Bioneering - Bioneers Conference focuses on ecological restoration

Whole Earth Review, Spring, 1996 by Stuart Cowan

Last October, several hundred bioneers converged on the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco for their seventh annual gathering. Bioneers are "biological pioneers," united by their desire to honor the full complexity and integrity of nature in their work. They infused the three-day event with celebration and passion. Panel discussions addressed Bioremediation; Native American Vision; Values, Politics, and Culture; Women and the Environment; and many more topics and issues. Kirsten Wilson performed a searingly funny performance piece; on the second evening the all-women band D'Cuckoo [WER 75:129] provided rich dance grooves. These gatherings lead inevitably to a cheerful satiation - the inability to assimilate another idea. It takes several months to gradually unwind the implications of a Bioneers conference.

Bioneer farmers like Fred Kirschenman are working to create bioregional "foodsheds," encouraging local farmers to increase their crop diversity. Bioneer activists like artist Mayumi Oda seek renewable-energy alternatives to nuclear power. Bioneer entrepreneurs, like Paul Dolan at Fetzer Vineyards and Greg Steltenpohl at Odwalla, provide markets for growers of organic grapes and fruit. Other Bioneers are teaching prisoners to garden, rescuing endangered cultivars, documenting the medicinal value of traditional herbs, and searching for a "politics of the spirit."

Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons have orchestrated the conference since its inception. They are careful to leaven healing visions with disturbing news. The Bioneers work against a grim backdrop of soil depletion, global warming, toxic chemicals, and massively destructive transnational commerce. The Bioneers are finding ways to empower local communities and preserve biodiversity even as life itself is becoming a patentable commodity.

On March 14, 1995, the United States National Institutes of Health took out a patent on the entire genetic material of a Hagahai man from Papua New Guinea. As Debra Harry of the Northern Piaute noted, "indigenous people are facing a new kind of colonization, this time at the molecular level." Meanwhile, the Human Genome Diversity Project - labeled the "vampire project" by opponents worldwide - seeks to sample the DNA of more than seven hundred indigenous groups. Samples are being taken without permission, amounting to an enormously lucrative form of biological prospecting.

Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone, the genetically engineered "flavor saver" tomato, and the NIH patent on an individual's complete genetic endowment continue the time-honored industrial epistemology of seeking a magic bullet rather than working within a systemic ecological context. Jason Clay, now with the World Wildlife Fund, pointed out that the decrease of American crop diversity in the early twentieth century was closely linked to the creation of a commodities exchange which demanded complete substitutability and standardization. One bushel of #2 corn needed to be the same across bioregions and nations in order to be reliably traded. In the same way, the development of high-yield rice strains during the Green Revolution took place with virtually no concern for soil, climate, and biological diversity. As a result, five thousand rice cultivars have been reduced to under one hundred.

The Bioneers have a different vision. They believe that conventional industrial approaches, which require vast inputs of energy and materials, are eroding the health of both ecosystems and human communities at an alarming rate. In response, the Bioneers are developing forms of agriculture, architecture, commerce, and engineering that are frugal, resilient, and responsive to local conditions.

According to Paul Hawken, "The reason industrialism is over is that it succeeded." Industrialism raised productivity and mobilized unprecedented quantities of materials and energy. Unfortunately, we can now see that it was a kind of Gaian metabolic disease. Hawken continued: "We should have a wake for industrialism - hold a party, invite people, hand out a pocket watch and gold chain, thank it, and send it home." The Bioneers inherit an industrial system that wastes 94 percent of all materials before the product reaches users and an additional 80 percent of what's left within six weeks of use. According to a National Academy of Engineers study, the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the United States economy is 2 percent.

Our present industrial system is predicated on cheap resources and expensive labor. It has created long-term structural unemployment by emphasizing productivity per person, rather than productivity per unit resource. The good news from the Bioneers is that resource productivity - wringing more and more useful products and services out of each molecule and erg - requires more people, not less. Resource efficiency can simultaneously create jobs and protect the environment.

Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, estimates that the worldwide costs of waste are up to $10 trillion per year. This presents an enormous opportunity for those who can minimize waste - or even turn what little waste is left into "food" for another customer. Lovins and colleagues have gathered fifty case studies of "factor-four" thrift - providing an equivalent product or service while using one-fourth the energy and generating one-fourth the waste - and will publish them under the name Natural Capitalism this year.(*) In each case, the move toward resource efficiency paid for itself rapidly through decreased costs and increased productivity. Many ecological economists in Europe now believe it is possible to achieve a factor-ten or -twenty reduction in energy use and materials throughput in the industrialized nations.