Episode 30: Soil, Political Ecology, and Water
“Meadow soils are rich in organic matter. They soak up all the water and slowly release it through both surface and subsurface flow processes, so that it eventually comes to the communities down in the valley. But we don’t just get water—we actually get clean water that has been filtered through the soil.”
A conversation with Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe (UC Merced) about soil degradation & water quality, political conflicts, climate solutions, and the politics of geoscience. Released February 25, 2022.
guests on the show
Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is the Professor and Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences, Life & Environmental Sciences Department at the University of California, Merced. Professor Berhe's research is broadly focused on soil science and global change science. The main goal of her research is to understand the effect of changing environmental conditions on vital soil processes, most importantly the cycling and fate of essential elements and water in the critical zone. She studies soil processes in systems experiencing natural and/or anthropogenic perturbation in order to understand fundamental principles governed by geomorphology, and contemporary modifications introduced by changes in land use and climate. Check out her TED Talk about climate change solutions, her recent work examining geoscience community obstacles featured in Nature Geoscience, and follow Dr. Berhe @aaberhe.
Transcript
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk! For today's episode, we are so excited to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. Dr. Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and political ecologist. She's also a professor of soil biogeochemistry and the Falasco chair in earth sciences and geology in the Department of Life and Environmental Science at the University of California, Merced. Dr. Berhe has received many awards. Highlights include a recent Joanne Simpson medal and fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Great Immigrants Great America award from the Carnegie Corporation, and also being a Sustainability Champion at UC Merced.
Her research and visionary leadership have shaped and continue to shape earth system science, our understanding of the earth cycle, including soils, water, energy, and nutrients, which is something I talk about a lot on Water Talk, the internal structures and also the politics of participation in earth science including hydrology and water system science, and also just inspiring new earth system scientists and political ecologists. Dr. Berhe has this really wonderful expertise in the area of soil biogeochemistry as well as political ecology. And today, we're going to be talking to her about both of those topics and asking a lot of questions related to how biogeochemistry and political ecology also factor in and have this interplay with water, which is what we talk about on Water Talk.
I'm hopeful that many others will also be able to draw the connections between biogeochemistry and water and understand how we need to be managing these things together and thinking about these things together. I asked everybody who is going to be participating today, Faith and Sam, I asked them to listen to Dr. Berhe’s 2019 TED Talk, which is pretty fantastic. It's about soil and soil carbon management, Sam, Faith, what were your impressions? Do you know Dr. Berhe?
Faith Kearns
I'm super excited to have Asmeret on the show today. I have known Asmeret since we were both graduate students in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at Berkeley. So I'm super excited. It's been really fun to watch Asmeret’s career grow. Her TED talk was amazing. She's grown into a really amazing science communicator. And I also just really appreciate all the work she does, besides the research she does, that's top notch on the issues around diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, in science, in our UC system, and certainly globally. So a lot of appreciation and respect for her.
Sam Sandoval
In my case, I find her very interesting because she brings different perspectives. Not only the physical perspective, also the political and human, how the soil can help out with food security, some of the policies, the disproportionate impact that climate change will have on people of color and women. There is a nice BBC interview where she talks about the disproportionate impact of climate change to women. And then a good publication related to how people of color and white woman have disproportionate impacts on their career, on their academic careers, as they are trying to move forward. Really looking forward for this conversation. Very excited.
Mallika Nocco
Yes, all of those things are so exciting to me too. I don't know if there are any children's book authors who listen to Water Talk, but I think that she's like a superhero, like a real life superhero. And it is just so exciting, both just a soil biogeochemist, a soil scientist, somebody who has this earth science context, who's also like a badass woman of color, engaging in the politics of science, and that makes me really excited. I had first interacted with her when I was in graduate school through some of the work that she's done with our Earth Science Women's Network putting on these different workshops and trainings. I was having these experiences as a woman of color in science, and I didn't really know how to navigate them. I took a workshop that was sponsored by an organized by the Earth Science Women's Network and it helped me so much to just recognize some of the obstacles, some of the external behaviors, some of the forces on me, and also just deal with them. Even though I didn't really know her very well, she's impacted me for the last decade or so. So it's wonderful to have her have her on today. So without further ado, we'd like to welcome Dr. Berhe to Water Talk. Welcome!
