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  • From: PacificEdge <pacedge@magna.com.au>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Afghanistan redux
  • Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 10:40:33 +1000

Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM

On Wednesday, September 25, 2002, at 01:05 AM, Mark wrote:

If you follow the right wing happy talk the whole Arab world will roll over into democracy and the A/I conflict will suddenly get easy to solve.

It's my opinion that the establishment of democracy has a number of prerequisites: functional civil and government institutions; access to a free media reporting a range of news and views; preferably, literacy (radio as the mass medium can to some extent overcome limitations of literacy); minimal educational standards; an absence of do-it-yourself coercive organisations (militias); the rule of civil law.

I do not know enough about the Arab states to know whether they have these institutions in a functioning form, so for me the question of installing democracy if the Iraqi leadership is removed is open. The appearance of democratic government might be attained - political parties, elections and so on - but this might not be actual democracy if there is coercion applied to the electorate or if the parties are not truly representatives of lines of thought in that society or are captives or front organisations for existing power groups or militias.


AUSTRALIA's CONCERNS
In this morning's Sydney Morning Herald (the state's major newspaper which has a high degree of credibility; www.smh.com.au), a number of former prime ministers, high ranking ex-defence staff and a former governor-general have issued a communique warning against participation in any conflict in Iraq not sanctioned by the UN.

For this country, the role of Islamists (fundamental Islam) in Indonesia, a couple hours flying time from the country's north coast, is of growing concern because Islamists have been involved in training a militia cadre which has for the past couple years been in conflict with Chritian communities on the island of Sulawesi. There was fighting in Ambon only last week. Somewhat alarming is the report that something like 3000 members of the Alaksa Jihad - the most militant of the Indonesian Islamist militias (and the one involved on Ambon and Sulawesi) have moved into seven towns in Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of the island of New Guinea, where they may play a violent, pro-Indonesian role against the local Melanesian populace and against the OPM, the separatist, pro-independence political and paramilitary organisation.

Indonesia is a very unstable political entity facing nationalist separatists in Papua and Islamic separists in Aceh (Sumatra, adjacent to the Malaysian peninsula). The Indonesian army is a bit of a wild card and is deeply involved in the country's politics. There are reports coming in alleging involvement of the military and, perhaps, supporters and militias cooperating with it in the ambush and killing of one Indonesian and three US school teachers several weeks ago near to the large Freeport mine.


PERMACULTURISTS - HOW TO RESPOND TO CHANGING WORLD EVENTS?
As for how people in the permaculture movement can respond to these events and trends, I don't have much of a clue but I would like to participate in online discussion about it as it may be important for the future relevance of permaculture if the world heads down the paths described by Samuel Huntington (read: Clash of Civilisations), Robert Kaplan (read: The Coming Anarchy; Atlantic Monthly issues) or towards other forms of fractionalisation and friction.

I fail to see how permaculture (or other) aid and development projects can make a great deal of impact in countries facing internal conflict or with a severe internal security problem. It's personal and community security that are the prime concerns in such circumstances. Sure, food security is important but breaks down when conflict or acute tension forces people to move. That's when you get an internal refugee crisis and that is not a development scenario, it is a humanitarian scenario to do with the distribution of emergency food supplies, the provision of medical services and the security of displaced persons (or those into whose territory they are moving).

I acknowledge that permaculture development workers, in unstable countries where tension or conflict is not so severe as to force people out of their villages and towns, do have a role in training local farmers to increase their production and to reduce their reliance on external inputs such as seed, fertiliser and agricultural chemicals. I am associated with just such an NGO programme in the Solomon Islands. There, with the coup and fighting in the capital, Honiara, in 2000 and last year, the programme expanded its seed production to distribute seed to communities with which it is associated which were absorbing internal refugees. This was done through the national seed production and saving organisation established in 1995 - the Solomon Islands Planting Material Network.

Other options
Other avenues for permaculturists in their own country to response to instability would be to help organisations such as Medicins san Frontiers... they might help administratively or through fundraising, publicity etc if there is no role for those with agricultural skills.

Another tack the Solomon Islands programme had success with and which might be replicable in countries facing tension or low-level conflict is associating with a hospital to provide agricultural training as part of the hospital's primary health care work in community nutritional health.

Varied skills useful
So what skills might be helpful to permaculturists in providing aid and development services to people in developing countries facing low-level conflict, insurgency or other stresses?

Those that come to mind include low external input sustainable agriculture; the provision through harvesting, storing and purifying of water for human and agricultural consumption; sanitation (and not just expensive models of composting toilets - remember that human waste, including the handling of processed human waste after composting - is taboo is some places); nutritional health (this should be part of any permaculture gardener's own training-it is the basic reason we grow food and provides clues as to what crops to grow/ animals to farm to produce nutritionally balanced family meals); a knowledge of community health (local disease and its vectors, availability of traditional and botanical medicines, clinics, Western medicine sources and services).

Any ideas?

.........................
Russ Grayson
Sydney, Australia
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