Foundations
From a Permacultural perspective, it is impossible to keep aside from the actual events that affect us globally –not evenly…–and that surely will have consequences, unpredictable to the date. However, it is possible to glimpse the completion of some scenarios in the near future that have been announced for the last 50 years and that don’t predict an equal and sustainable context of populations, neither a hypothetical return to global peace. This is why we consider it relevant and urgent to start sharing thoughts about these facts, with the expectation of developing and spreading strategies of survival together, as well as possible sustainable alternatives, to contribute to the reunion of people with their natural being unfolding their abilities in pursuit of living in communities more conscious and respectful of nature.
For all those who love life and this Earth, this crisis represents a great opportunity, besides of all its challenges: now we have the opportunity to unite forces all around the world to achieve a shared objective, developing social cohesion, establishing decentralized structures, a solidary economy: a genuine restart. In times of such agitation, it can be easy to get distracted with different opinions. We invite you to consider that what we do, think and imagine now will help to shape the future.
One virus, several collapses
Between the different types of collapses that have been described –like the progressive descent of fossil fuels, climate change or total exhaustion of the majority of living beings by work of a corporative agriculture that functions with the criteria of extractive mining– the one we begin to experience during these weeks integrates the group of the so–called “instant”. The first ones are taking from 30 to 50 years, according to its specific variables, and we are already going through all of them. Instead, the pandemic is found in a group of collapses that start in a few weeks and that reach its climax in 5 or 6 months. We can compare it with the eruption of an important volcano whose ashes invade the atmosphere for 8 to 24 months and generate a permanent solar winter, with the consequent fall of the ecosystems and of the food production. Similar to that would be the impact of a meteorite of considerable diameter, when it collides with the Earth it would originate a comparable effect of the suspended particles of the volcano. Just to mention another possible collapse of this category, an electromagnetic wave from the Sun, for example, would cause so much damage to the satellites that it could disintegrate the functioning of the nervous system of the technological era, formed by the Internet, communications, banks, commerce, industries, etc.
When these short–term collapses occur, most part of the population minimizes the problem in the first stage. The same way it did with this sudden pandemic which started with a few deaths –that furthermore were people above 60 years of age and that live in a distant country, which generated indifference, if not mockery–. Let us remember that during the tsunami of Indonesia in the year 2004, in many places, mainly touristic, people were crowded into the coastlines with their cars, cameras and camcorders, recording some amazing waves. Until they became monstrous and took people, cars, houses and everything they found in their path for hundreds of meters and even kilometers inland.
Parenthetical and in an attempt to explain some reasons why a great proportion of the world´s populations do not react in an adequate way facing a catastrophic phenomenon – that are not the same that the ones of the elites– beyond individualism, it should be noted that for over some decades the television and film industry bombarded us with expensive fictions that represent collapse scenarios, being these natural, cosmic, terrorism, financial, etc., naturalizing in this way inside the minds that this probability exists and can be materialized in any moment. Far from putting the people on guard, these productions of pitifully simplistic arguments anesthetize the spirits always showing how some improbable hero or some altruistic hegemonic State (je!) saves humanity, for what there is no reason to get worried… The message is not even subliminal. The issue of the nefarious influence of mass media is endless.
The consequences
It is when the families start being in quarantine that, rapidly, the collapse opens its wings: many systems weaken or stop functioning and millions of families, especially those involved in Occidental crisis, became aware that the advantages of living “comfortable” in the great city were only a monumental deception, since the city represents an ideal space for the virus to expand in an uncontrolled way, the same way other pandemics do, be the ones of microorganisms, or the ones generated by human beings: delinquency, contamination, stupidity, bureaucracy, hatred and tens of pandemics that affect the spirit. The fact that the COVID–19 disperses in microscopic aspersions through the air, make practically unviable the use of elevators, limiting the quantity of floors for the use of stairs, the same limit with offices, stores, etc., that have closed systems of air, it is confirmed that they can disseminate the virus, being the key to the use of buildings with natural ventilation and with natural materials, which are safer and healthier, thus showing the mistake in design of the buildings of uncontrolled urbanity. On the other hand it will stay in the environment for a lot of time, café outing, restaurants, to chat with friends; these spaces will become uncomfortable spaces because of the insecurity established by the collective unconscious. In this way and because of these mechanisms of terror that stayed in every soul, every public space ceased to be what it was in the past.
Although in this pandemic collapse no structure, geography or any system were destroyed in the least, the disruptive effect is achieved by a microscopic particle over people, making that a great part of the machinery of the consumer society stop functioning. We can define it like a catabolic collapse, the system devours itself because of the lack of the most important: consumption.