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Thank you for that kind introduction. And thank you, everybody, for having me here today.
Mallika Nocco
We really want to hear a little bit more about your work and your career path. How did you get started working on both political ecology and soil biogeochemistry? And what is it like to work on these areas together?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Oh, that's a cool question. I'm a self-described soil evangelist, I am really passionate about soils. I think soil is this really incredible, fascinating medium. But before I went to college, I didn't really know much about soil. My introduction into soil science happened through mainly through an introduction science course at the University of Asmara where I was an undergraduate. But once I learned about soil, and especially once I realized that all the different fields of science that I had loved as a young child that I went to college to study, I could use the soil as a medium for to study all of these really incredible phenomena. I got hooked, I started learning more and more about soil and decided to major in soil and water conservation, which was the undergraduate soil science major at the University, and continued to study.
One of the important things I studied as an undergraduate was soil erosion, and the impact of soil erosion and soil health, and the global crisis of land degradation. But upon finishing my bachelor's degree, which was mostly on the biophysical aspects of soil science, I felt like I didn't really have a good grasp of how soil gets to be degraded by human actions. And these two way relationships that human beings have with soil that's so detrimental for soil health and quality. And that was the motivation for why I decided to pursue a master's in political ecology. For folks who are not familiar with what political ecology is, it's this field of study that uses a political economic theory lens to understand humans and our interactions with the natural environment that we manage and treat in all sorts of different ways. That was just an incredible eye opening experience for me because like most natural scientists I didn't really explore a whole lot of the social science aspect of land degradation and the people side of that story, right? People were agents of change in what I studied, but how?
The interactions of human communities and societal processes dictate how we manage soil, how we go about using soil in a way that becomes detrimental to its health; those were not really things I focused on my undergraduate degree. I used that opportunity when I was doing my master's at Michigan State to study issues of land degradation, and in particular land degradation caused by armed conflicts, which affect a whole lot of people around the world and the natural resources that human communities depend on. But again, it’s not something we focus a lot on. But to me, that's an important topic, because as I mentioned earlier, I didn't get introduced to soils until college. Part of this is because I grew up in a war torn nation, my entire life is marked by major conflicts in the region that have destroyed the environment and interrupted people's lives in all sorts of ways. And so, like most people who do soils or earth system science, I was never introduced to it because I had tons of time that I spent as a child hiking or spending time in natural environments, that option was not available for me, or anybody else of my generation, in the region.
When I came time to study land degradation and I needed to be more specific, that seemed like a natural topic. But then, when I was doing my PhD, though, and came to the western part of the US to study at UC Berkeley, I really tried to create an interdisciplinary PhD that would actually address the societal aspect of land degradation. Again, my focus was still erosion and land degradation even when I studied at Berkeley, but it became clear at that point that the program I was part of was not super supportive of that kind of structure. So, I made a conscious decision then to just focus on the biogeochemical aspects of soil erosion. I ended up getting involved in many different projects and continued to work on the political ecology side of things and publish some of my master's work. But what I find is that I have a much wider lens through which I see soil though and see earth system science, and the role that human communities play as important change agents, and the role that we play in how we study even some of the questions that we investigate in earth system science. I feel like it gives me this fascinating lens through which I can appreciate earth system science even more.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, that is incredibly fascinating. I appreciate the comment you made about how so many people, when you're in a room talking to them, ask “how did you get into environmental science,” it's, “oh, well, I spent these days hiking through these lovely places,” and this is such a different entry point. And I think that's really interesting to just come in already understanding everything that is at stake from this human dimension. And the other thing that resonated with what you just said is how trendy academia can be because at the time, it sounds like the program wasn't supportive of integrating human dimensions, integrating political ecology into the soil-biogeochemistry. But now, I think it's all the rage, right? Everybody's coming around.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Yeah, I think it's unfortunately, there's the siloing that we do for science right, too often. And the department that I was in, the reason I chose that department, is because of the interdisciplinarity; but in reality, it was rather siloed. Quite, significantly, and so unfortunately. It wasn't all the rage then, it actually complicated things. But over time, it turns out, we're coming around, which is a good thing. Better late than never, right?
