TED2013
Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
Filmed:
Readability: 4.1
6,848,484 views
"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work may show -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert. (NOTE: Statements in this talk have been challenged by scientists working in this field. Please read "Criticisms & Updates" below for more details.)
Allan Savory - Grassland ecosystem pioneer
Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world. Full bio
Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:17
The most massive
0
1488
3569
00:20
tsunami perfect storm
1
5057
4935
00:25
is bearing down upon us.
2
9992
3879
00:29
This perfect storm
3
13871
3246
00:33
is mounting a grim reality, increasingly grim reality,
4
17117
5168
00:38
and we are facing that reality
5
22285
4950
00:43
with the full belief
6
27235
1381
00:44
that we can solve our problems with technology,
7
28616
2556
00:47
and that's very understandable.
8
31172
2296
00:49
Now, this perfect storm that we are facing
9
33468
4207
00:53
is the result of our rising population,
10
37675
3510
00:57
rising towards 10 billion people,
11
41185
2804
00:59
land that is turning to desert,
12
43989
2644
01:02
and, of course, climate change.
13
46633
3108
01:05
Now there's no question about it at all:
14
49741
2661
01:08
we will only solve the problem
15
52402
1811
01:10
of replacing fossil fuels with technology.
16
54213
3512
01:13
But fossil fuels, carbon -- coal and gas --
17
57725
3128
01:16
are by no means the only thing
18
60853
2121
01:18
that is causing climate change.
19
62974
4118
01:22
Desertification
20
67092
1883
01:24
is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,
21
68975
5326
01:30
and this happens only when
22
74301
2301
01:32
we create too much bare ground.
23
76602
2009
01:34
There's no other cause.
24
78611
2006
01:36
And I intend to focus
25
80617
2018
01:38
on most of the world's land that is turning to desert.
26
82635
4906
01:43
But I have for you a very simple message
27
87541
5293
01:48
that offers more hope than you can imagine.
28
92834
4196
01:52
We have environments
29
97030
2068
01:54
where humidity is guaranteed throughout the year.
30
99098
3244
01:58
On those, it is almost impossible
31
102342
2504
02:00
to create vast areas of bare ground.
32
104846
2789
02:03
No matter what you do, nature covers it up so quickly.
33
107635
3622
02:07
And we have environments
34
111257
1747
02:08
where we have months of humidity
35
113004
2693
02:11
followed by months of dryness,
36
115697
1778
02:13
and that is where desertification is occurring.
37
117475
3478
02:16
Fortunately, with space technology now,
38
120953
2056
02:18
we can look at it from space,
39
123009
1677
02:20
and when we do, you can see the proportions fairly well.
40
124686
4264
02:24
Generally, what you see in green
41
128950
1623
02:26
is not desertifying,
42
130573
1855
02:28
and what you see in brown is,
43
132428
2306
02:30
and these are by far the greatest areas of the Earth.
44
134734
4372
02:35
About two thirds, I would guess, of the world is desertifying.
45
139106
4785
02:39
I took this picture in the Tihamah Desert
46
143891
2924
02:42
while 25 millimeters -- that's an inch of rain -- was falling.
47
146815
3704
02:46
Think of it in terms of drums of water,
48
150519
2712
02:49
each containing 200 liters.
49
153231
2672
02:51
Over 1,000 drums of water fell on every hectare
50
155903
4600
02:56
of that land that day.
51
160503
2874
02:59
The next day, the land looked like this.
52
163377
2384
03:01
Where had that water gone?
53
165761
2823
03:04
Some of it ran off as flooding,
54
168584
2397
03:06
but most of the water that soaked into the soil
55
170981
2947
03:09
simply evaporated out again,
56
173928
2281
03:12
exactly as it does in your garden
57
176209
2369
03:14
if you leave the soil uncovered.
58
178578
3015
03:17
Now, because the fate of water and carbon
59
181593
3466
03:20
are tied to soil organic matter,
60
185059
3558
03:24
when we damage soils, you give off carbon.
61
188617
3927
03:28
Carbon goes back to the atmosphere.
62
192544
2826
03:31
Now you're told over and over, repeatedly,
63
195370
4105
03:35
that desertification is only occurring
64
199475
3000
03:38
in arid and semi-arid areas of the world,
65
202475
3649
03:42
and that tall grasslands like this one
66
206124
3975
03:45
in high rainfall are of no consequence.
