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#1
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permaculturall
Greetings all: I need some advice & assistance from the world
Permacultural Community. I'm currently negotiating with the Mayor of Pitcairn Island - Steve Christian - to transform Pitcairn Island (my ancestral homeland) into the world's first totally 'permaculturally-designed' Island. Pitcairn is still a British Colony, but the UK basically wants to shut the Island down (ie. the colony is "not economically viable") & sell the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Oeno, Ducie) along with their accompanying 200 nm. exclusive economic zones to the French* (presumably so that the latter can test nuclear devices on a volcanic Island rather than an atoll). One possible way to save the Island & it's unique heritage, would be to transform it into the only 'holistic-permaculture-nation-state' on the Planet; not only to make it completely independent of the British Exchequer, but also to lay the foundations for a limited ecotourism industry which could possibly enable the Island to become totally self-sufficient at a relatively comfortable standard of living. Steve Christian is warm on the idea, but - being one of the most remote places on earth - "Permaculture", is a complete unknown to the Island community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what I need is some advice on the best way to introduce the key principles & concepts of Permaculture to the Pitcairn Islander community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All & any advice or suggestions on moving this Project (tentatively titled 'Biosphere3') forward, will be graciously appreciated. For those unfamiliar with Pitcairn, the following site provides useful links: http://www.escapeartist.com/pitcairn/pitcairn.htm * there are substantial deposits of manganese, iron, copper, gold, silver, and zinc, which have recently been discovered within the 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone surrounding the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Oeno, Ducie). cf: 'Convention on Maritime Boundaries between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' http://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLAT...-GBR1983MB.PDF |
#2
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
(briancady413) wrote in message -----------************-----------------
Would they really radioactively contaminate a potentially vauable ore source? I suspect that after 175+ nuclear tests on Muruoa, they've already done so. Mururoa is a seamount atoll ie. a basalt base and an upper layer of limestones and corals which leak like a sieve www.abc.net.au/quantum/info/mururoa.htm There are those who actually enjoy French rule, and perhaps the most of us are not very attached to which european country on the opposite side of the planet claims and rules our home. Maybe such a changeover won't matter much. The French run a few islands off Newfoundland, too. I'm something of a Francophile myself; they could hardly do worse than the British have done. However, Pitcairn has been a farflung nook of the Anglosphere for over two centuries now & they have no desire to become French. [edit] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what I need is some advice on the best way to introduce the key principles & concepts of Permaculture to the Pitcairn Islander community. ------************************************---------------- Can you talk with family there? Do any PC designers have Ed. degres or teaching experience, with which they could get employed there? Could you invite him or someone he trusts to a PC designer training? From the email feedback I've had on this topic, the consensus advice is, that the optimum approach would be to conduct PDC's on the Island for all interested parties; in conjunction with supplying the community with Permaculture reference material. The Islanders could then come up with their own design plan. Sounds good to me. Only problem is getting an English-speaking PDC Trainer, along with relevant reference materials, out to the most inaccessible inhabited Island on earth. Meanwhile, both the global tourism industry http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories...1/ap_45445.asp & sundry fringe political groups have designs on the Island eg. www.freedonia.org/pitcairn.html [edit] Brian Cady |
#3
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
Steve Christian is warm on the idea, but - being one of the most
remote places on earth - "Permaculture", is a complete unknown to the Island community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what I need is some advice on the best way to introduce the key principles & concepts of Permaculture to the Pitcairn Islander community. Get them online. Regards, NT |
#4
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
Don't Mennonite, Bruderhof and Amish have traditions of land
stewardship and of forming colonies? I think Mennonites have started quite a few tropical communities, although perhaps in highlands. Gaviotas is a recent colony in highland Columbia that just might want to move or split, with recent violence there. They seem like really neat folk who have done amazing ecological transformations that any permaculturalist must respect, if not stagger in awe of, if reports prove true. Alan Weisman wrote about them. I heard one of the Canary Islands has a tradition of excellent, pre-permaculture gathering and storing rare rain there, which has transformed the isle.