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, absolutely. You've done a tremendous amount of work on soil organic matter, and its abundance, its persistence, and also its dynamics. And I think all organic matter is incredibly fascinating. I want people who think about water to also start to get evangelized, as you would say, and start thinking about soil organic matter in the same way that I do it, perhaps you do, too. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it is, and how it's related to water quantity, quality, and human security?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
From the most fundamental relationship, one of the most important ecosystem functions that all living things on Earth derive from soil is the ability of soil to actually regulate the quality and quantity of water that's available for living things. The example I like to give, especially when I teach undergraduate courses, is to get my students who are living in in the Central Valley of California an opportunity to imagine where most of our water comes from. All that snow that falls on the crest of the Sierra Nevada, sits there in the winter, either as snow or it melts and seeps into the meadow soils, and these meadow soils are able to serve like a sponge to hold on to a lot of the water during the winter and spring, because they're rich in organic matter, and organic matter imparts soil with this ability to hold on to water and regulate its flow.
Because these meadow soils are rich in organic matter, they soak up all the water and slowly release it both through surface and subsurface flow processes so that it eventually comes to us, the communities down in the valley, but we don't just get water, we actually get clean water that has been filtered through the soil. So the soil system plays this fundamental role in regulating the amount but also the nature of the water that we're able to consume. And, soil health and soil security are intricately tied to water dynamics because if the soil is degraded, its ability to hold on to water is compromised, and it means it can't actually support plant life. It can't support the microbes that are fundamentally important for regulating so many of the biogeochemical and other processes that need to happen in soil to regulate life and the earth system. And so there's this intricate linkage between the health and security of the soil and the water cycle or the water system at multiple levels. Healthy soils are wonderful at storing water and making it available to all other living things.
Mallika Nocco
I really like just thinking about it at so many different scales. But I guess the next question that I'm sure many, many folks have on their mind is what is climate change doing to our soils? And are there certain kinds of types of soil organic matter or types of carbon in the soil that could be better for food security? What would some of the goals be in this area?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
When we're talking about from a perspective of, let's start with the question of what is climate change doing to soils, right? And then we can think about, what could we do on the other side, and you could think about what climate change is doing to soil from the perspective of, for example, the warming, which is causing drought and drying, extreme drying and desiccation of soils. That compromises not just the structure of the soil and its ability to hold water, but also, as we spoke earlier, the ability to support all life that depends on soil.
Then you can also think about extreme climate events, things that occur with extreme drought, you with fire, for example, that compromise the health of the soil because post fire, for example, soil erosion, then there's a lot of lateral transport of topsoil, the nutrient rich topsoil, into downslope environments and other aquatic environments. So, there's this increased rate of erosion with climate change as the hydrologic cycle intensifies, and we're also expecting more intense precipitation events that are likely to cause even more soil erosion. So those are just some of these fundamental ways by which climate change is affecting soil health. In fact, there was an assessment by the UN that demonstrated that in many parts of the world right now, climate change is becoming a threat multiplier for the livelihood and security of many people's food and nutritional security. Part of this is because these areas already have either vulnerable or degraded soils, and add to that the threat of climate change that comes along with warming, lower amounts of precipitation, or even precipitation that comes at the wrong time, compared to when plants or human communities need it. This is causing even further degradation of their soils and their resources.
There are so many ways that climate change enters into the picture, in terms of the impact of soil. But then if you when you think about, what can we do about this? One of the important things we have to do, and it's a nonnegotiable, is adopt climate smart management practices in our soils in a way that allows our soils to stay stable, to not be more vulnerable. And one of those important ways is actually if the soils can maintain their ability to hold on to water, which is related to their ability to actually hold on to carbon. If the soils cannot receive enough water, they cannot support plant productivity, and there's not going to be enough carbon coming into the soil to rebuild the stock of carbon in soil.
