permaculture

[George Anna Clark <esac@laneta.apc.org>]

Hi Rafter,

Have you joined ecosanres@yahoogroups.com  (Ecological Sanitation
Research)? Jenny Aragundy - in Bolivia?- might have similar experience
with what you're seeing. Within the yahoogroup, there's a lot more
participation from Africa (haven't heard anything from floodplain
regions), although Mexico has lots and lots of experience, but not so
much in such wet conditions. I worked in two regions that had very, very
high water tables, and high humidity conditions, but no flooding (except
those dry toilets with plugged urine hoses!!).

Abby Rockefellor, Laura Orlando through the ReSource Institute have
worked in the Yucatan, which might be helpful, if you haven't contacted
them already.

Any chance you'll get to Fortaleza, Brazil for the ecosan conference
there? Nov 26-28--- 
http://www.ecosanlac.org/ecosanlac/assets/programa_espanol.pdf
(will be held in English, Spanish and Portuguese, if anyone else is 
interested) Themes include sustainable agriculture and a few of us will 
be talking about permaculture.

Back to Mexico and Peru - César Añorve   acua@terra.com.mx is his 
"public" address - He's kinda the ecosan guru here, and worked a bit in 
Peru, but pretty sure that was in high altitude (dry) conditions. He 
might have some contacts, though. He'd probably prefer correspondence in 
Spanish.

geez, almost forgot, Latin America has it's own ecosan listserv - I just
can't remember how to access it... Write a request to
sarar@laneta.apc.org and they'll sign you up and post it, SARAR might 
have some ideas as well. There's not much activity from the listserv 
these days...

After you get through in Peru, perhaps you could help re-design the
state of Tabasco's sanitation system here in Mexico? Don't know if the
news is getting to people outside the country, but approx. 800,000
people are homeless - some still haven't gotten off their roofs...
(that would be five days on a roof)

good luck,
george anna



rafter t. sass wrote:

> 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
>
>
>