permaculture

["rafter t. sass" <rafter@liberationecology.org>]

Hey Pc Friends and Companeros,

I'm coordinating an eco-sanitation research - and eventually design -
project for a community-led development initiative in Belen, a 73,000 person
"informal settlement" outside of Iquitos, in Peru. I'm working with the
Global Outreach Project of the Gesundheit Institute (a radical, loving,
silly, health-care reform model), who are also partnering with the Pan
American Health Organization, and a few other Peruvian NGOs.

The initiative is primarily about health-care and education - clinic and
school construction and funding - but the community has identified
sanitation issues as even higher priority than these extremely important
(and interconnected) issues. It's easy to see why - like a lot of
communities globally (maybe as many as 3 billion people) there is no
sanitation in Belen. People drink and bathe from the body of water they
defecate in (and dump all their garbage in, and subsist on) - i.e. the
Amazon river.

To compound the complexity of the issue, a large portion of Belen is under 5
- 18 feet of water for 4 months a year. Whatever design is developed will
have to be adapted to wet and dry and conditions.

What I'm looking for from the global permaculture community is several-fold:

1) A global best-practices survey of tropical eco-sanitation systems, with
an eye towards:
     * adaptibility for high-density settlement
     * scalable (able to start from a household, street, or block level)
     * low-budget (so probably no sewerage-based solutions)
     * any experience folks have had with flood-plain / semi-aquatic systems
2) A survey of people's on-the-ground experiences with all the "adoption"
issues:
     * cultural appropriateness, particularly but not only in this region
     * community input in design a/o collaborative design
     * use of small-business incubation a/o micro-loan models for
eco-sanitation systems
     * others I'm not thinking of yet
3) I'm contacting Permacultura Latina America, but if anyone has suggestions
for other permie a/o eco-design folks from L.A. that I need to contact, let
me know.

For those that are wondering, I'm taking this on as a volunteer. I'll be
fundraising independently in hopes that I can work full-time on it, or
nearly so, at least for a while. The project certainly deserves it.
Gesundheit Global Outreach is bringing me to Peru on their next trip, in
December, and most likely on some others later on. The rest of the
research/design/coordination work will be on me, and hopefully a few funders
I can round up.

This community has been an incredible resource to me on a variety of much
smaller projects. I appreciate all the time and attention of the folks on
this list.

best,
rafter t. sass


-- 
                    rafter t. sass
     -- the liberation ecology project --
* design tools for whole system health *
           www.liberationecology.org