United Colors of Ho avy: Growing Trees and Growing with Them, Madagascar
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Food Forests, Nurseries & Propogation, Social Gatherings, Trees, Village Development — by Martina Petru September 2, 2010
Editor’s Note: This is an update for the ho avy project in Madagascar. Previous updates here and here.
EcoExplorers Madagascar 2010 from Shannon Kohlitz on Vimeo.
Here we are past July’s time for fleece, hat and socks, wouldn’t you believe! Manintsy – cold (25/16 °C day/night or less) was the semiarid southwest Madagascar in winter; winter in the dry southwest where ‘it never rains’. Well, never say ‘never’ and/or be prepared for rain in the no rain season and for beautiful double rainbows arching gently over the glowing morning skies….
Since our last update in February, ho avy has been on a ‘high season rainbow ride’ – exciting in a way, admittedly speedy and bumpy some of the time – more like a downhill slalom race against time, where falling over exposed tree roots is unavoidable. Retrospectively, it’s been a valuable growing time: our trees are growing and we are growing with them.
We especially enjoyed the rainbow of colors left behind the pens, pencils and brushes of Eco-Explorers – talented undergraduate students of the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design. These young students overflowing with creativity came to Madagascar expecting no rain. Although they got some, they seemed to greatly enjoy this mad ride, and so did we on ho avy & Madagascar Eco-Explorers’ tour and project service work in Ranobe.
Comments (2)Permaculture for Kids
Community Projects, Education Centres, Society, Village Development — by Paul Douglas August 30, 2010
Editor’s Note: Please welcome new contributing writer, Paul Douglas of Victoria, Australia!
During my two week immersion into permaculture design, Bill Mollison was asked by a student, "How do we go about teaching permaculture to our children?” to which Bill replied something along the lines of, “I don’t believe we should be teaching Permaculture to children. They already have enough on their plates in terms of responsibilities and such, so we shouldn’t overburden them with yet another subject.”
True enough, if you take permaculture as the full 72-hour course that we adults tend towards. But I approach the idea that teaching children permaculture is vitally important to the sustainability of life itself and needs to be taught to youths so that by the time they are adults, permaculture is no longer a subject, but a way of life that is as natural as breathing.
Comments (10)Letters from Sri Lanka – Sarvodaya and the Tea Plantation Challenge
Aid Projects, Alternatives to Political Systems, Community Projects, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh August 26, 2010
Part IX of a series – If you haven’t already, please read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII and Part VIII before continuing. This series is part of my work for the Sustainable (R)evolution book project.
Preamble: Described as ‘the champagne of tea’, Sri Lankan tea is consumed the world over. Second only to Kenya in exports, Sri Lanka’s tea industry accounts for a full 15% of the nation’s GDP, generating about $700 million per year. Yet very little of this money is seen by the people actually producing it…. Tea plantation workers are trapped in low paid manual labour positions and live in miserable housing conditions, while people around the globe slurp on the fruit of their misery. Sarvodaya has its work cut out to try to assist, but they’re giving it a good try.
Sri Lankan tea plantation worker
All photographs © copyright Craig Mackintosh
Permaculture and Society – a Look at the Example of Detroit
Aid Projects, Alternatives to Political Systems, Community Projects, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh August 24, 2010
Rhamis Kent, friend and regular contributor to the PRI, recently gave a talk to Schumacher College in the south west of England. He starts with a look at the meltdown of Detroit’s once thriving manufacturing base, its dramatic consequences for the city and residents, and shares that the current state of affairs for the beleaguered city is a direct result of the economic model that’s been in place in the U.S. over the last century. Rhamis goes further, to share that this is, to one degree or another, the present trajectory of most of the world’s cities.
But, not stopping on the negative, Rhamis goes on to show some of the exciting movements within Detroit that these circumstances are giving life to. Out of necessity, people are working to increase their resiliency and quality of life – turning the problem of Detroit into a solution. Rhamis joins the dots between our socio-economic problems and the environmental catastrophes taking place, and begins to look through the lens of permaculture to see how we can turn things around by imitating natural systems to create low- to no-impact societies that don’t operate on the boom-and-bust model that present day Detroit is arguably the most striking example of.
Duration: 82 minutes
Part way through the talk Rhamis presents the following Urban Roots film trailer. I’ll put it below for convenience. To jump back to where the trailer below (higher quality) ends in the video above, click on 31:40 on progress bar above.
Comments (8)The Holistic Flower
Building, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Economics, Energy Systems, Land, People Systems, Plant Systems, Society, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, peak oil — by Oyvind Holmstad August 23, 2010
I’ve found a wonderful flower; I discovered it not long ago. Still, it’s not so much what I know about it that touches me, I’m just drawn to its colors. This flower is unique, it thrives in every country and climate, and adapts very well to the specific conditions of culture and place. Its colors, smell and form is therefore of unlimited variety and complexity, yet it is the same flower. It is the permaculture flower.