(which might be Fuerteventura.) I heard it was a rocky, barren low island that didn't get much rain, and now its full of gardens and people living their lives. (Some Canary islands are high and catch rain, some are low and dry. Maybe also there are refugee communities seeking sanctuary, with whom Pitcairn islanders would feel a cultural or empathetic bond with. Maybe inviting a variety of lifestyle/belief gropus could help eventually form. On the other hand, maybe the women of Pitcairn could select from among a world-full of men through online personals, those that would suit them and the island's opportunities. I actually once stumbled across a translated Japanese analysis of which churches had most successfully colonized Hokkaido, which had, and has, an indigenous gropu very unrelated to most japanese. This colonization was actualy not that long ago. Southern Japanese colonist farmers in Brazil, I have heard, have been very successful and responsible farmers there. Is this a similar climate? I'm interested in going to an island for good, but think of Tristan de Cunha, with its climate more suited to my western european gene set. I have messed around in small boats every summer as a kid, racing sailing dinghies in choppy, but swell-less Buzzards Bay in Southern New England, and crewing with my family aboard my fathers' cruising sloops. I previously trained in Re-evaluation Counseling, a peer-to-peer counceling method focusing on recovery form any traumas, with some great strengths and a few weaknesses, but I'm quite rusty. What's news? Brian Cady |
#6
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
....
Pitcairn is probably the most fertile environment on the planet - so the 'biological' aspects of Permaculture, in this case, is not the issue. BC: Thanks, I hadn't realized the climate until I followed your weblink to the 'bountybay' expedition. The real issue, is positioning the 'value-proposition' of creating the world's first 'nation-state model of sustainability' to the Pitcairners ...without, in the process, indulging in a kind of ideological imperialism. BC: I worship, but haven't practised, the grassroots organizing concept of knocking on doors and asking folks what they want and need; asking them to join in working together for what that group would democratically agree is firstmost, asking them to allow facilitaton, to consider training in working together well as equals, etc. Rodale Institute has a Community Renewal workbook that gives a step-by-step plan for reaching into one's community that seems well done. The benefits may be self-evident to middle-class, tertiary educated, New-Age Westerners; perhaps not so obvious to everyone else. Therein lies the challenge. BC: At first it seemed flippant, but more and more I wonder if NT's 'Get them online.' might be the best way to allow the chance to learn of opportunities, if done right. Our social groups help us, as individuals, make sensible choices - web access in a public place might help a community guide individuals to use the web in ways that preserve the community and the individual, physically and ethically. I guess I'm thinking about a library. Permaculture books could be donated - Pitcairners could read them if they wanted to. Have you chatted with cousins there, beyond the chief guy? I wonder what their thinking about the recent population changes there. With land constrained there, and with the distance, I think of trying to gather sea products - In Japan, pink salmon are nurtured when young, then let out to sea to fatten. Two years later they return to their natal stream, where the water flow has been diverted through a cannery. Here eggs and milt are harvested, brought to a hatchery upstream, continuing the cycle of fishing without fuel, nets, motors or boats. There are other migrating fish, some more tropical, as I remember. I keep wondering about the chances of getting extra iron into fish that are going out into an iron-poor sea to feed, which might help them as well as the production of that area of the sea itself - iron concentration is _extremely_ low in these areas, near half a microgram per kilo of seawater, if I calculate right, and the iron that might 'leak' out of supplemented birds and fish could nourish their next meal, making that meal possible. - it is the limiting nutrient, so small amounts could yield large productivity increases, and the ocean can quickly use any extra - everything else is set to go. I also think of trying to reach to customers in the neighborhood; round-the-world sailers could re-provision there, buying dried fruit and nuts, pressed oils, canned or dried fish. If they can afford a boat, they can at least afford to buy a bunch to resell later on. Here big questions would be how many land there now, and how many more would if they knew about such a thing. BC: Is water, or water quality limited? (It sure looks green and verdant.) There are machines which use waves to pump water through reverse osmosis filters, to get fresh from salt, and windmills might help with this and power in general. I've heard of work on a wind machine design that would pump air with a very simple structure, so it would be economical, reliable and easy to fix. How about a Pitcairn site for an Outward-Bound rustic boarding high school, or a trauma recovery center? BC: What do Pitcairners want now? Would they prefer to be part of the French Polynesian community? Easter Island seems as close, too, a connection to Chile. Perhaps national boundaries mean little so far from the nations' centers. Would they want to learn frecnch and spanish, to ease visiting their neighbors? Brian Cady |
#7
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
BC: What do Pitcairners want now? Would they prefer to be part of the
French Polynesian community? Easter Island seems as close, too, a connection to Chile. Perhaps national boundaries mean little so far from the nations' centers. Would they want to learn frecnch and spanish, to ease visiting their neighbors? BC: My apologies; Peter, you already said they want to keep themselves english. Brian Cady |
#8
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
(briancady413) wrote in message . com...
