Gaia Emerging

Deluge...community work

2011-12-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Another story from my adventures hunting cacao in Ecuador with Nova Monda Cacao and Chocolate.

Arriving into the little coastal village of Caimito, I hopped out of the old beat up ranchera, a rural van-like public transportation

with wooden bench seats bolted to the floor, and out into a torrential deluge of biblical proportions. It does not rain anywhere on earth like it rains on the coast in the tropics- imagine millions of gallons dumping from the sky in a thunderous crash. As I jumped down off the ranchera my friends Raul and Yor beckoned me to take shelter with a big group of neighbors gathered underneath a tin roof. Within seconds I was smiling and completely soaked, for in the time it took me to rush the 5 yards from the road to the roof it was as if I had been swimming the whole way.

With grins, hugs and handshakes we all greeted one another. I quickly realized I had arrived right in the middle of the weekly Minga. Mingas are an indigenous cultural tradition from the Andes where everyone in the community gets together to work on a project for the common good, or help out a particular community member. Today we were heading over to Ecoaldea, an eco village in Caimito, to see how the swale system and erosion control work that Ben

Murray had designed was holding up to the torrential tropical downpour. With hoots and laughter we all ran out from under the thunder of the tin roof and into the forest to check on the swales. Before reaching the work done at the eco-village to control erosion, we could see rivers of soil washing straight down the steep hills, running a reddish brown towards the ocean. As we approached the swales and ditches dug by Ben on contour around the eco-village it was a different sight entirely. Whole rivers of water crisscrossing the landscape, moving slowly and then sinking into the soil and finding its way to the springs and creaks below. We all marveled at how well it was working, and busied ourselves repairing places that had blown out in the intensity of the storm.

This kind of cooperative work party forms the foundation of how Nova Monda works with our friends and community members in Ecuador. By working beside them we all learn together and then can apply the wisdom of the whole group to projects that make life better, halt erosion, deepen soil, and protect the livelihoods of campesinos and chocolatiers a like. It is a truly community oriented, ecologically sensitive model.

Syndrome of Oppression, Conspiracy and Thrive

2011-12-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been struggling to articulate exactly what is off about the consciousness that is growing about the global financial elite that "control" world events and seem to be leading us towards environmental and social catastrophe. There is something easy about blaming a small group of nefarious men who smoke cigars, stroke their persian cats, and plot world domination.

And that is not the real story. The real story is much much harder to come to terms with because the responsibility does not merely lie with "them"...but instead it becomes clear that the roots of this problem dwell within the shadowy psyche of our collective and individual consciousness. The cutting, and loving truth of this more challenging reality is expressed with eloquence and clarity by friend, mentor and brilliant thinker Andy Langford in his recent blog entry:

Thrive, Charles E and expressions of rage

Check it out...and join the conversation about transition, economics and empowerment that is building in the Gaia University Community through the interactive Thrive call series.

The blog entry ties together the powerful blog about the Thrive Movie written by Charles Eisenstien, author of Sacred Economics.

Beyond Fair Trade: a new world

2011-12-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Nova Monda, a new world of business: Regenerative Enterprise, International Commerce, and Chocolate in the days of Occupy.

Question:

What does chocolate have to do with planetary regeneration, social change, monetary policy, and the future of human kind?

Answer:

Everything.

Cacao, the almond-sized seed responsible for crafting chocolate, has an ancient history as a currency; sacred offering; and holy drink. Nowadays, like so many things in our commercialized world, it is little more than a commodity. Cacao is one of the most valued and traded commodities in today’s global market, and it is second only to coffee in terms of its economic importance in the Global South as a luxury commodity.

Cacao and Chocolate are as intimately intertwined with the global economy as we are. All the complexities, injustices, inefficiencies and downright insanity that define the globalized economy are at play. In the midst of this complexity, there is a small group of Fair Trade businesses and entrepreneurs trying to shift the market. By advertising and selling products produced according to a standardized set of practices, these businesses hope to ensure social and ecological health.

Unfortunately, the Fair Trade solution still operates completely within the current dysfunctional global system. The products are sold at a premium to the final consumer, and only a very small portion of that premium ever makes it back to the farmers. Consumers in the Global North shop at stores like Whole Foods and buy expensive bars with environmental sustainability and social justice written all over them...literally. But, this expense still relies on externalization of costs in order to compete with all other chocolates. In the end, very little money ever makes it back to the hands of cooperatives and farmers who are certified Fair Trade or Organic.

Cacao prices are still subject to the whims of global speculation. Unpredictably rising and falling, prices cause farmers to lose control over their production. Fair Trade offers no solution…‘Organic’ gives an extra few cents per bushel…farmers ultimately lose their ability to feed their families. Meanwhile, their children are swept into the storm of consumerist coco-cola culture becoming addicts of television and sugar. Debt-loads and desperation lead farmers to sell to big corporations who are eagerly waiting to buy up valuable land shifting the land-use into larger-scale plantation-based farming. Heirloom varieties of cacao are lost; family farms and invaluable expertise disappears; biodiversity, cultural diversity and the hope for a better world vanishes in a flash flood of money and flashy marketing promising a better world. Meanwhile, consumers continue to shop at Whole Foods buying the latest raw, organic, and fair trade bars - they feel good about how they are doing their part to help. Is there anyone to blame in this predicament? How do we accept responsibility for and how do we understand our part in this carousel?

At this point you might ask yourself: ‘Why on Earth is this man, an owner of a chocolate business, telling us all this and asking these questions?’

Well, there are two reasons:

Transparency is essential – in business and personal relationships. If we forever hide the truth from each other it becomes a cancer.
Nova Monda Cacao and Chocolate is not a “Fair Trade” business. We do not rely on third party certifications to convince consumers we are doing things the right way. We do our absolute best to make direct connections between growers of cacao and lovers of chocolate. We do our best to tell the story, to bridge the gap, all while supporting and nurturing the building of real community. Our business is regenerative.

What is Regenerative?

Instead of paying an outside certification company to certify the co-ops we work with, we do it ourselves. We document our adventure by directly connecting and communing with the beautiful people who grow the cacao that ultimately becomes Nova Monda Chocolate. We become their friends and we become their community members. We also do our very best to offer opportunities to the growers in Ecuador and Nicaragua to become community members with the community of people who enjoy their chocolate. In turn, chocolate lovers are afforded the opportunity to become community members with the folks growing cacao in the hills of Ecuador and Nicaragua. In this circle of community, a beautiful story of mutual indebtedness occurs and it is the lifeblood of our regenerative business model.

Nova Monda is a quest to answer the question: What if we acted as if we lived in a world where everyone knew everyone else?

Thankfully, through social media this is truly possible: The farmers we work with are our friends on Facebook, we talk with them regularly on Skype, and we work with them personally every harvest. We do this because we believe the world is much too small to go on pretending. We recognize we live in an interrelated and interdependent web of life and we understand it’s time we start behaving in a manner that honors this truth.

We pay prices negotiated independent of the global commodities market – prices that represent our true costs and needs and the true costs and needs of our growers. We cooperate to add real value in the locations where cacao is grown. We invest in their future, infrastructure, and communities just as they invest in ours. We create reciprocal trading relationships. We learn, we grow, and we most certainly don’t claim to be perfect. We believe we bring something to the marketplace that is of real value...not only because it’s the best damn chocolate your likely to taste anywhere in the world...but because it is crafted with real care. It is the application of strong ethics, strong vision, and constant questioning and questing. Our unabashed and uncompromising goal is to have a business that is carbon negative - putting more carbon into soil and forests than we emit through our activity - with no externalized costs. We want to give more than we receive. We call this Regenerative Enterprise.

Regenerative Enterprise is an idea born from the Financial Permaculture Institute's work in participatory economic design. This is a process where communities come together to imagine and design the businesses, organizations and institutions that will support a healthy human and non-human community. In this framework it is the participation of the whole community that empowers the creation of a “business ecology” meeting the needs of the entire community. Instead of entrepreneurs pretending to “go it alone” and the government trying to regulate on behalf of constituents, creating a system where everyone is serving opposing purposes while lobbying and shouting for their own selfish ends…Financial Permaculture and the participatory design process offers a place for consumers; producers; and processors to come together and act like citizens. The thoughtfulness of this vision is especially apparent when we all realize that there is NO ANSWER to the questions we are asking. There are no answers to the questions in your heart. How do we live in a better world? How do we create a better world for ourselves, for our children, and the planet?

We keep trying.

In our quest for the holy grail of cacao we have found something unimaginable: the Holy Grail is the quest itself. It is not the answer. It is the question.

IT IS NOT THE CERTIFICATION THAT MATTERS. IT IS THE PEOPLE AND PLANET THAT MATTER.

This is a radical idea for green capitalism.

This idea was nothing new when we started using it to empower our actions four years ago. However, this idea has now spread across the Nation and world like wildfire. It seems to me this radical idea is the very foundation of the Occupy movement.

Now, I will end this blog in a way that pushes my edge, making me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. I want to ask you, the person who is reading this, to join me. I want you to join me in a simple way: buy the chocolate I help bring to the market. This business model has no margins for large ad campaigns. But, it does have room for storytelling. I’d like to tell the story of how permaculture, ecovillages and social activism led me to start a chocolate business. How an old hippie and Sandanista sympathizer showed me the ropes and conned me into starting a business to ‘walk my talk’...but all of that will have to wait for another day.

Nova Monda is striving to walk the talk. We bring chocolate to market that is absolutely uncompromising in integrity. We spend time and money to be friends with farmers and consumers. We plant trees, we build soil, we live our story, and we tell our story because we believe in a better world.

Buy our chocolate. Join the adventure. This is not a scam, this is not a scheme...it is a plan. It is a plan to create a better world. Vote for this plan with your dollars and follow us as the plan unfolds.

Occupy my blog

2011-11-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

In the midst of all the hope I feel looking around at the Occupy Movement and other signs of LIFE, I have been too busy to post regularly. I am hoping to pick it back up again.

The True Cost Of Culture

2011-02-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

Last night I had this amazing conversation with a researcher here writing a book about Hovensa (3rd largest Oil refinery in the world). We spoke about Marxist theory, the eco-socio-political impacts of corporate capitalism. At a certain point I started sharing the emerging framework of Financial Permaculture. I was explaining "cultural capital" and he asked what our working definition of culture was. I thought for a moment and said: Culture is the emergent property of society/community. Art, Music, Heritage, Stories, Myths, And everything that weaves us closer and makes life worth living.
To my surprise he told me that is precisely the definition of culture being generated and used at the leading edge of anthropological theory these days.

So, what is the value of functioning culture?

Jon Young and the Cultural Mentoring Community define culture as the invisible structures that increase bonds and strengthen relationships between:

individuals and individuals
individuals and the group
individuals and nature

They clearly state that the post modern globalized society that has emerged from the ashes of the natural world (yes I am aware I am using sloppy human-nature dichotomy here) is really an anti-culture. By their definition, the current social habits of breaking bonds with, family, other humans and the natural world is more like a viral tradition than a culture. The emergent properties of this degenerative system are competition, strife, alienation, isolation and rapid environmental degradation.

How might we go about measuring the value of culture, that ephemeral emergent property that takes the form of traditions, music, art, and myth that weaves us closer to one another and brings us closer to nature?

To calculate the cost of creating or maintaining culture, we could find the cost incurred by wealthy members of post modern society to re-create culture in their lives: consuming art, music and experience in order to feed the soul.
How much per year would it cost a New Yorker to re-gain the cultural integrity of the Kalihari Bushman?
We might tack on health and wellness into this equation. There is a lot of research emerging linking health issues to lack of connection with other humans and nature. As this process to quantify the value of culture continues, the cost and value of culture sky rockets (in relation to the fickle value of Financial Capital like US Dollars).

This type of valuation is called an exchange based valuation. What would people be willing to give in order to receive something.

Another way of valuing culture might be to determine its utility or use value. How much is it worth in terms of its usefulness.
What is culture useful for? It is useful for human health, it is useful for community cohesion and resilience (that worth will be even more apparent as the world's climate, economic conditions and social conditions fluctuate as the weight of humanity's avarice makes the world shudder and shake).

What is the use value of culture? What is culture useful for?

Connection.

Perhaps at this point in my monolog it might be useful to inject another key idea that is shaping many people's understanding of our current situation and how to heal it.
In traditional culture, the traditions, art and stories generated by culture have a very practical utility. They weave together the collective consciousness and un-conscious of a group of people. They form the story that children are initiation to and this in-turn forms the foundation of life.
In practical terms what does this mean?

This means that before a man or women can be trusted with leadership they are initiated through a cultural process. This initiation dissolves and transforms the ego and allows for connection with the whole. Initiation brings with it a vision of how to serve the whole. This process is articulated by the cultural mentoring community as the process of moving from "me to we".

Without functioning culture, this initiation is impossible. Without initiation, psychological development stagnates at a child or adolescent level. The consequences of this stagnation are people who have adult physiology and brain development with emotional intelligence impaired at the level of a pre-teen (at best) and a toddler (at worst).

This means that there are powerful (mostly men) running the show, who have never been initiated into a community or culture. These adults are wounded by alienation and isolation and are running as fast as they can hoping to be recognized by a community that no longer exists because it has been systematically destroyed. So, these “boys with toys” run amuck trying to manifest an initiation that is impossible because community coherence and culture (emergent properties of healthy human relationships ---e.g. regenerative society).

So, now we are caught up to today.

Back to the discussion of value.

What does value have to do with uninitiated men charging around the planet on a mission to receive acknowledgment from a community that has been dissolved?

The most accepted form of attention, acknowledgment and value in our society today (notice I did not use CULTURE to describe the set of social contracts that form our society) is MONEY. MONEY is a currency that allows the exchange of value. What exists now is a contest of initiation between boys with adult bodies and access to huge amounts of power (Oil, Nuclear). Their contest to be acknowledged now has the potential to impact the entirety of the biosphere: mother earth herself.

So, the value of functioning culture? Its usefulness: creating ceremony and ritual to initiate boys into manhood and gift them with a task of service to earn the acknowledgment and praise of a society that is happy to receive their gifts.

Price tag: in US dollars: Priceless. If you want to generate a price for culture, it will end up being the same as generating a price tag for functioning ecosystems priceless.

If we speak about it in a third way (moving away form any established theory of value towards a systems oriented theory of work, exchange and value), we find that there is a price tag that can be spoken about clearly, used to design projects in order to regenerate human attention. Thanks to the work of the Cultural Mentoring Movement, Initiation Experts, and culture repair technicians the world over, we have formulas to repair culture, in place, over time. We can create long range plans to regenerate culture, and re-weave the un-initiated males (and females) who are running amuck back into a functioning culture and sing their praises for being clever, resourceful and hard working (which they most certainly are).

Let me know and I can give you an itemized budget and phase plan.
If you’re already in the know...DO IT

Design Process

2011-02-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

Design is a powerful tool to help shape our choices to meet our goals. Permaculture Design is the science and art of consciously designing to fit human goals within ecosystem constraints.

This is a presentation I created for the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute 2011 Permaculture Design Course. The design process high-lighted is the process taught by the Conway School of design that I learned from Dave Jacke and Ethan Roland.

Associative economics and social start up labs.

2011-01-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

After a chat with Ethan Roland about a very exciting upcoming design we will be collaborating on I have come to realize that a large part of what we are working on was pioneered by Rudolf Steiner before I was even born.

My work with the Financial Permaculture Institute has often charette focused on participatory design as a tool for creating enterprise that meets community needs in a ecologically regenerative and social just way. Our strategy to bring investors, entrepreneurs and consumers together mirrors the Associative Economic business planing model to plans businesses with Producers, Processors and Consumers. Its always refreshing to know that there are other people out there working on a similar path.

Another little drop in the bucket reinforcing my suspicion that this kind of collaborative economic design is going to become the norm is the awesome work being done by Social Startup Labs. I am inspired by their vision as I work to create a model that supports and empowers people to get out and work to regenerate the earth and her peoples.

Better Means: Meritocracy and project management

2011-01-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

The open enterprise model proposed by Better means offers us a glimpse at a solution to the challenges of project management, collaborative design and decision making in a complex world. I am excited to apply it to some of the project workflows I am involved with the create regenerative solutions to climate change, food security issues, community governance, and economic injustice (which combine to form the complex challenges that are calling us to create solutions outside of our normal ways of thinking and doing.

My friend and colleague Patrick Gibbs has also proposed the integration of Holistic Management into Better Means as a tool for clarifying goals and allowing working groups to form more quickly and be more immediately effective.

I'll be following up with more information as I prototype the use of Better Means for several of my projects in the coming months.

Sea Change

2010-11-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

The future is now.

Entrepreneurship, rapid prototyping, r strategy and creating a regenerative entrepreneurial culture.

The follow is a blog entry written while reading "Makers" by Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author and writer for boing boing.

A New Economy

A new economy is emerging from the complexity and diversity of the global economy.
The post dotcom bust information infrastructure allows for access to thinking and innovation, lumbering industrial behemoths and profit driven the monsters have filled our landfills with more high tech and high quality trash than we know what to do with.

This destabilized, rapidly complexifying environment pushes the evolution of business into ever quicker, smaller, tighter loops. Evolution accelerates.

Evolutionary Strategy

In evolutionary biology there are two basic kinds of reproductive strategies: K and r. the K strategy is characterized by long gestation and long development stages. Offspring born to organisms that follow the K reproductive strategy mature slowly. This kind of slow maturation requires environmental stability. What ever survival strategy that the parents have must stay successful through out offspring development. Furthermore the offspring are firmly imprinted with what ever survival strategy was followed by the parents. Regardless of biological adaptability to changing conditions this strategy can quickly become maladapted during times of rapid environmental flux.
On the other hand, organisms that follow the r strategy reproduce rapidly on short cycles. offspring develop quickly and reproduce quickly. Little behavior imprinting takes place. Organisms with this kind of strategy show much quicker rates of evolution and therefore tend to be better adapted to fluctuating environmental conditions.

An Emerging Pattern

Of course there is more to it than simple reproductive strategies...
but this biological pattern provides a very interesting analog to consider business strategies for our current economic, social, and ecological conditions.

Micro loans, crowd-funding and garage inventors are all coming to the fore in a big way. Articles in major economic publications are vaunting entrepreneurship and inventiveness.

Are we seeing the birth of a new global economy? One that is democratized, with a low entry point for new inventors. A new marketplace that is now longer held in monopoly by huge transnational corporations who control the means of production and manipulate labor to maintain profitable margins?

An interesting possibility.

Perhaps even more important to consider is the impacts of a sea change in economics, manufacturing and trade on ecosystems. We are at a tipping point. We can fall off into the ecological abyss of pollution, climate change and ecosystem degradation due to an orgy of small scale manufacturing without oversight, or we can see a direct link of ecological value into the entrepreneurial explosion of small scale inventors and information traders.

More Questions than Answers

How will this new economy be capitalized?
What will it take to harness the collective energy of thousands of new entrepreneurs so that their work and innovation increases ecosystem health and stabilizes the climate?
What kind of policies would allow for independent initiative within the boundaries of ecological sanity?
What kind of currency?
What kind of culture?

CO-INSPIRE : CONSPIRE : CONSPIRICY

2010-11-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

The world keeps telling me
in lists and bullet points:
• be pragmatic
• get a job
• go back to school
• do what we tell you

yet my visions keep coming with no rhyme or reason
flowing like a river
swelling like the ocean
sweeping me away with crisp visions of utopia
things can be different my heart cries out in defiance.
We can live in eden
as soon as we realize
WE DO LIVE IN EDEN.
eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge gave US the responsibility to tend the garden.
That is all
we are gardeners of this planet.
what a gift
what a responsibility.

wonderment and gratitude
these are the inescapable feelings that dwell in my heart.

Granted I am privileged
born into the right place at the right time
not burdened by personal or family wealth...
given the opportunities only kings and princes ever had
along with the immense responsibilities that they never knew.

in my hands
the fate of a planet
IN YOUR HANDS THE FATE OF A PLANET.

what will we do?
you and I?

The world needs you
the world needs me
most of all
the world needs us TOGETHER.

So I go on...doing the best I know how.
Weaving myself into the communities of people out with hope in their hearts and a fierceness in their eyes that says: I will not settle for anything less than heaven on earth, and I know that means rolling up my sleeves in planting some trees.

So
we walk the earth, tears in our eyes. Tending to the wounded land and her wounded people
Music rings our through our hearts, through our voices.
We play
dance
make art
make love

we weep at the wounds of the world
and get up every morning
just to do the best we can.

A wise women once told me:

Show up
do your best
and watch the movie

always remember to say thank you.

thank you.

thank you people of the earth.
give thanks to all those who wake up one morning
every morning

with hope in their hearts
and a fierce gleam of love in their eyes

saying:
TODAY IS THE DAY I SAY YES

Another wise women once told me:

The question is not whether or not there is a conspiracy at play
The question is: Are you in a conspiracy? If not....Why?

Conspiracy:
Co-Inspire

Literally to breath together.
dictionary definition is a group of 20 or more people working together to change the world.

Co-Inspire

Breath together.

Connection, Healing and worldchange

2010-11-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Creating a meaningful and healthy life in a world of complexity, ambiguity and pain.

Social and Psychological health is essential to being a happy human. Lets face it, we are social beings. Isolation is one of the biggest problems facing individuals in today's materialistic, itemized, individualized post-industrial world.

Oddly enough, the re-connection with nature, community and meaning that is necessary to stay sane in today's chaotic world, is the same formula that empowers humans to act for the benefit of each other and the planet.

Recently I was awash in a sea of possibility, lost in an ocean of need to, should do, and can't do's. The task of healing myself, let alone healing the earth seemed completely impossible. Luckily for me I am surrounded with all the support I needed to help move beyond overwhelm and start to create the healing and growth I needed to overcome despair, isolation and fear and get back to the joyful work of healing mother earth.

Saving Graces:

Friends and family:
When overwhelm creeps in I pick up the phone and call friends. I know I am not alone. I've trained my friends to support me by listening and only giving me advice if I ask for it. Really just having another person to give loving attention to me when i am confused or distressed is enough.

Perspective:
AFOG: Another F*&~ing Opportunity for Growth. It is all an opportunity for growth and learning. Gratitude for the reminders. If something is not going the way I want it to go, I can accept it or not. Not accepting it leads to suffering.

Nature Connection:
Go into the mountains, breath fresh cool air, then try to look at me with confusion and despair. When I connect with the grandeur of the natural world it humbles me.
Even going out the back door and watching the ants crawl in the grass, listening to bird song, or climbing a tree can reconnect me to reality, pull me out of the illusion of suffering and confusion.

Connecting with archetypes and symbolism:
Finding meaning is important. We are surrounded by meaning. A bird flies across your path...what are you thinking? What does the bird mean?
Naming the world is a key way to create meaning. Finding symbols that resonate with my personal view helps me anchor myself and stay in equilibrium as I grow. It reminds me to connect with my own wisdom, ask myself what thing mean, and not take the superficial for granted.
Pay attention!

Creating Ritual
Even a small ritual like stretching in the morning, can be the difference between being swept away in angst and despair, and maintaining a calm and clear presence.
for me simple meditation, yoga, thanksgiving, and invocation ceremonies help remind me of who I am, the work that I am doing, and where I am going. It doesn't need to be much. Even 10 minutes per day can make all the difference.

Building Community with authentic communication
It is rare in todays culture to have authentic communication with anyone, let alone a whole community. Being heard, listening, giving and receiving aid are all part of what it means to be human. Reaching out to other people to break through their isolation can make the world of difference. Take leadership to connect with people deeper than the usual business and weather small talk. Ask for help. Give help without being asked.

Weaving these saving graces together through daily life can be an empowering way to create meaning. Sorrow and grief, anger and the challenged of daily life will always be a part of the human drama. The difference if how we respond to the challenges of life.

"Lord give me the strength to accept the things I can't change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference".
This quote says it all. What it does not say is how to build courage, strength and wisdom. Hopefully the saving graces I have outlined form my own experience can help for a foundation of strength, wisdom and courage so that we can all live our love and joy.

Financial Permaculture Principles

2010-08-23T15:33:00.001-07:00

Financial Permaculture Principles:
Towards a regenerative economy.

Financial Permaculture 2010 on Prezi

Regenerative Enterprise and participatory design are the cornerstones of the Financial Permaculture Institute's (FPI) road map towards ecological and social regeneration.

In order to create spaces that allow for the innovation and leadership that are needed to move our culture and economy quickly into alignment with ecological reality, we need to empower cooperative enterprises that are geared to address issues of strategic importance. Reforestation, food security, biological carbon capture, carbon farming, regenerative agriculture, economic access, personal empowerment. The list goes on.

But creating initiatives that are truly able to address real issues form the ground up is a challenge in an economic and social system that is geared to maintain the status quo.

Recently I published an article in the Permaculture Activst outlining FPI's findings in cooperation with Eric Toensmeier and Mary Johnsona. It is included in it original version below.

Financial Permaculture

Applying Permaculture Design to create financial, economic and enterprise models that regenerate the planet.

This article presents the design methodology and tools being used by the Financial Permaculture Institute to help grow successful permaculture businesses, cultivate re-distribution of surplus through investment, and create a firm foundation to begin systematic re-design of the global financial, monetary and economic systems.

Contents:

Definition and Findings
Design Principles
Design Processes and Tools
Investment Models
Case Studies
Conclusion

Definition and Findings

Definition:

“Financial Permaculture” is the design and management of business and monetary systems that increase ecological health while meeting human needs. Financial Permaculture thinking can be applied to many different economic and business models, suited to specific circumstances and designed accordingly.

Findings:
Financial Permaculture Institute: Exploring the possibilities of Finance and Permaculture

The Financial Permaculture Institute (FPI), a small team based in Lewis County, Tennessee, has been working to define, prototype and spread financial permaculture through collaboration, education and design. This article represents some of our initial findings and best thinking.

The FPI’s primary findings so far have been that the most viable steps in our bioregion are towards creating more, healthier, and more regenerative local businesses, and empowering people to become regenerative investors. The task at hand, as we see it in our region, is the creation of businesses that turn a profit in the existing (and for the most part broken) financial system, and re-invest that profit into more regenerative projects and businesses in the local community. This strategy puts power back into the hands of local people, and has demonstrated the capacity to build a movement slowly and surely while still keeping an eye on the bigger picture of opportunities for whole-systems regeneration. Instead of focusing on policy change we seek to engender change on the personal scale to empower individuals, friends, family and communities to invest in projects that matter to them, to buy and bank locally, or within a clear ethical and strategic framework, and to concentrate on building businesses that build local and multi-local resilience.

Design Principles:

Financial Permaculture Institute’s Design Principles

Decentralization is better than centralization. The current financial system is linear and centralized, and is designed to continually further centralize power and wealth. We must find ways to decentralize power and wealth so that well-informed, well-resourced, and locally appropriate decisions can be made by people within a given community.
Participatory design is true democracy. By empowering people with the process and tools needed to take decision-making into their own hands, we tap into the wisdom and fresh thinking of previously unheard voices.
Land based businesses that use permaculture as a foundation of their design, production and distribution processes are the best investments and form the foundation of any viable long-term economy.
Financial Intimacy creates closely knit and resilience communities. Invest in local enterprise. Invest in the dreams you share with friends, family and community. Become a stakeholder in your vision for a better world.
Do what’s possible now. It is valuable to think about meta-scale transformational project, however those large scale endeavors can only be successful once we’ve modeled what a successful prototype looks like. This means we need to get to work creating Financial systems that mimic ecosystem function and nutrient cycles within our sphere of influence: at home, business, family and community.

Design Processes and Tools:

The two primary tools used to design successful enterprises that generate surplus and then re-invest that surplus into regenerative projects and enterprises are Participatory Design and Holistic Management. By combining these processes we can create businesses that are well adapted to the needs and parameters of a local area, and are designed to succeed. When combined with a solid investment strategy and financial transparency this can generate revolutionary results.

1) Participatory Design of Businesses

Facilitating successful participatory design is an art form, necessary to creating thriving local economies. The Transition movement offers us a glimpse into its power.
In our experience the nine phases of successful participatory design are:

Framing the discussion and design
Building community cohesion
Mapping the financial ecosystem (or other context)
Brainstorming
Narrowing the options
Digging into the details
Presenting the final projects to each other
Articulating achievable next steps and generating responsibility for those next steps.
Celebrating success.

This process requires expertise in both process and content.

Process is the liberating structure that allows for community creativity to be born and flourish. Process techniques include World Cafe, open space technology, consensus-building facilition, appreciative inquiry, “think and listens”, fishbowl discussions, and many more. These methods, when appropriately applied, can allow people to freely voice their ideas and concerns while maintaining a dynamic structure that people can trust. The dynamic structure of the facilitation allows for a dance between giving full attention to each person’s contribution, and bringing the group’s full attention back to the central focus: designing a regenerative local financial system.

Content is the vast territory of design and strategy covered by permaculture design, as well as the vast territory covered by economics, business and finance. This requires a team of knowledgeable and flexible thinkers. Being able to switch gears from crunching numbers about the viability of a forest enterprise business to discussing the potential of an alternative currency system requires access to a wide range of information, and a willingness to dive into a creative process whose outcome may be unclear at first. Many times, however, communities already have all the expertise they need as long as the process is properly facilitated. Content is the area to include all the best thinking about waste re-use, regenerative land-use practices and new organizational design.

2) Holistic Management.
Holistic Management is a design and decision making system created by Allen Savory. It offers a wide range of excellent goal setting & decision making tools for assessment and analysis of complex systems. It is a framework, that can be very helpful in sustainable business & financial planning.. We have found that Holistic Management, with its birth out of observation of the natural world, is a perfect companion to Permaculture Design and works brilliantly as a tool to help solidify design thinking and bring sound decision making into the regenerative financial permaculture design and participatory design process.

Holistic Goal Setting: This is created in a participatory process that focuses on shared vision and common ideals for a good quality of life. It becomes the guiding star for a group of decision makers.

Holistic Financial Planing: Using the Holistic Goal as the overarching purpose, Holistic Financial Planning is a systematized process that takes the group through a year of financial decisions. It helps a group define the profit it wants,and then learn how to cap expenses so that level of profit is achieved. All income and expenses for the year are outlined ahead of time. This allows the group the chance to understand which expenses will generate wealth, which are inescapable, and which are maintenance expenses. The chain of production is analyzed to determine the weakest link by enterprise, which helps prioritize where money and time should be spent so effort isn’t wasted, and profit pilfered away on unnecessary “wants” instead of actual “needs” that will take the business where it is intended to go, ie. Profitability. Holistic Financial planning, because it is tied to a quality of life holistic goal which includes the future resource base that is needed to sustain it, is inherently more sound than a business model that defines profitability solely on dollars and cents.

Investment Models: Funding a Permaculture Venture

Investing and circulating capital is a key aspect to creating viable Financial Permaculture systems. The following four investment models follow our design principles of decentralization, and intimate investing.

Intimate Investing. Catherine Austin-Fitz, of Solari, Inc., has developed a process for creating small peer-to-peer investors’ groups that bring communities into what Catherine calls “financial intimacy”. Through mutual financial disclosure, cooperative learning and research, and vision oriented investing, members of a Solari Circle support each other to take responsibility for their finances and move towards the economic future that they design. This model does not require anyone involved to be a government licensed investor, and is a quick way to move forward and invest financial capital into local businesses and permaculture projects. The downside of this model (and please note that the problem is the solution!), is that this model challenges us all to take responsibility for being able to communicate clearly with friends and family about finance. This requires a willingness to move through distress we may feel about money, and significant education about money and the financial system.

Micro-Credit: The Grameen Bank, Kiva.org, and others from around the world demonstrate simple models to use micro-finance to jump start promising small business ideas. Credit can be extended by individuals in a community, or from a resource pool. Micro-credit can easily be a part of a Solari Circle's investment portfolio, through low interest funding of a diverse range of small, local business ventures.

Crowd Sourcing: This is an exciting new innovation made possible by web 2.0 technologies. Crowd Sourcing enable people to pitch good ideas to a diverse group of potential funders. Funders then choose an amount to invest or donate to a venture. Businesses like Kickstarter.com are leading the way to show how this approach can be profitable for all involved. Kickstarter proposals are only funded if their project budget is fully pledged. In this way, funders only pay for projects that have gathered sufficient support to move forward.

Ecosystem Investing: By investing in permaculture projects: trees, plants, biodiversity, water storage, natural buildings etc, we are banking away value in a very effective and important way. Turning Capital into robust and resilient ecosystems creates surplus of food, fuel and fodder and can be the source of many well function local businesses. Cost effective methods of ecosystem investing include, but are not limited to: nursery systems, aquaponics, keyline design and water storage on the landscape, rotational grazing to build soil, etc.

Pioneers of financial permaculture in North America have also, of course, created the Permaculture Credit Union, and are moving forward with great courage to create an alternative bank to provide loans, credit card and other financial tools for permaculture practitioners and other world changers.

Case Studies of Financial Permaculture in Action

Participatory Design in Hohenwald, Tennessee: Greening a Rural Southern Town

Located on the Cumberland Highland Rim of Middle Tennessee, Hohenwald is a small town nestled into rolling hills of oak-hickory forest. Local values of independence, hard work and family make Hohenwald a fertile location for re-growing a vibrant local economy.
Hohenwald, like many towns across America, has a culture that has its heart centered around church. Church groups form the foundation of how people communicate, cooperate, and worship.

Hohenwald has been the host of the last two Financial Permaculture Courses, and through this process has gone through significant amounts of participatory design and process focused on the creation of a viable local economy. The Financial Permaculture Course series has been a natural outgrowth of community organizing work of Jennifer English. Financial Permaculture grew up along side the successful Transition Initiative to create a container for exploring ways to rejuvenate the local economy of Hohenwald. The Center For Holistic Ecology, a non-profit directed by Jennifer English, in collaboration with the Ecovillage Training Center, and the Sonnenschien Green Initative (Transition Town Hohenwald’s first committee) formed a steering committee that began asking the community what it needed. Churches, citizens, business people and government officials were all approached and from that conversation, the shape of the first Financial Permaculture Summit was born. It was to be a space for expert and interested folks from around the country to come and help give design energy to creating a “business ecology” for the town of Hohenwald.

The first year of the Financial Permaculture Course in Hohenwald yielded a suite of four business plans that were presented to key town stakeholders and visiting leaders from elsewhere in Tennessee.

Businesses that were designed included:

Natural Building Cooperative
Ethanol Plant
Green Business Incubator
Food and Farm Enterprise

The powerful participatory design that took place combined the insights and knowledge of people from around the country, including facilitators, content providers and participants, and synergized it with local design parameters, on the ground good thinking, and common sense from our local attendees. This mix of culture and ideas showed how people of all walks of life can communicate and cooperate together successfully given the right attention to process.
To see a great documentary made during the 1st FPC check out this link: vimeo.com/2936264

Of the four businesses planed during the event, three of the plans have had significant forward movement with Natural Building becoming integrated into the county low income housing system, a farmers market and community garden being started, and the formation of a green business consulting company focused on helping start ups (Access Consulting).

By last summer, the city council had made a proclamation supporting local "green" business and beginning the process of becoming a Transition Town to help move the community forward. This is an amazing example of how permaculture design and the process of participatory design can cut through class, politics, race and gender to help people take community health into their own hands.

Nuestras Raíces – A Case Study for Permaculture Economic Development

Nuestras Raíces (“Our Roots”) is a community organization in Holyoke Massachusetts that has used food, agriculture, and the environment as the basis for community development projects in the urban, largely low-income Puerto Rican neighborhoods where they work. Financial Permaculture presenter Eric Toensmeier has had the opportunity to be involved as a board member (for nine years), staff (five years), and consultant (more recently). Nuestras Raíces has developed a series of functionally interconnected projects and businesses that serve the needs, and utilize the abilities of, Holyoke’s low-income residents.

During the development of the Nuestras Raíces farm project, a community-driven permaculture design process was used to develop a design for a thirty acre site just a few miles from downtown. The process integrated goals set by community members, a detailed site analysis, and market research. A large portion of the farm was set aside for parcels for start-up farmers, a group which has grown to include refugees and immigrants from around the world. A smaller portion of the farm was designated to serve as an intensively-used cultural agri-tourism destination. A set of business ideas were developed to be leased as concessions, with Nuestras Raíces developing the infrastructure and seeking community entrepreneurs to develop and run the businesses. These concessions were designed to:

minimize competition;
benefit the environment and the community;
celebrate Puerto Rican culture;
functionally interconnect by utilizing each other’s waste products; and
mutually support each other by attracting customers to each other’s businesses.

The idea was that with good design, each business, through self-interested marketing of their operation, would attract customers to benefit other enterprises and the farmers as well.

Businesses currently on-site include 22 farm parcels, a pig-roasting operation, farm store, paso fino equestrian operation, petting zoo with heritage Caribbean breeds, and cultural events with up to 3,000 visitors for live music, theater, and folkloric dancing. Several greenhouse businesses are under development, with heat provided by waste vegetable oil from another Nuestras Raíces restaurant downtown.

Nuestras Raíces has helped numerous other small green businesses start in Holyoke, including a brick-oven bakery, nursery-propagated coral aquaculture enterprise, restaurant and catering businesses, and Energia, a solar hot water panel installation company that employs local youth. These businesses have access to shared services like credit, business training, some marketing and promotion, and use of Nuestras Raíces infrastructure. Through participation in the Holyoke Food and Fitness Policy Council, Nuestras Raíces has also helped shape a community-driven redesign for the city of Holyoke to improve the food system and build environment to increase health of residents.

While this model is specific to the site and culture where it was developed, Nuestras Raíces has developed a set of principles for local economic development that dovetail very nicely with permaculture. To learn more visit www.nuestras-raices.org, check out the financial permaculture blog for a Slideshare presentation [www.financialpermaculture.org], or attend the upcoming Financial Permaculture Course [September 24th-26th].

Commercializing Edible Forest Gardens

Eric Toensmeier, co-author of Edible Forest Gardens and author of Perennial Vegetables, has also worked extensively in business planning for start-up farmers. He has been traveling the US and Latin America looking at commercially viable models of perennial farming systems.

Edible forest gardens have many benefits to the environment, and are a wonderful way to spend one’s time at the garden scale. There are many reasons to scale up these systems to a commercial scale - we need many thousands of perennial crop farms to sequester carbon and rebuild soils and ecosystems. But making the transition to commercial scale poses many difficulties, key among them the economic challenges of establishing a multifunctional community of support plants and the wait for perennial crops to come into bearing.

The challenge lies in finding crop (or crop-livestock) mixes that are:
suited to conditions on a given site;
capable of functioning in polycultures;
relatively inexpensive to establish on a commercial scale; and
marketable (particularly to high-end markets); and
profitable.
Ideally such a product mix can be marketed to the same market or markets (such as a farm store or farmers’ markets) so the producer is not keeping track of wildly different markets. Such products would also ideally share infrastructure and equipment.

An example is Roberto Muj’s perennial market garden in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. The basic layout is alley cropping, with rows of trees including avocado, macadamia, mulberry, peach, alder, and citrus. The rows between feature perennial herbaceous crops including medicinal herbs, alfalfa for chicken fodder, cut flowers like Alstromeria, and perennial vegetables including runner beans and perennial kales. These crops are sold at local farmers’ markets, and the range of medicinals, flower bouquets, and fresh produce makes an appealing display.

The world needs a new generation of perennial crop farmers – will you take up the challenge? A brief Slideshare is posted at the Financial Permaculture blog. Workshops will be offered at this years event.

Conclusion

Through the last two years members of the Financial Permaculture Institute's teaching and development team have found that by simplifying the conversation to answer the following questions, we can focus our design into actionable ideas that bring us closer to the regenerative future we are hoping to create.

What are the Most successful strategies for creating profitable right livelihood?
What are the most successful and accessible strategies for reinvesting profit back into the community?

The answer to these questions are unique for every individual, group and community. However, it is clear that there are certain common patterns and best practices that can help move our communities into the financial stability we need to truly start experimenting with alternative monetary and economic models. By creating individual and group financial permacultures using Participatory Design, Holistic Management Tools, Intimate and Decentralized Investing Strategies and Forest Garden Enterprise Models we create a firm foundation to explore more radical changes.

The next Financial Permaculture workshop is a call to participatory design to share best thinking about creating right livelihood and intimate investing systems as a foundation to build from as we work towards larger systemic transformation of the currency and markets that drive so much of human behavior. Join the conversation online at our blog: www.financialpermaculture.org, or check out the course site at www.financialpermaculture.com for more information about how to share you insights and participate with this exciting application of Permaculture Principles.
FPC 3: September 24th-26th

Gratitude and Acknowledgments:

Special Thanks to Catherine Austin Fitts, Jason Eaton, and the Solari crew for their hard work and expertise that has informed so much of this thinking.
Thanks to Ethan Roland, Connor Stedman, Patrick Gibbs and Andrew Langford for unwavering dedication to clarity and design process.
Thanks to Bill Mollison for his good thinking and the good folks at the Permaculture Credit Union for being pioneers long before we started this project.
Thanks to Jennifer English and Albert Bates for being pillars of the community that has birthed this experience.
Thanks again to Jennifer for her leadership, tenacity and good thinking.
Thanks to The Financial Permaculture Steering Committee, Sonnenschine Green Initiative and town of Hohenwald for good natured participation in this experiment on a grand scale.
Thanks to all of the teachers and students of the last two Financial Permaculture Design Courses where many of these ideas were born.

Gregory Landua,
Gregory is a Gaia University Adviser in Training, Permaculture Designer, and Principal of Booya Cacao, a beyond fair trade, sail transport cacao company. He has focused the past two years directing the Ecovillage Training Center and working to build cooperative economic models that turn a profit. Gregory is a founding member of the Financial Permaculture Institute and Terra Genesis International. His blog can be found at www.gaiaemerging.com
Eric Toensmeier
Eric is co-author of Edible Forest Gardens and author of Perennial Vegetables, has also worked extensively in business planning for start-up farmers. He has been traveling the US and Latin America looking at commercially viable models of perennial farming systems. www.perennialsolutions.org. Eric is a founding partner of Terra Genesis International
Mary Johnson
Mary Johnson is a Permaculture Design & Holistic Management consultant and trainer working with Terra Genesis International. She works with farmers and business owners in the US & internationally using concepts from both Permaculture and Holistic management to help families, businesses, and organizations. You can read more about Holistic Management and International Permaculture on Mary’s blog at http://wrcinashfield.wordpress.com.

Poverty Conscious Activism, Vs. Conscious Consumerism:

2010-06-16T08:36:00.001-07:00

Poverty Conscious Activism, Vs. Conscious Consumerism:
Creating the change we want to see in the world.

In a recent conversation on the facebook wall of a friend and colleague (Slav Davidzon, CEO of Common Circle Education) a debate quick started between the ideas of poverty conscious activism and Conscious Consumerism. I think this is an important conversation in our world today.

I see both sides to this conversation. I currently operate in Slav's paradigm...that as a capable individual in a capitalist system I should make surplus doing right livelihood and re-invest it into regeneration.
However I also see that activists who eschew finances to concentrate on worldchange work are needed. The financial system is fundamentally broken, and indeed Dollars represent DEGENERATION. so if we operated inside the dollar system without EXTREME CAUTION (the likes of which go FAR FAR BEYOND BUYING ORGANIC FOOD) we are actively degrading our home.

As with most answers to the complex problems facing us today, the answer is YES AND. We need to be carefully routing our financial capital to projects and causes that have real, lasting regenerative effects.

Cooperative Strategy for regeneration:

form cooperative groups...
find right livelihoods that can sustain our group overhead and produce surplus, define strategic projects and fund them ourselves. We need to begin to create the alternative economy, and start to redefine wealth. At this moment, The Financial Permaculture Institute, in parallel and collaboration with other groups like Slow Money, is working on :

Financial Permaculture Institute's Three fold plan for ECOnomic Regeneration:

Creating, testing and sharing the regenerative enterprise models that allow people to make right livelihood and create cooperative and resilient communities.
Finding regenerative investing instruments to empower money from the broken system to be turned into REAL WORK AND TOOLS FOR REGENERATION and community empowerment.
Cultivating a lively discussion on fundamentally different economic models that will allow us to align our hearts, hands and minds with the realities of scarcity and environmental limitations of the planet, and find the abundance and infinite capacity of our creativity and art.

Join us to help shape this conversation. Come to our participatory design based workshop, September 24-26th on The Farm, in Summertown, TN.

2010-06-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

Gaia University: Tranformative Action Learning

Kyle Thiermann is an amazing Gaia U Associate and I am proud to be one of his advisers. Check this video out of his experience with the Gaia University System

People's Voice on Climate Change

2010-06-08T12:48:00.002-07:00

(Español abajo)

This is the submission of May 31 of 2010, for the negotiations process on climate change in the framework United Nations, that reiterates in a summary form the main proposals that were presented by the Plurinational State of Bolivia the 26 of April of 2010, on the basic of the conclusions of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The content of the Bolivian submission was not taken into account in the tex to facilite negotiations among parties, way to the Conference of the Parties in Cancun, Mexico.

SUBMISSION BY THE PLURINATIONAL STATE OF BOLIVIA
TO THE AD-HOC WORKING GROUP ON
LONG-TERM COOPERATIVE ACTION

This submission reiterates in a summary form the main proposals that were presented by the Plurinational State of Bolivia the 26 of April of 2010, on the basis of the conclusions of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The content of the Bolivian submission was not taken into account in the “text to facilitate negotiations among Parties. Note by the Chair FCCC/AWGLCA/2010/6”
In order to have a balanced text of negotiation, where the main proposals of the different parties are not excluded, we expect that these elements will be included in the revised text of the chair of the AWG-LCA.
Integrated vision (to be included in Shared vision)1

OP The shared vision for long-term cooperative action is not simply about defining the limit on temperature increases and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but must incorporate a comprehensive and balanced set of goals, and other essentials such as the recognition of the rights of Mother Earth to restore harmony with nature. This is comprised of a range of essential elements including:

(a) The equitable allocation atmospheric space between developed countries and developing countries during the period 1750 to 2050 based on the principles of equity and historical responsibility, and the needs of developing countries in order to achieve their economic and social development and poverty eradication;

(b) Aggregate targets for developed country Parties that are not party to the Kyoto Protocol for emissions reduction that are comparable to those undertaken by Annex I parties to the Kyoto Protocol in the second and subsequent commitment periods that reflect their historical responsibilities and debts, meet the needs of developing country Parties to an equitable share of atmospheric space and are adequate to meet requirements according to the IPCC findings and the latest science;

(c) Provision of financial resources by developed countries to developing countries amounting to at least 6% of the value of GNP of developed countries, for adaptation, technology transfer, capacity building and mitigation;

(d) Provisions by developed countries of means of implementation to developing countries to facilitate adequate adaptation to climate change, to meet the costs of its adverse effects and to repay adaptation debts;

(e) The transfer of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries and enhancement of their endogenous capacities and technologies, including the identification and removal of all barriers to access to technologies at the most affordable cost and appropriate treatment of intellectual property rights including exclusion of patents on climate related technologies to developing country Parties;

(f) Capacity building to enable the upgrading of developing countries institutional capacities to address climate change and its adverse effect;

(g) Measures by developing countries to mitigate climate change, including nationally appropriate mitigation actions supported and enabled by developed countries

(h) Quantified changes to the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production by developed countries, including through the substantial reduction of their high per capita greenhouse gas emissions.

Goal in temperature and ppm (to be included in Shared vision)

OP Developed countries shall take the lead and strive towards returning greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to well below 300 ppm CO2eq with a view to returning concentrations to levels as close as possible to pre-industrial levels in the longer-term, and to limit the average global temperatures to a maximum level of 1º C with deep and adequate economy wide emissions reductions in the medium and long terms and taking effective measures to fulfill their commitments relating to the provision of substantial financial resources, capacity building and to provide technology development and transfer of environmentally sound technologies and know how to developing country Parties.

Mother Earth Rights (text to be included in Shared vision)

PP Acknowledging that to address climate change, we must recognize Mother Earth as the source of life and that it is a living system, with which we have an indivisible, interdependent and complementary relationship and that to achieve the realization of human rights and human dignity it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth.

OP A shared vision for Long-term Cooperative Action in order to reestablish harmony with nature should promote the recognition and defense of Mother Earth Rights, through a Declaration in the United Nations.

Structural causes (to be included in Shared vision)

PP Determined to deal with the root causes of climate change, including the elimination of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production in the developed country Parties and the dominant global financial and economic system that gives rise to these, and that a new system must be built to restore harmony with nature and among humans and that there can only be balance with nature if there is equity among human beings,

PP Advocating a development model that is not destructive or based on unlimited growth, and recognizing that countries need to produce goods and services to meet the basic needs of its population, but by no means can continue on the current path of development in which richer countries have a carbon footprint five times larger than the planet can bear.

OP Promote quantified changes to the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production by developed countries, including through the substantial reduction of their high per capita greenhouse gas emissions, and the development of an analysis and debate in relation to the structural causes of climate change.

Equitable distribution of atmospheric space (to be included in Shared vision)

PP Recognizing that an equitable sharing of atmospheric space is an inalienable fundamental right of all nations and peoples, and that economic, social and sustainable development are the first and overriding priorities of developing country Parties, which has been limited by the overuse of developed countries of the atmosphere, through their past, current and proposed future emissions.

OP Achieving an equitable allocation of global atmospheric space between developed and developing countries shall be determined by reference to:

a) An agreed global emission budget between the period 1750 to 2050;
b) An agreed methodology for sharing the global emissions budget among developed and developing countries taking into account their present and future population, and
c) The allocation, based on this methodology, of total and domestic assigned amounts to Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol and targets for a comparable effort for Annex I parties that are not party to the Kyoto Protocol.

Court of Climate and Environmental Justice (to be included in Shared vision)

PP Recognizing that developed countries have not fulfilled their commitments and that it is necessary to have a judicial mechanisms that guarantees the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol.

OP Parties shall promote the establishment of an International Court of Climate and Environmental Justice, whose aim is to contribute to preventing actions causing environmental pollution and climate change.

Referendum (to be included in Shared vision)

PP Recognizing that the decision about climate change is not only a matter of decision of governments and their technical representatives, but concerns us all, as citizens of the world.

PP Recognizing that is essential to carry out a global consultation about determining decisions that implies the impact of climate change on the future of Mother Earth and human life,

OP Parties agree to support and promote a world plebiscite or referendum on climate change open to the global public and the terms of this referendum will be considered by the COP.

Climate Debt (to be included in shared vision, mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology transfer)

PP Affirming that the historical emissions of developed countries are responsible for climate change and its adverse effects to developing countries and that developed countries are thus responsible for compensating developing countries as part of a climate debt owed by developed countries to developing countries,

PP Emphasizing that further delay by developed country Parties in implementing their commitments to reduce emissions will increase their climate debt to the developing country Parties and significantly constrain opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels of greenhouse gases and increase the risk of more severe climate change impacts,

OP Developed countries in assuming their historical responsibility, hereby recognize and commit to honor their climate debt in all its dimensions, as the basis for a just, effective and scientific climate change solution, including through:

• Reserving for developing countries the atmospheric space which is currently occupied by developed countries’ emissions of greenhouse gases;
• Assuming the costs and technology transfer needs of developing countries arising from the loss of development opportunities by having to live under a restricted atmospheric space;
• Being accountable for the hundreds of millions of people that will have to migrate as a result of climate change and to remove their restrictive policies on migration, including by providing migrants with opportunities to achieve a decent life and with all human rights;
• Assuming adaptation debt related to the impacts of climate change on developing countries by providing the means to prevent, minimize and deal with damages arising from their excessive emissions, as well as the opportunity costs;
• Honoring those debts as part of a major debt to Mother Earth by taking and implementing the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth at the United Nations.

The scale and timing of emission reductions by Annex I countries must be sufficient to ensure that developed countries’ historical debt for their excessive past consumption of environmental space, and their continuing excessive per-capita emissions, is fully repaid to developing countries.

Indigenous peoples (to be included in shared vision, mitigation, adaptation and technology transfer)

OP The full and effective implementation of the right to consultation, participation and prior, free and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples is needed in all negotiation processes and in the design and implementation of measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

OP The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO Convention 169 shall be fully recognized, implemented and integrated in climate change actions.

OP Indigenous and traditional knowledge and technologies form a valuable and useful part of the knowledge and technologies that are appropriate and useful for mitigation and adaptation activities in addressing climate change and that these have to be supported and be part of technology development, transfer and deployment.

Finance (to be included in Finance, Shared Vision, Mitigation, Adaptation, Technology transfer, Capacity building)

OP Developed country Parties and other developed Parties included in Annex II in accordance with their commitments under the Convention including Article 4, paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 shall provide substantial, new, additional, adequate, predictable and sustained public funding additional to and different from the ODA to meet the agreed full costs and/or incremental costs incurred by developing country Parties to effectively implement their commitments under the Convention, taking into consideration that sources for the fulfillment of these commitments shall come exclusively from public funding and not from markets.

OP Developed country Parties shall, beginning in 2013, provide resources equivalent to at least 6% of their GNP comprising 3% for adaptation, 1% for mitigation, 1% for technology development and transfer and 1% for capacity building.

Migration (to be included in Shared Vision and Adaptation)

OP Developed countries, assuming their responsibilities of the adverse impacts of climate change, must assume as a dimension of their climate debt, being accountable for the hundreds of millions of people that will have to migrate as a result of climate change and to remove their restrictive policies on migration, including by providing migrants with opportunities to achieve a decent life and with all human rights;

OP As a part of the institutional framework on adaptation, an international mechanism shall be established to address the needs of individuals and peoples displaced due to the adverse effects of climate change and the infringements of human rights resulting from the adverse effects of climate change.

Mitigation (text to be included in Mitigation 1bi)

PP Reaffirming that the Kyoto Protocol shall remain as the specific binding instrument for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in developed countries)

OP All Annex I Parties to the Convention, as part of their emissions debt and in accordance with their commitments of Article 4.2 of the Convention, shall undertake ambitious national economy-wide binding targets for quantified emission reduction commitments in aggregate of at least 50% of their domestic greenhouse gas emissions during the period 2013 to 2017 and by more than 100% before 2040, compared to their 1990 levels through domestic reduction actions and without the use of carbon markets or other offsetting mechanisms.

OP For any Annex I Party to the Convention that is also a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, its emission reduction target for the second and subsequent commitment periods under the Kyoto Protocol shall be considered as their economy wide commitment.

OP For an Annex I Party to the Convention that is not a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, its economy wide emission .reduction commitment shall be comparable in magnitude, time scale and compliance to the economy wide commitments referred to in the previous paragraph. Such commitments shall be reflected in a declaration by that Party and recognized through a decision of the Conference of Parties.

OP If, after measuring, reporting and verifying, the failure of a developed country to fulfill its reduction commitments is identified then penalties should be applied. This may include increased future reduction commitments by an amount calculated as a multiple of the shortfall in implementation. Financial contributions may also be assessed as penalties or fines and paid into an enhanced financial mechanism under the Conference of Parties.

NAMAs (to be included in Mitigation 1bii)

OP (1b2) Nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) of non-Annex I Parties are voluntary measures and/or programs to mitigate climate change under Article 4.1 of the Convention that are enabled by finance, technology and capacity building in accordance with Articles 4.3 and 4.5, and based on their specific national priorities and circumstances and in the context of sustainable development. A system shall be established under the financial mechanism to ensure that the developing countries' mitigation actions are enabled and supported by finance, technology and capacity building.

OP (1b2) Emission reductions resulting from NAMAs shall not be used to offset quantified emission reduction targets undertaken by Annex I Parties to the Convention.

Forest (to be included in Mitigation 1biii)

OP The following principles and elements will apply to forest related actions and the proposed framework:

• Environmental integrity.
• Guarantee rights of indigenous peoples under the basis of international normative instruments and local communities in conservation and participation in forest management.
• No market mechanism on forest related actions.
• No offset mechanism that imply that developed countries will use emission reductions that were made by developing countries in order to fulfill their emission reductions commitments.
• Ensure sovereignty and national as well as local control over forest related activities.

OP The definition of forest used in the negotiations should not include plantations, as monoculture plantations are not forests. Forest conservation can be funded, including adaptation activities related to forests.

OP We agree that the best strategy and action to avoid deforestation and degradation and protect native forests and the forest is to recognize and guarantee the collective rights of the lands and territories, especially of indigenous peoples and nations, and traditional farming communities.
OP A framework for the delivery of financial resources for forest related actions is hereby established to fund the agreed full incremental costs for the implementation of developing countries’ commitments under Article 4.1 (d) to promote sustainable management; and promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases, including forests ecosystems.

OP Eligibility criteria for funding forest related activities should include the following:

• Equitable distribution of funds must be assured
• Support for proposals that address the underlying causes of forest loss, including actions within but not limited to the forest sector;
• Support for proposals that guarantee lasting protection of natural forests and reduction of deforestation and degradation, enhanced forest law enforcement and improved forest governance, and strengthened recognition of Indigenous Peoples and community rights, regardless of whether the impact of these measures can be immediately quantified in terms of carbon emission units;
• Proposals shall not be considered that allow industrial-scale logging or that involve conversion of natural forests to plantations or other commercial or infrastructure activities and projects that damage the environment or violate the rights of local communities.
• Encouragement of proposals for activities that involve the full and effective participation of forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
• Support for the restoration and maintenance of the forests by indigenous peoples and their organizations, including through a global program to restore native forests and jungles, managed and administered by the communities and their organizations.
• Proposals and activities should promote good governance, in particular with respect to forest policies and law enforcement;
• Proposals and activities should contain transparent and participatory mechanisms to prevent or resolve conflicts over access, use, and ownership rights that could arise during the development and/or implementation of forest related activities.

Agriculture (to be included in 1biv)

PP Recognizing that emissions from ecologically harmful and chemical-intensive agriculture are a major contributor to climate change and the essential contribution of mitigation actions from ecologically-sound forms of agriculture, including traditional agricultural practices by many local communities and small farmers

PP Stressing that the promotion of food sovereignty is also a vital part of agricultural transformation required to address the climate crisis. The concept of food sovereignty is to be understood as the right of people to control their own seeds, land, water and food production, ensuring, through production in harmony with Mother Earth.

OP Decide to phase out inappropriate forms of agriculture that are ecologically harmful and that are emission-intensive and to instead take measures to promote an environmentally sustainable model of agricultural production that also promote food security and food sovereignty and the livelihoods and rights of local communities and indigenous peoples.

OP Agree that small farmers in developing countries have the right to control their own seeds, land, water and food production and that appropriate and adequate financing mechanisms shall be established to ensure they can maintain and increase control over their resources.

OP Decide to review of the global system of agricultural trade, the provisions of trade agreements and loan and aid conditions and the intellectual property regimes to ensure that policy framework for agriculture be appropriate to address the climate crisis and to meet the interests of local communities and protect the environment, rejecting the practices and technologies harmful to farmers and the environment, including, agrochemicals, corporate-controlled seeds and intensive water use, genetic engineering, particularly genetic use restriction technology, biofuels, nanotechnology, and geo-engineering.

Markets (to be included in 1bv)

PP Understanding that a system of markets has resulted in prioritizing the extreme competition for profits and growth, and that this has separated humanity from nature, establishing a logic of domination over it, turning everything into a commodity: water, earth, the human genome, the ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, rights of peoples, and life itself;

OP There should not be use of an international carbon market or an international carbon market approach in the offsetting of Annex I Parties' mitigation commitments or in the financing of developing countries' climate actions as it has serious adverse effects.

OP Parties reject the establishment of new flexible mechanisms that are based on carbon markets.

Adaptation (to be included in adaptation)

PP Recognizing that adaptation to climate change and its economic consequences is urgent and essential to the survival and existence of developing country Parties,

PP Recognizing that adaptation to climate change has a human rights dimension because the effects of climate change if not addressed will make impossible the realization of the economic and social rights including the right to life, to food, to water, to housing and to health.

OP Developed countries, recognizing their historical responsibility for climate change and its adverse effects, hereby recognize and commit to honor their adaptation debt, compensating all the negative impacts of climate change on developing countries by:
• providing the means for developing countries to develop and implement adaptation policies, plans, programs and projects through the provision of substantial, new and additional public financial resources, environmentally sound technologies and capacity building in a predictable and prompt manner
• Compensating actual damages arising from their excessive emissions,
• Compensating the opportunity costs; supporting developing country Parties efforts to reduce poverty and achieve their development goals.

OP An institutional framework on adaptation to climate change is hereby established under the Convention to enable developed country Parties, to honor their adaptation debts and to fulfill their commitments. The institutional arrangements shall comprise:
• An adaptation committee under the authority and guidance of the Conference of Parties.
• An international mechanism to address the unavoidable loss and damage resulting from the adverse effects of climate change, and associated lost opportunities for development, with the following functions:
- Addressing risks associated with climate-related extreme weather events, that incorporates measures to reduce, manage and prevent risk;
- Providing compensation and rehabilitation for climate-related slow onset events
• A compliance mechanism to verify the provisions of financial resources, compensation and transfer of technology from developed country Parties (within the new operating entity under the Convention Financial mechanism).

Technology Transfer (to be included in development and transfer of technology)

OP Technology transfer from developed to developing countries should be free from conditions or impositions. Instead, it is agreed that there must be a free exchange of information, knowledge and technologies, under the principles of solidarity, reciprocity, respect, complementariness, harmony, transparency, balance, permitting an inter-scientific dialogue of knowledge and skills.

OP Developed countries commit to share the complete technological cycle, namely enhancement, development, demonstration, deployment, diffusion and transfer of new and existing innovative technologies is urgent and essential to strengthening developing country Parties capacities in particular those listed in Art. 4.8 of the Convention. Developing countries must be recipients of the technological cycle in its integrity.

OP A mechanism for technology development and transfer is hereby established under the authority of to the Conference of Parties, that comprises:
• A Technology Executive Board aimed to develop strategy and policies, provide guidance, assess and elaborate on technology matters and develop a Technology Action Plan.
• Technical Panels for adaptation and mitigation technologies to generate and compile expert information.
• A Technology Action Plan to support concrete programs and actions with short, medium and long term actions and programs that covers all sectors.
• A Multilateral Climate Technology Fund/window to meet the full and the full incremental costs of technology transfer (in accordance with Article 4.3).
• A compliance mechanism for measuring and verifying commitments of developed country Parties for technology transfer, finance and development;

OP Transfer of technology must fully compensate the loss of development opportunities due to the costs and technological demands to developing countries to live within a restricted atmospheric space.

OP Indigenous and traditional knowledge and technologies form a valuable and useful part of the knowledge and technologies that are appropriate and useful for mitigation and adaptation activities.

OP Technologies and innovations that come from public financing destined for research and technology development must be located in public domain and not under a private patent regime, in such a way that they are of free access for developing countries.

OP Steps shall be taken to expand technologies in the public domain. Nothing in international intellectual property agreements shall be interpreted or implemented in a manner that limits or prevents any Party from taking measures to address climate change, in particular the development and transfer of technologies, including the development and enhancement of endogenous capacities and technologies of developing countries and transfer of, and access to, environmentally sound technologies and know-how.

OP Developing countries have the right to make use of the full flexibilities contained in the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, including compulsory licensing. Patents on climate-related technologies should be excluded.

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Esta es la presentación de 31 de mayo de 2010, para el proceso de negociaciones sobre cambio climático en el marco de Naciones Unidas, que reitera en forma resumida las principales propuestas que han sido presentadas por el Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia el 26 de abril de 2010, sobre la base de las conclusiones de la Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra. El contenido de la presentación de Bolivia no fue tomado en cuenta en el texto para facilitar las negociaciones entre las partes, camino a la Conferencia de las Partes en Cancún, México.

Presentación del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia para el Grupo de Trabajo Ad-hoc sobre Cooperación a Largo Plazo
Esta presentación reitera en forma resumida las principales propuestas que han sido presentadas por el Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia el 26 de abril de 2010, sobre la base de las conclusiones de la Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra. El contenido de la presentación de Bolivia no fue tomado en cuenta en el “texto para facilitar las negociaciones entre las partes”. Nota del Presidente FCC/AWGLCA/2010/6”
Para tener un texto de negociación equilibrado, donde las principales propuestas de las diferentes partes no estén excluidas, esperamos que estos elementos sean incluidos en la el texto revisado del Presidente del GTE – CLP.
Visión Integrada (para ser incluida en Visión Compartida)[1]
OP La Visión compartida para acciones de cooperación a largo plazo no es simplemente sobre la definición del límite del incremento de la temperatura y la concentración de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera, debe incorporar un conjunto comprensivo y balanceado de metas, y otros esenciales tales como el reconocimiento de los derechos de la Madre Tierra para restablecer la armonía con la naturaleza. Esta se compone de una serie de elementos esenciales que incluyen:
a) Distribución equitativa del espacio atmosférico entre los países desarrollados y los países en desarrollo durante el periodo de 1750 a 2050 en base a los principios de equidad y responsabilidad histórica, y la necesidad de los países en desarrollo para alcanzar un mayor desarrollo económico y social y la erradicación de la pobreza.
b) Metas agregadas para las partes de países desarrollados que no son parte del Protocolo de Kioto, para la reducción de emisiones comparables a las adoptadas por las partes del Anexo I del Protocolo de Kioto en el segundo periodo y los subsecuentes, que reflejen sus responsabilidades y deudas históricas, respondan a las necesidades de las partes de países en desarrollo para una participación equitativa del espacio atmosférico y sean adecuadas para responder a los requisitos de acuerdo a lo determinado por el IPCC y los últimos avances científicos;
c) Provisión de recursos financieros de los países desarrollados para los países en desarrollo, que sea por lo menos del 6% del valor del PIB de los países desarrollados, para adaptación, transferencia de tecnología, creación de capacidades y mitigación.
d) Provisión por parte de los países desarrollados de medios de implementación para los países en desarrollo para facilitar una adecuada adaptación al cambio climático, a fin de que puedan cubrir los costos de los efectos adversos y el saldo de adaptación.
e) La transferencia de tecnologías medioambientales razonables para los países en desarrollo y el fortalecimiento de sus capacidades endógenas y tecnológicas, incluyendo la identificación y eliminación de todas las barreras para el acceso a las mismas, con el costo más accesible y el tratamiento más apropiado posible de los derechos de propiedad intelectual incluyendo la exclusión de patentes relativas a tecnologías climáticas para las partes de países en desarrollo.
f) Creación de capacidades para permitir el progreso de las capacidades institucionales de los países en desarrollo dirigidas al cambio climático y sus efectos adversos.
g) Medidas de los países en desarrollo para mitigar el cambio climático, incluyendo acciones de mitigación apropiadas a nivel nacional, que sean apoyadas y viabilizadas por los países desarrollados.
h) Cambios cuantificados de los patrones insostenibles de consumo y producción de los países desarrollados, incluyendo la reducción sustancial de sus altas emisiones per cápita de gases de efecto invernadero.
Metas en la temperatura y ppm (para incluirse en Visión compartida)
OP Los países desarrollados deben liderar y hacer esfuerzos para lograr que las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera vuelvan a un nivel menor a 300 ppm CO2eq, a fin de retornar en el largo plazo a niveles de concentraciones que se acerquen lo más posible a los niveles preindustriales y limitar la temperatura global promedio a un máximo de 1ºC con profundas y adecuadas reducciones en el mediano y largo plazo y haciendo efectivas las medidas para cumplir con los compromisos relacionados a la provisión de recursos financieros sustentables, creación de capacidades y para proporcionar desarrollo tecnológico y transferencia de tecnologías ambientalmente razonables así como el “know how” a las Partes que son países en desarrollo.
Derechos de la Madre Tierra (texto a ser incluido en Visión compartida)
PP Admitiendo que para abordar el cambio climático, debemos reconocer a la Madre Tierra como fuente de vida y como un sistema vivo, con el que tenemos una relación indivisible, interdependiente y complementaria; y que para lograr la realización de los derechos humanos y dignidad humana es necesario reconocer y defender los derechos de la Madre Tierra.
OP Una visión compartida para una Acción Cooperativa a Largo Plazo para restablecer la armonía con la naturaleza debe promover el reconocimiento y defensa de los Derechos de la Madre Tierra, a través de una Declaración en Naciones Unidas.
Causas Estructurales (para ser incluido en Visión compartida)
PP Determinados a hacer frente a las causas del cambio climático, incluyendo la eliminación de patrones insostenibles de consumo y producción en los países desarrollados y el sistema financiero y económico global dominante que incrementa esto; que un nuevo sistema debe ser construido para restablecer la armonía con la naturaleza y entre los humanos; que únicamente puede haber balance con la naturaleza si hay equidad entre los seres humanos.
PP Abogando por un modelo de desarrollo que no sea destructivo o basado en el crecimiento ilimitado, y reconociendo que los países necesitan producir bienes y servicios para satisfacer las necesidades básicas de su población, pero no significa que se puede continuar sobre el actual patrón de desarrollo de los países ricos, los cuales tienen una huella ecológica cinco veces más grande que puede soportar el planeta.
OP Promover cambios cuantificados en los patrones insostenibles de consumo y producción por parte de los países desarrollados, incluyendo reducciones sustanciales de sus niveles per cápita de emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, y el desarrollo y análisis y debate en relación a las causas estructurales del cambio climático.
Distribución equitativa del espacio atmosférico (para ser incluido en Visión Compartida)
PP Reconociendo que una distribución equitativa del espacio atmosférico es un derecho inalienable fundamental de todas las naciones y personas, y que el desarrollo económico, social y sostenible es la primera y fundamental prioridad de los países en desarrollo partes, que está siendo limitado por el uso excesivo de los países desarrollados de la atmósfera, a través de sus emisiones pasadas, actuales y propuestas futuras de emisiones.
OP Lograr una equitativa distribución del espacio global atmosférico entre los países desarrollados y los países en desarrollo tomando como referencia:
a) Acuerdo del presupuesto mundial de emisiones entre el periodo de 1750 a 2050;
b) Una metodología acordada para compartir el presupuesto de emisiones globales entre los países desarrollados y en desarrollo tomando en cuenta sus presentes y futuras poblaciones; y
c) La distribución basada en esta metodología, de la cantidad asignada total y doméstica para las partes del Anexo I bajo el Protocolo de Kioto y los objetivos para un esfuerzo comparable para las partes anexo I que no son parte del Protocolo de Kioto.
Tribunal de Justicia Climática y Ambiental (para ser incluido en Visión compartida)
PP Reconociendo que los países desarrollados no han cumplido sus compromisos y que es necesario tener un mecanismo judicial que garantice la implementación de la Convención y el Protocolo de Kioto.
OP Las partes deberán promover el establecimiento de un Tribunal Internacional de Justicia Climática y Ambiental, cuyo objetivo fundamental es contribuir a la prevención de acciones que causan contaminación ambiental y cambio climático.
Referéndum (para ser incluido en Visión compartida)
PP Reconociendo que la decisión sobre el cambio climático no es únicamente la decisión de los gobiernos y sus representantes técnicos, nos concierne a todos, como ciudadanos del mundo.
PP Reconociendo que es esencial llevar a cabo una consulta mundial sobre la determinación de decisiones que implican el impacto del cambio climático sobre el futuro de la Madre Tierra y la vida humana,
OP Las partes acuerdan apoyar y promover un plebiscito o referéndum mundial sobre cambio climático abierto al público del mundo; los términos de este referéndum serían considerados por la COP.
Deuda Climática (para ser incluido en Visión Compartida, Mitigación, Adaptación, Financiamiento y Transferencia de Tecnología)
PP Afirmando que las emisiones históricas de los países desarrollados son las responsables del cambio climático y sus efectos adversos para los países en desarrollo y que los países desarrollados por tanto tienen la responsabilidad de compensar a los países en desarrollo como parte de una deuda climática.
PP Enfatizando que la falta de implementación de los compromisos de reducir emisiones por parte de los países desarrollados aumentará su deuda climática para los países en desarrollo y limitan significativamente las oportunidades de lograr la estabilización de los niveles de gases de efecto invernadero y el incremento de los riesgos más graves de los impactos del cambio climático.
OP Los países desarrollados, asumiendo su responsabilidad histórica, por este medio reconocen y se comprometen a honrar su deuda climática en todas sus dimensiones, como la base para una solución justa, efectiva y científica contra el cambio climático, incluyendo las siguientes acciones:
• Reservar para los países en desarrollo el espacio atmosférico, que es actualmente ocupado por las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de los países desarrollados;
• Asumir los costos y las necesidades de transferencia de tecnología de los países en desarrollo por la pérdida de oportunidades de desarrollo a causa de vivir en un espacio atmosférico restringido.
• Hacerse responsables por los cientos de millones que tendrán que migrar por el cambio climático que han provocado; eliminar sus políticas restrictivas de migración y ofrecer a los migrantes una vida digna y con todos los derechos en sus países.
• Asumir la deuda de adaptación relacionada a los impactos del cambio climático en los países en desarrollo proveyendo los medios para prevenir, minimizar y atender los daños que surgen de sus excesivas emisiones, así como también costos de oportunidad.
• Honrar esta deuda como parte de una deuda mayor con la Madre Tierra adoptando y aplicando la Declaración Universal de los Derechos de la Madre Tierra en las Naciones Unidas.
La escala y la sincronización de las reducciones de emisiones de los países del Anexo I deben ser suficiente para asegurar que la deuda histórica de los países desarrollados por su consumo excesivo del espacio ambiental en el pasado, y sus continuas excesivas emisiones per cápita, sean restituidas en su totalidad a los países en desarrollo.
Pueblos Indígenas (para ser incluido en visión compartida, mitigación, adaptación y transferencia de tecnología)
OP La aplicación plena y efectiva del derecho a la consulta, participación y consentimiento previo, libre e informado es necesaria en todo el proceso de negociación y en el diseño e implementación de las medidas para mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático.
OP La Declaración de Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas y el Convenio OIT 169 deben reconocerse plenamente, implementarse e integrarse en las acciones de cambio climático.
OP El conocimiento tradicional indígena y sus tecnologías constituyen una parte valiosa y útil de los conocimientos y tecnologías que son apropiados y útiles para las actividades de adaptación y mitigación para atender el cambio climático y que tienen que ser apoyados y ser parte del desarrollo de tecnología, transferencia y despliegue.
Financiamiento (para ser incluido en Financiamiento, Visión Compartida, Mitigación, Adaptación, Transferencia de Tecnología y Construcción de Capacidad.
OP Las partes que son países desarrollados y las otras partes desarrolladas incluidas en el Anexo II en concordancia con sus compromisos bajo la Convención, incluido el Artículo 4, parágrafo 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 y 9 deben proporcionar sustanciales, nuevos, adicionales, adecuados, previsibles y sustentables fondos públicos adicionales y diferentes de la Ayuda Oficial al Desarrollo para cubrir los gastos totales y/o costos adicionales incurridos por las partes que son países en desarrollo para la implementación efectiva de sus compromisos bajo la Convención, tomando en consideración que las fuentes para el cumplimiento de esos compromisos deben provenir exclusivamente de fondos públicos y no de los mercados.
OP Las partes que son países desarrollados, deberán a partir de 2013, proporcionar recursos equivalentes por lo menos del 6% de su PNB comprendiendo el 3% para adaptación, 1% para mitigación, 1% para desarrollo y transferencia de tecnología y 1% para la construcción de capacidades.
Migración (para ser incluido en Visión Compartida y Adaptación)
OP La países desarrollados, asumiendo sus responsabilidades de los impactos adversos del cambio climático, deben asumir como una dimensión de su deuda climática, siendo responsables por los cientos de millones de personas que tienen que migrar como un resultado del cambio climático y eliminar sus políticas restrictivas sobre migración, incluyendo, proporcionar a los migrantes oportunidades para lograr una vida digna y con todos los derechos humanos;
OP Como una parte del marco institucional sobre adaptación, debe ser establecido un mecanismo internacional para atender las necesidades individuales y personas desplazadas debido a los efectos adversos del cambio climático y las infracciones de los derechos humanos resultantes de los efectos adversos del cambio climático.
Mitigación (texto para ser incluido en Mitigación 1bi)
PP Reafirmando que el Protocolo de Kioto debe mantenerse como el instrumento vinculante específico para la reducción de gases de efecto invernadero en los países desarrollados
OP Todos las Partes Anexo I de la Convención, como parte de su deuda de emisiones y en concordancia con sus compromisos del Artículo 4.2 de la Convención, deben asumir objetivos ambiciosos nacionales vinculantes a escala de toda su economía, en cuanto a compromisos cuantificados de reducción de emisiones durante el periodo 2013 a 2017 y en más del 100 % antes del 2040, comparados con sus niveles de 1990 a través de acciones de reducción domésticas y sin usar los mercados de carbono u otro mecanismo de compensación.
OP Para cualquiera de las partes del Anexo I que no sea parte en el Protocolo de Kioto, su compromiso de reducción de emisiones para el segundo periodo y subsiguientes periodo debe ser considerado a escala de toda su economía.
OP Para cualquiera de las partes del Anexo I de la Convención que no sea parte del Protocolo de Kioto, su compromiso de reducción de emisiones a escala de toda su economía deberá ser comparable en magnitud, escala de tiempo y en cumplimiento con los compromisos de toda la economía como se menciona en los párrafos anteriores. Tales compromisos deben ser reflejados en una declaración por las partes y reconocidos a través de una decisión de la Conferencia de las Partes.
OP si, después de medir, reportar y verificar el fracaso del cumplimiento de los compromisos de reducción de los países desarrollados se deberán identificar estas faltas para aplicar sanciones. Esto puede incluir compromisos futuros de incremento de reducción calculado como un múltiplo por la falta en su implementación. Contribuciones financieras pueden también ser consideradas como penalidades o multas para abonar en el establecimiento de un mecanismo financiero bajo la Conferencia de las Partes.
NAMAs (para ser incluidas en Mitigación 1bii)
OP Las acciones apropiadas de mitigación nacional (NAMAs) de las Partes no Anexo 1 son voluntariamente medidas y/o programas para mitigar el cambio climático bajo el Artículo 4.1 de la Convención que son posibilitadas por el financiamiento, la tecnología y construcción de capacidades en concordancia con los Artículos 4.3 y 4.5 y basados en sus específicas prioridades nacionales y circunstancias y dentro del contexto del desarrollo sostenible. Un sistema debería ser establecido bajo un mecanismo financiero para asegurar que las acciones de mitigaciones de los países desarrollados sean posibilitadas y apoyadas por el financiamiento, la tecnología y la construcción de capacidades.
OP (1b2) La reducción de las emisiones resultante de las (NAMAs) no deberían ser utilizadas para compensar los objetivos de reducción de emisiones cuantificadas realizadas por las Partes Anexo I de la Convención.
Bosque (para ser incluido en Mitigación 1bii)
OP Los siguientes principios y elementos se aplicaran para las acciones relacionadas a bosques y en el marco de la propuesta:
• Integridad medioambiental
• La garantía de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas bajo la base de los instrumentos de la normativa internacional y las comunidades locales en conservación y participación en el manejo de los bosques.
• No a los mecanismos de Mercado en las acciones relacionadas a los bosques.
• No a los mecanismos de compensación que impliquen que los países desarrollados utilizaran las emisiones de reducción que fueron creadas por los países en desarrollo para cumplir sus compromisos de reducciones de emisiones.
• Asegurar soberanía y control nacional así como local sobre actividades relacionadas al los bosques.
OP La definición de bosque utilizada en las negociaciones no debería incluir plantaciones, como las plantaciones de monocultivos que no son bosques. La preservación de los bosques puede tener fondos, incluyendo la adaptación de las actividades relacionadas con los bosques.
OP Estamos de acuerdo que la mejor estrategia y acción para evitar la deforestación y degradación y para proteger los bosques nativos y los bosques es reconocer y garantizar los derechos colectivos de las tierras y territorios especialmente de los pueblos y naciones indígenas, y las comunidades de cultivo tradicional.
OP Un marco para la entrega de los recursos financieros para la acciones relacionadas a los bosques es por este medio establecido para financiar los costos adicionales acordados para la implementación de los compromisos de los países en desarrollo bajo el articulo 4.1 (d) para la promoción y cooperación en la preservación y mejoramiento de los depósitos y el absorbente de los gases de efectos invernadero, incluyendo los ecosistemas de los bosques.
El criterio de elegibilidad para el financiamiento de los bosques y las actividades relacionadas debería incluir lo siguiente:
• La distribución equitativa de los fondos de financiamiento debe ser garantizada.
• El apoyo para las propuestas que se dirigen en sobresaltar las causas subyacentes de la pérdida de bosques, incluyendo las acciones dentro pero no limitándose al sector de los bosques.
• Apoyo a las propuestas que garanticen una protección duradera de los boques naturales y la reducción de la deforestación y degradación, mejorando las leyes forestales y aumentando las políticas de los boques, consolidando el reconocimiento de los Pueblos Indígenas y los derechos de las comunidades, a pesar de cuál pueda ser el impacto inmediato de estas medidas cuantificando en términos de emisión de unidades de carbono.
• Las propuestas no deberían considerar que permitan escalas industriales o que implique la conversión de los bosques naturales en plantaciones u otro comercio de actividades de infraestructura y proyectos que dañan el medio ambiente o violan los derechos de las comunidades locales.
• Incentivar las propuestas para las actividades que implican la plena y efectiva participación de los pueblos y comunidades locales que dependen de los bosques.
• Apoyar la restauración y mantenimiento de los bosques por los pueblos indígenas y sus organizaciones, incluyendo a través de un programa mundial para restaurar los bosques y junglas nativas, manejadas y administradas por las comunidades y sus organizaciones.
• Las Propuestas y las actividades deberían promover el buen gobierno, en particular con respecto a las políticas forestales y el apoyo a las leyes.
• Las propuestas y actividades deberían contener transparencia y mecanismo de participación para prevenir o resolver los conflictos acerca del acceso, uso y derechos de propiedad que podrán surgir durante el desarrollo o implementación de las actividades forestales relacionadas.
Agricultura (para ser incluido en 1biv)
PP Reconociendo que las emisiones de la agricultura ecológicamente nociva e intensiva químicamente son el mayor contribuyente al cambio climático, y la esencial contribución de acciones de mitigación de formas ecológicamente racional de la agricultura, incluyendo las prácticas tradicionales de agricultura por algunas comunidades locales y pequeños campesinos.
PP Recalcando que la promoción de la soberanía alimentaria es también parte vital de la transformación agricultura necesaria para atender la crisis climática. El concepto de soberanía alimentaria es entendido como el derecho de los pueblos de controlar sus propias semillas, tierras, agua y producción alimentaria, asegurando, a través de la producción en armonía con la Madre Tierra.
OP Decide dejar de producir formas inapropiadas de agricultura que son ecológicamente dañinas y que son emisoras intensivas y en vez de tomar medidas para promocionar un modelo de producción ecológicamente sustentable, que también promueva la seguridad alimentaria y la soberanía alimentaria y las formas de ganarse la vida y los derechos de las comunidades locales de los pueblos indígenas
OP Acuerda que los pequeños campesinos en los países en desarrollo tienen el derecho de controlar sus propias semillas, tierras, aguas y producción alimentaria, apropiadas y adecuadas los mecanismos de financiamiento deben ser establecidos para asegurar que se pueden mantener e incrementar el control de sus recursos.
OP Decide revisar el sistema mundial del comercio agrícola, las disposiciones de los acuerdos comerciales, prestamos y condiciones de ayuda y los régimen de propiedad intelectual para asegurar que el marco de las políticas elaboradas para la agricultura sean apropiadas para conducir la crisis climática y encontrar los intereses de las comunidades locales y proteger el medioambiente, rechazando las prácticas y tecnologías dañinas para los agricultores y el medio ambiente, incluyendo agroquímicos, semillas corporativas-controladas y uso intensivo del agua, ingeniería genética, en particular el uso de tecnología de restricción genética, los biocombustibles, la nanotecnología y la geo-ingenieria.
Mercados (a ser incluido en 1bv)
PP Entendiendo que el sistema de mercados ha resultado priorizando la competencia extrema para los beneficios y crecimiento, y que esto ha separado la humanidad de la naturaleza, estableciendo una lógica de dominación, convirtiendo todo en mercancías: agua, tierra, el genoma humano, las culturas ancestrales. La biodiversidad, la justicia. La ética. El derecho de los pueblos y la vida en sí misma.
OP No se debería utilizar un mercado internacional del carbono o una aproximación de compensación al mercado internacional del carbono de las Partes del Anexo 1 para sus compromisos de mitigación o en el financiamiento de los países en desarrollo y sus acciones que han tenido serios efectos adversos.
OP Las Partes rechazan el establecimiento de nuevos mecanismos flexible que estén sujetos al Mercado del carbono.
Adaptación (para ser incluido en Adaptación)
PP Reconociendo que la adaptación al cambio climático y sus consecuencias económicas es urgente y esencial para la sobrevivencia y existencia de las partes de los países en desarrollo,
PP Reconociendo que la adaptación al cambio climático tiene una dimensión en los derechos humanos porque si no se atienden los efectos del cambio climático no será posible la realización de los derechos económicos y sociales, incluyendo el derecho a la vida, comida, agua, vivienda y salud.
OP Los países desarrollados, reconociendo su responsabilidad histórica por el cambio climático y sus efectos adversos, por la presente reconoce y se compromete a honrar su deuda de adaptación, compensando todos los impactos negativos del cambio climático en los países en desarrollo con:
• Proporcionando los medios a los países en desarrollo para desarrollar e implementar políticas de adaptación, planes, programas y proyectos mediante la provisión de nuevos y adicionales recursos públicos financieros sustanciales, tecnologías medio ambientales razonables y construcción de capacidades de manera predecible y pronta.
• Compensando los daños reales derivados de sus excesivas emisiones.
• Compensando los costos de oportunidad; apoyando a las partes que son los países en desarrollo en sus esfuerzos para reducir la pobreza y lograr sus metas de desarrollo.
OP Un marco institucional sobre adaptación al cambio climático es establecido por la presente bajo la Convención para permitir el desarrollo de los países parte, honrar su deudas de adaptación y cumplir con sus compromisos. El Acuerdo institucional debería comprometer:
• Un comité de adaptación bajo la autoridad y guía de la Conferencia de las Partes.
• Un Mecanismo Internacional para dirigirse la pérdida inevitable y daños resultados de los efectos adversos del cambio climático, y asociando las oportunidades para el desarrollo, con las siguientes funciones:
- Enfrentar los riesgos asociados con las condiciones meteorológicas extremas, que incorpora medidas para reducir, administrar y prevenir los riesgos.
- Proporcionar la compensación y rehabilitación relacionadas con el clima en eventos previstos.
• Un mecanismo para verificar la provisión de recursos financieros, compensación y transferencia de tecnología desde las partes que son países desarrollados (dentro de una nueva entidad encargada del funcionamiento del mecanismo financiero bajo la Convención).
Transferencia de Tecnología (para ser incluido en desarrollo y transferencia de tecnología)
OP El traspaso de tecnología de un país desarrollado hacia uno en desarrollo debería ser libre de condiciones o imposiciones. En su lugar, se ha acordado que se debe tener un intercambio libre de información. Conocimiento y tecnologías, bajo los principios de solidaridad, reciprocidad, respeto, complementariedad, armonía, transparencia, equitatividad, permitiendo un dialogo intra-científico del conocimiento y de las técnicas.
OP Los países desarrollados se comprometen a compartir el ciclo entero de tecnología, principalmente las innovaciones, desarrollo, demostración, despliegue, difusión y la transferencia de nueva y existentes innovaciones tecnológicas es urgente y esencial para fortalecer las capacidades de los países en desarrollo, en particular los que se encuentran en el Articulo 4.8 de la Convención. Los países en desarrollo deben ser receptores del ciclo tecnológico en su integridad.
OP Un mecanismo para desarrollo tecnológico y su transferencia mediante la presente es establecido bajo la autoridad de la Conferencia de las Partes, que comprende:
• Un Consejo Ejecutivo de Tecnología con el objetivo de desarrollar estrategias y políticas, proporcionar orientación, aconsejar y elaborar en temas tecnológicos, y desarrollar un Plan de Acción tecnológico.
• Un panel técnico para la adaptación y mitigación tecnológica para generar y recompilar información de expertos.
• Un Plan de Acción Tecnológico para apoyar programas concretos y acciones de corto, mediano y largo plazo y programas que cubren todos los sectores.
• Un Fondo Multilateral de Tecnología Climática para cumplir plenamente el costo adicional de la transferencia de tecnología. (en concordancia con el Artículo 4.3)
• Un mecanismo de cumplimiento para medir y verificar los compromisos de las partes de los países desarrollados para la transferencia tecnológica, el financiamiento y el desarrollo.
OP La transferencia de la tecnología debe ser plenamente compensada por la pérdida de las oportunidades de desarrollo debido a los costos y las exigencias tecnológicas de los países en desarrollo que viven dentro de un restringido espacio atmosférico.
OP El conocimiento tradicional e indígena y las tecnologías forman una parte valiosa y útil del conocimiento y tecnologías que son apropiadas y útiles para las actividades de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático.
OP Las tecnologías e innovaciones que vienen del financiamiento público destinadas para la investigación y el desarrollo tecnológico deben ser puestas en un dominio público y no bajo un régimen de patentes privadas, de manera que sean de libre acceso para los países en desarrollo.
OP Las medidas deben ser hechas para expandir las tecnologías en el dominio público. Nada en los acuerdos internacionales de propiedad intelectual deben ser interpretados o implementados de manera que limite o evite a cualquier parte de tomar medidas para atender al cambio climático, en particular el desarrollo y la transferencia de tecnologías, incluyendo el desarrollo y mejoramiento de las capacidades endógenas y las tecnologías de la transferencia y acceso de los países en desarrollo, y las tecnologías de medioambientales razonable y el conocimiento.
OP Los países en desarrollo tienen el derecho de utilizar plenamente las flexibilidades contenidas en el acuerdo de los Aspectos Relacionados a los Derechos de Propiedad Intelectual (TRIPS), incluyendo las medidas obligatorias de licencias, deberán ser excluidas las patentes en temas de clima relacionadas a la tecnología.
[1] PP= párrafo preambular; OP= párrafo operacional; en paréntesis indicaciones de la sección donde tiene relevancia.

Open Letter to The Zapatistas

2010-04-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

As we quickly approach the 2010 Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth, it seems appropriate to do a quick assessment of the current state of peoples movements across the globe.

The following is a letter, published in Spanish written by my friend and compatriot J. Sandy Hepler to the Zapatistas during his recent visit to Chiapas.

¿Que pasa con los Zapatistas?
Los amigos en los Estados Unidos se preguntan,
¿que pasa con los
Zapatistas¿ Ha muerto su
revolucion?

Un hecho sobresaliente:
Desde los primeros
dias de 1994, aprendieron pronto que la guerra armada traera mucha miseria
con poca
esperanza de una victoria clara.

Otro
hecho: De veras el pueblo Zapatista hacen las decisiones en sus
comunidades. No esta el reino
de un caudillo enmascarado.

Ni Guerra de Rotulos
Hoy en dia se ven, rumbo a La Realidad de Ocosingo
y tambien de Las Margaritas, varios rotulos que dicen, "Ya estas
en territorio Zapatista." Tambien vemos rotulos de Juntas de
Buen Gobierno, y otros con espiritù de lucha.
Y tambien vemos postes militares del
Ejercito Mexicano, y su gran cuartel en
San Quintin.
Parece que algùn jefe del Ejercito Mexican
se diò cuenta que serìa mejor para todos si dejaban
los
rotulos, dejando un equilibrio al menos-- in vez de tirar los
rotulos. Si
habìa antes, ahora no hay "guerra de
rotulos". Lo cual muestra que todavìa vive el Zapatismo.

No es menospreciar el peligro que corre siempre
de bandas armadas
derechistas. Ni el hecho que quedan todavia
alrededor de 60 mil tropas del
Ejercito Mexicano en
Chiapas.

De la Cultura Basica del Pueblo Zapatista
¿Como vive el pùeblo Zapatista? Como
enfrentan a sus necesidades mas basicos?

Lo que
comen;
Como se tratan sus aguas;

De su sistema sanitario
De su produccion agricola
Del desarollo de sus productos
De
su sistema educativo
y de su tiempo recreativo

Por UN ejemplo cada Caracol tiene unas
tiendas,
productos hechos por los amos industriales. En cada compra,
la comunidad
pierde algo de su sangre y sudor. Bebidas embotelladas y
comida
chatarra tambien tienen la desventaja de ser
anti-saludables.
¿En donde hay la
oferta alternativa de jugos, "aguas de frutas" o dulces
caseros?

Ejemplo DOS, aceites o
grasas comestibles estan necesitadas para la cocina. ¿Està
en marcha un plan--
para uso del coco(u otro) que provee el
mejor aceite tropical?
Tambien, adentro de la semilla del mango hay
un nuez con aceite muy rico y
premiado en el merc
ado mundial.
¿Cuantos semillas del mango hemos
visto tirado cada
año?
Para pequeña industria aceitera se
necesita una prensa, primer paso. Y una prensa puede
tener otros
usos. No se necesita gran inversion para empezar. Pero
sí, hay
que investigar la ciencia practica.Sobre todo, necesita estudio,
diseño y prueba por los
Zapestudiantes y
diseñadores.

Ejemplo TRES, si
el pueblo necesita pasta de dientes,
¿se ofrece tambien en las
tienditas Zapatistas la alternativa bien
conocida-- bicarbonato de
soda? U otro invento como arcilla blanca y
muy fina, talvez con
saborizante de menta natural?

Ejemplo
CUATRO, las càscaras de frutas cìtricas contienen
ingredientes poderosos, tal que se usaban desde
hace muchos
a&nt
ilde;os como limpiador ecologico en los Estados Unidos. En
tantos
casos, ¿como puede saber una poblacion aislada de
las opciones que existen?

Ejemplo CINCO, el Chocolate es un arma
poderosa para lanzar afuera. Si quieren desarollo de chocolate-- en vez
de
vender la materia prima, cacao-- hay muchas opciones que exigen
investigaciòn. ¿Hicieron estudios? Hay un plan de
desarollo?

Los ultimos ejemplos son
mas complicados y profundos; y solamente los tocamos.

Ejemplo SEIS, ¿Quien sabe cuanto el temible
Televisor, la flecha
toxica del Capitalismo, ha penetrado
Zapatalandia? Este agente de la
esclavitud moderna ya entraba en la
mente de casi todas las personas.
Somos hipnotisados con sus
mensajes de la "Buena Vida", de
mas c
ompras, siempre. Peor
todavia su mensaje una-via que nos
enseña a mirar y escuchar
pero no hacer nada. "Sientese y
tragase nuestros mensajes":
asi se mata la imaginacion y animo de
todos, hasta los niños.

Pero ¿quien va a prohibirlo? Y si
está prohibido, vuelve mas deseable
por el hecho
de su prohibiciòn?
La alternativa es
proveer opciones las cuales exigen la
imaginaciòn, como
un sistema de creatividad y
alegria. Un ejemplo seria una
càmara de pelìcula (con
bastante memoria electronica
vale $2000 pesos) y un equipo humano para
hacer su propio Novela, o
unas historias de las comunidades Zapatisitas.
Los niños
mismos aprenden hacerse astros y estrellas.

O un Circo, no s
olamente de una vez, sino
entrenamiento de largo plazo,
como parte de la vida de la gente (y
mejor, niños) quienes quieren
hacerlo. La Alegrìa no
puede esperar hasta que resolvamos los otras
problemas.

Ejemplo
SIETE, de lavar la ropa en el rio, se dice, "Hay que respetar la
costumbre
del pueblo." De acuerdo pero preguntamos-- "En
este,
¿respeta el pueblo a su ecologia? Respeta el
pueblo a sus
compañeros de los aguas de abajo? Y
sabe el pueblo del
contenido de su
jabón?" ¿Y que alternativas hay?
¿Que contienen los varios jabones? Estan
algunos menos toxicos que otros? Que necesitamos para una
pequeña industria jabonera, mas que aceite y cenizas? Donde
estan
los Zapestudiantes de la ciencia practi
ca?

Pueden decir tambien, "Mucha agua, poca
gente." Y dejarlo.

OCHO, el
inodoro es otra estafa de los amos, demasiado caro para el
pueblo y un desastre ecologico en
muchos casos.
La letrina hedionda es otro modo, conveniente y
barato, pero con desventajas bien conocidas. En ambos
casos, la
filosofìa es quitarlo y olvidarlo. Don Durito debe
saber: ningun de los dos convienen a sus amigos del trabajo, que
faltan
suelo con sus microbios y la fibra
necesitada.
"Mandamos la naturaleza por
obedecerla."
Hay
opciones para el manejo de la excrementa. No hay que escoger
entre el inodoro que exige tanto agua y tanto tuberia; y la letrina
hedionda. Mas fà
;cil es la letrina abonera, estilo
Vietnamita, en donde se imita la naturaleza para devolver
la
excreta a tierra negra con eficiencia y costo minimo.

NUEVE y mas importante: ¿estan
desarollando un sistema de agricultura sostenible? De lo que vemos en
"territorio Zapatista" (aunque no hemos visto adentro de
los
caracoles) es la vieja sistema de milpa: maiz, frijol y calabaza
conjuntos
en una cosecha. Despues se crece el monte algunas meses, se
limpia y
dejarlo secar antes que quemarla. Entonces otra siembra,
otro ciclo.
Lo que hemos visto esta en
suelo
sumamente rico, especialmente el fomdo del valle de Ocosingo y
la empieza
al menos de la Selva Laconda, fertilizado en siglos por
aguas aluviales.
Un gran suerte para los habitantes pero
¿quien sabe cuantos
a&ntil
de;os va a durar su riqueza con solo
cenizas y tal vez fertilizante
quimica para abonarlo¿ (Veiamos
tambien uso corriente de al menos
un veneno quimico en contra una de
una plaga de maiz.)

**********************************************

Hay que felicitar al Pueblo Zapatista por sus
logros; y agradecerles por su ejemplo. Ojalà que tengan la
seguridad a largo plazo.

"Mi Risa es mi espada; mi Alegria mi
escudo." Martin Luther y
J Sandy Hepler,
Chiapas, enero 2010

Flash Documentation and Regenerative Media part two

2010-03-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

Regenerative Media offers us a glimpse into what it might be like to preserve the worlds cultures, and the polyvocal diversity of voices that enrich our planet.

In order to change our collective story we must first learn how to create information that is accessible and effective. We must learn how to make our memes well adapted to the dynamic, rapidly fluctuation environment of today's wired world.

Listen to the talk on Flash Documentation and Regenerative Media:

Flash Documentation @ GaiaSE

2010-03-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

Documenting the Blessed Unrest

Documentation is a serious growth edge for the movements to regenerate the planet. Without good documentation the decentralized ad-hoc networks of world-changers that form to address issues and create positive change cannot communicate with each other, or learn from past mistakes.

Flash Documentation

Flash Documentation is a method to create quick, clear and meaningful documentation with minimal interruption of project work and action learning. Flash documentation endeavors to create a tool kit to be able to get high quality, multimedia information where it needs to go, quickly and with minimal attention to formatting and editing.

Story Telling:

In addition to the pragmatic needs for a strong documentation competence in organizations and individuals engaged in strategic and regenerative actions, storytelling, and myth-making are key ways to change the world.

Story telling shapes our world. The stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell our friends, and hear in the media all color our views and values. Our stories define us as a culture, and our culture defines our presence on the earth. Evolving, participatory stories and story telling gives us access to the key to culture change.

Engaging:

At Gaia University South East, Associates are actively engaging in learning the skill flex needed to create effective, aesthetic documentation of their dreams, visions, and actions in this world.

Check out blogging 101 for world changers, and stay tuned at Gaia SE Blog for the ongoing exploration of Flash Documentation and Regenerative Media

Earth Trust

2009-12-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

Ecological economics and the ownership and treatment of land:
the Earth Trust

By David Haenke

Part 8 of 8 Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

I realize that what I have said thus far about a new
overall praxis of economics does not include the fundamental
question of ownership of the land as presently defined in the
capitalist and socialist models. It is an abomination for any
system to carry on the belief that ownership, either by
individuals, corporations, or the state, includes the right to despoil
any part of the Earth.

My personal belief on ownership and enterprise is that
neither individuals nor the state can truly hold title to
anything, but that the whole Earth and everything on it is
a commons which belongs to no one but the Earth, GAIA. I
here acknowledge its implicit existence and call it into
being simply by naming it: The Earth Trust.

Any human activity needs to be seen as carried out under
an implicit ecological lease covenant from the Earth, which
expires with our personal, collective, or corporate life.
(No more "immortal" personal or corporate holdings.)
This of course is a heterodox view in the "civilized" world,
and is recognized by few, First Peoples, Bioregionalists,
and some Greens.

No matter what we believe about ownership, the best we
can do now is stick to the ecological evaluation and modality
of economic activity and ownership. There is no evidence to
support that either ownership by individuals, or the state,
will protect and adequately care for the land in any given
political-economic system with any degree of consistency or
certainty. Using ecological economics as best we can under
the present dysfunctional systems we will just have to do
the best we can in mitigating the damage caused by present
nations’ concepts of ownership rights.

Something to hold in mind and work for through the generations:
Establish the Earth Trust under the Ecological Covenant of Earth.

2009-12-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

Bioregional ecological economics: a prescription for health:
by David Haenke

Part 7 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

I have characterized our present economic modalities as the
prime cause of kind of sickness -- cancerous in nature -- inflicting the Earth and all its life with what is, on our present course, terminal entropy. Below I will describe what I characterize as a "prescription for health": bioregional ecological economics.

"Eco-economics" means bioregionally-scaled economies designed
on the basis of ecological principles. It means running an
economy the way nature runs a forest. Ecological principles
mandate decentralization, deconcentration, and regionalization of
our economic systems. As much as possible, there must be local
production, consumption, and full-scale recycling, drawing from
local resources. It further mandates that no economic activity
be allowed that is destructive or compromising to the ecological
integrity of the region within which it takes place

Under bioregional economics," capital and resources are
cycled within the region. As little as possible is allowed to
"leak out." Presently macro-economic activity creates a continual
hemorrhaging from localities, which are bled dry of capital,
energy, resources, people, etc. This is true in every country on
Earth, even within the first world nations.

Under bioregional economics, the consumer society must become
the producer-conserver society, where the real work for people
becomes economic and political empowerment through each home,
family, community, and region producing as many of its own basic
requirements, using ecological technologies, as possible. This
considerably disintermediates the need for money, effectively
beginning the necessary demonetization of human life.

Instead of working a meaningless job to get the money to
buy necessities, part of our real work becomes the efficient
production or more direct involvement (such as through working
membership in cooperatives) in procurement of these things
ourselves. This bypasses the circuitous, wasteful, and
entropic formation, procurement, and expenditure of capital
to do the same thing. Thus the formal "work week" wherein we
labor for money can drop considerably, perhaps to 20 hours or
less. Of course for some significant part of the rest of the working
week we would be laboring to more directly produce some of
what we formerly used money to buy.

This eco-economy runs as much as possible on solar energy,
just as ecosystems run entirely on solar gain. We make
judicious use of "capital" resources such as fossil fuels,
which are used according to their most efficient application,
as in the "soft energy path" ideas of Amory Lovins.

Eco-economics means bringing the economy home, and embedding
it cooperatively in the web of life of our bioregions.

To summarize, the basic bioregional economic prescription
is, to the greatest extent possible:

* Participants in, invest in, and support local, ecologically-
responsible production, by locally owned, operated, and
controlled enterprises.

* Buy, trade, consume locally and bioregionally-produced goods
and services.

* Work to strengthen the local and bioregional economy.

* Keep resources, capital, energy at home: plug leaks.

* Use solar energy, and other "renewable" energies and resources.

* Radically efficient use of non-renewables.

* Intense conservation and efficiency in all sectors.

* Full scale--90-100 percent recycling done by local and biore-
gional enterprises.

* Pay true, ecologically-audited costs: internalize "externalities."

* (Work toward) formal or informal local and bioregional trading
system or currency.

* Support a humane and socially responsible economy.

* Don't support business that pollute or destroy the ecology.

* Conversely, whenever possible, avoid buying from national
or multinational-scale corporations, their subsidiaries, or
state-owned enterprises. Each locality, region, bioregion, or
state would establish an up-to-date database identifying what is
being sold, and the ownership is of the company selling a given
product in their territory. This information would be furnished
to the public so that they can choose the local and regional
alternative where possible. Ongoing development of economic
alternatives to nationals and transnationals would be a focus of
each bioregion.

Bioregions and bioregionalism in economic thought

2009-12-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Bioregions and bioregionalism
by David Haenke

Part 6 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

Throughout our exploration of ecological economics, we have emphasized that if humanity
to survive, there is no question that our economies and systems of production and distribution of vital physical goods must come under a new regime of ecological decentralism. I am positing
that the ultimate locus of ecological economics is the "bioregion", and its practice is "bioregionalism".

A bioregion is a geographical area whose boundaries are
determined by nature and not solely by humans. One bioregion is
distinguished from another by characteristics of flora, fauna,
water, climate, rocks, soils, landforms, and the human settle-
ments and cultures these characteristics have given rise to.

Bioregionalism is a comprehensive "new" way of defining and
understanding the place where we live, and of living there sus-
tainably and respectfully. In truth, what Bioregionalism repre-
sents is only new for people who come out of the Western indus-
trial-technological heritage. Its essence has been reality and
common sense for native people living close to the land for thou-
sands of years, and remains so. At the same time, bioregional
concepts are rigorously defensible in terms of science, technology,
economics, politics, and other fields of "civilized" human
endeavor.

Using ecology as the discriminator, Bioregionalism takes the
best and most presently relevant of the old, and synthesizes it
with most appropriate of the new. Bioregionalism is the most
ecological of systems of social organization, excepting the life
ways of native and indigenous peoples who still live traditionally
in intact ecosystems. It is a complete and all-inclusive way
of life, comprising the whole range of human thought and endeavor.
Bioregionalism offers a comprehensive restructuring of most
human systems using ecological design principles.

Towards the Ecological Corporation

2009-12-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Towards the ecological corporation:
by Davel Haenke

Part 5 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

I identify the following trends that will increasingly
affect corporations in major ways:

* More litigation by health-affected workers and the public.

* Better profit potentials for energy and resource efficiency,
by-products re-use and recycling, and on-site reduction and
treatment of toxics and pollutants.

* More pro-environment financial pressure from stockholders
and investors, particularly through the socially and
ecologically responsible investment movement.

* Increasingly positive consumer response to corporations ad-
judged to be "clean."

* A greater degree of social and ecological responsibility.

I suggest that this leads not just to a climate favorable to
producing and selling some "green" products, but to the necessity
of the creation of truly ecological corporations and businesses.

The evolution into a true eco-corporation has these implica-
tions:
* The corporation is re-structured, from the ground up, on
principles, policies, practices, efficiencies that are
ecologically determined, selling only ecologically benign
products. These modalities are built into the articles of
incorporation, the bylaws, the standard operating policies,
the manufacturing practices, the advertising, marketing, and
distribution strategies, and the public face.

* Full protection for the environment, workers, and the public
in at all areas and levels of production and distribution
is a given.

* Physical production plants and processes are ecologically
designed, constructed, and integrated. Operations are
oriented towards resource and energy efficiency, on-site
reduction, re-use, recycling or re-manufacture of by-products
into new products.

* Physical decentralization of production, marketing and
distribution.

* The "ecological audit" will become the basic guideline for
determining profitability and viability.

What does this eco-corporation strategy accomplish? It
effectively deals with the problems and opportunities inherent
in the trends mentioned above. Ecological self-regulation,
internalized, becomes a profit strategy. The need for government
regulation is minimized. "Externalities" are internalized,
becoming efficiency indicators and profit enhancers. This must be
the company of the future.

Transforming the mega-corporation

During the time of transition into an ecological economy
(functioning at true cost, with subsidies substantially dimin-
ished or eliminated), "mega-corporations" ( both national and trans-
national) may still be able to continue to provide functions and
services which their host societies have
not yet learned to do without. This can be true even after the
first stage of their transformation, which is the decentraliza-
tion and deconcentration of their physical operations into eco-
logically-scaled local and regional units. These units would be
pushed towards producing and distributing goods regionally.
Increasingly, they would use regionally available raw materials,
energy sources, and labor for production. Activities within the
structure of a given corporation would then be limited chiefly to
the flow of information and capital. Shipment of physical re-
sources and products over long distances must be minimized.

Eco-economics and the Market System

2009-12-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Eco-economics and the market system
by David Haenke

Part 3 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.
Ecological principles, internalized into businesses and
production enterprises, in any nation, can offer viability
with ecological integrity, while removing or substantially
mitigating social and ecological destructiveness from
market and production activity.

When ecological principles are applied to economics, a
number of otherwise intractable problems are illumined and
made soluble. These include: the rationale and methodology
for internal self-regulation for economic enterprises (with-
out relying on government); the nature and criteria for
appropriate, responsible growth (which sectors of a given
economy should shrink, and which should expand); resource
depletion; optimal scales of production and distribution.

It is obvious that the market systems around the world
are going to have to undergo a basic greening. It is in the
interest of corporate leaders to look as far ahead as possible
now, not only for the good of their companies, but for the
nations and the critically threatened ecologies that make possi-
ble their very existence. Now that market economics has, glo-
bally, become virtually "the only game in town," the necessity
for effective, responsible corporate leadership and stewardship
is imperative.

Ecological Audit

2009-12-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

The ecological audit
by David Haenke

Part 4 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

The cornerstone and most powerful tool of ecologicaleconomics is the "ecological audit." The science, theory,and practice of the ecological audit is rapidly being developed,though it has a long way to go.

We know about financial audits. We have heard of theenergy audit. More fundamental and significant is theecological audit of an enterprise, or any given product orservice. It goes far beyond the "environmental audits" now being employed by some industries.

Some of the factors that the ecological audit would consider:

(note: whenever the term "full cost" is used. it means the ecologically audited cost.)

Waste, pollution, toxics (at any stage or level of business
process)

* Amount and kind of waste control
* Amount, kind and full cost of pollution or toxics created
* The impact and full cost to the environment of dealing with
waste
* Degree and manner of waste recycling
* Manner and impact of final disposal of wastes
* Level of reuse of waste.
Energy
* Form of energy inputs
* Efficiency of energy use
* Full cost of using energy sources.
Production--Resource Inputs
* Whole impact of production on environment, ecological systems,
species
* Level and kind of resource use
* Where the resource comes from
* Method and full costs of resource extraction
* Mode and cost of transportation of resource to point of use.
Distribution
Distances from production point that products are marketed,
related to:
Full energy and resource cost of transportation to markets,
type of transportation

* Whole (ecologically audited) cost of packaging

Marketing

* Full cost of packaging

* Full cost of advertising

Monetary and other capital inputs

* Source, and nature of the source of investment money

* Full cost of investment money

* Whether the business is locally owned and operated

* Source and nature of business capitalization

* Where profits go and eventually end up

* Where profits and assets are invested

* What happens to money invested

* The level, nature and source of business subsidies, such as:
cheap access to natural financial resources, public tax
money, regulatory breaks, tax breaks; below-cost access to
physical resources; incentives; regulatory favors; conces-
sions; inside information; depletion allowances; below market
cost access to financial resources

Human community

The Human Economy can be seen as:

* Source of labor

* Salary and wage paid to labor relative to averages for the
same kind of work in other places

* How well the enterprise integrates, not only into the local
human community, but also into the existing natural communities

* Cost of not conforming to community and governmental standards
and regulations

* The amount of business resources put into enhancement of the
health of the local community and ecological health

* Degree and kind of social responsibility

(end of ecological audit criteria)

Hopefully the time will come soon when these factors and
dozens more will be quantified, and the numbers rigorously run
and available.

As soon as possible human societies must begin to understand
the true cost or viability of anything or any enterprise can
only be determined by the ecological audit. Passing the test of
the ecological audit will determine both the long term financial
viability of any given business, as well as its acceptability in
the community.

At the same time, eco-auditing will provide a powerful
tool for economic enterprises to evaluate their real profitabili-
ty, as well as determine the best methods for them to self-regu-
late themselves in ways not determined by government or the
arbitrary, ecologically and socially destructive forces of the
money and investment-driven marketplace.

2009-12-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

Profit and acceptable rate of growth
by David Haenke

Part 3 of Ecological Economics and Bioregionalism, a cornerstone document for creating a regenerative economy.

Since most economic rhetoric of both the socialist and
capitalist varieties is now meaningless and confusing, much
of it must be dispensed with, or subjected to basic re-definition
through ecology. "Profit" and "growth" are in particular need of
re-evaluation.

Ecologically, all of nature works on a "profit" basis, where
the "profit"--solar surplus--comes from organisms and ecosystems
creating new biological wealth by taking in some form of solar-
derived energy or matter, and using this gain for their benefit,
which they then return to the Earth for redistribution when
they die. Similarly, all human economic enterprises, whether
they be state, private, and all forms in between, also must
create some margin of surplus (which may or may not be called
"profit," and which always comes from biological solar surplus or
other Earth resources) in order to survive.

From the working principles of ecology, we must translate a
new description of the solar-based surplus that is created by any
viable economic enterprise (or any living thing, for that matter)
and how that process fits into the ecosystems in which the enter-
prise is based. For the purpose of discussion, I suggest that
one percent would be a sustainable profit margin and growth rate
for any economic enterprise, corporation, or aggregate economy
complying reasonably to an ecological audit. One percent is the
rate of efficiency by which the process of photosynthesis can fix
solar energy and convert it to biomass. The capacity of photosynthetic
fixation and transformation of solar energy into utilizable biomass is
the basic enabling process of life, and therefore of all natural and human
economies. I suggest that a directly solar-driven one percent is
a rate of growth and "profit" that is sustainable on Earth.

Of course over time even 1% could get out of hand, and thus this contingency
needs be addressed as ecological rules currently require that all entities
on Earth must have reasonable life spans, give up what they
have accumulated in their lifetimes, and this includes corporations. The legal
fiction of corporate immortality has got to be ended. Corporations must
have a reasonable chartered life span, at the end of which, in order to be
re-chartered, they must pass an ecological audit to justify their continued
existence appropriate to whatever current ecological/social contexts
obtain at that time relative to the consensus of what constitutes a healthy
equilibrium.

The dysfunctions of subsidy

2009-12-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

Part two of David Haenke's paper on Ecological Economics:

As our political and economic systems continue to support the pillage of the earth, this selection of writing focused on outlining the dysfunction of our current subsity based economic paradigm is more and more pertinent to understanding what the problems are, and how to fix them.

read on....

The dysfunctions of subsidy

Viewed ecologically, the dominant economic order of the
nations and transnational corporations is inherently contradictory
and non-sustainable, nowhere more so than with regard to
subsidies.

The national- and transnational-scale industrial operations
of corporations and governments derive their profitability and
"viability" through massive subsidies of many kinds. These entities
skim off profits or surpluses gained primarily through the
great volume of their subsidized activity, growing through feeding
off undervalued resources and labor. It is the inefficiency
and destructiveness of their use of such enormous quantities of
these resources--often for unnecessary or even trivial purposes --
that is the prime agent of human-caused entropy, or
"economic cancer," resulting from the generation of
vast amounts of pollution and toxic waste, as well as general
social and ecological disintegration.

What if we were to do an ecological audit of whole economic
systems, of socialism, capitalism and the "free market", of the
global economy, of the United States? The results would be
startling, shaking the very foundations of the nations and the
global trading system.

Ecological cost evaluation -- ecological auditing -- of the
international economy will show a system that is thoroughly
unsustainable. Our fragile and finite planet's resources and
ability to absorb wastes cannot continue to support the massive
scale of fossil fuel driven production and transport of physical
goods all over the planet.

Despite the increasingly desperate, depleted state of societies
and ecosystems all over the world, international prices --
both relative and real -- for labor and many key types of primary
resources and raw materials needed for large scale industrial
activity continue to fall or remain steady. This is occurring in
the face of escalating social and ecological costs.

How can this be happening? It is because the financial
machinery of the dominant market nations and the transnational
corporations is geared towards driving down global prices of
labor, natural resources, and basic commodities: a goal of "Free
Trade". Every laborer, independent farmer, and small business in
the world is forced to compete in selling their labor and
production against the buying and selling power of multinational
corporations and the hourly wage of the most desperate of
sweatshop workers in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

The economic leverage needed by governments and national- and
transnational -scale corporations to enable this global price
distortion is provided by government subsidies: varied, massive,
pervasive, often hidden. Primary among these subsidies are broad
(often planetary) access to natural resources, labor, and capital
at radically undervalued prices, these prices supported by tax-
payers' money; also included are cheap land leases, tax incen-
tives, resource depletion allowances, loan guarantees, regulatory
favoritism, contract preference, and outright government grants
for product and marketing research and development. Both taxpayers
and mother nature unwittingly underwrite corporate costs and
profits, while absorbing and paying for the pollutants and their
cleanup. Not only that, the publics of the world's nations end
up servicing the gargantuan debts run up by the international
corporate trading and banking systems. For example, the 1980's
S & L scandal in the U.S. was strongly connected to international
corporate resource speculation, particularly in oil.

With all this, along with the great volume and scale of
production and distribution, it's not hard to see where the
profit margins come from. As Herman Daly has pointed out, in
this international system, benefits are privatized, costs socialized.
Or to put it more succinctly, the essence of the present maco-economy
is : "Privatize profits; socialize cost's". (Daly and Cobb, For The Common
Good, 1989, p. 231).

If the majority of the world's larger economic enterprises
and national economies were made to pay their way in terms of
full ecologically-audited costs of their raw materials, labor,
production-distribution operations, waste, and pollution, most of
them would go bankrupt in a very short time, along with the
governments that support and subsidize them.

It is this kind of economics of profit subsidy for the
largest, most powerful, and most centralized economic entities
that most thoroughly fails an ecological audit and most
compromises a future for human beings and other species on this
planet. Ecological economics clearly establishes that these
kinds of enterprises will eventually fall. They violate most
ecological principles, and many moral ones, as well as making a
mockery of the "free enterprise" market system that they claim to
represent. The biggest question is: how much will they take with
them when they go down. The kind of politico-economics that
combines the least functional aspects of capitalism with those of
socialism I call "special interest socialism", or "corporate socialism".

Gaia, Economics, Money, and Wealth

2009-12-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Whirling and swirling conversations with David Haenke in the heart of the Ozarks have lead me to begin a series of posts of his seminal, and as yet, unpublished works on the leading edge of the planetary evolution towards cultures, and ecologies of regeneration.

The next 8 posts will focus on Bioregionalism and Ecological Economics

Part one:

Gaia, Economics, Money, and Wealth

by David Haenke

According to scientist James Lovelock's Gaia Theory, the
earth is a single living organism, one vast self-regulating,
self-organizing, self-healing ecological body. This understand-
ing underlies the necessary reconfiguration of all human systems,
particularly economics. More than "Gaia Theory", I submit that
this is "Gaia Reality", Earth reality.

Earth reality mandates this: All human systems -- towns and
cities, transport, technologies, agriculture, manufacture,
energy, housing, production, distribution, consumption -- must be
designed to be ecologically resonant and responsible. The
best place to find the necessary design principles and patterns is
in close observation of the function of intact natural ecosys-
tems, i.e., nature's economy. The ecological designs of nature's
economy are perfected over billions of years, unmatched in intri-
cacy and efficiency by anything we have yet created. Earth's
proven ecological designs run systems which are powered entirely
by renewable energy, recycle materials at a 100% level and there-
by waste nothing, produce no debilitating levels of pollution or
toxics, self-regulate, and are phenomenally abundant. Given our
present terminal situation, is this not something to emulate?

The true source and measure of value and wealth is not money
or any kind of human currency. Rather, it is the resources and
ecological integrity of the Earth. At the same time, whatever
(derivative) value and measure of wealth that money carries is
backed solely by earth's ecological integrity, and comes fully
and directly from the earth and the resources of its ecosystems.
This is the most radical and universally ignored economic truth.
Money, and all of economics, has no function, no reality outside
of ecological reality.

Ecology and economics come from the same root word. Hope-
fully before it's too late, humanity will see that good economics
must be also good ecology: ECO-ECONOMICS. This is the "unified
field theory" and practice for economics.

After 250 years, an answer to the central question

Two hundred-fifty years ago the industrial revolution - along with
the acceleration of the enclosure of the commons and the rising
of the power of the nation state - began to tear apart the fabric
of all human societies and the natural world, a process that
continues to this day.

The result was social upheaval, forcible eviction from the
land of the peasant populations to be driven to the cities and
towns to work in wage slavery in the mills, horrific working
conditions, child labor exploitation, the swelling of foul slums
in the cities... This list is long and familiar. At the same
time, dominant new classes endowed with previously unheard of
material wealth and power were created. The combined political-
economic power of capitalism, technology, and the state became a
monster running rampant. The great question: how to control it.

Powerful new ideas and movements rose to address and combat
these forces. Chief among them was Marxism. Marx, and those who
followed him, for all their brilliant analysis, and for all the
revolutionary upheaval they caused, provided the wrong answers.
For one thing, their alternatives encompassed too many of the
evils of the systems they opposed. They embraced industrialism,
and centralization, combined with of the political-economic power
of the state. Their main quarrel was with who owned and con-
trolled these forces and institutions, and less by what principles they were
run. They did not question the basic nature of the forces
themselves. They also failed to discern the most important factor
of all, the mandates of nature, of ecology. Of course hardly anyone
prominent in the industrializing West -- capitalist or otherwise -- was
paying much attention to nature in Marx's time, except to come up with
ways to conquer and overcome the natural world.

On the other side of the great question, Adam Smith proposed
that the "invisible hand" of the market system would serve to
perfect it and bring land, labor, and capital into a functional
equilibrium. Unfortunately he was unable to identify the true
"invisible hand", just as all classical and neo-classical econo-
mists have failed to do since. Smith and his descendants predi-
cated the successful functioning of the market mechanism on an
unlimited store of goods and services from nature's cornucopic
warehouses. Again, the root of all, nature's finite economy, the
true "invisible hand" was ignored.

For two hundred-fifty years, the economists of the left, right,
and center, and all those in the positions of power who listen to
them have presided over a world on fire. They have failed to
answer the central burning question: how to regulate and control
the forces created by the interlinking of capitalism, industrial-
ism, technology, and the nation state.

In ecological economics we finally have the answer. Ecology
regulates capitalism. Indeed, it is the ultimate regulator of
all economic enterprises and systems in any world (and as
economics is the real root of politics), whether they refer to
themselves as “left,” “right,” or “center.”

One of the major reasons that socialism fails is that it is
unable to determine and allocate real costs. Market economics
and capitalism as presently functioning have been better at
determining prices at the gross monetary level, but their time of
reckoning has arrived as they fail to assess and pay true
ecological costs, which are the real costs.

When we make ecological principles, practices, and values
central to the market system, and we have the new economics of
Earth: eco-economics, the true prerequisite for sustainability.

Ecological economics gives business and the market
the tools for internal self-evaluation and self-regulation.
Based on true cost accounting, what is best for both the
social and the ecosystemic community is best for the long term
viability of any given economic enterprise. The need for
governmental and other external control is diminished. The
market system can operate as it was meant to. The primary tool
for internal self-evaluation and regulation is the ecological
audit (described later).

The economics of cancer / the cancer of economics

The Earth is sick -- suffering from accelerated entropy --
from the activities of human beings living out of ecological
balance. The primary agent of the sickness is conventional human
economics. The biological roots of ecological economics give us
potent ways to understand the forces that afflict us and our
planet. Cancer in metastasis is the best way that we can ade-
quately describe what our interest and speculative investment-
driven industrial economic systems are now doing to life on
Earth. Both cancer and our economic systems grow primarily for
the sake of growing, while they busily disorder, toxify, and
finally destroy their host body. It is startling and incredible
that virtually every nation and corporation on Earth continues to
hysterically promote unlimited and undifferentiated economic
growth at any cost in the face of its clearly cancerous conse-
quences.

Everywhere we look we can see the living fabric of life,
prairies, forests, savannas, estuaries and swamps - the healthy
tissue of the Earth's body - being replaced by trash development,
buildings, stores, parking lots, factories, the power lines,
sewer lines, and roads. These systemic extensions of the economic
cancer grow into the afflicted ecosystem, sucking nutrients
and spewing poison like the mal-formed vascular and other tissue
networks created by cancers in the human body.

When you watch a road being built you are literally watching
the Earth cancer at work, growing an extension of its deadly
vascular system, a new pathway for its metastasizing, entropy-
spewing killer cells, the automobiles.

The bare cultivated fields are, as described by Wes Jackson,
"lesions", as are the mange-like sore spots of clear-cut forests,
as seen from the air. From space or high altitude the cities
look like tumors, as often described by astronauts, and they see
the vast fires of the rainforests burning. On the highways of
the United States, 200 to 500 million animals are run over and
killed each years, dwarfing in number the tens of thousands of
humans killed. These animals are literally the diminishing
healthy cells and tissues of GAIA, as are the lung-like forests,
devastated and diminished. From the bare fields of cancer agri-
culture the eroded soil runs like blood. The affliction reaches
out to afflict the ozone. The air is poisoned. Each industrial
factory is a concentrated, potent tumor, as are the largest
cities. Each industrial accident, explosion, fire, leakage of
toxic chemicals, is part of the pandemic toxification, and the
poison-spewing death process of the cancer tumors themselves.
This will increase radically as time passes and nothing is seri-
ously done to bring our economic systems into a condition of
ecological responsibility.

The simultaneous ethnocide and ecocide of indigenous peoples
and the lands where they live is an action of the mega-cancer to
kill another crucial part of the fabric and spirit of the Earth.
Within the indigenous peoples and the land they are woven into is
the living spirit and reflective intelligence of nature, the last
people on Earth who really know how to live sustainably and can
by their example tell the rest of us.

Holistic ways to prevent and deal with cancer in the human
body can be extrapolated to economic cancer and the Earth.
Ecological economics is such a healing strategy.

The ecological dysfunctions of interest

Income from interest and all money realized from speculatively
playing stock and futures markets is ecologically and thermo-
dynamically indefensible, a major factor in the of the Earth's
disease. This kind of "income" constitutes a demand that the
Earth yield up whatever energy and resource-related goods and
services the bearer asks for when this illusory money is present-
ed for redemption. Such money is at work ransacking the planet,
fueling the unrestrained growth demanded by governments and
corporations, in order to create more illusory money and
"wealth". This shell game is directed from the stock markets,
boardrooms, and capitols of the world, where the money flows to
and from. Demand becomes insatiable, as interest/speculation
money increasingly self-creates, demanding more fruits of the
Earth, which must be further exploited to produce them. The
interest and inflation rates, the Dow Jones, the Nikke, and the
other industrial stock market averages are the fever charts of
the Earth.

Using eco-auditing as its prime evaluative tool, ecological
economics regulates interest, and speculative stock and futures
market income, and works to phase out all aspects of economic
growth economy which are ecologically- and socially-undifferentiated.

2009-09-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Holistic Management: Integrative Desision Making Framework

2009-08-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

Integrative Decision Making Framework

Often times designers, thinkers, engineers, planers, and other people engaged in disciplines that value thorough, well thought out plans for any kind of enterprise or endeavor, succumb to a type of paralysis. Cycling through endless iterations of design on paper without being able to ground this good thinking into action often times creates situations where opportunities slip through our fingers.

Holistic Managements Decision making framework offers a system developed to deal with planing in real time for farmers and ranchers who have to be able to harvest crops this year, no matter what changes they may be considering making next year.

One of the most important and informative ways to analyze decision making is through the lens of finance. With a sharp eye for creating profit by minimizing expense, and a framework to insure ecological and social accountability Holistic Management's financial planing is a powerful tool to help us empower eco-social regeneration through entrepreneurial ventures.

Holistic Management Financial Planning

View more documents from ethanappleseed.

Integrating this framework into the design cycles present in the world of permaculture design allows us to truly embody principles like catch and story energy and make hay while the sun shines by re-enforcing good decision making that is embedded firmly in an overall holistic vision for the long term design.

A great team of blogers is busy documenting how Holistic Management fits into an emerging framework for Carbon Farming and Regenerative Design.

Some great resources for understanding this process can be found at the carbon farming blog.

2009-08-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

Total Ecological Health Index.

Total Ecological Health index is a way of quantifying the health of an ecosystem, or entire bioregion. Scientific methods like soil testing, air quality testing, water quality testing, species diversity index, human footprint and other methods can help us gain an understanding for the health of our home environments.

Maintaining and improving the Total Ecological Health Index of bioregions and the entire prlant is a key part of any strategy to stabalize climate.

In fact saving the ecosystems on earth that have high ecological health indecis due to their species diversity may be the most important strategy of all to help maintain earth's precarious balence of life.

E.O Wilson's article in science news talking about hotspots points to an important strategy I will call the arc strategy.

Hotspots:

Hot spots are areas of the planet, that due to unique climate and topography, harbor immense biodiversity. These hot spots are like seed banks for Earth's genetic diversity.

The Arc Strategy:

In this strategy you protect diversity hotspots that will then be able to radiate species diversity out these refugios have historically been the backbone of planetary species diversity and ecoogical resilience.
Developing a coherent and economically viable strategy for protecting these hot spot is essential for ecological resilience and the survival of our species and planetary ecology as we know it.

So, what are some strategies for protecting these arcs of life?

government funded conservation grants run through science
ecosocial entreprenuerial enterprise
private reserves

Each of these strategies has its upsides and down sides.

Ecosocial enterprise offers us a glimpse at a sustainable solution that can compliment, and even weave other strategies together.
Providing a firm matrix of right livelihood, preservation and even regeneration of species this strategy is being pioneered by innovators in the Gaia U community and other world changing groups around the world.

Booyacacao is my personal attempt to create a sustainable, just ecosocial enterprise that can help protect hotspots and also foster opportunities for right livlihood for all people involved.

Greenhorn and Carbon Farming

2009-08-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

Greenhorn Radio interviews Carbon Farming Course convener Ethan Roland

On today's episode of Greenhorn Radio, Severine von Tscharner Fleming interviewed Ethan Roland (a primary organizer of the Carbon Farming Course, and proprietor of Appleseed Permaculture) and John Good (co-owner and operator of Quiet Creek Farm at The Rodale Institute). Their topics were carbon, compost, and the future of farming, and you can hear the show online at Greenhorn Radio.

Read more on the Carbon Farming Blog

This is a great example of where agriculture is going, and how different groups are working together to create cooperative systems to improve ecological health, build real wealth, and shift society and culture into justice and peace.

The Carbon Negative Future!

Banking away the waves

2009-07-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

Surfer, activist and Gaia University Associate in Green Business Kyle Thierman shows the connections between the world of international finance and pollution, climate change and poverty.

Rock on bro

Carbon Rich Farming Worldwatch

2009-07-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

Worldwatch institute, a well known think tank focusing on hard science, meticulous research and solution oriented analysis is pointing towards decentralized, carbon farming oriented agricultural solutions. The systems called for in the 09 Land Use Report follow three main strategies:

Enriching soil carbon: Through soil conservation such as no till or appropriate tillage practices, strictly organic agriculture and using biochar as an ammendment.
Farming With Perennials: year around ground cover, perennial systems and polyculture systems to enhance yeild and carbon capture.
Climate Friendly Livestock Solutions: reduction of markets for livestock, innovation in feed, rotational grazing and re-use of waste play central roles in the worldwatch strategy for livestock in agriculture.

This last point is the only part of the puzzle that does not seem to quite fit.
Using over designed nutrition supliments (with startch) to help cattle stop flattulating seems to miss the point: cattle raised in systems that mimic their natural environment eat foods with high startch (thus their intensive bicamaral digestive system). So using a system like holsitic management integrated into an agro forestry system we can pull the livestock design back into the pattern created by the first two recommendations. This option is illustrated in the graphic above.

The report is remarkably insightful, and points towards the need being addressed by inovative and timely courses and research being implimented by teams of farmers, permaculturalists and other regenerative landuse practicioners in the form Carbon Farming and Economy Courses.

These courses, designed by an integrative working group of landuse professionals from across the globe will be holding three major courses consisting of modules that address all three major strategic points outlined by world watch, and beyond. By integrating systems like Keyline Design, Holistic Management, Soil Food Web, Food Forestry, Permaculture, and economic relocalization, Carbon Farming also delves into the details of maintaing a healhty soil food web, creating localized food systems to that support the kind of business model needed to create resilient multi-crop carbon negative farms, and address water management issues to hep increase the capacity to bulid biomas, build soil and store water on the landscape.

Worldwatch readers seem well aware that this kind of design, moving agriculture to a smaller scale and fundign support for regenerative landuse through credits for systems that capture carbon is reflected by the poll I saw on the worldwatch page July 1st:

Time seems ripe for this kind of new agricultural revolution to sweep the world and provide healhty food while dealing with the key issues of carbon pollution and soil loss by creating resilient local carbon farming systems.

Transition Hohenwald Unleashing

2009-06-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the Emporium Cafe listening to a local blues band the buzz of optimistic conversation is filling the Cafe.

WE are all gathered to celebrate the unleashing of the 25th Transition Town in USA. Hohenwald is unique, being one of the only transition towns that does not have a progressive legend cloaking the community, and is also unique being the only transition town in the South East USA. To top of the list of interesting facts, Hohenwald is, quite possibly, the only Transition Town town with City, County and State proclamations embracing the Transition Movement.

Interesting fact for a rural southern town with a deep christian heart and conservative roots.

Perhaps a telling sign that green is now becoming a part of North American Culture.

And not green as in greenwashed, green as in grassroots community organized, natural build permaculture, connecting with conventional, practical conservative pragmatism to create an interesting synergy between local government and community activists.

Hohenwald in Transition! Grass Roots Southern Green.

Quilt of the Bioregional Congress

2009-06-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

The Turtle Island Quilt

Started by two women on the organizing committee of the 1st North American Bioregional Congress that took place in the Ozark Bioregion in 1984. The women, sent fabric out to bioreigons across the continent asking for each region to send back a patch that spoke of the culture and ecology of their home place.

Interestingly, the first squares seemed to be mostly made by women from across the continent. This spoke to an imbalance in gender roles that was noticed even more strongly when the congress met. Men would dominate the conversation by habit, and quickly the Congress decided that some action needed to be taken to help create a space open for all to speak and share. The quilt played a central role in this strategy, as the men, who wanted to heal the rift and create balance as much as the women, sat down to sew the prices of the quilt, brought from the four corners of North America together into one whole. Working together they assembled the turtle island quilt and helped break the isolation patterns passed down by our culture.

In addition to the ceremonial sewing of the quilt several other decisions helped make the Congress Plenary Sessions more open to the feminine energy it seemed to be lacking.

The quilt has played a central role in each congress, and has traveled across the continent and back, being hosted at each of the 9 previous congresses listed below:

• The Ozark Mountains (Arkansas, 1984)
• The Great Lakes Bioregion (Michigan, 1986)
• Cascadia (British Columbia, 1988)
• Gulf of Maine (Maine, 1990)
• Edwards Plateau (Texas, 1992)
• Ohio River Valley (Kentucky, 1994)
• Cuahunahuac (Mexico, 1996; this was also a hemispheric gathering)
• The Prairie (Kansas/Kansas Area Watershed/KAW, 2002)
• Katuah (Southern Appalachians, at Earthaven Ecovillage, 2005.

Each one of these convenings has been put on by a bioregional group from the host region. In a sense, from its beginning in 1984, there has been just one congress, going in and out of session on that average of every 2 years, for nearly 20 years, maintaining its continuity between assemblies through secretariats and coordinating councils. Each convening of the Continental Congress has been a landmark event, widened our vision, and deepened our commitment to bioregionalism.

Now the quilt is hanging in the community center of The Farm, a community with a deep history of mindfulness, connection with the land, and a global network of positive influence.

Welcome Home, to the Tenth Continental Bioregional Congress on The Farm

Ecosystem Investing and Green Ventures

2009-05-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Ethan Roland of Appleseed Permaculture and I presented at the 2009 Green Ventures Conference at Farleigh Dickinson University. Our presentation sparked a lively discussion centering around the entrepreneurial imperative of regenerative business and the next steps towards re-arranging financial relationships to start investing capital projects that

Build Soil
Store and clean water
Capture Carbon
Build Community

Using the regenerative investment principles developed by Ethan and I in conjunction with our Solari group:

Invest like Ecosystems:

Invest Locally
Invest Intimately
Invest in Diversity

Invest In Ecosystems

Invest in Ecosocial entrepreneurs (People)
Invest in Living Equity (Plants and Animals)
Invest in Natural Capital (Places)

All of these design elements, plus an emphasis on carbon nuetral transportation options like sail trade, are woven together in the business model being implemented by Booyacacao, a sustainable chocolate company being launched by Greg Landua (me) and partners.

Our slide show on this new regenerative design edge can be viewed below.

Financial Permaculture & Ecosystem Investing

View more Microsoft Word documents from ethanappleseed.

Dubai Could be going green

2009-05-14T10:57:00.001-07:00

From the Solari Feed
For a couple years now I have dreamed of seeing Dubai take the steps needed to create an oasis in the desert, harvesting sun and water and creating a verdant metropolis ...
It looks like, perhaps, the Shieks have been hearing the same song and are marching in step to the same drummer...

Flash Documentation

2009-04-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Creating rapid documentation of world changing activities, while simultaneously engaging in the process of change is quite a difficult proposition.

That is exactly what Gaian Actionists are doing all over the world.

Here is a quick video I put together to help share best practices for Flash Documentation, the art of rapidly capturing and editing information to share with the global commons.

Mind Mapping, online tools and planetary evolution

2009-04-17T17:06:00.001-07:00

Working on my Masters Degree learning contract today I spent an hour supported by Grifen Hope and Javiera Carrion of Ecoescuela El Manzano documenting my learning design. During this dynamic process Grifen mapped my thinking in a program he likes to use called Mindmanager.

In order for me to view the document holding the structure of my learning design, I went a a change to convert the file type into .mm format for freemind .0.9.0

This catalyzed me to sign up for mindmeister, an amazing online collaboration tool that allows for exporing and importing mindmaps as well as working on them simultaniously with online collaborators. This tool was first brought to my attention as a tool of best practice by Kiterina Webber, and member of the German ROG.

So, I find myself sitting here at El Manzano, Biobio Chile, following up on advice given to me by a member of the German ROG at HuehueCoyotl Ecovillage in Morelos Mexico. Funny local, global world we live in eh?

This map gives a good overview of online tools that enable this kind of global collaboration to take place, and are empowering the grassroots mobilization of world changers. This technology is enabling us to create flexible organization around shared vision. This type of web2.0, adhoc, organizational structure is both collaborative and agile.

This type of collaboration is a very clear sign of the growing influence of the synergetic systems thinking and ability to collaborate that charecterizes what Spiral Dynamics calls Yellow (GT) thinking.

With the combination of high tech communications technology, a keen awareness of group process (social), systems thinking and awareness of environmental process (eco), and somatic awareness, we start to see the glimers of true intelegence, and the hope that humans can persue a course of consiouce evolution in step with the processes and needs of mother earth.

The protonoosphere that is the internet, seems to be evolving rapidly towards a connecting intellegence analogous to our own neural pathways....
with raising complexity we find increased emergence...
Web Technology as sacred

Here we go!

Financial Permaculture .Global

2009-04-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Financial Permaculture from Greg Landua on Vimeo.

This video shows the interactive, participatory design process to create a sustainable business ecology as a part of a community transition process in the town of Hohenwald, TN. This safe phenomenon is happening all other the world. In fact, the edges being designed and surfed by nearly all my permaculture and regenerative design collegues have a similar theme as we apply permaculture principles and ethics to social and economic design problems to help address injustice and inequality by empowering participation in the local and global economy.

This video, by Byron Palmer seems even fresher in light of the re-embracing of the old paradigm of banking and toxic loaning that Obama seems to be chasing after.

It is, after all, up to us to harness the collective, youthful and vibrant spirit that has changes the USAmerica Administration from Bush to Obama, to continue to push for participatory solutions to the global financial crisis.

BodyVersity and Ecosomatics

2009-04-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

Plan, and body wisdom are two key parts of the emerging sustainable culture.

Nala Walla's BodyVersity offers a glipse into the art of ecosomatics: integrating graceful movement and individual body/mind awareness into movement that gives back to the planet and her people.

Tuning into what you body needs: diet, exercise, touch, play, is not an extraneous extra, but an essential part of integrating into the world in a healthy way.

This quick video really shows the deep wisdom of designing play, improv and movement into group activities.

During the last Gaia University International Gather In, play and improve, lead by Nala Walla of the BCollective, was an integral part. This allowed us to ground into our bodies and integrate the heady intelectual design processes and conversations that were swirling around between the amazing permi desingers, organizational designers and educators from around the world that came to help design the next phase of Gaia Unviersity's transformitive action learning pathway as a social organism.

Interdependence and Bioregionalism

2009-03-23T20:11:00.001-07:00

This is an interview I did with the amazing folks at the Interdependent Project on Bioregionalism.

I am involved in organizing for the Tenth Continintal Bioregional Congress from October 3rd-11th.

GaiaU Gathers at Huehuecoyotl

2009-03-22T23:42:00.001-07:00

The Gaia University core faculty and student group met for a week at Huehuecoyotl, an ecovillage nestled in the mountains of Morelos, Mexico, a little south of Mexico, D.F.

Here are a few photos.

At the gather in we explored collaboration and co-creation by working in small groups to help design the future learning and administrative structures of the University that learns: Gaia U.

Mixed in with all the heady design work we practiced Bodyuniversity lead by Nalla Walla by exploring contact improve, group work sessions and playfulness as a matter of course.

Check out the previous post on Parkour for a little tidbit of our bodymovement playtime.

More on Gaia University in this interview with Liora Adler, President and Co-founder of Gaia U:

Stories, more videos, and reports from a leading edge of regenerative world change will follow hot on the heels of this post

Parkour for worldchange

2009-03-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

Moving through the world with efficiency and grace.

Parkour is an art of body movement.

Let the Parkour Begin

Bioregional Links

2009-03-08T22:31:00.001-07:00

From the Bioregional List
bioreg@yahoo.com

Great list of links for exploring the bioregional, regenerative, permi, communitarian web

compiled by Chris Lowry
Feb. 8/08

Bioregional Links

> http://www.conservationeconomy.net
> http://www.permatopia.com/
> www.planetdrum.org
> http://www.thewatershedproject.org
> http://www.allspecies.org/
> http://www.orionmagazine.org/
> http://www.RealisticLiving.org
> http://www.bioregional-congress.org/
> www.resurgence.org
> www.slowfood.com
> http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ecoregion
> http://onthecommons.org/

Permaculture Links

> http://www.permacultureactivist.net
> http://remineralize.org
> www.landinstitute.org
> http://www.midwestpermaculture.com
> http://www.permaculture.org.au
> http://www.localharvest.org
> http://www.matteroftrust.org
> http://www.organicconsumers.org

Consensus Facilitation Links

> http://www.ic.org/nica/Process/meeting.html
> http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC07/Estes.htm
> http://web.mit.edu/publicdisputes/practice/cbh_ch1.html
> http://www.pioneer.net/~alpha/consensus.html
> http://www.icacan.ca/
> Eco and Sustainable Living Links
> www.theecologist.org
> http://www.ecoliteracy.org/
> http://www.bioneers.org/
> http://www.gaia.org
> www.rmi.org/
> http://www.sustainablelifestyles.ca/
> http://www.myebike.com
> http://www.eatlocal.org/Ideas.html
> http://www.localharvest.org/
> http://www.greenfestivals.org/
> http://www.chelseagreen.com/
> http://www.context.org
> http://www.worldwatch.org/
> www.rachel.org
> http://www.worldchanging.com/
> http://www.doorsofperception.com/
> www.grist.org
> www.yesmagazine.org
> www.wildlandsproject.org
> www.earthcharter.org/

Natural history and Earth Education Links

> www.exploratorium.edu
> www.greenteacher.com
> www.teachearth.com
> www.Bullfrogfilms.com
> www.Wildernessawareness.org
> www.sharingnature.com

Local Economies Links

> http://www.permatopia.com/
> http://www.schumachersociety.org/
> http://www.timebanks.org/
> http://www.ilsr.org/
> http://www.greeneconomics.net/
> http://www.theyrule.net/
> http://www.mcc.es/ing/quienessomos/avi.html
> > http://www.bigboxtoolkit.com
> http://www.beyondpeak.com/
> > www.livingeconomies.org
> http://postcarbon.org/
> http://poclad.org/
> http://www.coopamerica.org/
> http://www.newrules.org

Ambiguity, Cacao and the Flowering of Gaiapoiesis

2009-02-22T13:18:00.000-08:00

my ambiguous, ambitious, and gloriously absurd mission does not seem simple to explain...but that is what I will try to do...

I have this crazy idea, that has come through various visions that
crashed their way through meditations, visits with plant allies, and
talks with friends that lasted well into the night.

This idea has shaped my life, and brought me here, to the damp tropical forest in search of a wild, native variety of cacao.

Yes...somehow it all has to do with chocolate.

But chocolate is merely the currency of the vision. And just as I am
loath to believe that dollars are the end all be all of human
existence, so to is cacao limited (but integral) in the idea..this
pesky vision that has tugged me (or perhaps that I have chased with
feverish eyes?) to this vivid tropical dreamscape.

The craziness (or perceived craziness) of this idea makes me reluctant
to spill it across my glowing computer screen to be cast across the
internet....but that same seeming absurdity is what drives me to share
it. perhaps that idea, of the fresh absurdity of my idea might seem
counter intuitive to some of my readers...so I will put that part of my
story away for the time being, and get down the the nitty-gritty of
explaining what has brought me to this amazing, green, vivid landscape
in search of a particular variety of a globally traded plant that has
many of the same properties of illegal species that grow in a similar
climate.

Theobroma cacao, food of the gods. This amazing species could be a key
element in the design of a regenerative system that can reverse
deforestation and desertification in the tropics, boost the standard of living of a
substantial proportion of rural inhabitants of tropical countries, and
link the world together in a way that will build information rich,
cooperative and symbiotic relationships in a way that our world is in
dire need of.

This is a story of resilience, and diversity. This is a vision of connection and symbiosis.

This is an idea that grows out of the firtile soil that has been cultivated with care by ecologists, permaculturalists and bioregionalists.

This is my story of Gaiapoiesis, and the reason that this blog exists...
So, I will plunge on un-abashed at my crazy vision for a better way...a different way.
At this point my mind is jumping to start creating outlines and bullet points...

but for the moment, in the interest of going with the flow of my creative leanings and the current state of the local noospheric
conditions (there is a poetry festival pulsing away just down the hill
from the poor barrio in Granada from which I am sending this humble
dispatch)...

so, for the time being, a rambling exposition of my ideas will have to
suffice until I come back into the state of mind that will allow a more
concise expose of the patterns and details of this plan for eco-social
regeneration and patrix busting on the grandest scale.

So

I won’t be bashful.

here it comes...the crazed blathering of a lunatic? or the
pre-sentience of things to come? or perhaps a glimpse of a world that
would have...would have...should have been.

well...lets see what it looks like:

It looks like a small farm barely visible through the thick tropical
vegitation. Monkeys howl and big cats prowl through the dark
shade...and the wily human inhabitants make an amazing living providing
quality commodities, namely cacao, coffee and medicinal plants for the
international and local markets.

Elements of this finca desiparicido are a biofuels plant, a pyrolysis
unit, a satellite uplinked computer system, a conservation buffer zone,
shade grown cacao plants of various species, shade grown coffee, and an
assortment of other tropical fruits and nuts woven together in a mosaic
pattern that mimics natural habitat and increases the disease
resistance, overall yield and pest resistance of the marketable crops.

The total start up cost for this kind of farm depends on if one is
working with existing growers, but current estimates put it at less
than a million dollars to bring a fully functioning regional trade
system up on line that can bring carbon negative commodities to market.

This finca is up-linked in to a transparent commodity trading system
that allows people to connect directly with the producers, and also
connected with a transportation supply chain that is carbon nuetral,
relying on biofuel transportation for rural overland routes, trains
powered by renewable for the mainline overland routes, and sail powered
over sea shipping for oceanic travel.

This vision starts here and now with me, bootstrapping together a trip
to learn about cacao, and sniff out the possibilities of all the
different facets of this absurd vision...as I try to weave together
enough of it to create a viable business model to jump start the dream,
and chase ofter the vision with the reckless abandon of a hopeless
romantic and youthful idealists.

Armed with some amazing wisdom dolled out in homeopathic doses from
elders like Sandy Hepler, Andy Langford, Albert Bates, my amazing
parents, and a whole host of encouraging folks with more years under
their belt I plunge on ahead making enough mistakes to sink any but the
fiercely determined...

And the best part is...its all fun.

Learning about the ins-and-outs of cacao production and it’s
transportation and marketing is like a microcosm of the global
commodities market...and addressing this head on to create a business
model that functions for people and the planet is an edge that many
folks are surfing with the advent of Financial Permaculture, True Cost Economics, B Corps, BALLE and triple bottom line accounting.

sometimes the juggling act that has allowed me to really jump head long
into this quest can be a bit taxing...but the learning curve for
automating that part of my life that had, heretofore, been in my way is
all part and parcel of learning to be an eco-social entrepreneur.

And the people I am meeting along the way, the story book friendships
and serendipitous connections make me shake my head in wonder at times
as I plunge ahead into un-chartered waters with a gin on my face and
love in my heart.

So,

that is one of the base harmonies and driving beats of my vision.
There are certainly more ins and outs...and some important crescendos
that have not been unveiled (i am certain that even I will be surprised
by many of developments that will be sparked by this unfolding
dream)....

my vision is a part of a flowering conspiracy or resonant regeneration

“The question is not who else is in a conspiracy and what they are
doing. The question is, are you in a conspiracy, and if not...why?”
C.A. Fitts

so, my conspiracy laid bare in the full embrace of open source philosophy, I offer this question to the world...

what is your conspiracy? how do you want to change the world? and what are you doing about it?

Matagalpa, Finca Las Palmas

2009-02-18T13:17:00.001-08:00

With sweat running down my brow I pushed up over the latest hill in the 20 kilometer trek through the verdant hills of the Matagalpa district of Nicaragua.

I am here trekking through the emerald landscape of the tropics chasing a dream, and as my vision cleared the hill I was climbing, that dream seemed to snap into vivid reality as a familiar looking, steep sided cerro rose majestically from the landscape.

Atop the cerro, a red flag waived in the day breeze giving the impression that a fort lay hidden under the green canopy of the tropical forest that blanketed the cerro.

walking down the drive way to a non-descript concerete house, coconut, mango, limon, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, papaya and guayaba surroung the house, and cattle can be seen in a muddy little pen.

The place is vibrant, verdent, lush...in a word....green

friendly faces greet us, and a couple of teens (Michaela and Clinton) take us on a walk about to see cerro molsun form the top of a hill.

The finca that I am visiting is a 250 Manzano (50 acres) small holding owned by a family. Finca Las Palmas is a part of the Campesina Cooperative in Matagalpa Dstrict of Nicaragua. I am visiting to learn about their gorwing techniques and to find a Criollo Variety of cacao that my chocolate mentor Sandy used to make some amazing, distinct chocolate a few years back.

As we tour around with the owners of the Farm, Don Eloy and his Grandsons, we find out a few interesting facts...some quite concerning.

As it turns out, of the 1500 cacao trees that make are grown int he shade of a little more than an acre, Don Eloy is activly selecting for a new species that produces larger fruits.
He is grafting the new species, recently arrived from who knows where, onto the older native root stocks that offer disease and draugh resistence. This is a pretty common practice in orchardry, but We came in the hopes we would be able to ask Don Eloy to sort out some of the Lower producing, but more nuanced and flavorfull Criollo fruits so we could experiment with single estate pure Criollo cacao in our artisinal, small batch chocolate production back on the Ecovilave Training Center.

After some consersation it became apparent that the switch over to higher yeilding vareities would take a few years, and during that time Don Eloy would sort his cacao into varieties (something no one in the area...and potentialy no one anywhere) is doing. The main buyer in the area is German chocolate giant Ritter Sport. They buy a very small percentage of their total cacao intake from the area, but it is one of their flag ship Fair Trade organic sources that was develooped in conuntion with the German International Development Agency. Small buyers and Chocolatiers like us are very nearly squeezed out, although through cooperation a few manage to survive and are now working towards finding the better quality and more refined vareities instead of the bulk grab bag that is purchased by Ritter Sport and other big companies.

Currently the state of cacao growing is akin to throwing all the different vareities of grapes from an entire region into one mash, and calling it red wine.

While that may produce some great table wine, for the consosour its nice to distinguish all the interesting flavors that come from different varieties and different soils.

A few crafts people and artisinal chocolate makers have made this kind of effort...but its few and far between.

As a way to boost the market price and start working towards a direct connection between consumers and producers, Sandy, Don Eloy and I all agree that starting to sort the varieties and label their origin, harvest time and names will be a good move no matter what variety he ends up choosing.

Our hope is that through continued interaction with Don Eloy and his small farm we can work towards INCREASING the varieties he grows to help buffer disease and pests, as well as provide a myriad of interesting cacao flavors form this region that has been producing wild cacao for thousands of years.

La Esperanza: Mt. Mambacho

2009-02-16T08:17:00.000-08:00

Mt. Mombacho soars over the quaint Colonial town of Granada in Nicaragua, Central America. Overlooking Lago Nicaragua, the biggest lake in Central America, Mombacho is quite a majestic site.

With verdant slopes and plenty of water, Mombacho is also home to Finca La Esperanza, a Cacao and Coffee growing farms that produces high quality, certified organic, shade grown cacao and coffee for the local and international markets.

I am plunging head long into a personal education and passionate exploration of the world of Cacao and Chocolate as I work to combine a Fair Tra de Chocolate Business with my passion for permaculture, travel, and learning. So taking a nice long walk up the slopes of Mt. Mambacho to see La Esperanza, where some of the Cacao that I am using to make the super suave Tennessee Booya Chocolate in a Jar for some of our local CSAs seemed like just the trip.

Esperanza has a multi-layered agroforestry approach to growing their crops.

With a high canopy to provide “Sombra Alto” (High Shade) and intermediate canopy intermixed, Cacao and coffee are both medium to lower canopy trees.