67
210099
3632
03:49
But if you do not look at grasslands but look down into them,
68
213731
4577
03:54
you find that most of the soil in that grassland
69
218308
2711
03:56
that you've just seen is bare and covered with a crust of algae,
70
221019
4291
04:01
leading to increased runoff and evaporation.
71
225310
3118
04:04
That is the cancer of desertification
72
228428
3986
04:08
that we do not recognize till its terminal form.
73
232414
4536
04:12
Now we know that desertification is caused by livestock,
74
236950
5312
04:18
mostly cattle, sheep and goats,
75
242262
2784
04:20
overgrazing the plants,
76
245046
2817
04:23
leaving the soil bare and giving off methane.
77
247863
4119
04:27
Almost everybody knows this,
78
251982
2240
04:30
from nobel laureates to golf caddies,
79
254222
2835
04:32
or was taught it, as I was.
80
257057
2631
04:35
Now, the environments like you see here,
81
259688
3470
04:39
dusty environments in Africa where I grew up,
82
263158
2864
04:41
and I loved wildlife,
83
266022
2920
04:44
and so I grew up hating livestock
84
268942
3392
04:48
because of the damage they were doing.
85
272334
2028
04:50
And then my university education as an ecologist
86
274362
3284
04:53
reinforced my beliefs.
87
277646
3088
04:56
Well, I have news for you.
88
280734
5276
05:01
We were once just as certain
89
286010
3284
05:05
that the world was flat.
90
289294
2280
05:07
We were wrong then, and we are wrong again.
91
291574
3945
05:11
And I want to invite you now
92
295519
2175
05:13
to come along on my journey of reeducation and discovery.
93
297694
6254
05:19
When I was a young man,
94
303948
2571
05:22
a young biologist in Africa,
95
306519
2895
05:25
I was involved in setting aside marvelous areas
96
309414
4417
05:29
as future national parks.
97
313831
2519
05:32
Now no sooner — this was in the 1950s —
98
316350
3427
05:35
and no sooner did we remove the hunting,
99
319777
3168
05:38
drum-beating people to protect the animals,
100
322945
3481
05:42
than the land began to deteriorate,
101
326426
1893
05:44
as you see in this park that we formed.
102
328319
4246
05:48
Now, no livestock were involved,
103
332565
2323
05:50
but suspecting that we had too many elephants now,
104
334888
3632
05:54
I did the research and I proved we had too many,
105
338520
4265
05:58
and I recommended that we would have to reduce their numbers
106
342785
3584
06:02
and bring them down to a level that the land could sustain.
107
346369
4052
06:06
Now, that was a terrible decision for me to have to make,
108
350421
3784
06:10
and it was political dynamite, frankly.
109
354205
2859
06:12
So our government formed a team of experts
110
357064
3125
06:16
to evaluate my research.
111
360189
2641
06:18
They did. They agreed with me,
112
362830
2407
06:21
and over the following years,
113
365237
1911
06:23
we shot 40,000 elephants to try to stop the damage.
114
367148
5891
06:28
And it got worse, not better.
115
373039
3740
06:32
Loving elephants as I do,
116
376779
2499
06:35
that was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life,
117
379278
3606
06:38
and I will carry that to my grave.
118
382884
2728
06:41
One good thing did come out of it.
119
385612
2472
06:43
It made me absolutely determined
120
388084
3376
06:47
to devote my life to finding solutions.
121
391460
5480
06:52
When I came to the United States, I got a shock,
122
396940
4085
06:56
to find national parks like this one
123
401025
2468
06:59
desertifying as badly as anything in Africa.
124
403493
4231
07:03
And there'd been no livestock on this land
125
407724
2004
07:05
for over 70 years.
126
409728
2724
07:08
And I found that American scientists
127
412452
1926
07:10
had no explanation for this
128
414378
2914
07:13
except that it is arid and natural.
129
417292
2960
07:16
So I then began looking
130
420252
3360
07:19
at all the research plots I could
131
423612
3251
07:22
over the whole of the Western United States
132
426863
2703
07:25
where cattle had been removed
133
429566
2201
07:27
to prove that it would stop desertification,
134
431767
2872
07:30
but I found the opposite,
135
434639
1833
07:32
as we see on this research station,
136
436472
2822
07:35
where this grassland that was green in 1961,
137
439294
3724
07:38
by 2002 had changed to that situation.
138
443018
5013
07:43
And the authors of the position paper on climate change
139
448031
4719
07:48
from which I obtained these pictures
140
452750
2553
07:51
attribute this change to "unknown processes."
