Gaia In New Zealand

Philip Simpson - 1 August 1991

Gaia is alive and well in New Zealand, as the following abridged Department of Conservation report shows. It was prepared for a meeting of the Engineers for Social Responsibility by DOC botanist Philip Simpson. The full report is available from DOC.

The Sweet One Hundred

I believe that the Gaia hypothesis contributes in a positive way to the plight of the Earth and its inhabitants. If I need to seek one word as to…why I think Gaia is worth talking about, it is education. It is environmental education — Gaia addresses an ethic, contributes understanding and leads to action.

Despite our objective exterior, people are moved by strange inner forces — numbers among them — and there is no number more significant as a threshold of achievement than one hundred. My “Sweet One Hundred” is a tomato, a variety which I have grown on my land in Takaka. It’s healthy, it’s beautiful, it’s delicious and it bears lots of small fruit. It’s a tribute to the science of plant breeding to have forsaken corporate pressures and produced something of real value for ordinary people.

It’s a change that is sympathetic to Gaia. But I have chosen “Sweet One Hundred” [as my title] for another reason too, for it reminds me of Ken Keyes’s book The Hundredth Monkey, a story and line of enquiry that I think is consistent with, and will one day be shown to be an integral part of Gaia theory.

Hundredth Monkey

The Hundredth Monkey principle is about the spread or transference of ideas, attitudes or actions without direct contact between the individuals concerned but when a certain threshold of concentration is reached. It is the manifestation of “an idea whose time has come, an expression of Jung’s collective unconscious or, in particular, de Chardin’s noosphere, the envelope of life consciousness around the earth. It is inconceivable to me that the interconnectedness that is the cornerstone of modern ecological thought and of the Gaia hypothesis does not also involve consciousness.

As a scientist, I am cautious about accepting metaphysical forces as real. I do not wish to mystify the world as a means of resolving problems. Lovelock says in his latest book (1988) that the destruction of the English countryside can be blamed on the scientists and agronomists. I believe these scientists were operating under a particular world view, Science is a tool for social development, not an unconditional search for truth.

I believe that the emergence of the Gaia hypothesis, the Hundredth Monkey principle, Sheldrake’s morphic resonance theory and others indicate a desperate need for new ethics, new understanding and new types of action. If this means broadening the perspective of science, I am all for it.

The Gaia hypothesis is a planetary expression of sustainability, a concept now at the forefront of international and national debate.

Such steps are needed because most people lack an ethical or spiritual dimension that identifies them with other living things and the environment at large. Science itself has fostered a separatist ethic by discouraging awareness of connections between disciplines and encouraging concepts of unlimited growth and superiority over nature.

In relation to the need fora new world view, the Gaia hypothesis lays a foundation for changed approaches to understanding ourselves and nature. Gaia is a powerful stimulus for science to investigate ecological connection such as the noosphere and the recently discovered W-waves in plants.

New Zealand’s Place

I would like to conclude by asking how the Gaia hypothesis relates to New Zealand and New Zealanders. We are obviously part of the whole, but there are particular aspects of unique importance. Our proximity to the hole in the ozone layer makes planetary geophysiology specially important to each of us. New Zealand has a unique set of physical and biological characteristics which seem to exaggerate human impacts. Extinction of species is exceptionally high as a result of their sensitivity to introduced animals, including people, and the loss of habitat. Forest removal has vastly increased the already high natural rate of erosion in our hills and mountains. In resource use, we have tended to ignore the need for sustainability.

Yet the people of New Zealand are strongly motivated to conserve, in recognition of the uniqueness of our resources, our dependence on them and our isolation from outside problems.

Maori have a conservation ethic at the heart of their world view, and many pakeha have developed a strong sense of place after only a few generations in residence. The sweet one hundred is bearing fruit but only a few of them are ripe.

The Gaia hypothesis provides a foundation for a new ethic on the relationship between people and nature, it provides objective understanding of ecological connections and human impacts, and it provides stimulus and direction for actions — for research, for technology, for sustainability, for personal development.