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What should the Bay Area do if the economy never recovers?
Aaron Lehmer, Bay Localize
… almost no one in high office is talking about adapting to a contracting economy — much less to one that’s more locally self-reliant and less dependent on distant imports to supply our basic needs. But that’s the kind of shift we must begin to accept, prepare for, and shape to our own regional conditions if we ever hope to thrive within the post-petroleum economy that’s coming.
To help prepare our region for the coming end of cheap oil — and the progressive decline in global imports that will follow — Bay Localize is advancing flexible tools and models that area groups and municipal governments can implement in their own locales to bring the production of food, energy, and essential goods and services closer to home.
By advocating for policies and projects that build a regionally-focused economy, we believe we can help increase the livability of all Bay Area counties. And by shifting our energy use to renewables — thereby slashing fossil fuel burning for electricity and transportation — we believe we can improve the quality of life for low-income communities and people of color who suffer disproportionately from exposure to pollutants from nearby gas-fired power plants, petroleum refineries, and congested freeways.
Make no mistake about it — we Bay Areans will need to completely transform the way we live, work, travel, and play. It will be difficult, and at times positively wrenching. The good news is that moving away from fossil fuel dependency will create millions of new opportunities to rebuild our energy grid, food system, transportation network, and regional infrastructure. If we do this in ways that empower all Bay Area communities, we can dramatically improve the quality of life for everyone, and serve as a beacon of hope for other regions seeking to cultivate their own assets. Let’s get to it!
Aaron Lehmer is Network Development Director for Bay Localize
(3 May 2009)
The Permaculture Army: Belize Boot Camp
Albert Bates, “Michael” and others; The Great Change
“We could share ideas with the millions of other permaculturists around the world, in the common language of the ‘permaculture army'”
We’ve been receiving memoirs of our recent Permaculture Course at Maya Mountain Research Center and would like to share some of those with a wider audience now. Forgive the 5000 word length of this compendium, but we think you will agree it is worth it.
Into the Jungle
From Michael:
(original at EYESLIKESAUCERS, Wednesday, April 22, 2009)
We are crouched in the dory, a traditional canoe carved from a solid tree trunk, being punted upstream through the darkening jungle. The vine covered rafters reach over us, blackening into the night sky. Jorge struggles valiently but weighed low with passengers we frequently grind to a halt and have to jump out barefoot and push. It starts to drizzle, only adding to the atmosphere.
Eventually we arrive, slipping precariously up the bank with our lumps of luggage, climbing a stepped slope until we arrive at a covered courtyard and calls of welcome from our fellow students. We’ve reached the Maya Mountain Research Farm (MMRF) ready to begin a two week Permaculture Design Course.
MMRF
MMRF is the life’s work of Christopher Nesbitt, a forty-something New Yorker who in the eighties swapped the furious pace of a Manhattan cycle courier for a seventy acre damaged citrus farm in Southern Belize. From his early days living in a wooden shack, beholden to the sun for wake-up calls and lights-out, he has observed, studied, planted and nurtured his land into a lush and productive agroforestry system. Papaya, pineapple, breadnut, corn, beans, coconuts, eggs, vanilla, cacao, coffee… the list goes on and on. Solar panel by solar panel, stone by stone he has built a comfortable, light-filled home – complete with kitchen, book-lined study and panoramic vista’d bedroom – fit for the cover of glossy magazine.
Although the dreadlocks went decades ago he’s not shaved since eighteen and Chris could now be credited with creating the ‘Jungle Rabbinic’ look: cropped hair and vast beard, baggy Carhartt pants betraying his urban roots, wellingtons, army surplus rucksack slung over one shoulder and rifle or machete over the other. His face is open and kind but his large, sad eyes hint at the tough graft and personal tragedies that he’s overcome building his home in the jungle of this sparsely populated river valley.
Chris was the perfect host and his farm the perfect location to study something that I hoped desperately could offer a last minute reprieve to a world on life-support.
‘Permanent Agriculture’
Permaculture is short for ‘permanent agriculture’. It sums up the ambitious hopes of its founders, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who in 1978 launched it with the publication of Permaculture One. In 1988 the hefty Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual was published, one percent ethics and ninety percent practical design instruction, where the definition given is “the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive and healthy ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems.” Still not clear? I wasn’t either.
Most of my fellow students weren’t entirely sure, but our anticipation grew during the introduction: we were to be learning a whole new vocabulary that included the mysterious ‘swales’, the principle of ‘stacking functions’ and the crucial tool of ‘needs and yields analysis’. With it we could share ideas with the millions of other permaculturists around the world, in the common language of the ‘permaculture army’.
(6 May 2009)
Albert Bates is author of The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, a permaculture teacher and a contributor to Energy Bulletin. -BA
Transforming the African Brand Through Sustainability
Richard Seireeni, Huffington Post
…There was a passion in this small, but engaged meeting, a passion that makes one think of a positive future, rather than obsessing about AIDS, poverty, war and corruption, which are the overwhelming images we in the West associate with Africa. Bono and Bob Geldof, despite their inspiring good works, tend to perpetuate this impression that Africa is a basket case, an opinion that Melissa Davis expresses in her article, “Is Africa Misbranded?” and that economist William Easterly opines in the Los Angeles Times, “What Bono Doesn’t Say About Africa”. The people who attended this meeting hosted by The Environmental Press were thinking about a different basket, a breadbasket of opportunity that can sustainably and efficiently lift the lives of ordinary Africans.
There was no disagreement among attendees that Africa needs, even requires a sustainable future. The extraction industries have run wild here with no regulation that cannot be bought or bent to their will. The issue of Blood Diamonds was brought to the world’s attention, but oil, mineral and timber extraction continues to fuel tribal conflicts that lead to the unraveling of communities and environmental destruction on a massive scale. The raw materials used to make your cell phone? They are fueling a ten-year war in East Africa. The piracy off the coast of Somalia? Its root cause is exploitation of Indian Ocean fisheries and toxic dumping. Clearly, the current system of resource extraction must shift to a more ecological and sustainable one.
Africa also needs better infrastructure, affordable sources of power and confident trading partners. Africa needs sustainable economic growth, but there is much disagreement on how sustainability should be achieved.
I was a bit put off by the “brand” driven approach of this piece, but heartened to hear about some of the projects detailed in the article that are going on in Africa. It makes a good contrast, as the article points out, to the usual African press. KS
(8 May 2009)