141
455303
5819
07:57
Clearly, we have never understood
142
461122
3994
08:01
what is causing desertification,
143
465116
2684
08:03
which has destroyed many civilizations
144
467800
3048
08:06
and now threatens us globally.
145
470848
2692
08:09
We have never understood it.
146
473540
2453
08:11
Take one square meter of soil
147
475993
2119
08:14
and make it bare like this is down here,
148
478112
2703
08:16
and I promise you, you will find it much colder at dawn
149
480815
3179
08:19
and much hotter at midday
150
483994
2804
08:22
than that same piece of ground if it's just covered with litter,
151
486798
3670
08:26
plant litter.
152
490468
1614
08:27
You have changed the microclimate.
153
492082
3037
08:31
Now, by the time you are doing that
154
495119
2099
08:33
and increasing greatly the percentage of bare ground
155
497218
5588
08:38
on more than half the world's land,
156
502806
4025
08:42
you are changing macroclimate.
157
506831
3230
08:45
But we have just simply not understood
158
510061
2589
08:48
why was it beginning to happen 10,000 years ago?
159
512650
3986
08:52
Why has it accelerated lately?
160
516636
2650
08:55
We had no understanding of that.
161
519286
1967
08:57
What we had failed to understand
162
521253
3425
09:00
was that these seasonal humidity environments of the world,
163
524678
3823
09:04
the soil and the vegetation
164
528501
2896
09:07
developed with very large numbers of grazing animals,
165
531397
5792
09:13
and that these grazing animals
166
537189
2624
09:15
developed with ferocious pack-hunting predators.
167
539813
5392
09:21
Now, the main defense against pack-hunting predators
168
545205
3892
09:24
is to get into herds,
169
549097
2341
09:27
and the larger the herd, the safer the individuals.
170
551438
3992
09:31
Now, large herds dung and urinate all over their own food,
171
555430
4831
09:36
and they have to keep moving,
172
560261
3000
09:39
and it was that movement
173
563261
1917
09:41
that prevented the overgrazing of plants,
174
565178
2804
09:43
while the periodic trampling
175
567982
2399
09:46
ensured good cover of the soil,
176
570381
2520
09:48
as we see where a herd has passed.
177
572901
3112
09:51
This picture is a typical seasonal grassland.
178
576013
6228
09:58
It has just come through four months of rain,
179
582241
2792
10:00
and it's now going into eight months of dry season.
180
585033
3682
10:04
And watch the change as it goes into this long dry season.
181
588715
3468
10:08
Now, all of that grass you see aboveground
182
592183
3076
10:11
has to decay biologically
183
595259
3748
10:14
before the next growing season, and if it doesn't,
184
599007
3524
10:18
the grassland and the soil begin to die.
185
602531
4193
10:22
Now, if it does not decay biologically,
186
606724
3195
10:25
it shifts to oxidation, which is a very slow process,
187
609919
5139
10:30
and this smothers and kills grasses,
188
615058
2955
10:33
leading to a shift to woody vegetation
189
618013
3109
10:37
and bare soil, releasing carbon.
190
621122
3420
10:40
To prevent that, we have traditionally used fire.
191
624542
5104
10:45
But fire also leaves the soil bare, releasing carbon,
192
629646
5849
10:51
and worse than that,
193
635495
2391
10:53
burning one hectare of grassland
194
637886
2680
10:56
gives off more, and more damaging, pollutants
195
640566
3160
10:59
than 6,000 cars.
196
643726
2914
11:02
And we are burning in Africa, every single year,
197
646640
4393
11:06
more than one billion hectares of grasslands,
198
651033
4639
11:11
and almost nobody is talking about it.
199
655672
3626
11:15
We justify the burning, as scientists,
200
659298
4339
11:19
because it does remove the dead material
201
663637
2913
11:22
and it allows the plants to grow.
202
666550
3303
11:25
Now, looking at this grassland of ours that has gone dry,
203
669853
3096
11:28
what could we do to keep that healthy?
204
672949
2696
11:31
And bear in mind, I'm talking of most of the world's land now.
205
675645
3024
11:34
Okay? We cannot reduce animal numbers to rest it more
206
678669
4688
11:39
without causing desertification and climate change.
207
683357
3616
11:42
We cannot burn it without causing
208
686973
3137
11:46
desertification and climate change.
209
690110
2265
11:48
What are we going to do?