Besides of generating huge political, economic and social impacts that we can already observe throughout the whole world, the virus isolates us and individualizes us even more, since it doesn’t promote the generation of any strong collective feelings. Today, and for much more time, solidarity consists in saving mutual distance. It is not about a solidarity that allows to dream with a different society, more peaceful, fairer.
Moreover, the sense of security stays reserved to the virtual reality in many cases, gains more subjective strength on the screen of the electronic devices than the fact of being and sharing with others. Moving freely in open spaces it could possibly be, in the next years, the privilege of some few that count with islands of their own, or those who already live in the countryside, in different ways.
We cannot leave the “re evolution” in the hands of the virus!
There is a way out
During the last 30 years, public policies have retarded the ascendant reconstruction of self–sufficiency and the collective and familiar household and community confidence. Furthermore, the powerful influence of corporate lobbies has produced a ceaseless increase of prices of houses, lower and lower wages and retirements, and spiralized increase of the costs of food, service fees and others, all of which ineluctably ends in the growing indebtedness of people and families to be able to live. And finally, to the living conditions getting poorer every day, are added the illness and the presence of death –so frequent and shared that we stop moving–, and the permanent fear of something unknown and dangerous that stays or reappears.
But in an unforeseen way, the appearance and sudden speed of the global pandemic and the strength of its impact are pushing people to action in a much more rapid way than it would have made them due solely to the dissatisfaction of those whose conditions are increasingly deteriorated.
At this point appears the way out: head to the lifeboats, assimilated from permaculture, in front of a collapse of this magnitude, to the settlements and sustainable communities. The strategy is to get away from urban concentrations, where violence and robberies will multiply and increase because of the spastic paralysis of the society. On the contrary, these communities or permacultural farms of extended family represent a real and concrete hope on which many people will find a meaning the day that their homes stop being a prison cell.
The giant wave will pass. But the post pandemic era society will be very different, especially because an important number of people will begin to understand that sustainable life, far from the titanic defoliant urbanity, is the chance to survive the collapses to come and the best choice to take care of the children and the elderly with the time and love necessary, since the extremes of ages becomes key in the future communities.
For those that have access to outdoors spaces, this situation is an especial opportunity to rediscover our contact with nature and with life itself. In this moment when the normality is interrupted, we have the opportunity to truly ask ourselves: How do we want to live? How does the world in which people live together in solidarity and in contact with nature and with each other looks like? What opportunity do we have to build decision–making functional structures and food, water and energy supplies? How can we recover the power we lost to think, love, be there for each other? Let us connect with these visions, because they are much more than individual fantasies.
That is why we decide to multiply and facilitate the possibilities of access to the tools that will help to give way to this relocation, embodied in a Permacultural Relocation Manifest.
The planet is waiting for us to get out of this drunkenness and to work together with nature, from which we are part. We are trees, water, river, sea.
In extraordinary situations like this one, extraordinary solutions are required. “Strong reasons make strong actions” by William Shakespeare. Always the most important actions come from strong motivations and the main one is life.
Permacultural Relocation Manifest
In this moments in which all society is living in first person the need of resilience, both personal and communal and in material and emotional spheres, we realize that our permacultural designs will be more necessary than ever. We are seeing how we pass from a predator capitalist system to decentralized systems of small and middle settlements.
With this permacultural manifest we want to offer to the society strategies of relocation and in this way convert this great problem into one of the solutions to encourage the use of Permaculture as a fundamental tool for the construction of a new culture.
Permaculture is a system created to offer the tools and the organization in order to create permanent human settlements in a fast and efficient way and harmony with the nature of the site. Its concepts, ideas and proposals are designed to be applied in times of collapse and transition. During 42 years the permaculture has developed a holistic, practical, scientific structure, which is fundamentally based on the knowledge of Original Nations, to reorganize life and the values of a minority ready for the deeper change, applicable in the right moment and in a massive level. Today came that moment.
Urban people need to be re literate so that they can start this transition and live in the countryside. This is key for them to obtain good results and to not get frustrated.
Self-sufficiency, to permaculture, is the base of a resilient society, this is, like if with the new virus the pandemic had never existed because his victims would be totally scattered, with a good health status and with Natural Hygiene practices as given in rural life. The dead would not be more than the normal rates. This implies a good state of health, high level of immunity due to the quality of life of the most vulnerable ages that is generated in eco-village, cohousing and international comunities. Besides, in a decentralized society the contagions are much fewer, which leaves much time to organize treatments and preventive measures without having to stop most of the world, like with the actual pandemic.
A lifestyle based on homely self-sufficiency, in minimum and slow displacement that provides protection against such infectious virus like COVID-19, also provides a base for social distancing and isolation, which are fundamentals to avoid the expansion of this and other pandemics.
