PermacultureCooperative

The permaculture school and its associated projects turned into a cooperative society last week. T. phoned me to inform me of that fact. Lots of discussion, and a long period in the making, there will now be an umbrella organization for all projects that sprouted from the work of the permaculture school. One of the requirements for attendance is that you have to start your own permaculture project upon graduation. And so, like plants in a garden, permaculture is sowing itself, getting dispersed ever more widely. The new co-op will be linked to Hof van Twello’s center for localized economy and its projects and this will guarantee that there is an outlet for the gardens’ produce. In time, more and more projects can become members. It was very important, in keeping with the school’s philosophy, that it should be a co-op, that members should have voting rights, as permaculture is also a philosophy about living and working together. The goal is to arrive at a real “market of the commons”, where produce, goods, services and ideas can be freely traded. It is one step on the road towards building resilient local communities - and cultures. Tonanzi will become a co-op member, as will my own business. I was incredibly honored when T. asked if I wanted to be on the board of trustees and on the advisory board, and I gladly accepted

http://permacultuurcoop.aardedenker.nl/permaculture-co-op

Last night at the Climate Camp UK plenary, there where a number of excellent speakers and an animated and informed discussion about neoliberal capitalism and its resistance and alternative social economies such as cooperative networks etc. It made me think there needs to be a Permaculture Worker Cooperative Movement. A 72 hour intensive permaculture worker cooperative course, body of knowledge etc. As Arizmendi, the priest founder of Mondragon said “its an education movement with an economic model, no an economic movement with an education component” (paraphrased, check quote)

• David Harvey: Red Pepper (who was wearing a PM Press hoodie, publisher of a new history of cooperative movement in the USA, For All the People and The Vegetarian Myth reviewed by Peter Bane of the Permaculture Activist)
  
• Nick Hildyard: The Corner House
  
• Molly Scot Cato: a green economist, Gaian Economics
  
• Keir Milburn: co-editor of Turbulence (was she/he there?)
  
• Claire Faucet: former researcher for Corporate Watch, author of Techno-Fixes
• Camper: Paddy Gillett

In short, it was a session that hit the key points of most of the Permaculture Worker Cooperative ideas.

It seems that the social economies of south America are way ahead in this. No wonder Chomsky’s newest book is on this topic: Hopes and Prospects. So too are the Radical Routes worker cooperative.

Regarding Climate Camp UK 2009, check-out the Blackheath Bugle and if you are really stuck the Climate Camp UK website

Today we are spending some time with cooperators from Radical Routes, Rootstock, Trapese Popular Education Collective and hopefully the Permaculture Association of Britain. The aim is to better understand how a UK permaculture worker cooperative group might form and operate, and act in a kind of cooperative federation with other geographical based permaculture worker cooperative groups.

At the moment we are on wifi on the train from Edinburg to Leeds. Google has decided we are in Sweden, which gives you an idea of geolocation.

Some (most or all?) of the cooperators in Leeds are vegans, and have advanced views about ecological and animal rights. Which made me think “could the concept of worker-cooperative be expanded to include all living (and non-living? machines, minerals, etc?) beings in an ecosystem?”. 

This idea happened while having lunch with Mondragon cooperators we where told and interesting story. Within the Mondragon Coop there is a only one primary-industry agricultural worker cooperative. A dairy cooperative. As with most Mondragon cooperative stories, themes where efficiency, excellence, etc… but one statement stood-out.

Paraphrasing “a dairy farm is just like any other factory, except the milk making machines are cows.” This reinforced the obvious industrial paradigm of Mondragon culture. But it also made me think ask “What if the cows where given the same labor rights as the people worker ? or in otherwords, what if the the cows where made members of the worker-cooperatives?”.

Certainly there is precedent to the concept of Nature’s Rights or Rights of Nature. Embedded in the new Constitution of Ecuador (again under attack by the Obama neoliberal counter-revolution) are environmental laws giving nature and ecosystems rights: Ecuadors Rights of Nature

“When Ecuador began the process of writing a new constitution, they received help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to draft environmental laws giving nature and ecosystems rights.[1] [2][3] [4] On September 28, 2008, the people of Ecuador voted for a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. It was approved by a large margin. [5]

Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before public institutions. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation of natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In case of severe or permanent environmental impact, including that caused by the exploitation of non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for restoration, and will adopt adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter the national genetic heritage in a definitive way is prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and from natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services cannot be appropriated; their production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.”

