‘Saving plants is not altruistic but selfish’

Preventing the outbreak of the World War III? Eradicating poverty? Ensuring children have access to education?None of these is the biggest challenge facing humanity, according to Carlos Magdalena. The most important thing humans can do, he says, is to focus on saving plants.“All the international debates of the recent times: Brexit, Catalonia, Donald Trump, who will pay for the wall … Even if this may seem hard to believe, they are totally irrelevant,” says the Spanish botanical horticulturist.The real problem, he says, is climate change – and that all begins with plants, which are the foundation of the earth’s ecosystems.“In the global and historical perspective, [political issues] are chats between neighbours that are gone with the wind when you think about the impact of global warming and how it will change the face of the earth for millennia,” he says.Mgadalena is speaking shortly after the launch of the Spanish version of his book on plants, first published in English last year.Born in 1972, he works in London’s Kew Gardens. A couple of years ago, during filming for a documentary, broadcaster David Attenborough described as the plant saviour.Magdalena’s English-language publisher describes him as “a man on a mission to save the world’s most endangered plants from destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors.”The book blurb continues: “From the planet’s tiniest waterlily – the Nymphaea thermarum – to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction.”“[Plants] regulate climate, and they have been doing so for millions of years,” Magdalena says. “Oxygen would not exist if plants had not created it, and the atmosphere would be stuffed with carbon dioxide if it had not been absorbed by plants.”He continues: “Plants are the only organism … that is capable of producing energy and storing it and of producing many more materials in the process, without generating carbon dioxide. And not only that, but they absorb it.”This ability is massively undervalued, he adds: “Nobody puts a price on the oxygen that we breathe, but it is the engine of the economy.”Saving the plant world is not an altruistic cause, Magdalena says – “it is rather selfish.”He stresses the “potential that plants have and the many things they give humanity: nutrition, medicine, climate security … protection from soil erosion.”Plants maintain the climate in ways we may not be conscious of, Magdalena says. If a wheat harvest fails in Siberia, for example, that can spark famines elsewhere.Historically, plant production has played a key role in economies and can even make regimes collapse, he adds.In not paying attention to plant protection, “we are shooting ourselves in the foot,” Magdalena concludes.“Gandhi said: ‘The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ If we really manage our resources well, changing our mode of production should not have such a big impact on our lives.”Some people have resigned themselves to the idea that our natural environment will be destroyed, while others think that humanity could save itself by colonising Mars, Magdalena points out.“As climate change destabilises the climate, the solution would be to move to a planet where temperatures are around minus 50 degrees! And which, interestingly, has a problem with CO2 and is therefore an arid and ice-cold planet, according to scientists.”As to the widespread belief that technology will allow humanity solve environmental problems, Magdalena is sceptical.“Technology could have allowed us to overcome this years ago, but we are not doing it. I think all of us, if we stop to reflect, know that our approach to the environment is wrong. But then, it is very difficult for us as a society to implement [the right changes].”Madgalena wants his book to ring alarm bells over the loss of biodiversity – above all plant diversity. The book pays tribute to his father and above all his mother, who loved plants and allowed him to grow up surrounded by them in his native Asturias region in northern Spain.Magdalena also feels indebted to scientists and naturalists who showed him the way: Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente in Spain, Jane Goodall, Jacques Cousteau and, of course, Attenborough.He hopes the book will inspire young people who may be considering a career in horticulture.“We have ignored [some] important things,” he says. “As a species, we have always lived in groups. And as a species, we have always interacted with other species. And today, this is not understood by our brain neurons. We live in individual bubbles: I am me and I walk along the street alongside other bubbles.”Magdalena has been told that dedicating his life to nature and living surrounded by it means he has a Peter Pan complex. “I thought about it a bit and I said: ‘No. Nature is reality. There is nothing more real. All the rest is man-made.’”Man-made things have their own rules, he says, but nature is governed by immutable laws. “It is a tool for your mental health, an element that is there, unchangeable, you can’t argue with it: If I throw an apple, it will land on the ground. It may give you more solid values to cling to.” – DPA

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