210
692375
3985
11:54
There is only one option,
211
698420
2390
11:56
I'll repeat to you, only one option
212
700810
2861
11:59
left to climatologists and scientists,
213
703671
2719
12:02
and that is to do the unthinkable,
214
706390
2928
12:05
and to use livestock,
215
709318
2736
12:07
bunched and moving,
216
712054
2955
12:10
as a proxy for former herds and predators,
217
715009
3389
12:14
and mimic nature.
218
718398
1744
12:16
There is no other alternative left to mankind.
219
720142
4504
12:20
So let's do that.
220
724646
2448
12:22
So on this bit of grassland, we'll do it, but just in the foreground.
221
727094
3370
12:26
We'll impact it very heavily with cattle to mimic nature,
222
730464
3238
12:29
and we've done so, and look at that.
223
733702
2824
12:32
All of that grass is now covering the soil
224
736526
3360
12:35
as dung, urine and litter or mulch,
225
739886
3970
12:39
as every one of the gardeners amongst you would understand,
226
743856
3280
12:43
and that soil is ready to absorb and hold the rain,
227
747136
4361
12:47
to store carbon, and to break down methane.
228
751497
5007
12:52
And we did that,
229
756504
2230
12:54
without using fire to damage the soil,
230
758734
2770
12:57
and the plants are free to grow.
231
761504
3136
13:00
When I first realized
232
764640
2264
13:02
that we had no option as scientists
233
766904
2482
13:05
but to use much-vilified livestock
234
769386
2760
13:08
to address climate change and desertification,
235
772146
5247
13:13
I was faced with a real dilemma.
236
777393
2235
13:15
How were we to do it?
237
779628
1725
13:17
We'd had 10,000 years of extremely knowledgeable pastoralists
238
781353
4564
13:21
bunching and moving their animals,
239
785917
1948
13:23
but they had created the great manmade deserts of the world.
240
787865
3667
13:27
Then we'd had 100 years of modern rain science,
241
791532
3879
13:31
and that had accelerated desertification,
242
795411
3259
13:34
as we first discovered in Africa
243
798670
2173
13:36
and then confirmed in the United States,
244
800843
2664
13:39
and as you see in this picture
245
803507
2119
13:41
of land managed by the federal government.
246
805626
3361
13:44
Clearly more was needed
247
808987
1901
13:46
than bunching and moving the animals,
248
810888
2089
13:48
and humans, over thousands of years,
249
812977
3570
13:52
had never been able to deal with nature's complexity.
250
816547
4386
13:56
But we biologists and ecologists
251
820933
2384
13:59
had never tackled anything as complex as this.
252
823317
2969
14:02
So rather than reinvent the wheel,
253
826286
2639
14:04
I began studying other professions to see if anybody had.
254
828925
4136
14:08
And I found there were planning techniques
255
833061
2472
14:11
that I could take and adapt to our biological need,
256
835533
3772
14:15
and from those I developed what we call
257
839305
2697
14:17
holistic management and planned grazing,
258
842002
3310
14:21
a planning process,
259
845312
1799
14:23
and that does address all of nature's complexity
260
847111
3695
14:26
and our social, environmental, economic complexity.
261
850806
5249
14:31
Today, we have young women like this one
262
856055
2664
14:34
teaching villages in Africa
263
858719
2368
14:36
how to put their animals together into larger herds,
264
861087
2936
14:39
plan their grazing to mimic nature,
265
864023
2704
14:42
and where we have them hold their animals overnight --
266
866727
4041
14:46
we run them in a predator-friendly manner,
267
870768
2259
14:48
because we have a lot of lands, and so on --
268
873027
2322
14:51
and where they do this and hold them overnight
269
875349
2194
14:53
to prepare the crop fields,
270
877543
1805
14:55
we are getting very great increases in crop yield as well.
271
879348
3984
14:59
Let's look at some results.
272
883332
1617
15:00
This is land close to land that we manage in Zimbabwe.
273
884949
4224
15:05
It has just come through four months of very good rains
274
889173
3544
15:08
it got that year, and it's going into the long dry season.
275
892717
3510
15:12
But as you can see, all of that rain, almost of all it,
276
896227
3035
15:15
has evaporated from the soil surface.
277
899262
3107
15:18
Their river is dry despite the rain just having ended,
278
902369
3802
15:22
and we have 150,000 people
279
906171
3520
15:25
on almost permanent food aid.
280
909691
3750
15:29
Now let's go to our land nearby on the same day,
281
913441
4496
15:33
with the same rainfall, and look at that.