Some people think the permaculture flower is a remnant of the hippie’s flower power movement, or that it has something to do with New Age – just another consumerism idea to be sold to the confused and rich people of the middle classes. Oh no, the ‘flower power’ of the permaculture flower has real power. It has the power to reunite humanity with the complex systems of nature, so they can live in symbiosis, enriching each other. Nothing else possesses this power.
Comments (4)Permaculture Continues To Take Root In Kenya
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, People Systems, Village Development — by Warren Brush
Take a PDC in Kenya (PDF) or donate, either way will help to underwrite the course expenses so that local Kenyans can participate without cost….
There are two very unique and exciting opportunities to learn Permaculture Design and obtain your certification in Kenya this coming December of 2010 or in March of 2011. Students from around the world are invited to join local Kenyan students and International permaculture teacher and designer, Warren Brush, of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm and other teachers from the local culture for this learning journey of a lifetime.
Get Paid to Share Your Permaculture Passion With the World
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, Networking Sites, News, People Systems, Project Positions, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh August 18, 2010
How to Help Us Educate the World and Save Our Futures
Tongue-in-cheek instructional video
Note: This is an update on PRI’s position and direction, and an opportunity for you to get paid to help!
The short version: We’re now paying you to write for us! Click here to get started.
The background/long version follows:
Over the last two years since I took over the running of this site, I’ve been pleased to see significant growth in traffic. I’m not so narrow-minded as to believe this is just due to my efforts or Geoff and Nadia Lawton’s or the rest of the PRI team, however. Aside from the tremendous support and input from the wider permaculture community, I also note that current events and the spread of information through the internet is threatening to actually wake the world up – and this ‘awakening’ is seeing an unprecedented growth in interest in sustainability, transition and the creation of resilient people systems. This interest certainly isn’t coming too soon, but better late than never.
Comments (20)Turning Estates into Villages
Building, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Society, Village Development — by George Monbiot August 10, 2010
How good planning can make us slimmer, fitter, safer and less lonely.
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
It took me a while to recognise what I was seeing. It was an ordinary campsite in Pembrokeshire: a square field with tents around the perimeter. But it had a curious effect on the children staying there. Young people who had seldom experienced daylight slowly emerged from their tents and were drawn towards the centre of the field. Bats and balls left on the grass mysteriously appeared in their hands. Children with no prior interest in sport started playing football, cricket and rounders. Little kids ran around with older ones. As children of all classes played together, their parents started talking to each other. It hit me with some force: we had reinvented the village green.
Source: Wikipedia
We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us. Academic papers show that many of the problems we blame on individual behaviour are caused in part by the places in which we live. People are more likely to help their neighbours in quiet areas, for example, than in noisy ones(1). A long series of studies across several countries, beginning in San Francisco in 1969, shows unequivocally that communities become weaker as the volume of traffic on their streets increases(2,3).
Comments (3)A Call to Large Scale Earth Healing and Lessons from the Loess Plateau (Video)
Alternatives to Political Systems, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Conservation, Consumerism, Dams, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Gabions, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Plant Systems, Population, Regional Water Cycle, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Swales, Terraces, Trees, Village Development, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh August 6, 2010
The world is coming unglued. The world burns. What are we going to do about it?
Map of fires in Russia
As I type, half of Russia is on fire after its hottest summer on record, Pakistan is dealing with the biggest floods in living memory and Australia is still in the clutches of a decade long drought. The last decade, worldwide, was the hottest since records began, and 2010 may break the records of 1998 and 2005 to become the hottest year we’ve ever known. We could spend weeks just examining the extreme weather events going on on a country by country basis.
Comments (12)Making The Case For Earth Repair Work – Part 2
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Development & Property Trusts, Economics, Ethical Investment, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems, Population, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton — by Rhamis Kent August 5, 2010
Over the past couple of years, there has been quite a bit of attention paid to the purchase of massive amounts of agricultural land by rich countries and corporate entities in the developing world. Craig Mackintosh wrote about this on this site, as have many other very informative reports and press stories.
To summarize, there has been approximately US$100 Billion mobilized to purchase somewhere between 40 – 50 million hectares (roughly 100 – 125 million acres) of agricultural land worldwide.
Comments (6)From Little Things Big Things Grow
Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Land, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Retrofitting, Social Gatherings, Society, Trees, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling — by Matt Lees July 30, 2010
Have you ever grown your own food? Studies have shown that people who eat organic produce from their own garden have an increased sense of well being and good health.
In September 2007 I met a group of motivated, hardcore volunteer gardeners. When I say hardcore, some of these guys where involved with the guerrilla gardeners. They turn unused trashy areas and transform them into edible, self-sustaining gardens.
It started like this….
Some groups even go to extremes like dressing up in council uniforms or go out in the middle of the night and load their vans armed with fruit tree seedlings, compost and shovels.
Comments (4)Morocco Observations, Past, Present and Future – Part II
Aid Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Alex Metcalfe July 28, 2010
Written by Alex Metcalfe. Photo credits to Alex Metcalfe, Asiya Brock, Helen Evans and Houssa Yacoubi. Part II of a Series. Click here for Part I.
