Miyawaki Forest

I’ve been super curious about the spectrum of land regeneration, whether it is permaculture, syntropic agroforestry, the Miyawaki reforestation/ afforestation method, or many others. I can’t remember when I first came across the Miyawaki method but I got Hannah Lewis’ book recently ‘Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World’ and found amazing organizations promoting the Miyawaki method like Afforest in India and Junglo in Bali.

Ecologist and botanist, Professor Akira Miyawaki, first developed this method in the 1970s to restore land into mature natural forests in a matter of decades instead of centuries. This happens by:

1. Planting a high diversity of native climax tree species to accelerate the succession
2. Planting in high density to simulate competitive and mutualistic interactions that also promote quicker growth
3. Preparing the soil to provide the best condition for the trees to survive and thrive

Having stalked Junglo for a while, I reached out to them as soon as I knew when I’ll be in Bali next. What I’m most curious about is how they got started, how the forests are doing, and what they have learned. Mo, the co-founder of Junglo, was very welcoming and invited me to crash an introductory session that he is hosting for NUS students who coincidentally are visiting Bali at the same time. These students are part of a new residential college in NUS called Lighthouse and come from a diverse background ranging from nursing to engineering, environmental science, medicine, landscaping, etc. NUS is piloting a social innovation and sustainable tourism course to introduce more holistic and experiential learning to their students.

The introduction was held at Green School, a wall-less, bamboo campus that allows kids to learn through purpose-driven and hands-on enquiry to solve a lot of the tough problems we face in the world today, and very importantly to develop kids holistically beyond just the intellect. Mo was a teacher at the Green School where he worked with students to develop projects that tackle real-life problems and looking at the magnitude of problems the world is facing today, it is easy to get paralyzed by fear and inaction, not knowing where to even begin. During the pandemic, Mo dived deep into the Miyawaki method with one of his students, Chayton whom he co-founded Junglo with. Firstly, they took a short online course with Afforest and then they just decided to start experimenting with how to plant Miyawaki forests in their own backyard.

Identifying native climax species, or what Miyawaki called Potential Natural Vegetation (PNV) might seem like a fairly straightforward process but it is anything but. The process requires studying what used to exist before humans interfered which is a little hard when according to Mo, there is hardly any primary forest left in Bali. So he went to the pura or temples and see what large trees still remain, asking the locals, finding the scientific names, searching databases to see if those trees are indeed native or not, observing these trees in their natural environment, seeing what companion trees live around them, and in what patterns.

Once he has a list, he went to nurseries in search of seedlings of these native trees which are pretty rare. Just when he was about to give up, he found a nursery with some of these precious trees. Luckily, he has found a regular nursery now willing to provide more native species. Next, it is time to restore the soil to forest-like conditions which is not easy when our soil is mostly compacted and exhausted. Digging 1 meter holes and mixing the soil with compost, rice husk, coco peat, etc. to prepare the soil for tree planting takes time, effort and costs. Now, Mo is trialing different ways to restore soil that can provide his clients with more options. Once the seedlings and the soil are ready, you can start planting and mulching away. In the first 3 years, you may need to weed and water but after that, the forest basically self-maintains. Over time, they create the symbiotic relationships necessary to survive and thrive.

I was curious given climate change and the increasing likelihood of extreme weather conditions such as floods and drought, can native species survive and does the competition affect the trees? Mo reminded me that identifying native species that existed before humans do and have survived up until today shows their incredible level of resilience. And the important thing is not just what happens above ground but to provide them with the best conditions to survive which includes the underground mycelium network that sustains entire ecosystem of trees.

This is the Miyawaki forest at Green School after 3 months

This is the forest at Chayton’s house after 15 months. Chayton’s dad shared that even though his land already has quite a lot of trees and vegetation, since the Miyawaki forest, he has seen many more species of birds and wildlife with the native and dense forest. Plus he still has not watered the forest!

What I think is really exciting about the Miyawaki method is it can be applied on land of any size, the results are relatively quick and obvious, and it engages the community to identify, plant and monitor the forests. It seems to make a lot of sense for an urban environment like Singapore and offers a great opportunity to enable people in the city to begin building a relationship with nature! Imagine the rapid creation of such urban pockets of forest with very little maintenance everywhere and another fantastic organization SUGi is doing exactly that! I asked Mo if the Miyawaki method can be integrated with other methods on a larger scale and he was like absolutely. For example, the Miyawaki method can be used at the border/ periphery of a syntropic agroforestry farm. A word of caution though is not to treat this as a one size fits all solution. The understanding of the trees including its natural environment and the type of soil needed plus not all ecosystems can and should be a forest if it wasn’t a forest in the first place.

What I took away from today is land regeneration is really about self and community regeneration. Everyone that I have met on this journey so far, whether it is the permaculture community in Singapore, the syntropic agroforestry community a few weeks ago in Malaysia or the Miyawaki forest community that I got a quick glimpse of today in Bali, has been so open, welcoming and encouraging. Plus it’s not like any one of us has figured it all out, we are just trying, each in our own way.

Another seed was planted in me today, waiting to bloom soon perhaps when the soil is ready but I feel that the mycelium-like connections and networks for land regeneration have already started forming across South East Asia!