282
917937
2840
15:36
Our river is flowing and healthy and clean.
283
920777
2705
15:39
It's fine.
284
923482
2487
15:41
The production of grass, shrubs, trees, wildlife,
285
925969
5318
15:47
everything is now more productive,
286
931287
2856
15:50
and we have virtually no fear of dry years.
287
934143
4105
15:54
And we did that by increasing the cattle and goats
288
938248
5495
15:59
400 percent,
289
943743
1925
16:01
planning the grazing to mimic nature
290
945668
3130
16:04
and integrate them with all the elephants, buffalo,
291
948798
2421
16:07
giraffe and other animals that we have.
292
951219
3587
16:10
But before we began, our land looked like that.
293
954806
5722
16:16
This site was bare and eroding for over 30 years
294
960528
5417
16:21
regardless of what rain we got.
295
965945
2769
16:24
Okay? Watch the marked tree and see the change
296
968714
3618
16:28
as we use livestock to mimic nature.
297
972332
3653
16:31
This was another site
298
975985
1462
16:33
where it had been bare and eroding,
299
977447
2378
16:35
and at the base of the marked small tree,
300
979825
2704
16:38
we had lost over 30 centimeters of soil. Okay?
301
982529
4288
16:42
And again, watch the change
302
986817
1609
16:44
just using livestock to mimic nature.
303
988426
2850
16:47
And there are fallen trees in there now,
304
991276
2131
16:49
because the better land is now attracting elephants, etc.
305
993407
4957
16:54
This land in Mexico was in terrible condition,
306
998364
3656
16:57
and I've had to mark the hill
307
1002020
1954
16:59
because the change is so profound.
308
1003974
4187
17:04
(Applause)
309
1008161
5725
17:11
I began helping a family in the Karoo Desert in the 1970s
310
1015721
4937
17:16
turn the desert that you see on the right there
311
1020658
2968
17:19
back to grassland,
312
1023626
1934
17:21
and thankfully, now their grandchildren are on the land
313
1025560
3522
17:24
with hope for the future.
314
1029082
1843
17:26
And look at the amazing change in this one,
315
1030925
2797
17:29
where that gully has completely healed
316
1033722
2712
17:32
using nothing but livestock mimicking nature,
317
1036434
4579
17:36
and once more, we have the third generation of that family
318
1041013
4225
17:41
on that land with their flag still flying.
319
1045238
3280
17:44
The vast grasslands of Patagonia
320
1048518
2568
17:46
are turning to desert as you see here.
321
1051086
2076
17:49
The man in the middle is an Argentinian researcher,
322
1053162
3060
17:52
and he has documented the steady decline of that land
323
1056222
3644
17:55
over the years as they kept reducing sheep numbers.
324
1059866
3476
17:59
They put 25,000 sheep in one flock,
325
1063342
4848
18:04
really mimicking nature now with planned grazing,
326
1068190
3949
18:08
and they have documented a 50-percent increase
327
1072139
4343
18:12
in the production of the land in the first year.
328
1076482
3468
18:15
We now have in the violent Horn of Africa
329
1079950
3040
18:18
pastoralists planning their grazing to mimic nature
330
1082990
3456
18:22
and openly saying it is the only hope they have
331
1086446
3496
18:25
of saving their families and saving their culture.
332
1089942
3168
18:29
Ninety-five percent of that land
333
1093110
2076
18:31
can only feed people from animals.
334
1095186
3660
18:34
I remind you that I am talking about
335
1098846
2111
18:36
most of the world's land here that controls our fate,
336
1100957
4441
18:41
including the most violent region of the world,
337
1105398
3056
18:44
where only animals can feed people
338
1108454
2952
18:47
from about 95 percent of the land.
339
1111406
3304
18:50
What we are doing globally is causing climate change
340
1114710
5134
18:55
as much as, I believe, fossil fuels,
341
1119844
3296
18:59
and maybe more than fossil fuels.
342
1123140
3536
19:02
But worse than that, it is causing hunger, poverty,
343
1126676
3675
19:06
violence, social breakdown and war,
344
1130351
2997
19:09
and as I am talking to you,
345
1133348
2408
19:11
millions of men, women and children
346
1135756
3150
19:14
are suffering and dying.
347
1138906
2402
19:17
And if this continues,
348
1141308
2712
19:19
we are unlikely to be able to stop the climate changing,
349
1144020
3794
19:23
even after we have eliminated the use of fossil fuels.
