permaculture

[Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

> From: <permed@nor.com.au>
> Reply-To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 02 09:10:41 -0000
> To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two
> 
>>> Just take what he says and downscale a heap and you'll be
>> closer to the reality.
>> 
>> so far nobody has commented on bill's story about vietnam (was it
>> vietnam?) - so am i safe to assume that it is mostly true? or do
>> i have to substract some 80%?
>> 
>> georg

> More than likely Georg - I had a student from Vietnam here doing a PDC
> not long ago and that wasn't the picture she painted - Rosemary Morrow
> would be in the best position to give an accurate picture of what's going
> on there.
> Robyn

I'm not familiar with the case reported by Bill, but Vietnam has been
reported in Australia as a shining light of permaculture. At one stage, a
permaculturist -  I don't remember who - was promoting Vietnam for
officially adopting permaculture as a food production strategy.

Rosemary Morrow, who lives in the Blue Mountains, a little over an hour's
train ride from me here in Sydney, has a lot of experience in both Vietnam
and Cambodia and may be able to shed light on questions arising about
permaculture there.

Casting my mind back a few years to when I worked for an overseas aid agency
in Sydney,  I recall - but my memory may be faulty here - that Quakers
Australia was supporting small scale agricultural development in Vietnam
through funding from AusAID, the federal government's overseas development
assistance funding body. I recall being told that AusAID suspended funding
to the Quaker project, reportedly because of corruption in the Vietnamese
organisation it was working with.

About three years ago I met a young Australian man who had been placed with
a community in the hills in Vietnam. He had spent something like a year
there, presumably to assist the local people in food production. While there
was no criticism of the young man's work, I later heard from another source
that the project did not go so well.

Without evidence, its impossible to assess the veracity of such claims but I
mention them here as others might have more detailed knowledge of the
situation and as a contribution to the ongoing discussion about the use of
permaculture in overseas development and how it is best used.

In the interview with Bill it was stated:

>BM: Lots of students to follow up on. Two young people, very young,
>boy and girlfriend, went to a class and took off for Borneo because of
>the rain forest trees. They wanted to go and protest the logging in
>Borneo. So they got to Borneo... and showed them how to grow food...

I don't know if the Borneo example is the same as I was informed was a bit
of a failure by someone who went there.

This discussion about the use of permaculture in overseas development is
important because aid is an area that permaculture people are attracted to.
My suggestion is that permaculture has a great deal to learn from the people
who have been doing this work for some time - the development aid agencies.

I know that Bill has - in some cases justifiably - criticised the agencies
but his broad-brush criticism also blackens the agencies with a successful
record and stops permaculturists learning from them. Examples where
permaculture people could learn from the agencies include the use of
participatory techniques, project management, commitment to long term
placement of field workers and project sustainability.

...Russ Grayson