Hi Everyone
Rosemary Morrow's newest edition of "Earth User's Guide to
Permaculture" has a chapter called Design for Disaster,
very pertinent as we see events in Haiti unfold. Since we have
similar disasters in Southern California (earthquakes, fire), maybe
something for Transition Town & Permaculture groups to use as focus
point of trainings, very good & useful information, way beyond just
keeping batteries and extra water on hand. Permaculture strategies
for planning in advance, including disaster profiling for your property;
first 24 hour plan with locals seen as essential to saving lives;
establishing community emergency or famine gardens.
We watch and see others not prepared, but probably those in urban
Southern Calif would be even less prepared if an earthquake of similar
magnitude occurred, with government or emergency services
overwhelmed or not available. Would our kids and youth be even
slightly prepared with what they would need, psychologically or with
practical skills? Would we know how to coordinate and assist, would
they? All things we could easily learn, maybe in small radius of
our own neighborhoods.
Rosemary has worked around the world in the most difficult times and
conditions, most recently in Afghanistan (documented by Gary Caganoff's
recent film "The Garden at the End of the World",
http://www.TheGardenAtTheEndOfTheWorld.Info). Below is an
article she wrote for Hopedance Magazine several years ago, helps
understand the vulnerability of countries in difficult times, especially
war, and how it is not always easy to implement sustainable solutions
under those conditions.
Margie Bushman, SB Permaculture Network
Sustainablity in a War Torn Nation
by Rosemary
Morrow
I have been
teaching permaculture for nearly 16 years and during that time I have
examined many other types of sustainable living practices. I have
studied biodynamics, organic gardening and farming, systems agriculture
and so on. Not one is as comprehensives as permaculture. It
has so many facets that it is very difficult to find it all together in
one place. Teaching it in developing nations is a challenge.
In effect some things work in some places, in some climates and with some
people. Lots of techniques fail. It can take years for
sustainable practices such as intergrated pest management (IPM) to begin
working. Soil building, although a quicker process through
permaculture than nature, also takes time. But can poor farmers
afford the time and loss of crop while they wait? Who will
subsidize them while they are repairing the land from devastating things
like war?
War
is a serious destroyer of sustainability and social coherence, and the
genocide which followed the war in Cambodia further reduced
sustainability. Bombing destroyed natural resources, cultivated areas and
cultural heritage.
War also
reduces the ability of a country to withstand undesirable foreign
influences. Neighbors who illegally cut forests, people who traffic
in women and children, and a corrupt military can reduce respect
for the law and the country’s confidence in its culture and ability to
control its own future. Greedy and ruthless industry enters
the vacuum left by war, then hard sells cigarettes, pharmaceuticals,
fertilizers, seed and a range of other non-sustainable products.
Foreign and disinterested world monetary organizations direct fiscal
policy and reconstruction with no regard to sustainable outcomes, and
blame the country for its poverty or inability to cope with their
decisions. Sustainability finds itself in crisis and crisis
requires relief.
Quaker
Service Australia (QSA) has a long history in Cambodia, having arrived
early and served as a de facto consulate while the rest of the world was
boycotting the country because the Vietnamese were occupying it and
fighting the Khmer Rouge. For some years they offered English language
training because the people, emerging from trauma and genocide, needed a
common language to confer with the rest of the world. Soon, QSA
switched to offering permaculture training projects to rural
provinces. This has been a small and certainly step-by-step,
process.
I was sent
to Cambodia by QSA, where I spent some weeks discussing the
possibilities of introducing permaculture into the country. There
were talks with many organizations and finally QSA approached the
Cambodian Women’s Union (later the Ministry of Women’s Affairs) which had
a network that reached into all the villages from province, to district,
to commune. I asked whether some provincial staff would like to
learn permaculture in Phnom Penh and do training of trainers, and they
agreed. At this stage there was no commitment for any further
project but just three months later a four week course was held in Phnom
Penh.
At the end
of the Permaculture Design Course, several women asked very specifically
for permaculture training in their own province. QSA decided to
work with one of the most able provincial women’s unions which later
became the Department of Women’s Affairs(DWA) in Pursat province, and
some months later ran a Permaculture Design Course to selected
staff. There were 16 district and Pursat town staff women
chosen by the director who would later train other women and farmers in
the communes and villages.
In the
meantime, another course had been asked for by Catholic Relief Services
(CRS) and participants from this course who had tertiary agricultural
training now translated key chapters of my book into Khmer
language. So those who could read now had a reference book to refer
to afterwards.
The
Australian Embassy made a grant and a third course was held and this was
open to agricultural staff of other NGO's and IOs. A sustainable
agriculture centre soon opened in Phnom Penh assisted by Japanese
volunteers. However the main problem was there are no models of
permaculture in a country which has been devastated by war. So
where to start? One condition of the training was before starting
extension to farmers, all participants would design and make their own
gardens. Classic permaculture items such as tire ponds and herb
spirals were not included. A tire pond where there are no
spare tires and it is bone dry and not one drop of rain falls for 3-4
months is not useful. However metre-square beds, kitchen door
beds and raised compost piles are. And generally little effort was
made to teach specific techniques, instead participants were given the
principles and some strategies and then asked to develop new or to use
old techniques. So a type of indigenous adapted permaculture was
developed.
Trainers
were then offered assistance in making learning materials which consisted
of trainer’s books, posters and leaflets. These could be used
for literate, newly literate or illiterate farmers. In this way the
trainers really used their experience of developing a garden and ensured
they knew the curriculum.
The
project started small with a one year trial among some farmers, then
developed into a three year project. There were millions of
problems, however essentially weaknesses were identified, then special
refresher courses given. Trainers learned how to
monitor. Then the trainers were asked to train other
NGOs.
Later some
farmers who grew surplus food participated in a food processing project
and were able to generate income. Today about 80% of those who
farmers who learned permaculture are still practicing it.
Many have gone beyond it with new techniques and strategies. With
other NGOs, government officials and more awareness on TV and radio, the
boundaries of who learned what and where are now blurred. A
very strict evaluation was not possible, nonetheless one was
attempted and the Department of Women’s Affairs in Pursat considers that
the permaculture project was their most successful for rural
people.
- Rosemary Morrow works as a consultant on permaculture programs run
by Quaker Service Australia in South East Asia. She is passionate
about the right of everyone to have enough food to eat and her life is
dedicated to simplicity and the right sharing of world resources.
She lectures, writes books, and runs workshops on Permaculture in her
home country of Australia, and is very absorbed with Alternatives to
Violence programs. For more articles on her work with QSA, see
www.quakers.org.au
-END-
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
an educational
non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie@sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org
"We are like trees,
we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to grow." -
Anonymous