Especially in areas that were cold, warming also unleashes a high rate of decomposition that depletes the native stock of carbon in soil. So, there are these two really fundamental ways that climate change can affect soil. If we rehabilitate soils, including by practices that minimize its physical disturbance, practices that ensure that the soil is actually covered, especially during periods that it could be vulnerable, by application of cover crops practice, all of these important things have the dual benefit of regulating the health of the soil as well as its vulnerability to climate change and even allow the soils to take up some of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and use it to build the health of that soil further.
Mallika Nocco
Thinking about different types of carbon and fire in the water cycle that you'd mentioned, I saw that you had some recent work on – I love this word – “pyrogenic carbon,” and its impacts on the water cycle and its interactions with the water cycle. Can you tell us what pyrogenic carbon is? And how does it interact with water? And can we manage the water cycle for more pyrogenic carbon – is that something that we should be trying to think about?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Not necessarily, but we have to think about what to do with the pyogenic carbon that is going to be available one way or another though. Basically, that term pyrogenic carbon, for the benefit of your audience, just means fire altered carbon. This is a product of incomplete combustion of biomass that is produced either during wildfires or even in intentional burns when we put excess biomass in pyrolysis units to produce biochar. The reason it's identified separately is because this pyrogenic carbon tends to be made out of condensed, aromatic structures that tend to be a little hard to break down from microbes. So it persists in the environment for long periods of time. But it also has reactive surfaces that are able to increase the soils ability to hold on to water and nutrients and other things, which is why there's a bit of an interest on it.
I think some of the work you're referring to in terms of our recent publications has to do with pyrogenic carbon that's produced from wildfires. When wildfires move through, for example, the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, there's a lot of biomass to burn, there's a lot of trees, there's a lot of litter sitting on top of the soil surface. And when that material burns, part of it turns into char and ash, the distinction here being dependent on the temperature which that biomass was burned and for how long, and it either produced the black material that we recognize as char or the white material that's ash. One of the questions we asked was how does this affect the soils ability to store and cycle carbon? Because remember, we said, this is going to be product of practices, and also wildfires that are happening, whether we like it or not.
But what we really wanted to understand, and what the biogeochemistry community's been trying to understand, is how much of the soils carbon actually is pyrogenic? How much impact have fires historically had on the carbon that's already stored in soil? And what regulates the rate at which this pyrogenic carbon is cycled to the soil and is lost? Some of the data that's out there suggests that somewhere on the order of 13 to 35% of all soil carbon could be pyrogenic, this material was produced by fires. And because it's decomposed more slowly than the other carbon in soil, it has been being stored and accumulating in soil over time. Some of the questions that we asked, for example, at the site of the Rim Fire that occurred in Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest, we work especially on the Yosemite side, is to ask how much does this material interact with water in the early days of the fire? And does that matter from a perspective of its persistence?
We monitored the rate at which the topsoil and the associated pyrogenic carbon would be eroded in the first rain events that occur after the fire. And we use some modeling exercises to infer how much of the fate of the pyrogenic carbon basically depends on that lateral transport erosion of the pyrogenic carbon occurs fairly early? And it turns out a lot. If we do not include the erosion and its lateral transport from the well aerated soils up in the hill slope to the poorly drained soils in riparian areas, we do not account for that in how we understand pyogenic carbon dynamics, it turns out we miss a lot. In fact, we introduce an error into our estimates of pyrogenic carbon turnover rate that is equivalent to about a third of the value. In fact, our conclusion is basically that the initial interaction of biogenic carbon with the hydrologic cycle in many ways sets the stage for its environmental fate and persistence. Not understanding how fast the material is eroded with the first rain, where it ends up, has huge implications for how we understand its fate in the environment and how much of it can accumulate in soil in the first place.
