Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It will be interesting to see therefore whether Trevelyan will address the key areas for enabling adaptation and enhancing resilience of vulnerable communities in low-income countries to more frequent and intense climate change impacts.
It did not stop it, or make it any less real or stressful but permaculture design has clearly helped smooth decision making in times of crisis and has been a wellspring of ingenuity and optimism. “This is the time to dream, better dreams – what is the future we want to have?” encourages and invites Fran.
Wood stoves can provide a household with thermal energy for cooking and for space and water heating. Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators also produce electricity, which can be more sustainable, more reliable and less costly than power from solar panels.
An overview of the narratives of these resilient women reveals a pattern of resourcefulness, persistence in the face of setbacks, courage to take a stand, and through all the challenges, pride in family and community. All of them continued to be active in community life, and all of them were proud of what their children had accomplished when the walls of segregation came tumbling down.
What is so heartening is how permaculture design in action is proving resilient! Whether in small urban spaces or large land-based projects, designing for multi-functional uses is proving how valuable a permaculture approach can be.
This condition of wondering is still absolutely intact in us. It is. Amongst the loaded shopping trolleys of Walmart and Tesco, the fluorescent tech hubs, flicker-screens and finger-beckoning apps, it’s still there. This raw, imaginative, holy thing.
There’s an audacity to it, but it’s what we’ve always done.
There is much we simply don’t know about the continuity of life. Perhaps the wisdom we need most is already right before our eyes in the awesome wonder of the natural world, and all we need to do is open ourselves to it.
If you want to survive the holocaust of planetary proportions that is upon us all, you must defend the plants, and help them, or you must get out of the way, so they can get on with their planet-healing work.
It is only by pulling together that we can hope to salvage and protect what is most intrinsically valuable about our world, and perhaps even improve lives over the long term.
The term regenerative development, on the other hand, carries within it a clear aim of regenerating the health and vitality of the nested, scale-linking systems we participate in. At a basic level regeneration also communicates not to use resources that cannot be regenerated, nor to use any resources faster than they can be regenerated.
We all have to consume; it’s a necessary reality of existence. However, in the ‘consumer society’ the most radical thing you can do is not to consume ‘as directed’ – by finding alternative options that meets your needs while enacting a set of principles in opposition to that overbearing and exploitative economic paradigm.
We can’t predict where and when the next movement moment will start. Fortunately, help has shown up to steer us away from predictable mistakes when the moment comes.
