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permaculture - RE: [Permaculture] African deserts

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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture digest <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: [Permaculture] African deserts
  • Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 17:28:47 -0700


A further thought: As in so many differences of opinion, I think the
contrasting positions taken by Scott and myself on one side, and John S.
(and maybe Eric and Christopher) on the other come from different starting
assumptions. We're not advocating roaring in with bulldozers, IMF-like, to
ram a million acres of swales down somebody's throat. In any design, at an
early phase you must ask, as Christopher says:

>What is it that the people in these areas want? What kind of quality of life
>do they envision for them selves?

and recognize that, as John says,

>if the various human organizational/cultural/infrastructure/population/etc.
>factors are left out of the designing, the design is likely to be
>insufficient.

This is the site assessment phase as taught in the PDC: know your client
and site. Scott (I believe) and I assume that you've already done this,
have the backing of the client, and now you're at the implementation phase,
asking whether digging stick or dozer is a more effective and appropriate
technology. We wouldn't, a priori, rule out either method. But if you
haven't done a good site assessment and if you don't know your client, any
design, large or small, will fail. I think we don't really disagree, we're
just starting at different places. I believe that the technical solutions
to desertification, and very elegant yet large-scale ones, exist. Whether
the appropriate cultural or political milieu for implementation exists is
another question altogether, and that's one I don't know the answer to. But
you guys have framed the questions very articulately, and in a way that
would be a contribution to any design course. These issues are at the heart
of permaculture every bit as much as the techniques (and why no designer
wants to work without seeing the site and client), and we ignore them at
our own peril.

Toby







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