But the story doesn't even end there. The work that we did was actually in partnership with researchers at the Yosemite National Park and it was funded partly by a municipality, far away, that was interested in investigating when fires occur, how much could they increase the rate of soil erosion, and what kind sediment, total carbon, and pyrogenic carbon are these events likely to introduce into streams and reservoirs. And the reason is, if postfire erosion actually pushes a lot of sediment and carbon and some of this pyrogenic carbon into reservoirs, this could pose an important environmental health risk. Because when the municipalities add things like chlorine, there could be a production of these what they call disinfection byproducts, some poly aromatic hydrocarbons that actually can end up being carcinogenic and pose a major environmental health issue. So, studying fate of pyrogenic carbon is exciting in itself. But it also has this really interesting interaction with water systems and even human health.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, that's fascinating. It made me feel really good about paying attention in my soil microbiology class many years ago, because when you brought up the aromaticity of the carbon, I remember that there aren't that many categories or classes of microorganisms that can break that structure, right? They can't they can't break the aromatic structure. And that was that's kind of what causes this persistence.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
It’s a slow process, which is why they persist the environment.
Mallika Nocco
That’s very important work, and timely work, that your research group is working on. So thank you for doing that. I want to turn to a very related topic, and I think sometimes our listeners don't understand how related it is, which is getting back to that human element of we just talked about — some technical, biogeochemical, hydrological stuff. It is really important to think about who does the science and who comes up with the management recommendations and how that's interacting with the rest of the community. And you've done a lot of work in this area as well.
Specifically thinking about how just geosciences as a whole, and that includes hydrology, so hydrology does not get out of this, is among the least diverse fields in science. And there's kind of this old way of thinking about it, that there was a leaky pipe pipeline. And, I've heard this talked about it, it's almost used as an excuse like, “oh, well, we don't know what to do about it. There's a leaky pipe people just like fall out of the field, and it's leaking.” But you had a really new, interesting paper in Nature Geoscience, that just transforms this idea of a leaky pipeline into a hostile obstacle course, and there's a really compelling visual from that that paper as well describing this obstacle course. When I saw that, I thought it was so creative, and it's such a useful visualization to have, as opposed to that leaky pipeline. And I was curious how you came up with that concept and visualization? And how do you think it can help with retention efforts of people of color in science?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Thank you for that question. As you said, the leaky pipeline is discussed a lot as this passive thing, right? People just drop out through these leaks, and it's an infrastructure problem in an otherwise robust system, that somehow we don't know what to do. There's nobody can figure out a solution. Right?
A lot of the ideas for the hostile obstacle course paper come out from a lot of work that we've been doing for a long periods of time and discussions that we've had for over a decade through the Earth Science Women’s Network, ESWN, or even work that we've been funded by NSF to do through the Advanced Geo-partnership project. Ultimately speaking, where we settled on this idea was around discussions of trying to get people to pay attention to how few people of color graduate from geoscience and earth science programs.
A while ago, there was a discussion on Twitter, in fact, we quote this discussion in the Nature Geoscience paper, that was basically was trying to highlight this. I spoke about how the year I graduated with my PhD, there was a grand total of about five Black people that got their PhDs across the entire country, across all of these institutions on this land, right? But that's not unique, this has been the trend year after year after year after year. And I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm special. I don't think there's anything special about me and those other four people that make us so unique to be able to finish the Ph. D. process. All the other Black people that either did not enter geoscience, or didn't complete their degrees, something is amiss here, right? And so to me, the idea, based on personal things that I've experienced, as well as many things I've learned from the scholarship, the rich scholarship in this field, is that the idea of an obstacle course was a fitting one, it's a really fitting one.
It was important to frame it as a hostile obstacle course because getting through a PhD is a difficult journey for everyone, men, women, people of all races and creeds, everybody has to work hard, everybody has to work their way up through the ladder. But it's important to recognize that not everybody walks through the steps the same way. Some people have a guide, some people have directions, and they’re given support. But some people, even if they do or do not get those supports and directions, there's they still have to go over multiple obstacles before they can go through the ranks. And in many cases, either their entrance into that step is compromised because there's a lot of gatekeeping in the profession. Or even if they start to climb those steps, they're met with multiple occurrences that challenge their existence and their path up through those steps. And it was important to recognize it. And we felt the obstacle course frame captured so much of what has been described in the literature.