Spicer and Asiya Brock shop for supplies in Marrakesh Medina
Consistent with Global Warming trends, Observation from Morocco’s National Meteorological Directorate show rising temperatures, less precipitation, and an increase in drought, widening the gap between water supply and demand. Average temperatures are expected to rise between 2 and 5 degree Celsius by the end of the century, while rainfall is predicted to decline 20 to 30%. – Moroccan Coastal Management: Building Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change through Sustainable Policies and Planning
Deforestation, water management and erosion are all evidently interlinked and inseparable issues faced by rural Imazighen, particularly those living amongst the unique and ever changing weather systems of the high Atlas Mountains.
After my first memorable visit I searched for a project in Morocco I could contribute to. I wanted to have a good reason for returning, something other than purely for pleasure. Morocco is a country where everyone can have a passport, but only those with enough cash in their bank account can get a visa to travel to places like Europe or the U.S. I had a much smaller sum in my account when I went to Morocco the first time and yet I was free to do so. That fact set me apart in some sense from the people I had the pleasure to meet and although they did not appear overly occupied with it, it was something I was keenly aware of. I felt that if I could work with Moroccans I would receive a more intimate education on life in their country than I would as a tourist and hopefully earn their respect by doing so. Like many, many other people who volunteer or work for positive change abroad I wanted, if possible, to side step what can sometimes turn into a series of purely economic interactions. I wanted to meet people’s families, work with them, to eat at their table and to digest their way of life literally instead of just intellectually.
Comments (2)Solving All the Problems of the World – in a Garden
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, News, Nurseries & Propogation, People Systems, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Salination, Society, Soil Conservation, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh July 23, 2010
This video can be downloaded in high resolution from Vimeo (see ‘About this video’ section on lower right side’).
I hope you’ll enjoy this clip. More, I hope it encourages you to dare to be different, and dare to have your work noticed. The garden we profile in the video above, as you’ll discover after watching it, has just won a national competition held by the Jordanian Department of Education – for schools who incorporate environmental projects into their curriculum. This means that thousands of schools, in what is arguably the most water-stressed country on the planet, now have the possibility to learn from this humble example of permaculture in action – and get inspired to do similar.
Special thanks to Lesley Byrne for her enthusiastic support, and to Nadia Lawton for her vision and determination to help her own people – and in so doing setting such an excellent example for us all.
A Fresh Look at Gandhi – Part II
Alternatives to Political Systems, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Thomas Fischbacher
by Thomas Fischbacher. Read Part I here.
History has seen many an ideology fail that wrongly believed to "finally" explain everything that went wrong in this world, and show a way out. The problem with any such system of thought is that its key feature – "to explain everything" makes it both very seductive and very dangerous. Seductive, because many (most?) people experience psychological discomfort at the thought of living in a world they cannot fully understand, and dangerous, because any such ideology by construction must be unable to recognize feedback of the "you are on the wrong track here" sort – it will always have both an excuse and a remedy ready that is of the form "it would have worked straightaway if only …". So, how do such ideologies fail? In the only way they can – by bumping into the solid wall of hard reality.
In human societies, "conflict" more often than not is a conflict between different interpretations of the world around us and how we think it should be shaped. The dominant attitude towards "conflict" in western society is one of "might makes right". "Conflict" is typically seen as a problem of "preferred outcomes", with "strategy" being the key tool employed by both parties in conflict as they lead their own ideology to victory – as if the world were a game of chess.
Comments (3)Privatized Hell
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Ernest Partridge
Editor’s Note: Some prefer to only talk about swales and banana circles, but I hope enough of you recognise that it’s economic theory, political policy and industry behaviour – and the educational curriculums in our schools that are tailored to appease all three – that have delivered us into this environmental mega-debacle, and that to escape it will require consideration on how to adjust our present invisible structures so they will nurture permaculture systems, rather than be their aggressive adversary, as they are today. There are a few amongst us, ‘libertarians’, who believe that dismantling government, along with the complete privatisation of everything – land, water, air, creatures, etc. – combined with a privatised court system to settle ownership disputes, is a recipe for success. What do you think?
Copyright 2007 by Ernest Partridge. Published here with permission of the author.
I
In colonial Philadelphia, firefighters were employed by private insurance companies which, of course, had financial incentives to minimize damage to their clients’ properties. Plaques with the insurance company’s insignia were placed on buildings, so that the fire fighters would know whether or not it was their “business” to put out the fires on the premises. (These plaques are often found today in antique shops). . If a fire alarm was answered by a cadre of fire-fighters from the “wrong” company, that was just tough luck. “Burn, baby, burn!” Many structures were lost while competing companies tried to sort out which was authorized to put out the fire. Many more adjoining structures were consumed by fires that were oblivious to property lines.
Occasionally, when the building’s insurance affiliation was in some doubt, competing fire companies would fight each other for the privilege of putting out the fire, resulting in more water aimed at fire fighters than at burning buildings.
Eventually, the absurdity and outright danger of this system led one prominent Philadelphia citizen to come up with the idea of a publicly funded and administered fire department.
His name was Benjamin Franklin: America’s first anti-free-enterprise commie pinko nut-case.
Comments (4)
