The Search for Sustainability in the Negev
Aid Projects, Community Projects, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Alice Gray February 2, 2012
The Bedouin of the Negev are an ancient people whose cultural history spans centuries, if not millennia. Historically, the Bedouin have been semi-nomadic pastoralists, who made the desert their own through a combination of dry-land farming of forage crops and cereals, rainwater harvesting and seasonal mobility: rotating their presence between their winter and summer grazing grounds. When water and forage ran short, they would move on to another place where they knew they could find what they needed – a cistern that would probably be full, an area where small shrubs would be abundant.
Like all people, everywhere, they created a complex cultural landscape through their activities: modifying the environment they lived in to suit their needs. Like all people, everywhere, they developed their own codes of conduct for sharing the resources upon which they depended among themselves, between different families and tribal groups. Grazing rights, water rights and rights of safe-passage were enshrined in cultural codes, tribal territories were known and respected (or disrespected at the peril of transgressors).
Comments (4)Bustan Qaraaqa, West Bank, Seeks Two Permaculture Interns
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Project Positions — by Alice Gray
Bustan Qaraaqa is a community permaculture project in the Palestinian West Bank. The project consists of an experimental permaculture farm in the town of Beit Sahour close to the historic city of Bethlehem, and several community projects where staff and volunteers work together with Palestinian community groups and individuals to implement permaculture initiatives that have been tried and tested at the farm.
The project has been in operation for almost 4 years now, and as well as building a functioning and attractive permaculture centre for staff and volunteers to live in, we have built up a great network of local partners and become a local landmark in our host town.
In fact, things are going so well that we are feeling the need to extend our team to cope with the workload that we now have. This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a cutting edge permaculture project in a fascinating country – ideal for anyone who wants to build up their practical experience.
Comments (2)Arts Factory Backpackers – Photo Update
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites — by Geoff Lawton February 1, 2012
I was visiting Byron Bay on my last Sunday off in conditions where we have had a large amount of rain and some very unsettled weather with lots of storms. With the winds from the north, the surf conditions where very messy and unfavorable, as also were the fishing conditions, the sea was really unsettled and a lot of fresh water was flowing into the ocean.
So, I instead took the opportunity to visit some of our project work and was fortunate to visit the Arts Factory Backpackers’ garden. This was installed during a permaculture urban landscape course, reference the links below:
Comments (6)Update on Permaculture Pygmies – Introducing Solar Ovens, Water Filter and SODIS
Aid Projects, Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Energy Systems, Potable Water — by Xavier Fux
We built a solar oven made out of cardboard, and showed the pygmies how to purify water through a solar disinfection unit (the SODIS System). We also showed them how to make a filter with a bucket full of sand, gravel and active carbon.
by Xavier Fux
Who said last days weren’t productive? Before leaving, we wanted to provide the pygmies with some very useful tools that can greatly simplify things for them:
- Simple, easy-to-build solar ovens (to reduce the need for firewood and all the negative implications that come with it)
- Sand-gravel-charcoal water filter (to clean the water from the 20,000L pond in order to use it for washing and other uses)
- Solar disinfection system for water (to purify water from the 1000L tank)
Community Design Template for 25-500 Families
Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organisations, Community Projects, Education, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Dann Zealley January 31, 2012
Introduction
Back in 2008 I spent 6 weeks in Venezuela. I have a Venezuelan friend who believes as I do that permaculture could and should be a driving force for positive change. We both also believe that the Bolivarian Revolution, championed most famously by the charismatic and controversially colourful personality of Hugo Chavez, despite many serious ‘growing pains’, provides the most pragmatic model for the social transformation of humanity towards a truly just and ecologically sustainable world. Already tremendous social and political changes have taken place since Chavez was elected in 1998. Despite corporate media propaganda to the contrary, his government’s record of accomplishment is undeniable (particularly when contrasted with the dramatic economic and social decline of the so-called ‘developed’ nations and the disturbingly increasing deficit of democracy occurring in Europe and North America.)*
Comments (5)My First Week at Thailand’s Newest Permaculture Farm
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Village Development — by Theron Beaudreau January 26, 2012
In a rural village at the Southwest corner of the Isaan Plateau, just over an hour drive south of Thailand’s second largest city, Korat, a band of tenacious permaculturalists have just arrived at the site of their new home.
Over the course of the next year, infrastructure will be erected, community and teaching spaces will be established and a traditional corn and rice farm will undergo a dramatic metamorphosis. The work here has already begun… and I’d like to take you along for the ride!
Comments (11)Permaculture in Damaged Lands: Degradation and Restoration in New Mexico
Community Projects, Conservation, Courses/Workshops, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Gabions, Irrigation, Land, People Systems, Processing & Food Preservation, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Storm Water, Swales, Village Development, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Dan Smith January 21, 2012
A certain coal-strewn road in Madrid, New Mexico
— the remnants of a now defunct railway.
Alternately barren and spectacular, the southwest United States has piqued the imagination of Americans and people across the world for generations. The site of gold rushes, Native American homelands, and a culture of lawlessness that has yet to fade completely, much of the land was degraded and destroyed long before Hollywood discovered how to cash in on retelling stories from its checkered past. Films may glorify the breadth and scope of the iconic terrain, but the essence and character of the Southwest ecology has been drastically altered; it little resembles what it once was.
Comments (6)Gold Coast Permaculture Prepares for Another Great Year Ahead
Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Land, Rehabilitation, Soil Biology, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Permaculture Gold Coast January 19, 2012
by Vanessa Fernandes
Dani, Mel, Judy, Kristy and Pond in the house garden
2011 has been seminal in the development of permaculture on the Gold Coast, NSW, Australia. The incorporation of Gold Coast Permaculture (GCP) early in the year has seen the organisation and the concept become very much integrated into the Gold Coast community sector. Some of the sector we have cooperation with are:
- Employment Plus, the employment arm of the Salvation Army
- The Smith Family provides contact with schools and organisations that wish to create gardens
- The Department of Corrective Services
- Federation House who are working with individuals who have become very marginalised
- We work with local government and other not-for-profit groups.
We are also blessed to have many individual volunteers who have embraced the project.
Comments (3)A Step and a Stride: From Academia to Abundance
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops — by Graham Calder January 17, 2012
How exactly did I get here? When did I embark on this journey of abundance? Here I am looking back on my life, and seeing how it all started….
Raised on 75 acres of subsistence farm I was an unlikely candidate to moving to the big city of Montreal at age 20. After five years studying the discouraging field of Environmental Science and Human Environment, I found myself at a loss for solutions. Academia only paralyzed me in face of environmental challenges, and with my employment with Environment Canada preaching contorted, underwhelming solutions and finger wagging, it was all taking its toll. My studies and career where failing me greatly.
Comments (6)The Shared Patterns of Indigenous Culture, Permaculture and Digital Commons
Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organisations, Community Projects, Consumerism, Development & Property Trusts, Economics, Land, People Systems, Plant Systems, Society, Village Development — by David Bollier January 16, 2012
Joline Blais
Rarely have I read an essay that knits together some very different commons with such wisdom and depth. Joline Blais’ 2006 essay, “Indigenous Domain: Pilgrims, Permaculture and Perl,” is a wonderfully insightful analysis that reveals the underlying unity and logic of commons principles. Her piece appeared in Intelligent Agent (vol. 6, no. 2), published by the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts.
Blais’ essay is valuable because it speaks to the rift that is said to separate commons based on natural resources and those of cyberspace. The segregation of those two classes of commons has always bothered me. There are of course significant differences between managing depletable natural resources and managing cheap and limitless stores of digital information. Yet it has always struck me that the two great tribes of commoners have much more in common than not, and should be in closer consultation with each other.
Comments (1)John Hardy: My Green School Dream
Aid Projects, Building, Community Projects, Eco-Villages, Education, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
Comments (0)Join John Hardy on a tour of the Green School, his off-the-grid school in Bali that teaches kids how to build, garden, create (and get into college). The centerpiece of campus is the spiraling Heart of School, perhaps the world’s largest freestanding bamboo building. — Ted.com
Greeks Reclaim the Land to Ease the Pain of Economic Austerity
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Compost, Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Economics, Food Shortages, Fungi, Rehabilitation, Salination, Society, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Beatrice Yannacopoulou January 13, 2012
Editor’s Note: The recently-formed PRI Hellas (Greece) team are making good progress in difficult times, as evidenced by this nice piece from The Ecologist below. If you want to support this work, whilst having a great learning experience in an incredibly beautiful location, be sure to check out their April 23 – 29, 2012, Intensive 6-day Permaculture Seminar & Workshop on the island of Kefalonia, Greece.
A group of community-minded gardeners have turned a former Athens airport into a blooming vegetable plot, showing how Greece’s eroded soil holds the keys to a revival in farming and a way to buck the jobless trend.
by Beatrice Yannacopoulou. Article originally published on The Ecologist
All photographs courtesy: Dimitris.V.Geronikos
"If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth," said Nicolas Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Research Institute Hellas. He was talking to a group of some fifty people of all ages who had gathered for two days of workshops on self-sufficiency, how to self-organize, agro-ecology and composting. This small gathering was taking place on a beautifully sunny autumn day at the former Athens airport, Ellinikon.
Comments (3)Rental Permaculture: How to Fill the Void
Community Projects, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Nurseries & Propogation, Plant Systems, Seeds, Society, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Bob Nekrasov January 6, 2012
by Bob Nekrasov
I hear you comrade. ‘I want those acres and to start my food forest and have a permaculture demonstration Eden – but alas, I am a humble renter with big bloody dreams and typically uncreative landlords’.
As us ‘renters’ forlornly scan open fields and acres — seeing real estate listings of eroded soils sitting below beautiful key points — we are designing lush, abundant landscape in our minds and whinging about the price and how we could easily ‘turn this place into a self-sustaining paradise’. Well, at least I am! But, we can get caught in the dream trap — thinking we will start the big permaculture project when we get that dream plot of land. But it is really a void that needs to be filled. When you know how much good you can do you do feel a little crippled by renting a place where you feel you cannot do much. Having this deluded mindset a few years back I set out to figure out what I can do. Hooray!
Comments (19)Orlando Permaculture Documentary
Community Projects, Consumerism, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development, peak oil — by Troy Ansley January 2, 2012
Comments (5)The heroes and heroines of history’s past are so well-known they need not be mentioned. Lesser known and perhaps more integral, however, are the countless individuals whose stories remain untold and hidden by history. “Orlando Permaculture” is a documentary of the latter modern-day individuals. It is a story of a community of people who have read cover to cover the “story of pattern recognition in a sea of apparent chaos” of which Troy Ansley, speaks. They have also repeatedly heard the story modern culture sells them on how the world operates, and decided they would like to write a new, yet somehow ancient story of their own. A story of community, integrity, true sustainability and new beginnings. A story of belonging.
The film, “Orlando Permaculture,” poignantly reveals that great movements are birthed in the dreams of those who desire more, and molded between the hands of those who reach out to one another and to the land. Through visiting a variety of different people within the city of Orlando, the film and portrayals serve to inspire, enlighten and engage your heart & mind to dream of a more colorful and living world in which all are welcome. This is a world of possibilities, togetherness, and balance. Indicative of the subject matter, Ansley weaves a beautiful fabric of sound and image to ornately clothe this emerging community whose story otherwise might remain hidden by history. Listen to this story, dear viewer, so that you might share it and likewise reach out your hand and mold it with us. — Richard G. Powell December 20th, 2011 Orlando, FL
Kotare Village and Community Development – Your New Zealand Opportunity
Community Projects, Development & Property Trusts, Eco-Villages, People Systems, Village Development — by Bob Corker December 24, 2011
To confidently face the many challenges that the future holds for us, we need new models for living lightly on Earth and for building resilience into our communities.
We can’t expect that we can merely change our intentions and the existing economic, physical and social structures will magically serve our new intentions with ‘green’ add-ons.
Design follows intention.
We are challenged to dream new dreams and to have the courage to manifest those dreams; crafting them in the spirit with which they were dreamed. This is the challenge of our time. “We are the ones we have been waiting for”.
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