Food & Water featured

We don’t need high-tech innovation to create a sustainable future for humanity. In fact, all the tech we need to regenerate our ecosystem and provide a good life for all already exists.

In 2017, the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand was given the rights of a legal person under the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017.

The thirst of humans and our technology for water, according to two important studies, is bottomless and accelerating, even if the precious liquid itself is finite on this planet.

As oyster reefs have declined, other marine species have suffered and coastal storm damage has increased. Innovative programs are starting to help.

This closed-loop approach to carbon sequestration would yield a world with both a safe climate and “communal low-tech luxury,” as Max Ajl calls it in his excellent book, A People’s Green New Deal. It is not just a vision for climate stability and justice but also beauty and comfort.

Feeding ourselves is a lot of things – it’s a network, it’s an event, it’s movement building – and it’s growing. First with CSAs, then agroecologists, then local food proponents, then those with wider food justice concerns, then environmentalists and ruralists, and now also conventional farmers from the region – in all their way, with their own diversities.

Volunteers, school teachers, and urban farmers in cities across the country are planting fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and other edible plants in public spaces to create shade, provide access to green space, and supply neighbors with free and healthy food.

After his experience living and volunteering on the farm in February, Matteo reflects on what El Manzano can teach us about some key ingredients of rural resilience: housing, labour and energy.