Sustainable Revolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms, and Communities Worldwide

Description

"Urban gardeners. Native seed-saving collectives. Ecovillage developments. What is the connection between these seemingly disparate groups? The ecological design system of permaculture is the common thread that weaves them into a powerful, potentially revolutionary-or reevolutionary-movement." Urban gardeners. Native seed-saving collectives. Ecovillage developments. What is the connection between these seemingly disparate groups? The ecological design system of permaculture is the common thread that weaves them into a powerful, potentially revolutionary-or reevolutionary-movement. Permaculture is a philosophy based on common ethics of sustainable cultures throughout history that have designed settlements according to nature's patterns and lived within its bounds. As a movement that has been building momentum for the past 40 years, it nowis taking form as a growing network of sites developed with the intention of regenerating local ecologies and economies. Permaculture strategies can be used by individuals, groups, or nations to address basic human needs such as food, water, energy, and housing. As a species, humans are being called forth to evolve, using our collective intelligence to meet the challenges of the future. Yet if we are to survive our collective planetary crisis, we need to revisit history, integrating successful systems from sustainable cultures. To boldly confront our position on the brink of the earth's carrying capacity and make changes that incorporate the wisdom of the past is truly revolutionary. Sustainable Revolution features the work of a worldwide network of visionaries, including journalists, activists, indigenous leaders and permaculturists such as David Holmgren, Vandana Shiva, Charles Eisenstein, Starhawk, Erik Assadourian, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Albert Bates, and Geoff Lawton. This beautifully photographed collection of profiles, interviews, and essays features 60 innovative community-based projects in diverse climates across the planet. Edited by anthropologist Juliana Birnbaum Fox and award-winning activist filmmaker Louis Fox, it can be read as an informal ethnography of an international culture that is modeling solutions on the cutting edge of social and environmental change. The research presented in the book frames the permaculture movement as a significant ally to marginalized groups, such as the urban poor and native communities resisting the pressures of globalization. Sustainable Revolution uplifts and inspires with its amazing array of dynamic activists and thriving, vibrant communities.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist and skilled in four languages,Juliana Birnbaum has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, Japan,Nepal, Costa Rica and Brazil. In 2005 she founded Voices in Solidarity, an initiative that partnered with Ashaninka indigenoustribal leaders from the Brazilian Amazon to support the development ofthe Yorenka tame community-led environmental educational centerfeatured in the book. She has written about ecovillages, native rights,and social justice issues in a variety of newspapers, indigenousjournals, and anthologies including E-The Environmental Magazine,Bridges Journal, El Reportero, The Rising Nepal, World RainforestMovement Bulletin, Quechua Network, and Cultural Survival Quarterly.She was the first graduate of the Cornerstone Doula School, one of themost rigorous natural birth programs in the U.S., focusing on aholistic model of care.She is engaged variously as writer, editor, teacher, midwife assistant and mother when not attempting new yoga poses or learning how togarden. Louis Fox is a storyteller, strategist, photographer, puppeteer, and filmmaker dedicated to looking at the world as it truly is, while alsoenvisioning it as it could be. Since cofounding Free Range Studios in1999, he's created some of the most successful online cause-marketingcampaigns of all time. His work for clients like AmnestyInternational, the Organic Trade Association, Patagonia, and Greenpeace has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, TheWashington Post, CNN, FOX News, NPR, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt DesignMuseum, The Colbert Report, and Fast Company magazine, which named himone of the fifty most influential social innovators of 2007. As a filmmaker, he has directed and cowritten over a hundred shortlive action and animated films. His projects The Meatrix, GroceryStore Wars, and the on-going Story of Stuff series, have been viewedby more than 60 million people and have garnered top honors at dozensof international film and media festivals. Juliana Birnbaum, Louis Fox, and their daughters L la and Serenne livein California's San Geronimo Valley and are founding members ofa collective permaculture farm in Costa Rica.

"The most significant discovery of the space age is that we humans are, first and foremost, indigenous Earthlings. Sustainable Revolution is a profound reminder of what this means.... By detailing local applications of eternally regenerative design principles, it eloquently demonstrates the inspiring possibilities-and critical importance-of synchronizing with the highly evolved patterns emerging from our home planet's cycles of life."-David McConville, chairman of the Buckminster Fuller Institute "In today's sped-up, hyper-individualized, consumer-frenzied society, it's hard not to feel off-kilter. Birnbaum and Fox's book is the perfect medicine for the moment, offering guidance and inspiration to reclaim and repair our relationship with ourselves, our community and the planet."-Annie Leonard, founder of the Story of Stuff Project "Our culture has been at war with the world for millennia, wresting our food from it as if it were an enemy to be conquered.... Permaculture isn't just another way of growing food, it's a culture different from ours, a culture making peace with the world in every way. See it at work in this book. You'll be astonished. I was."-Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael