Lessons from the past key to fixing battered landscape

There are four key principles to repair our damaged landscape and help our continent flourish when rain comes, writes Peter Andrews.

Precious resource: Australia’s irregular rainfall means water cannot be wasted.

IT HAS been declared that Australia is a laboratory for the world because of the impact of introduced animals, people, plants and agriculture.

It’s also an example of failure, but the good news is that in enough cases, solutions are available that all forms of agriculture can use.

The ancient Australian landscape provides a blueprint and by remaking this landscape following this blueprint, we have immediate solutions. When making decisions, the following fundamental processes of our ancient landscape should be evaluated:

ALL life on land is packaged sunlight. Using the energy of sunlight, plants sequester carbon daily. Plants also manage water, using/negating the heat from the sun. Both of these roles are important in managing our climate, but it is this second role that plants play in moderating radiant heat extremes (and therefore moderating climate) that is often overlooked;

ALL life’s compounds and the fertility that generates life moves downward due to gravity. They move from high ground to low ground; they move to the depths of soil and they keep moving out to sea if nothing stops them.

In the ancient Australian landscape, multiple processes existed to filter and prevent nutrients from washing away, to bring nutrients out of the deeper soil, and to restore nutrients to high ground;

OUR rehydration system has been replaced with drainage systems. The ancient Australian landscape saw plants evolve in a way to keep the landscape hydrated through the (daily) small water cycle. Through the small water cycle or perpetuated broader cycles, the land was rehydrated despite unpredictable rainfall.

Human activity has removed the plants and the plant-based biological landforms, altering the landscape in a way that we have created a drainage system.

The current paradigm is floods are to be drained, rather than seen as landscape rehydration events. On a continent where rainfall is irregular and water is precious, we are still draining our land and landscapes; and

THE drainage system has eliminated most of the filtering systems so that the recycling of daily plant production is not possible. We are now trading on finite reserves.

To address climate, we must enable plants to perform their key role in climate moderation. To do this we must simultaneously repair the nutrient cycle and replace the drainage system with a rehydration system driven by plants.

For the past 40 years, I have been attempting to understand the visible examples of these fundamental processes. To that end I have established an international reference panel currently operating as Rain for Climate and have gathered the most experienced and reliable individuals in this country and other parts of the world.

Provided an independent advisory service is available to provide the right instruction, we can repair this landscape.

● Peter Andrews OAM is Natural Sequence Farming founder and land hydrology expert

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