real value of forests. THE BIOTIC PUMP AND POLICY Mongabay: What policy changes does the biotic theory suggest for governments worldwide? Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva: 1. The biotic pump theory shows that natural forests are indispensable if we want to have rainfall, and, consequently, agriculture on the land where we live. This scientific message has important economic implications. First of all, people and governments worldwide should realize that economic growth cannot occur at the expense of cutting forests either in one's own country or elsewhere. It is undermining the very pillars of our civilizations existence. When water and food security are at stake, it is not possible for forest industries to focus on growth, just to increase the global production of wrapping and toilet paper. This should be the main topic of environmental campaigns. There are important branches of human activities where economic growth is not possible: that is, for example, fisheries. Consumption of natural fish products is limited by the rate of their recovery in nature, which is achieved by the mechanism of international quotas. Lack of such regulations could result in transient economic growth, but would ultimately lead to collapse of the entire industry when the fish base is depleted. For a different reason, economic growth is equally not possible based on criminal activities like selling drugs or human organs. Were such activities encouraged, as are other economic activities, this could lead to transient "economic growth" but then to the physical collapse of the population. Where this is understood, people are taking measures against such activities. Raw timber lines a port in Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The case with the forestry industry is less akin to fishery but more akin to drug and human organ selling. Humanity needs a large territory of natural, intact, undisturbed forests to run the hydrological cycle on land. This strict environmental criterion is incompatible with the criterion of "sustainability" applied in modern forestry, when trees are in the best case cut at the rate at which they regrow and when the majority of trees are cut when they are 50 years of age. Conceptually, this could be compared to growing human beings for organs and killing them when they are, say, fifteen years of age. Such an "economic activity" could be "sustainable" and "profitable" for some, but one cannot expect civilization based on such "economics" to be stable and give birth to Shakespeares, Mozarts, Einsteins etc. Human beings grown for organs cannot live a normal human life, they cannot work creatively or develop. Likewise, trees grown for timber cannot perform their environmental function and stabilize the climate: only a natural ecosystem with a full suite of all the necessary biological species can do this. In other words, society must urgently take the course of gradually shrinking the forestry industry. Destruction of natural forest ecosystems is a crime against humanity and will be increasingly perceived as such as new knowledge accumulates, environmental literacy increases, and ethical standards change accordingly. Such radical changes have happened in human history: slavery, once perceived as economically prudent