... [edit] With land constrained there, and with the distance, I think of trying to gather sea products - In Japan, pink salmon are nurtured when young, then let out to sea to fatten. Two years later they return to their natal stream, where the water flow has been diverted through a cannery. Here eggs and milt are harvested, brought to a hatchery upstream, continuing the cycle of fishing without fuel, nets, motors or boats. There are other migrating fish, some more tropical, as I remember. Damn clever Japanese. Unfortunately there are no rivers or sizeable streams on the Islands, so salmon farming is probably not an option. However, as the Pitcairner's religion - SDA - prohibits the consumption of many types of seafood (in Seventh Day Adventist communities, only finfish are consumed, due to religious prohibitions on the consumption of anything without fins and scales; so effective a conservation measure has this prohibition been, that there is great abundance of invertebrates, especially crustaceans and holothurians around the Pitcairn Islands) there would probably be some scope for limited commercial harvesting within the 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone surrounding the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie, Oeno & Sandy). I imagine any deal struck with the Japanese would need to be in accord with: 'Convention on Maritime Boundaries between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' http://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLAT...-GBR1983MB.PDF I keep wondering about the chances of getting extra iron into fish that are going out into an iron-poor sea to feed, which might help them as well as the production of that area of the sea itself - iron concentration is _extremely_ low in these areas, near half a microgram per kilo of seawater, if I calculate right, and the iron that might 'leak' out of supplemented birds and fish could nourish their next meal, making that meal possible. - it is the limiting nutrient, so small amounts could yield large productivity increases, and the ocean can quickly use any extra - everything else is set to go. Very interesting point. If memory serves the SE-Pacific is within the 40% of world's ocean which is extrememly low in iron concentrations ie. production of phytoplankton is iron limited with obvious impact on the marine food chain. I'm not too sure about the efficacy of using birds or fish as iron vectors; however there are two active submarine volcanoes about 100 km southeast of Pitcairn. One of these rises to within 60 m/200 ft of sea level; although pumice has a much lower hematite content than say basalt, unlike the latter, it floats well & breaks down a lot faster. I wonder if inducing regular pyroclastic flows from these cinder cones would do the trick? I also think of trying to reach to customers in the neighborhood; round-the-world sailers could re-provision there, buying dried fruit and nuts, pressed oils, canned or dried fish. If they can afford a boat, they can at least afford to buy a bunch to resell later on. Here big questions would be how many land there now, and how many more would if they knew about such a thing. The reason Christian selected the Island in the first place, was precisely because there is no safe harbour. In fact the whole littoral zone is extremely hazardous & is - currently - an insurmountable barrier to the size of vessel able to be used by the Islanders. If there was a technological solution which would somehow allow the berthing of an ocean-going vessel, able to make safe passage to Rikitea on Mangareva, most of the Island's logistics problems could be solved. BC: Is water, or water quality limited? (It sure looks green and verdant.) There are machines which use waves to pump water through reverse osmosis filters, to get fresh from salt, and windmills might help with this and power in general. I've heard of work on a wind machine design that would pump air with a very simple structure, so it would be economical, reliable and easy to fix. There is no subterranean aquifer or spring water on the Island. Potable water has to be harvested from rainfall. Huge scope here for a technological fix. Some stimulating ideas there Brian - esp. re. phytoplankton limiting factors. Seems to me that there is huge scope for leveraging marine food resources worldwide if there was a magic-bullet fix for this. Brian Cady |
#9
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Calling all Permaculture Designers: Opportunity to create the world's first totally 'Permacultu
the Pitcairner's religion - SDA - prohibits the
