-
This is a man-made forest.
-
It can spread over acres
and acres of area,
-
or it could fit in a small space --
-
as small as your house garden.
-
Each of these forests are just two years.
-
I have a forest in the backyard
of my own house.
-
It attracts a lot of biodiversity.
-
(Bird call)
-
I wake up to this every morning,
-
like a Disney princess.
-
(Laughter)
-
I am an entrepreneur
-
who facilitates the making
of these forests professionally.
-
We have helped factories,
-
farms,
-
schools,
-
homes,
-
resorts,
-
apartment buildings,
-
public parks
-
and even a zoo
-
to have one of such forests.
-
A forest is not an isolated piece of land
where animals live together.
-
A forest can be an integral part
of our urban existence.
-
A forest for me,
-
is a place so dense with trees
that you just can't walk into it.
-
It doesn't matter
how big or small they are.
-
Most of the world
we live in today was forest.
-
This was before human intervention.
-
Then we built up our cities
on those forests,
-
like São Paulo,
-
forgetting that we
belong to nature as well,
-
as much as 8.4 million
other species on the planet.
-
Our habitat stopped being
our natural habitat.
-
But not anymore for some of us.
-
Few others and I today make
these forests professionally --
-
anywhere and everywhere.
-
I'm an industrial engineer.
-
I specialize in making cars.
-
In my previous job at Toyota,
-
I learned how to convert
natural resources into products.
-
To give you an example,
-
we could drip the sap
out of a rubber tree,
-
convert it into [our] rubber
-
and make a tire out of it:
-
the product.
-
But these products can never
become a natural resource again.
-
We separate the elements from nature
-
and convert them
into an irreversible state.
-
That's industrial production.
-
Nature, on the other hand,
works in a totally opposite way.
-
Natural system produces
by bringing elements together,
-
atom by atom.
-
All the natural products become
a natural resource again.
-
This is something which I learned
-
when I made a forest
in the backyard of my own house.
-
And this was the first time
-
I worked with the nature
rather than against it.
-
Since then,
-
we have made 75 such forests
in 25 cities across the world.
-
Every time we work at a new place,
-
we find that every single element
needed to make a forest
-
is available right around us.
-
All we have to do is to bring
these elements together
-
and let the nature take over.
-
To make a forest we start with soil.
-
We touch, feel and even taste it
-
to identify what properties it lacks.
-
If the soil is made up of small
particles it becomes compact --
-
so compact that water cannot seep in.
-
We mix some local biomass
available around,
-
which can help soil become more porous.
-
Water can now seep in.
-
If the soil doesn't have
capacity to hold the water,
-
we will mix some more biomass --
-
some water absorbent material
like peat or [bigas],
-
so soil can hold this water
and it stays moist.
-
To grow,
-
plants need water, sunlight and nutrition.
-
What if the soil doesn't have
any nutrition in it?
-
We don't just add nutrition
directly into the soil.
-
That would be the industrial way,
-
it goes against the nature.
-
We instead add microorganisms to the soil.
-
They produce the nutrients
in the soil naturally.
-
The feed and the biomass
we have mixed in the soil,
-
so all they have to do
is eat and multiply.
-
And as their number grows,
-
soil starts breathing again.
-
It becomes alive.
-
We survey the native
tree species of the place.
-
How do we decide what's native or not?
-
Well, whatever existed before
human intervention is native.
-
That's the simple rule.
-
We survey national parks to find
the last remains of a natural forest.
-
We survey the sacred [groves],
-
or sacred forests around old temples.
-
And if we don't find anything at all,
-
we go to museums
-
to see the seeds or wood of trees
existing there a long time ago.
-
We research old paintings,
poems and literature from the place,
-
to identify the tree
species belonging there.
-
Once we know our trees,
-
we divide them in four different layers:
-
shrub layer,
-
sub-tree layer,
-
tree layer
-
and canopy layer.
-
We fix the ratios of each layer
-
and then we decide the percentage
of each tree specie in the mix.
-
If we are making a fruit forest,
-
we increase the percentage
of fruit-bearing trees.
-
It could be a flowering forest,
-
a forest that attracts
a lot of birds or bees,
-
or it could simply be a native,
wild Evergreen forest.
-
We collect the seeds
-
and germinate saplings out of them.
-
We make sure that trees
belonging to the same layer
-
are not planted next to each other,
-
or they will fight for the same
vertical space when they grow tall.
-
We plant the saplings close to each other.
-
On the surface we spread
a thick layer of mulch,
-
so when it's hot outside
the soil stays moist.
-
When it's cold,
-
frost formation happens only on the mulch
-
so soil can still breathe
while it's freezing outside.
-
The soil is very soft --
-
so soft that roots
can penetrate into it easily,
-
rapidly.
-
Initially, the forest doesn't
seem like it's growing,
-
but it's growing under the surface.
-
In the first three months,
-
roots reach up to one meter.
-
These roots form a mesh,
-
tightly holding the soil.
-
Microbes and fungi live throughout
this network of roots.
-
So if some nutrition is not available
in the vicinity of a tree,
-
these microbes are going to get
the nutrition to the tree.
-
Whenever it rains,
-
magically,
-
mushrooms appear overnight.
-
And this means the soil below
has a healthy fungal network.
-
Once these roots are established,
-
forest starts growing on the surface.
-
As the forest grows we keep watering it --
-
for the next two-to-three years
we water the forest.
-
We want to keep all the water
and soil nutrition only for our trees,
-
so we remove the weeds
growing on the ground.
-
As this forest grows,
-
it blocks the sunlight.
-
Eventually,
-
the forest becomes so dense
-
that sunlight can't reach
the ground anymore.
-
Weeds cannot grow now
because they need sunlight as well.
-
At this stage,
-
every single drop of water
that falls into the forest
-
doesn't evaporate back
into the atmosphere.
-
This dense forest condenses the moist air
-
and retains its moisture.
-
We gradually reduce and eventually
stop watering the forest.
-
And even without watering,
-
the forest floor stays moist
and sometimes even dark.
-
Now, when a single leaf
falls on this forest floor,
-
it immediately starts decaying.
-
This decayed biomass forms humus,
-
which is food for the forest.
-
As the forest grows,
-
more leaves fall on the surface --
-
means more humus is produced,
-
means more food so the forest
can grow still, bigger.
-
And this forest keeps
growing exponentially.
-
Once established,
-
these forests are going to regenerate
themselves again and again --
-
probably forever.
-
In a natural forest like this,
-
no management is the best management.
-
It's a tiny jungle party.
-
(Laughter)
-
This forest grows as a collective.
-
If the same trees --
-
same species --
-
would have been planted independently,
-
it wouldn't grow so fast.
-
And this is how we create
a 100-year-old forest
-
in just 10 years.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(Applause)
Annika Bidner
Hello, I have a question for 3:45. He talks about a water-absorbent material like peat or bigas. What is bigas? I see that the different languages has solved this is many different ways: By not including the word, using the same word without translating, biogas, brushwood ... What do you suggest?
Brian Greene
Hi there!
The word in question around the 3:46 mark is actually "bagasse." It has been corrected in the English transcript. More about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse
Thanks,
Brian