It’s not even just we shouldn't be talking about individual personal experiences, this has been documented now, how prevalent hostile workplace experiences are for people who come from minoritized communities, in fields like ours. And so what we did was to provide a summary for all of that, and provide a description for how it fits in this thing we've been discussing as a leaky pipeline. Because if we do not embrace this idea, this real idea of struggle that people have to go through to climb through the steps, there's really no way for us to address the bottom line of what is causing this under representation in our communities. And we also felt it's important to highlight how the obstacle course metaphor allows people who are in charge, the senior folks, the leaders in our institutions, to remove these obstacles if you really want to serve the entire public. I feel very strongly about this. \
You and I are employed in a public institution of higher learning, serving the public is literally part of the job, we're not doing anybody any favors here. We are paid to do this by the public, right? And so, if we are actually going to do our jobs, then we have every right to do the job that we were hired to do, and serve every member of that public that makes our jobs possible. Our leaders and our institutions then have a have a responsibility to remove any barriers and obstacles that prevent us from doing this work. Any barrier that might exist for any member of that public entering our institutions, from succeeding in our institutions, and just getting the education that everybody's entitled to get, because the public paid. And so we felt like this metaphor is a wonderful way to put the responsibility where it belongs. Put the leaders in a position to remove these obstacles if you are serious about improving diversity, inclusion, and equity and justice in our institutions.
Mallika Nocco
I just want to highlight one thing you mentioned, which is that this is an area where there's rich scholarship. And it's been the scholarship of decades and decades of work, right? I don't think that people always realize that and it's just kind of something that I, as someone who's early career and is having some of these conversations or thinking about just what are some of the easiest obstacles to remove? I think you actually wrote it another publication related to ways to make an anti-racist laboratory. And it identifies in that publication several different, approachable things that are feasible to do. This can be at the level of a science laboratory, but also at the level of a department or at the level of degree program.
I don't know if this has been your experience, but my experience has been that sometimes when I bring some of these things up, the low hanging fruit that some of some of our colleagues in the water world and geosciences could take, they just opt out of the conversation and say things like “I don't want to get into the politics of this” or “I just want to focus on science and providing science based information.” The GRE has been identified as being a racist, sexist, elitist exam, and people just respond to it by saying, “Well, I just need to look at a number to see if somebody can handle the math in our programs” and keep retaining these barriers. I'm curious, how do you deal with these people over and over again? Because for you, in addition to creating these ideas and participating in this rich scholarship, you're also in the obstacle course. It can be exhausting. So, I'm curious how you take care of yourself? And how you handle these constant obstacles while also fighting the obstacles?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
I really appreciate that question. It is exhausting! Sometimes we are trying to argue with the obvious, like GRE is a perfect example. I've argued for years, what are you learning from a test that has been proven time and again to be a better predictor of family income, socioeconomic backgrounds, and race more than it is about skill or potential for even success in the graduate program? What are you learning that you haven't learned from the GPAs, the transcripts of your students? I don't think it brings anything any new information, right? Even though grading in itself might have some issues. But people are very hesitant.
I've had people who've argued exactly what you stated, it's like, “I need a number, I need to know somebody could do can handle the GRE quantitative part of the test,” which says nothing about their ability to actually complete the work, right? But it is a never ending discussion. One of the things I think I've tried to do over the years to engage the folks who are interested in doing the right thing first; there's a coalition of the willing that, thankfully, is growing every day. And there's a lot of folks, especially early career folks, that are -- and I should say some senior folks -- that have always been interested in doing the right thing and engaging with what we can learn from the scholarship that's out there, from people's experiences. And first provide the tools and information that group of folks would need.