The inter-cropping of Coffee and Cacao allows to highly valuable export crops to be grown in close proximity in a way that mimics the natural structure of a neo-tropical forest.
According to Don Amado, the foreman at La Esperanza, there are Three distinct varieties of Cacao grown on the farm: Indio a light colored variety from El Salvador, Forrestero, a deep red vareiety from the Amazon, and Crillollo, the native species that still grows in the region.

Production methods.

After the harvest, Esperanza Ferments their cacao for three days.
This is unique among cacao growers, and creates a very refined and delicious tast. Most growers over ferment their cacao at the request of large Chocolate companies who want the strongest possible flavor in order to put the least amount of cacao in each chocolate bar. In contrast, chocolate that is not over fermented gives a more delicate taste and for connoisseurs, there is little better than a lightly fermented Crillollo bean.

La Esperanza is an organic farm, but to protect some of the older cacao trees they do use a natural pesticide made of coffee and cacao leases and branches ground in water and sprayed over the leaves and trunks of the trees:

A brief History:

Cacao has been an important trade item for thousands of years. used as a currency, a highly sought after drink, and then turned into chocolate by the Europeans, cacao has a rich, and sometimes troubled history.

Like coffee, sugar and tea, cacao was one of the first “drugs” to be trades as a commodity by the colonial powers. because of this cacao has been intertwined with slavery, human trafficking, and environmental degradation as companies sought to extract as much cacao for the lowest possible price to turn it into chocolate for customers.
Now, Fair trade, and similar movements are helping reconnect consumers directly with growers, and re-establish the healthy and amazing relationship that cacao can help create between people in different parts of the world.

Perhaps once again cacao will be the life blood and currency of exchange for the American Continent.
After all, wouldn't it be better to back our money with something that really does grow on trees?
but that's another story all together.

Stay tuned as we search for the perfect cacao, and the best way to keep it JUST and SUSTAINABLE on its way to the CSAs and local food markets in Tennessee.

Booya Cacao's criteria is:

Carbon Negative
Social Just
High Quality
Whole Food
No additives

Start a business to help the world?
yummm...taste the adventure.

Clowning for Social Change

2009-02-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

Patrix busting the old fashioned way.
Working in the heat and poverty of Nicaragua to help set up a micro economic engine for a education and nutrition project en Barrio de Santa Rosario, Granada:

One of the hardest part of development of any sort is seeing simple problems go unsolved because of cultural reasons.

While this issues is often pointed to with a scowl of "laziness" by some, there is a deep thread of truth in the idea that our culture often passes down habits of self and social oppression.
The matrix of patriarchial dominance and socio cultural patterns that lead to the perpetuation of unhealthy habits tied to old survival mechanisms is called the Patrix.

By opening the doors of perceptions to the possibility that old ways of seeing the world are potentially nothing more than oppressive habits passed down from the Patrix we can give ourselves the chance to shed old habits and meet the challenges of the day with verve, resilience and fresh intelligence.

One of the best, and oldest, ways of addressing stagnant socio-cultural habits is by calling in the ancient energy of the trickster. Coyote, Loki, Brer Rabbit, Buggs Bunny, and Jokers
to name just some of the many faces that weild the powerful energy of the clown to help teach lessons and change society.

Here is Barrio el Rossario on the outskirts of Granada Nicaragua, there are some significant hurdles for a child to overcome in order to have a real chance in the world.
Mal-nutrition, lack of education and sanitation issues to name a few.

And the Gorrioncitos project lead by Project Director Sandy Hepler is working on all fronts. But not without a sense of humor.
Enter the Gorrioncitos clown club: Los Payacitos.
Los Payacitos practice with Sandy learning acrobatics, juggling, clown tricks and jokes in perperation for a big skit that will poke fun at the neighborhood, the project, Sandy himself, the kids and all aspects of the project and the reasons for the project. This kind of clowning brings light to unresolved issues and allows for a kind of communication that is often times hard to find, and even harder to udnerstand without a little laughter.

Web 2.0 and Regenerative Education

2009-01-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

Interactive and participatory learning systems are being facilitated by web 2.0 technology that enables computer literate groups to transcend the old student teacher relationship and create learning networks.

Organizations like Gaia University are optimizing this trend to empower action learning for eco-social regeneration.

Within the Gaia University Community there is an active discussion about what software tools can best empower our collaboration for effective knowledge sharing, knowledge management, and project management.

Gaia E Learning Platform Digiphon (by Patrick Gibbs)

SERVER
- Moodle 1.9.3+ (full version number another day) with modifications by Moodlerooms
- I don't know what operating system Moodlerooms uses

ME
- Mac OS 10.4.11 (occasionally boot into Fedora 8, 9, or 10, which are linux distributions)
- Firefox 3 for browsing
- SeaMonkey for composing HTML (sometimes use other apps)
- Smultron for editing code
- Cyberduck for occasional FTP
- a wrist brace so that I don't get a repetitive stress injury, or worsen the one I already got from the GEL site.
- sleepless nights
- patience, lots of patience, and long walks and RC when the patience wears out
- breaks every hour for jump roping (only seems to happen when I'm well organized)

OTHER
- plenty of internet infrastructure in between me and that server, though I guess that's not digital, it's physical (or whatever isn't digital)

To meet the Gaian communities strenuous needs is truly a test

Here are some design parameters for the digital interface for Gaia U's global, opensource community of action learners:

quick learning curve
usable interface
accessible to low bandwidth users
effective support for multi-media documentation
searchable
tagable
full feature profile
chat function
forum function
premier blogging function
online course platform

Here are a few of the options we are looking at, and the pluses and minuses from my perspective as a learner, teacher and collaborator within the context of a global network woven together by web 2.0 technology.

So far I have the most experience with ning, having built several social networks including"
Alaska P ermaculture.

Ning is very usable, but does not quite have the built in functionality for posting up academic style work in a full featured portfolio. It interfaced correctly with moodle that would quickly change. Ning has a very large support community, and there are several ning networks devoted solely to the exploration of social networking technology as it applies to education. Classro om 2.0, and ning in education are two such networks, showing cases new uses of technology in classrooms. While class room 2.0 does not quite have an educational constructivist focus, there is a wealth of interesting applications of new technology to virtual and non-virtual education.

Elgg is similar to ning, although it is open source, which scores it points because it allows developers to alter the code for individual need. It looks quite nice, but from reviews on at least one forum, it sounds like the learning curve is a bit steeper and longer than ning. Eduspaces is a elgg powered social network for e-learning.

Dolphin seems to be mostly built to enable social connections: online dating, affinity groups and networks. With no mention of education, it seems similar to ning. I have no real experience with dolphin.

Mahara seems to have a very functional plateform for creating portfolios and sharing real work. With this as a focus it sounds like a good fit. Ning, Dolphin and Elgg are all designed more for the social networking aspect, and with a focus on sharing information, Mahara sounds like it might be a better fit for a functioning community learning site. In this sample portfolio, built using Mahara, it is easy to see how information can be effectily organized. What is missing is any inkling of mahara's social networking capacity.

Commentary:
On potential draw back is the zest and vigor that a social networking site with sex appeal can bring. Increases usage brings more attention to creating great work. Imagine turning the collective attention of every facebook user to something useful. That kind of collective intelligence would be enormous. Portfolio sharing is only one facet of what it would take to make a participatory and interactive online learning community really thrive. Other criteria like usability and ability to network effectively play key roles in increasing the time spent online.

This is a fine line to walk however. Gaia Unversity is not trying to create something that is going to suck people in like facebook. We are looking for an effective and efficient means to share and disperse information, to host meaningful discussions and share new ideas and connections. in this way, leaning away from oversexed designs makes good sense. Unfortunately often times it seems like as we look away form the sexyness of many social networking platforms, the alternatives have not been designed for usability. A key criteria for success is usability and the ease of non-computer literate users to use the E Learning site as a bridge to further use of digital technology.

all this said, Mahara looks like it warrants the most attention because of its particular focus.

Holistic Economics on Local Currency

2009-01-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

A Brief History of Local Currencies
The presence of alternative and/or local currencies far outdates that of the national dollar. The idea of a single currency did not even come into being until the 19th century (Tibbett, 1997). In the United States, local paper currencies first appeared in the form of municipal currencies during the ‘Free Banking’ era of 1837-65 (Jayaraman & Oak, 2005). Local currencies regained popularity worldwide in the 1930’s during the Great Depression with the issuance of scrip (non-legal tender, which acts as a substitution for currency often in the form of credit) (Jayaraman & Oak, 2005).

To read more and see the academic sources that focus on Local and Complementary Currencies, CLICK HERE

This is an excerpt from a blog post by Ali Rosenblat, a friend and colleague involved in the ecovillage movement.

More from Gaia Emerging

Wall Street Notices Local Currency: Mainstream media pick up on the raise of local currencies an as adaptation to tough economic times

Free Money: Around the world alternative currency experts are predicting the creation of sector wide and local complementary currency systems.

Eco-social Entrepreneur

2009-01-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

Part nne In a four part series of inspired lectures, Andy Langford outlines a pathway towards Earth Regeneration. This film was shot by Jay Ma, of Living Mandala during the 08 Financial Permaculture Summit.

Ecosocial Entreprenuers

Find more videos like this on Living Mandala

The concept of an ecosociall entrepurenuer draws from the inspiration of pioneering work of permaculturalists and other people working on the edge to create sustainable, just change.
Individuals and groups sustain themselves via livlihoods that are designed specificaly to provide sustianble goods and services, and re-invest the surplus of hard, and intellgent work, into people and projects that are ethicaly aligned with the permaculture ethics.

As pointed out by Andy, Entreprenuerial work requires attention to the books, passion, hands on learning, and calculated risk taking.

Wall Street Notices Local Currency Trend

2009-01-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, as I sat eating breakfast while visiting family, I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

While not a newspaper I am in the habit of reading, a lot of useful information can be gleaned of our a quick peruse, or even a more in-depth survey of the contents.

Some interesting tidbits about that day's Journal:

Of three color advertisements in the front section of the Wall St journal, one is from Monsanto, advertising genetically modified crops. One is for Fox News, and one is for Morgan Stanley, advertising investments in privatized water.

all three made me shudder...
But...it was all genetically modified doom and gloom, commodification of water and Fox propaganda....on the front page of the Wall Street journal today I found an article about local currency!

"When it comes to cash, A Thai VIllages says, "Baht Humbug" covers the growth of a local currency during the economic recession of the late nineties in Thailand.

Of course the article forgets to tell us that there are local currencies all over the world, including in well developed economies in the EU (although a brief mention of Berkshares in the US made made it into the article). Also not mentioned is the fact that local currencies played a big role in depression era trading in the US and Europe, and, in fact, during times of economic woe, communities can cushion, and often times reverse, economic downturn by creating well designed complementary currency systems.

One of the best examples of complementary currency's ability to create resilient local economies is the Austrian Worgl Experiment

But for all the articles short comings, and my own prejudice against the advertisements and general focus of the Wall Street Journal, it is still amazing to think that Local Currency has floated to the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Interesting times indeed.

Designing the economic landscape for drought

2009-01-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

As economic instability, born out of flawed and corrupt policies, sweeps across the world, communities can come together and re-think how they do business.

Drought proofing the economic landscape parallels drought proofing natural landscapes. Keyline design and Permaculture offer us patterns that can be mimicked to optimize the effective use of scare capital to keep a community vibrant in tough economic times:

Find more videos like this on Living Mandala

In this video Andy Langford outlines a Financial Permaculture strategy for designing local economic systems to catch and store capital, mimicking the well documented success of the keyline design system to catch and store water on a landscape. By creating economies that catch and store energy, and built the "tilth" of their community, we can build a solid base to support the growth of diverse and resilient human society working with the natural world.

Europe's Debt to The Americas

2009-01-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

EUROPE’S DEBT TO THE AMERICAS

Speech by an indigenous chief directed to the 150 chiefs of state at the European Union/Latin American Summit, May 2002

So here we all meet. We know what we are, and that’s a lot.

The brother in European customs asks me for a paper stamped with a visa to be able to discover those who discovered me. The European moneylender brother asks me to pay a debt contracted by Judas, that I never authorized him to sell me.

The legalizing European brother explains to me that all debts are paid with interest even if it means selling human beings and entire countries without asking their consent.

I go discovering. I too can demand payments and I too can demand interest.

It is stated in the Indian Archives, paper after paper, receipt after receipt, and signature after signature, that merely between the years 1503 and 1660, 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver from America arrived at Sanlucar de Barrameda.

1. Robbery? I don’t believe it! Because that would be to think that the Christian brothers lacked the Seventh Commandment.
2. Exploitation? Tanatzin protect me from thinking that the Europeans, like Cain, kill and deny the blood of their brother!
3. Genocide? That would be giving credit to the slanderers, like Bartolome de las Casas, who described the meeting as the destruction of the Indians, or extremists like Arturo Uslar Pietri, who confirms that the starting engine for capitalism and the present European civilization was the flood ofprecious metals!
4. No! Those 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver should be considered as the first of many other friendly loans from America, destined for the development of Europe. The contrary would be to presume the existence of war crimes, which would give the right not just to require its immediate return, but also the payment of damages and losses.

I, Guaiacaiputo Cuatemoc, prefer to think of the
least offensive of these hypotheses.

Such fabulous capital exportation was no more than the beginning of a MARSHALLTESUMA Plan, to guarantee the reconstruction of savage Europe, ruined by its deplorable wars against the Muslim cult, creators of algebra, polygamy, the daily bath and other superior achievements of civilization.

Therefore, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the
Little Loan, we may ask ourselves:

Have the European brothers made rational, responsible, or at least productive use of the funds so generously advanced by the International Indoamerican Fund? We regret to say no.

Strategically, they wasted it on battles, invincible armadas, on Third Reichs and other forms of mutual extermination, with no other outcome than to end up occupied by gringo troops from NATO – like in Panama, but without the canal.

Financially, they have been incapable, after a moratorium of 500 years, either to pay off the principal and its interest, or to become independent of the liquid profits, raw materials, and cheap energy that the entire Third World exports and provides.

This deplorable picture corroborates the statement by Milton Friedman, according to whom subsidized economies can never work, and obliges us to require, for your own good, the payment of the principal and interests that we have so generously delayed all these centuries to charge.

Saying this, we clarify that we will not stoop to charging our European brothers the vile and bloodsucking rates of 20 and even 30% interest that the European brothers charge the peoples of the Third World.

We will limit ourselves to requiring the return of the precious metals we advanced to you, plus a modest fixed interest rate of 10%, accumulated only during the last 300 years, with 200 years’ grace period. Using this base, and applying the European formula of compound interest, we inform the discoverers that they owe us, as the first payment on the debt, a mass of 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver, with both figures raised to the power of 300. That is to say, an amount whose complete expression would need more than 300 digits, and which vastly exceeds the total weight of planet Earth.

These dishes of gold and silver are very heavy. How much would they weigh calculated in blood?
Deducing that Europe, in half a millennium, has not been able to generate sufficient riches to pay off these modest interest rates, would be as much as admitting its absolute financial failure and/or the irrational insanity of the assumptions of capitalism. Such metaphysical questions, of course, don’t trouble the American Indians. But we do require the signing of a letter of intent that disciplines the debtor peoples of the Old Continent and that obligates them to fulfill their promise by means of a prompt privatization or repossession of Europe, which will permit them to deliver it to us whole, as the first payment of the historical debt….

Return of The light

2009-01-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

To my readers:
a blessed return of the light and happy new year! As we enter into the new year there is so much possibility for positive change amidst the craziness of economic downturn and awakening of peoples spirits to something better.

Some updates from the Gaia Emerging Blog:

I have just updated the font color to help with readers with less than 20-20 eye sight.
What to expect for the first few weeks of the new year. I am planing stories on:

The steps and to become a permaculture designer and teacher
Web 2.0 participatory learning tools
Beyond Fair Trade: regenerative exchange
Carbon Farming: Carbon Negative, Food Positive solutions for climate change and food scarcity
The connection between business and civil society in the global sustainability movement
Men's work: deconstructing the patrix.

These are all stories that have been on the back burner while I hibernate for the winter in preparation for a busy and vibrant 2009.
My plans include trialing a new Fair Trade Business; organizing the tenth Bioregional Congress;
Teaching and working in Mexico, Chile and Nicaragua; organizing and helping to facilitate the 09 Financial Permaculture Course, and teaching in several other events during the year.
And in the midst of all of that I am going to breath...and help other people with thier projects.

What makes it possible for me to do all of that? Stubborn hard work? maybe...but the most important thing that enables me to work on so many different exciting projects is deffintaly team work. Working with groups like Living Mandala, The Financial Permaculture Steering Comittee, and Gaia University allows me to collaborate on different aspects of projects, and play a similar role to help coordinate things as we bring together diverse groups to work on complex and exciting projects.
Being so integrated into the world changing field is what give me access to such interesting insights, people and events...and I feel grateful to have the chance to share that with people over the web.
I hope the folks reading this are gaining from my action learning. Let me know if there are aspects of permaculture, regenerative design, community organizing, transition culture, or regenerative economics that you would like me to focus more on, and I will do my best to glean insight from my personal experience and share it.

Free Money

2008-12-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

Alternative Currency is coming to the fore in many of the discussions taking place in progressive worldchange circles. At Gaia University we are actively conversing about the potential of a global educational currency that is also tradable for associated goods and services. on the Transition US ning network there is an active discussion that has lead me to some interesting connection between p2p economics and the world of complimentary currency.
I have been tracking this exciting possibility for a couple years now, and it is just now seeming to have the critical mass and buzz to start taking off. Working groups are forming and discussion are percolating on several of the networks that I am a member of:

Financial depression seem to be a catalyst for the creation and use of alternative currencies. This trend mimics trends of dynamic dis-equilibrium in ecosystem dynamics where climate change or other disturbances cause rapid shifts in the species composition of a system.

If we take a step back and try for a meta view of the current state of the global economy I would argue we are seeing the outgrowth of a monetary system that is no longer well adapted to the dynamic, quick paced needs of the global financial ecosystem. Innovation is squashed, energy is horded and power is centralized. This all makes for a system teetering on the edge of collapse.
Many folks point to individuals or corporations and the problem. I would argue the corruption endemic to the global economic system is a symptom of poorly designed currency. Corruption and poor decisions are not human nature, nor tha fault of money per se. They are a consequence of a monetary system that does not align incentives with planetary and personal health and well being.
One of the major steps we can take is to allow for rapid differentiation and development of currencies that can fill the vacuum left in the wake of the monumental failure of the national fiat currencies.

Mexico conference on Future of Money... from Jean-François Noubel on Vimeo.

Many countries around the world are already starting to launch these types of currencies. German complementary currency's lead the way, and Brazil is now proposing to start up over 100 complementary currencies to fill in the gaps of the national and international currencies that are used for day to day trading.

Resources for further exploration:

Open Source: Regenerative Revolution

2008-11-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

The edge of Regenerative Design and Development is surfing the wave of the open source movement:

Phrases like: Power Hacker, Open Source Ecology, and Financial Permaculture show how uncommon synergy can be generated by the combination of ideas usually isolated across barriers of culture. Moving towards a creative commons is a strong thread in the tapestry of sustainability being woven by actionists, social entrepreneurs and the REgeneration.

I am especially excited by the growth of pyrolysis and biomass energy as a viable, decentralized alternative to the grid or diesel generators. Simultaneous with innovations in the combination of pyrolysis technology and Stirling engines is the rapid and agile deployment of open source alternatives to patented technology. Potentially this puts enough carbon negative power at the hands of any community around the globe to have a computing station linked into the global Peer-to-Peer internet and economy. This will blast open the previously locked and guarded doors of the global marketplace, allowing every community to define its terms: trade on the global carbon market for carbon sequestered by the energy system running the computing stations and other basic infrastructure becomes a way for everyone to have access to a currency that has global value that is not manipulated by a small group of (arguable insane) bankers.

Let me explain why it is so important to open source green energy technology, and why that is a strong step towards a sustainable and just future for humans and our mother earth:

As I write this, the "green bubble economy" is being built by the same business people and neoliberal apologists see pic----->

who gave us the three economic bubbles I remember: The Housing and Loan bubble, the .com bubble and the most recent clusterf@#k that ended with the nationalization of the banking system. This kind of economic strategy centralizes power and wealth into the hands of few. Although I disagree with the very idea of a green energy bubble, some of what Friedman is saying makes sense: Garage inventors...what turns this rapid prototyping away from just another bubble economy and into something of global significance as we work towards REAL sustainability and justice, is open source development. Open Source takes us beyond the centralization of knowledge and its use as a tool of control...

This kind of centralization is dangerous in today's world for several reasons:

It serves to create massive upheaval during which time currency is consolidated into the hands of those who can weather the storm. This phenomena is well documented and has been re-capitulated in cycles over the course of industrialized capitalism. The latest times are the three bubbles of which I am speaking right now.

Our world is becoming smaller and more turbulent. Climate change and resource depletion serve to create a complex system where feedback loops need to be kept small and manageable. Centralization of currency, and therefore decision making power, into cloistered enclaves on bankers and financiers in the first world serves to dismantle the ability to generate local solutions.

Agile solutions are needed to address complex environmental, cultural and economic issues. These solutions need to be collaboratively designed by local people to have best fit to the situations. They also need to be woven together with common parameters and communication into a global matrix of sustainability.

To address the issues brought up by centralization of economic and political power, grassroots movements like the transition movement are needed. AND we also need to move rapidly towards energy solutions that enable continued global communication and interconnection so that our cultural evolution can meet the swiftly emerging demands for interdependence on a global scale. This means:

P2P economy
Complimentary Currency
Open Source Energy
Sustainable Trade Networks
Slow Food

If we open source energy alternative and educate and empower local groups to choose the correct fit for their environmental and cultural circumstance we take powerful strides away form the culture of consumption that the 1st world has been pursuing, we give the 2nd/3rd world the ability to define terms and participate in an equal way in the material comforts of a post-modern world, and we automatically deconstruct the centralized system that is symbolized by grid power run off of huge coal plants (or windmill farms for that matter).
In this way we can create a global culture of production and conservation: empowering people to raise their voices into the poly vocal mosaic of a globalized knowledge commons where diversity (biological and cultural) are valued more highly than the monotonous homogenization that we are currently marching towards.