Permacultural designs allow us to be much more prepared for pandemics and other collapses of civilization. Its productive proposals go far beyond ecologic proccuines to sell food. Orchards integrated to fruit forests are encouraged, that supply storerooms of homemade preserves, these systems integrate with foods bought in bulk from other producers. All this gives a sensation of safeness in relation to the people -mostly- that depend on supermarkets crowded with scared buyers. One vibrant and busy domestic economy, where young and old contribute, provides focus and meaning instead of boredom and accumulated frustrations. The capacity to connect with nature and its living beings, promotes an independent equilibrium from the news cycle and from social networks.
Moreover, behaviors like self production, auto supply, community bulk buy and minimum travelling not only reduce the ecological footprint and stimulate domestic and community economies, but also “flatten out the curve” of infection, which gives the health system the best opportunity to respond to sick people and to those who, desperately, ask for help and assistance to the Government.
Far from being a survival retirement of the society, permaculture designed in rural settlements based on the collective self-sufficiency in a domestic level is our best option for an ascendant response to the multiple crises generated by globalized capitalism.
The repeated critics to rural life are relegated thanks to the virtual communications, which are gaining more strength to be with the others.
Moving freely in open spaces is already a privilege many millionaires that have their own private places, just like hundreds of thousands of families that live in eco-villages, cohousing, international communities, farms and other permacultural settlements. Where in full pandemic daily life continues at the same paces.
We cannot leave the “Urgent Transformation” in the hands of a virus! If we have to isolate from this pandemic and the next to come, it will be in an organized, harmonic and self-sufficient way, and it must represent the daily living, instead of the extraordinary.
Permaculture seeks that people, in their places, commit themselves with the regeneration of their communities, their local and bioregional economies, always respecting the biocultural singularity of the place, based all these projects in regenerative practices that permaculture generates. In these times of so much physical, mental and spiritual sickness, permaculture encourages life in harmony and in tune with the harmonizing and curative forces of nature.
We are promoting a vaccine against fear and terror generated by this pandemic, never in all history of humanity existed such a big and fast change, from permaculture we are reacting with the same speed to make this civilizatory change, dissolving mental and heart barriers which would not allow us to go forward to develop a permanent culture based in declaring peace to the planet and between people.
We all can choose between keeping with the same mental schemes that took us to this disaster, if we keep them we will be irreversible dissected in life by the perverse urbanity that we managed to obtain or reborn, reemerge, relocate and co-inspire together in a pact to Mother Earth that we can live over her in another way with other regenerative organization, promoter of planet health and of our bodies health.
We never imagined that we were going to lead the most important movement that we could possibly imagine. Millions of people today are ready to abandon their prisons, their deficiencies, their sufferings and their addictions, they want to go through the healing and the co-creation path, for this reason we launch this manifest, that has no leaders, names, it is life which is the one that tells us what to do, the one that beats within each one of us towards an awakening that awaits to manifest.
Which are the strategic areas and the steps to follow to give life to post pandemic permaculture
- Modify the way of understanding the world and the vital relationships, promoting the knowledge of the principles and ethical values of permaculture.
- Start projects in places that have basic conditions for a human settlement, or joining with a positive attitude the ones that already exist, arriving with humility and with a learning spirit.
- Design and build houses and other buildings with natural materials and bioclimatic design.
- Production of energy with decentralized and renewable systems, like wind power, hydraulic, biomass, solar energy between the main ones.
- Systems of heating and cooking and water heating, with alternative energies and biomass.
- Efficient supply and management of water.
- Water treatments and dry toilets.
- Production of food, natural medicines, fibers and wool.
- Production of seeds, and generation of regional reserve banks.
- Management of forests and bamboos, for firewood, wood and food.
- Integrate other living beings to the agroecosystems, on the basis of their right care and respect, of a harmonic life with them and taking into account the functions that they can perform in the permacultural systems.
- Sharing the excess.
- Care of the children, the elders and the sick.
- Living with a culture based in encouraging and honoring natural life, as original nations always did.
- Education of children and adolescent in contact with nature and the values of its care and regeneration.
- Promoting all the necessary behaviors of survival and resilience to face the planetary challenges to come.
- Encourage practices based on promoting the physical and spiritual well-being.
- Use and development of appropriate technologies for the support and maintenance of rural settlements.
- Implementation of economic, ecologic and collective transports to do the necessary travels.
- Development of alternative economies based on bartering, social coins, between others.
- Possession of the land and governance at the service of people and care of the soil, the water and the air.
Students, teachers and collaborators of the Universidad Internacional de Permacultura
April 6, 2020.
