[Pil-pc-oceania] IPC8 in Brazil - Some personal highlights - 1. Think-tanks

[Rosemary Morrow]

Hello Everyone:

I wonder if it would be relevant for me to write a few paragraphs  
each week about the actions and ideas from IPC8 which I found  
particularly interesting.  I'm giving you a taste with the following  
and will not continue if you feel it's not for you or not  
appropriate.  I'm going to keep them short and will enter into longer  
discussions with anyone who wishes to contact me on my email.    But  
I hope they will provoke some discussion amongst us all.

Warmly,

Rowe

1.    A PERMACULTURE THINK TANK

In preparation for IPC8 Scandinavian permaculturists,  primarily  
teachers, from Norway, Sweden and Denmark  held a live-in weekend in  
March this year to discuss what they thought were the issues of most  
importance to them, and to bring that thinking as papers,  to  
Brazil.   They seemed to be the only group at the conference which  
concentrated on climate change and what it would mean for their  
countries and, they also looked at early permaculture ideas to see  
how they had weathered  and where they felt they should be going with  
permaculture in the future.

They brought papers to hand out,  but didn't present them in sessions  
and this is a summary of their ideas.  I've added some information  
given to me in informal chats by Tony Andersen, one of the  
permaculture 'elders' who is weathering extremely well well with good  
food and whisky. I have them as computer documents and could send the  
full manuscripts to anyone who requests them. They were prompted by  
the following:

“In 1984 Bill Mollison said that permaculturists had ten years to  
make a difference. This was Plan A. Given the stunning decline of the  
planet’s ecological equilibrium in the last few years most would  
consider it ludicrous to suggest that we have. However there are more  
than a few who feel strongly that perhaps we may claim to have set  
the stage to make a difference.”
– Ali Sharif, www.ipc8.org, Director’s Blog, 2006.

They looked at Bill Mollison's Plan A and then a Plan B in terms of  
the rate of  environmental deterioration.   Plan A they felt was now  
out of date and that Plan B needed to be implemented as fast as  
possible.    Plan B focusses on working together and locally in  
powerful ways.  Plan B stresses the urgent need for repair and  
regeneration not simply of conservation present systems.   It is  
almost a fourth ethic - repair, renew, regenerate water, soils, food  
and energy, now.   The Nordic group focussed on the Oeresund region.

Plan B they state is for permaculture as conditions became more  
critical - for whatever reasons, drought, peak oil, climate change -  
choose your disaster.   Plan B entails consciously targetting  
neighbourhoods and groups as the units of strength, not individuals,   
and then through permaculture design work on the issues.   This has  
implications for courses and how we teach them.   It centres in on  
localisation (call it bioregionalism perhaps) and direct action  
through groups.  Perhaps the climate change groups being formed in  
many places in Australia are vehicles for this.  Restitution of  
landscape is fundamental.

I took this idea a bit further.   It occurred to me that eco-centres  
and eco-villages could focus as local centres of knowledge and  
skills.   For example, they do not need to have the seedbank but they  
need to know where the local seeds, and other such critical  
information and skills, can be found.  They would function as  
emergency centres in the case of disasters.

Tony told me that in Scandinavia, the Danes, in particular are  
looking at floating villages, perhaps boat villages with floating  
gardens and, tall buildings plugged deeply into bedrock as the other  
main living units for their populations.

Also, in their "10,000 trees paper,  they propose that the 10,000  
trees planted per person message is primarily for coastal areas which  
are likely to be inundated permanently, however they also see it as a  
global strategy - see the last  edition of the Permaculture Activist  
on climate change..    Huge littoral forests would be planted to  
mitigate the force of wind and waves breaking over coastal lowlands.

This is a type of disaster planning which is pro-active for a defined  
region and not difficult to implement..

Some of these ideas are to be taken to the European Community and to  
the UN where Tony will make representation next year.

Importance of Think Tanks:
1.    Local permaculture Think-tanks look at the bigger regional   
picture and permaculture theory and practice to see how it meets  
future needs,  and then develops plans that can be put to local,  
state or federal governments.    It would be good if each state or  
regional could do this for IPC9.   Is it possible?   Who are our  
thinkers?
2.    They come  with ideas for special treatment of areas such as  
low coastal zones.   For example,  I  realised that every country,  
not land-bound  needs  littoral permaculture plans, as we need the  
riverine plans and this should be part of our permaculture thinking  
and, of course,  it is just as important as water harvesting on a  
huge scale in dry or drought areas.  The mass movement of people from  
their homes should i think be avoided as much as possible.


What do you think?
1.    Should we hold think tanks and then present the results at APC9?
2.    What are the  local regions Australia of Australia and the  
south Pacific which would need regional permaculture plans - and if  
restoration is to start - what should it be?
3.    Where do we feed in our findings?
4.    How does this information affect our teaching curriculum?











-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/pipermail/pil-pc-oceania/attachments/20070825/b17a103e/attachment.html