Clearly this is a ridiculous question. Yet though the
title of this blog may seem utterly absurd, I would dare to claim that it is perhaps
not quite as mad as it might first appear.
Of course Croydon, one of London's largest boroughs, is situated in a temperate region and
though it contains a number of woodlands, none of them is in the least way
tropical. Some of the nearest actual rainforests are more than 3,000 miles away
across the Atlantic in the snake like strip of land called Central America.
Yet, when I see bindweed trying to creep up the hoardings of the new Box Park,
when I see buddleias sprouting from Croydon’s urban rooftops, and our native wildflowers
taking over any area of vacant land, I see the same force that drives all the
vital green growth of our world, whether it reveals itself in the cactae of the
deserts, the bluebells in our native woodlands or the giant Kapok Tree of the
rainforests. During the day, I may walk the hard unrelenting streets of Croydon
but at night in my dreams, I may wander in the footsteps of the jaguar under
the dense, green canopy of the rainforest. Sometimes, dreams being what they
are, the two become muddled, and I might be sitting on top of a Croydon tram,
spotting toucans flying through the windows of Croydon’s abandoned office blocks,
watching capuchin monkeys pinching bananas from the Surrey Street Market, and
admiring beautiful orchids, growing between the lianas, that have draped
themselves over the multi-coloured Saffron Tower.
OK, so I admit that the Croydon Rainforest exists only
within the slippery realm of my subconscious, yet this obvious fact doesn’t
seem to make it any less real. For in some very tangible ways, there are signs
of the rainforests all around us. The chocolate and coffee on our supermarket
shelves, the sweet corn, bananas and pineapples at Surrey Street Market, and
the pepper with which we season our food, are merely a very small example of
the variety of foods that come from the rainforests. As the average Croydonian
goes about his or her business, they may hardly give the distant rainforests a
second thought, yet most of us come in contact with a product from the
rainforests on a daily basis. Yet this
valuable human larder is under serious threat from many sources; illegal
deforestation, the cutting of forests by large companies to grow the ubiquitous
palm oil, and the destruction of rainforests by poor peasant farmers, who are
using a technique of farming that is no longer sustainable. It is my involvement
with a small UK charity that is offering such farmers a more sustainable
alternative, thus providing them with a better livelihood and helping preserve
the forests, that has perhaps led to my fascination with these incredible
habitats, the most biodiverse eco-systems on our ever shrinking planet.
The charity is called Rainforest Saver – www.rainforestsaver.org
and like many other small charities, it faces a constant struggle to acquire
adequate funding to help support its partners in Honduras, Ecuador and
Cameroon. This article is written in the hope that I might find a few other
Croydonians, who share a similar passion to do what they can to help prevent
the destruction of these vital and fascinating habitats. Thus, I have decided
to set up Rainforest Saver’s first ever local group in the biodiverse urban
jungle of Croydon. I would like such a group to take on two projects each year,
one to help raise funds for poor farmers that are in desperate need of the simple
technology that Rainforest Saver can provide and the other to increase
biodiversity or environmental awareness within Croydon. Yet, as in my dreams, I
do not see the projects as entirely separate entities. If you have an interest
and active involvement in your own local environment, you are perhaps more
likely to be interested in the wider environment. We are all interconnected –
If we want poor local people in distant countries to look after their
environments, perhaps we will have more credibility if we are also trying to
look after our own. After all, our own biodiversity has also diminished
drastically in the last hundred years. As well though as attempting to take on
these two practical objectives, I hope that our little group will also bring
some of the exotic colour, vitality and wonder of the rainforests to some of
the barren, litter-strewn streets of Croydon.
Croydon of course has its own biodiversity, but this
tends to be more to do with the variety of different races and cultures that
have ended up in our own unique metropolis. Much as I value this exciting and
stimulating melting pot, I am conscious that Croydon, like so many other towns,
has for various reasons, squeezed out much of its own natural biodiversity.
Sixty years ago when it was still a Surrey Market town, the surrounding nature
and countryside was much closer to the average Croydonian’s doorstep. One
hundred years ago, the average Croydonian would have been able to name most of
the plants and animals within the area. Today, though, we have lost much of
this traditional knowledge, which is not only often useful but also brings a
fuller connection and communication to the place that we inhabit. One of the
aims of The Croydon Rainforest Club would be to generate a greater interest and
knowledge of our own natural surroundings, and to try and bring back some of
the biodiversity that Croydon, like numerous other towns, has lost over the
last hundred years. Whereas the inhabitants of rainforest areas are losing
their biodiversity, due to illegal deforestation, the ravages of agri-business
and the use of non-sustainable farming techniques, Croydon has lost much of its
own through the spread of urbanisation. Yet cities do not have to exclude
nature, and can indeed encourage it. The recent wildflowers grown at the
Croydon Saffron Farm on the site of a temporarily vacant building plot, should
act as a catalyst for re-greening the whole town. If the Council really wants
local people to engage more with local parks and gardens, this desire to
reclaim some of our traditional biodiversity should be an impulse that it both
supports and encourages.
Yet, much as I would love to see wildflower
roundabouts and green rooves all over Croydon, I also believe that we shouldn’t
merely live and work in our own little bubble. Our advanced communication
technology enables us to be more aware than ever of what is happening around
our shrinking globe. We are also more knowledgeable about how about how
inter-connected everything is. If we allow the rainforests to disappear, we not
only lose one of the most useful, precious and beautiful habitats in our world,
we also release an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere, hastening the
dangerous effects of global warming. One of the reasons the charity Rainforest
Saver so appeals to me, is because it offers the opportunity for poor farmers,
not only to improve their own livelihoods but also to play a crucial role in
helping to preserve these vital eco-systems on which they, and to some extent
we, all depend. The latest newsletter of Rainforest Saver - http://www.rainforestsaver.org/news/no74-how-cameroonian-farmer-lives-part-i-0 about the life of a poor Cameroonian farmer -
perhaps puts some of our own urban worries, concerns and anxieties into a wider
perspective.
One of the ways that I would like the Croydon
Rainforest Club to both highlight one of Croydon’s environmental problems and
the valuable work of Rainforest Saver is by creating an artificial rainforest
in Croydon, made out of the litter on Croydon’s streets, re-used paper and
cardboard and unwanted bamboo canes. The
first meeting of The Croydon Rainforest Club will discuss how such an art
installation might be created as well as what other crazy but joyful activities
we might get up to, both to improve our local environment and raise funds to
help poor farmers to protect their own rainforests. This is a social club that’s free to join but
I would hope that most people that do so, would make an active contribution to
whichever projects it takes on. Together, we could really make Croydon the
greenest and most biodiverse borough of London, as well as doing our bit to
help protect one of the most vital eco-systems for the continuing wealth and
health of our planet. The first meeting will take place on Wednesday 7th
of December at 7.30pm at Mathews Yard, just off Surrey Street. If anyone would like
to get involved but can’t make the first meeting, please email me at charles.barber13@gmail.com,
and if anyone knows where I can pick up
some unwanted bamboo canes, I’d be delighted to hear from them.