consumption of many types of seafood (in Seventh Day Adventist communities, only finfish are consumed, due to religious prohibitions on the consumption of anything without fins and scales; so effective a conservation measure has this prohibition been, that there is great abundance of invertebrates, especially crustaceans and holothurians around the Pitcairn Islands) there would probably be some scope for limited commercial harvesting within the 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone surrounding the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie, Oeno & Sandy). One needn't eat a thing to sell it. I imagine any deal struck with the Japanese would need to be in accord with:....[snip] I mentioned Japanese salmon fishing only as an example of anadromous seafood 'ranching'. There are machines which use waves to pump water through reverse osmosis filters, to get fresh from salt, and windmills might help with this and power in general. I've heard of work on a wind machine design that would pump air with a very simple structure, so it would be economical, reliable and easy to fix. There is no subterranean aquifer or spring water on the Island. Potable water has to be harvested from rainfall. Huge scope here for a technological fix. I think the wave units are ready to ship. Brian Cady |
#10
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Aloha....In regards to Biosphere 3, I have a couple of questions....is most of the food consumed on this island locally grown? Is there import of commodities? I also live on an island in the middle of the pacific yet we have a large amount of tourism....and here we are doing our best to implement example sites incorporating permacultue techniques in all avenues, not just the garden. I feel a great method of approach to the mayor might just be a whole systems approach.....incorporating the lifestyle...economics, education, etc. Being an island Pitcarin is set up to be a leading example for the world of how we each as individuals can take and share responsibility for ourselves, eachother, our environment and most important our children... |
#11
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Peter Ward Wrote: Greetings all: I need some advice & assistance from the world Permacultural Community. I'm currently negotiating with the Mayor of Pitcairn Island - Steve Christian - to transform Pitcairn Island (my ancestral homeland) into the world's first totally 'permaculturally-designed' Island. Pitcairn is still a British Colony, but the UK basically wants to shut the Island down (ie. the colony is "not economically viable") & sell the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Oeno, Ducie) along with their accompanying 200 nm. exclusive economic zones to the French* (presumably so that the latter can test nuclear devices on a volcanic Island rather than an atoll). One possible way to save the Island & it's unique heritage, would be to transform it into the only 'holistic-permaculture-nation-state' on the Planet; not only to make it completely independent of the British Exchequer, but also to lay the foundations for a limited ecotourism industry which could possibly enable the Island to become totally self-sufficient at a relatively comfortable standard of living. Steve Christian is warm on the idea, but - being one of the most remote places on earth - "Permaculture", is a complete unknown to the Island community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what I need is some advice on the best way to introduce the key principles & concepts of Permaculture to the Pitcairn Islander community. All & any advice or suggestions on moving this Project (tentatively titled 'Biosphere3') forward, will be graciously appreciated. For those unfamiliar with Pitcairn, the following site provides useful links: http://tinyurl.com/53jnq * there are substantial deposits of manganese, iron, copper, gold, silver, and zinc, which have recently been discovered within the 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone surrounding the Pitcairn Islands (Pitcairn, Henderson, Oeno, Ducie). cf: 'Convention on Maritime Boundaries between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' http://tinyurl.com/6svfs------------...-------------- Aloha....In regards to Biosphere 3, I have a couple of questions....is most of the food consumed on this island locally grown? Is there import of commodities? I also live on an island in the middle of the pacific yet we have a large amount of tourism....and here we are doing our best to implement example sites incorporating permacultue techniques in all avenues, not just the garden. I feel a great method of approach to the mayor might just be a whole systems approach.....incorporating the lifestyle...economics, education, etc. Being an island Pitcarin is set up to be a leading example for the world of how we each as individuals can take and share responsibility for ourselves, eachother, our environment and most important our children... -- Gd Seals |
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