Some don't know where to start simply speaking. And I think the 10 Simple Rules paper was helpful to start conversations in that way with people who want to do the right thing, but just weren't engaged in this discussion or don't know the scholarship enough because it's a little outside our field. That gave folks a starting point for compensation and things that we could all do to improve the conditions in our labs, and I'm grateful for everybody who engaged with that work in this way. But every once in a while, it does become like we're repeating ourselves over and over again, we keep having this conversation with the converted, if you will, but we don't have enough of the folks that need to hear this conversation show up. And in many ways, that's a failure in leadership, especially in public institutions of higher learning.
I'm going to reiterate this point, I've repeated this to folks until they probably hate me at this point. But we're not doing anybody any favors, we are paid by the public, so serving the public, every member of that public is an important part of our job. If we're not creating conditions, the right conditions, for all students to come to our public institutions and succeed, and if we're not treating everybody fairly in an equitable manner, and not creating justice centered approaches for how we teach, how we mentor, how we do our research, we are failing the public that is allowing us to do this work. And I think we have a good examples here, NSF, NIH are engaging in very productive ways to get people to do the right thing and pay attention. And so hopefully, there'll be more that could happen in that respect, but it is quite exhausting.
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much Asmeret, I've already learned so much in this interview. And Mallika’s last question really just kind of leads into the next one here, and I appreciate your points about the coalition of the willing, and also just our role in terms of being public servants. So just to zoom out a tiny bit to this question of more public interfacing, your work at interface of political ecology and sort of biogeochemistry reveal that the people most affected by soil degradation and climate change are often the ones that are also most missing from the conversation. Do you have any thoughts or advice about how to ensure that the conversation and actual actions related to soil and climate change impacts are truly inclusive and just?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Yeah, thank you. For that question. I think it's extremely important that we're centering the voices of the people that are most affected, that we're not just speaking for people without actually giving them a voice to speak for themselves, without actually empowering the very people you're supposedly arguing to get a seat at the table, right? And this has been the story of climate change, or every other issue, if you will, right? And I've argued in the past that climate change cannot become another issue that is created by rich, fair skinned folks in the northern part of the world and then the worst part of the impact get experienced by the poorer communities, darker skinned folks, typically in the tropics or coastal margins, island nations, small countries, and the poor folks of the world that depend on land for their lives.
This is why I think this whole issue is related to how we handle ourselves in academic institutions. If we're not allowing people from all walks of life to actually gain the training they need to be educated to represent themselves, then we're not doing this right, if we keep empowering a segment of the population, but we're continuously marginalizing folks that are suffering the worst of the consequences, we're doing this wrong. And we need to figure out a way to bring those folks into these conversations early on, including when we're making decisions about what to study, what to prioritize. And if we are ignoring their way of life, their knowledge practices, including Indigenous knowledge about the environment, that they live in, the things they know most about, we're also not doing things right. So, I think inclusion and centering the voices of the people most affected by the crisis that we're studying is this non-negotiable piece that we have to engage in, we have to do better, if we're going to have the path forward is going to be better than the one we've already traveled.
Sam Sandoval
Asmeret, this has been a great conversation, and on behalf of the Water Talk podcast and our audience, I really would like to thank you for your time. You have done a lot of work, and thank you, thank you for all of that. But also, I think this is a two way conversation, I would like to ask you, what would you like people to know about how can we support your work? How can we support the efforts that you're doing?
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Thank you, I really appreciate that. I think you all have a really wonderful program and a platform from which you reach a lot of people. I think every little bit helps in this way. So, my hope is that we keep educating people just like you're educating folks about water, about the soil system and the health of the soil system and the need to actually respect the soil and do right by the soil as we push forward. So, every bit of information you can include about that would be just wonderful and really desperately needed, because we are still at a time where most people virtually treat soil as dirt. I think that's personally really wrong and that's how we got to the problem that we are in right now. Going forward, we need to appreciate the majesty and beauty of soil system and how intricately associated is, not just with water, but with so many of the processes that regulate life in the earth system. And I feel like it'd be wonderful if more people get a better understanding of that.