350
1147814
5047
19:28
I believe I've shown you how we can work with nature
351
1152861
4236
19:32
at very low cost
352
1157097
2456
19:35
to reverse all this.
353
1159553
2496
19:37
We are already doing so
354
1162049
2432
19:40
on about 15 million hectares
355
1164481
3996
19:44
on five continents,
356
1168477
2632
19:47
and people who understand
357
1171109
1627
19:48
far more about carbon than I do
358
1172736
2290
19:50
calculate that, for illustrative purposes,
359
1175026
3058
19:53
if we do what I am showing you here,
360
1178084
2794
19:56
we can take enough carbon out of the atmosphere
361
1180878
4025
20:00
and safely store it in the grassland soils
362
1184903
3334
20:04
for thousands of years,
363
1188237
1626
20:05
and if we just do that on about half the world's grasslands
364
1189863
4996
20:10
that I've shown you,
365
1194859
1354
20:12
we can take us back to pre-industrial levels,
366
1196213
3700
20:15
while feeding people.
367
1199913
1641
20:17
I can think of almost nothing
368
1201554
2772
20:20
that offers more hope for our planet,
369
1204326
3525
20:23
for your children,
370
1207851
2248
20:25
and their children, and all of humanity.
371
1210099
2656
20:28
Thank you.
372
1212755
3305
20:31
(Applause)
373
1216060
8112
20:40
Thank you. (Applause)
374
1224172
4988
20:53
Thank you, Chris.
375
1237521
1720
20:55
Chris Anderson: Thank you. I have,
376
1239241
3346
20:58
and I'm sure everyone here has,
377
1242587
2097
21:00
A) a hundred questions, B) wants to hug you.
378
1244684
3728
21:04
I'm just going to ask you one quick question.
379
1248412
1759
21:06
When you first start this and you bring in a flock of animals,
380
1250171
3684
21:09
it's desert. What do they eat? How does that part work?
381
1253855
3376
21:13
How do you start?
382
1257231
991
21:14
Allan Savory: Well, we have done this for a long time,
383
1258222
1639
21:15
and the only time we have ever had to provide any feed
384
1259861
3618
21:19
is during mine reclamation,
385
1263479
1769
21:21
where it's 100 percent bare.
386
1265248
2314
21:23
But many years ago, we took the worst land in Zimbabwe,
387
1267562
4356
21:27
where I offered a £5 note
388
1271918
3094
21:30
in a hundred-mile drive
389
1275012
2019
21:32
if somebody could find one grass
390
1277031
2120
21:35
in a hundred-mile drive,
391
1279151
1990
21:37
and on that, we trebled the stocking rate,
392
1281141
2786
21:39
the number of animals, in the first year with no feeding,
393
1283927
3776
21:43
just by the movement, mimicking nature,
394
1287703
2656
21:46
and using a sigmoid curve, that principle.
395
1290359
4775
21:51
It's a little bit technical to explain here, but just that.
396
1295134
2471
21:53
CA: Well, I would love to -- I mean, this such an interesting and important idea.
397
1297605
3712
21:57
The best people on our blog are going to come and talk to you
398
1301317
1992
21:59
and try and -- I want to get more on this
399
1303309
2632
22:01
that we could share along with the talk.AS: Wonderful.
400
1305941
2952
22:04
CA: That is an astonishing talk, truly an astonishing talk,
401
1308893
3536
22:08
and I think you heard that we all are cheering you on your way.
402
1312429
2776
22:11
Thank you so much.AS: Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.
403
1315205
2992
22:14
(Applause)
404
1318197
1230
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Allan Savory - Grassland ecosystem pioneerAllan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world.
Why you should listen
Desertification of the world's grasslands, Allan Savory suggests, is the immediate cause of poverty, social breakdown, violence, cultural genocide -- and a significent contribution to climate change. In the 1960s, while working in Africa on the interrelated problems of increasing poverty and disappearing wildlife, Savory made a significant breakthrough in understanding the degradation and desertification of grassland ecosystems. After decades of study and collaboration, thousands of managers of land, livestock and wildlife on five continents today follow the methodology he calls "Holistic Management."
In 1992, Savory and his wife, Jody Butterfield, formed the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, a learning site for people all over Africa. In 2010, the Centre won the Buckminster Fuller Challenge for its work in reversing desertification. In that same year he and his wife, with others, founded the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to promote large-scale restoration of the world's grasslands.
Intrigued by this talk? Read Savory's papers and other publications »
Allan Savory | Speaker | TED.com