Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
But the big question for all of us working in this area is how we harness this new energy and markets once the crisis is over. How do we keep the energy of this moment alive? What will it take to keep citizens loyal to buying direct?
Growing your own food has seen a resurgence on a scale that has been compared to the Dig For Victory campaigns of the second world war. But with so few places selling seed, how can you take advantage of this planting season and get your own veggie garden under way?
From the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the oil fields of Texas, to the Ecuadorian Amazon, The Condor & the Eagle tells the story of the collective struggle of the Indigenous peoples of North and South America in their fight to preserve their communities and to protect the Earth from climate change.
Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better.
Our philosophy is materialized and represented by the Sisa Ñampi, the Border of Life or Living Path of Flowers. This perimeter of flowering trees is being planted around our territory to represent the fragility of life, the ephemeral limit of existence between life and death.
While COVID19 was not the ecological crisis we had in mind, it has undoubtedly challenged us to consider alternatives to our ways of being and belonging. I will continue taking the advice of Kimmerer, planting and tending to my garden and being open to listening to what it has to say.
We need to de-prioritize yield within plant breeding. It has become an obsession and does little to help prepare our farmers for the future. As global temperatures continue to climb and the frequency of extreme weather events increases, our crops need to be bred for resilience so that they can adapt to the changing environment.
The days ahead will be days of pushing, struggling, campaigning and fighting. The old order does not let go easily. But they must also be days of attention, care, beauty, imagination. These days may prove to have just been the calm before the storm. But oh, what a calm it was.
As local authorities in Scotland point out, outdoor learning could be the best means of getting children back to school, as it permits physical distancing. It lends itself to re-engagement with the living world.
So can a permaculture perspective add insight and a model of adaptive change in the context of the current crisis? I believe applying permaculture ethics and design principles to how we live can reduce our vulnerabilities to shocks from whatever quarter…
Since 2012, the Inga Foundation’s revolutionary agroforestry system of Inga alley cropping in Honduras has dramatically transformed the lives of 300 subsistence farming families, planted over 3 million trees, and become a model for true environmental sustainability and ecological resilience.
This has been a long tour through the Wonderland of fake solutions to climate change, ideas designed to splash a coat of green paint on Business As Usual so that certain private interests can keep getting richer…and so the rest of us need not be bothered with changing our habits or lifestyle. This won’t do.
