Interview with Joaquín Araújo: Caring for Nature in a Changing Climate

Joaquín Araújo is one of the most renowned Spanish naturalists. He is the author of numerous books and works as a director, producer and scriptwriter of series and documentaries, especially related to nature. He was a collaborator of the legendary Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. For years he has lived on a farm in the province of Cáceres, where he practices organic farming and makes continuous appeals to Humanity that in this matter of caring for nature we are going astray. He says that the human species must adapt to a warmer and much drier climate.

–Is there a lack of a culture of nature?

–Too many times, over too long, culture and nature have been converted into antonyms. In fact, it hardly appears in education laws and in artistic manifestations, political programs and people’s preferences. This emasculation is absurd, very dangerous and does not correspond to practical reason or emotional intelligence. The parricide that is actually the current tragic loss of spontaneous life is essentially the result of much ignorance.

–What progress have we made in terms of caring for nature? if we have made progress

–Of course we have come a long way in the last half century. It is demonstrated by the fact that we are forcing large corporations and not a few governments to lie. That they are forced to say that they are respectful of their surroundings. Society, thanks to the enormous work of ecological information, education, literature, creativity, philosophy and militancy, knows that we are suffocating the air, drowning the water and burying the earth. The climate catastrophe is so obvious that there are thousands of initiatives to change the energy model.

–And where have we gone back?

–In that all of the above has not become a radical change in the model of using the planet. The diagnosis is devastating. We are going to reach the temperatures that will initiate the collapse. We have lost just over 50% of natural life. Only 15% of the planet can continue to be considered wild. Extinctions and deserts advance, fires of enormous proportions worsen and the biological productivity of crops decreases. It seems that a competition is taking place between the possible collapses to see who arrives first. We fail in that there are no energetic responses to so many threats.

–You have retired to live in the country. What does living in isolation offer you?

–Serenity and understanding. Above all, because my sources of information are the forests and the sources, the birds and the plants that I grow. I have dribbled in haste and comfort, but above all I have scored a great goal for competitiveness. I also get huge sips of freedom and inspiration for my literary and cinematographic work.

What do you miss about the big city?

–Nothing, because what attracts me the most, that is, the cinema, the theater and the concerts, I can reach them with just a couple of hours’ trip. In fact, I use the big city only five percent of the days of the year.

– Is there a solution to the emptied Spain? What should be done to avoid it?

–Everything has a solution if we honestly set about solving it. What would most stop this mass desertion is that this system does not value at all and even despises what makes it possible. To give a simple example, the products of the primary sector should be five times more expensive, among other things to correspond with a minimum of equity to those who have sweated them.

-What do you think of rural tourism, now so fashionable?

-That it lacks a boil. It’s almost massive but short, superficial and, like everything commodified, deaf and myopic. This does not mean that this increase is much better than its lack. Among other reasons because the other, dry tourism, is one of the great tortures that are done to the planet.

And what about the lack of water?

–More than a concern is the first line of the tragedy. Those of us who have spent our whole lives planting trees are watching them dry up. Those of us who cultivate may have to stop dead. I see fountains and entire rivers dry up. Water is right now the thirstiest thing I know. And the necessary measures are not being taken either. Both shock and long-term, that is, adapting to a new warmer and much drier climate.

– Is the fight against illegal wells being effectively undertaken?

– Not much less. There are too many and the watchmen too few. We also lack a formidable rectification in the way of interpreting what water is and how it should be used. We have to move from incessant looting and pollution to their complete socialization and regeneration.

–How can new technologies help in caring for nature?

–At the moment, technologies are mainly multipliers of the perverse effects of conventional activities within this economic system. They also multiply all the possible clumsiness of which we humans are so capable. If it ends up, as some claim, ruling the algorithm, the other four collapses will remain a joke. This does not mean that one part cannot have positive facets, especially when it comes to improving the information and therefore the diagnosis.