reconnect green infrastructure; natural wilderness ecosystems. This blog provides a quick vision for that: Acting Locally to rescue and restore Biosphere Earth.

Context

Once one considers the history and architecture of the human life-support system it’s easy to see Earth not as some planet in space we just happen to live on, but as the only planetary biosphere; a contiguous wilderness of land and water ecosystems animated by their biodiversity, which has recently been interrupted and scaled-back by humanity’s growth.

Forest fragmentation (Breiehagen)

From our perspective, Earth is a wild planet not a “blue” planet. It’s the advent and continuation of life, then wilderness ecosystems in waters and on lands, that created us. “Blue” is just the color of the oceans. Wilderness keeps us alive.

Currently, we are driving wildernesses into extinction. Again, act globally first. The local goal is to reverse wilderness loss by restoring and re-linking local vegetative continuity; local “green infrastructure.”

(my image)

Reconstructing continuity can mean starting with any bit of vegetation you can add to your personal landscape. The wilder, the better. Local species, a must. Scale-up from there to bring things like wild yards, school gardens, and public parks into ubuiquitous presence everywhere there are humans. Biospherically even small, low-grade wildernesses provide bio-physical benefits, services, and security technology cannot.

You can play a role at every level. Here’s a sequence showing how rebuilding and reconnecting wilderness integrity can look, for small to local spaces—

From outside your door

To rewildling your nearest landscape (photos: Annette Stone)

To cultivating your yard (CG)

Or converting it into production (Helvenston)

To school gardens

And shared community spaces (images: Justin Stewart)

To urban parks (Creek People)

Vegetated walls

And rooftops

To roof farms

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We want to see ecosystems merge with and connect to larger wildernesses.

More in the next blog! Thanks

This blog is part 17 of a series on Biosphere Earth.
Read the previous blog: Global Priorities.
To review other posts, visit the TOC.