[Scpg] Design for Disaster/Earth User's Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow

Mon Jan 18 07:09:12 PST 2010

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>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 at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in 
order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
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