HD Odum’s (which inspired David Holmgren when writing Permaculture One) scientific work on systems ecology, especially his ecological Maximum Power Principle (one of the principles of energetics) could work well within a framework of the Rights of Nature.

I am also thinking about the arguments made by Kevin Carson in his organisational theory (and other worker cooperative literarture) about the agency problem of alienated labor: Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective. If an ecosystem is “designed” so that all the ecology is empowered, extending the Catholic social doctrine that created Mondragon’s worker-cooperative culture to all life (and life supporting systems). We have some very important threads for developing a course and body of knowledge, a culture embedded in various events, media, industry of permaculture worker cooperatives.

Also, at the World Soclal Forum 2009, the Amazon as an ecosystem or ecology, including its indigenous inhabitants, where made a political actor: Pan-Amazonic movements manifesto. Again, enabling the idea of Rights of Nature, with the Rights of Humans embedded within, not the the way around. 

The permaculture principles of perennial polyculture, guilds and zones also compliments the ecosystem worker cooperative.

Lastly, its important to note, that these patterns of ecological worker cooperatives, or permaculture worker cooperatives (with a richer meaning) need to be global. The International Biochar Initiative makes it plain that organic farming and soil carbon are going to become a dangerous big business.

The Rights of Nature are an important foil to the UN and BIG BUSINESS sponsored “sustainable development” and ecosystems services financialisation, starting with soil carbon being included in the so-called CDM (Clean Development Mechanism ) of casino capitalism cap-and-trade

Also, its a paradigm shift from Environmental Economics (environment being a part of economics) to Ecological Economics (economics being a part of ecology)

Local solutions, local organisation is not enough. It is required, but global action cannot be left to centralised governments or corporations.

With all the talk of BIG GREEN, geo-engineering sustainment projects, its time for Gaia Permaculture.

Via colloboration at the Scottish Camp for Climate Action at the Mainshill Solidarity Camp, fighting the Greenhouse Fuedalism of the United Kingdom, we met some very wonderful people.

Permaculture cooperation ? why not forest gardens or Transition Towns ?

As I have written before i.e McGaia, I am interested in Fair Share and People Care ethics of permaculture. Also, focused on scaling-up permaculture from the home, garden and farm to community and larger i.e city, region, state and planet, see Gaia Permaculture. At Mondragon we discussed industrial ecology and permaculture, and how that might happen. As such, we have been focussed on permaculture AND cooperation projects. Which narrows the number of projects down enormously. Transition Towns Totnes is still on the list, but at the bottom, as I naturally must explore the more radically cooperative projects first. Robert Hart inspired forest gardening is vital, but its off the agenda for the moment. So to is Schumacher College, we where to study Gaia Permaculture there, but they have summer recess and are closed. Hopefully we might develop Gaia Permaculture at University of Massachuetts, Amherst. 

Permaculture Association of Britain 

A good friend, made at the camp, suggested the Permaculture Association of Britain would be a good place to start. That business is booming for the association.

Trapese Popular Education Collective

I asked said friend about Transition Towns Totnes, and he offered a reference to the Trapese Popular Education Collective’s critique “A Rocky Road To Transition” PDF. Indymedia review the critique, and a reply from Transition Culture.

Trapese are worth a special mention, as Transition Culture explain in their rebuttal of the critique.

The authors write from a perspective strongly rooted in their work as
left wing activists and educators, with a strong anti-corporate,
anti-globalisation stance. One of the aspects of their critique of
Transition is that it shies away from directly confronting what they
see as being the enemy. Their starting point can be summed up in the
sentence “it is fundamentally important to identify and name the
cenemies in the battle to make a real Transition”.

I couldn’t agree more. Transition Culture response states that “Yes there are tremendously powerful global forces at work, doing appalling things with increasing boldness, but they function as such because, in many cases, we have given them, consciously or unconsciously, the power to do so”. What happens when they have taken the power, by force, by violence ? or manipulation of the institutions of industrial civilisation ? The Transition Culture response continues with magical thinking

Transition is determinedly inclusive and non-blaming, arguing that a
successful transition through peak oil and climate change will by
necessity be about a bringing together of individuals and
organisations, rather than a continued fracturing and antagonising.

If only. The current trajectory is heading more towards a Sustainment scenario, a kind of Fotress World, with Green Zones for the rich and powerful (and perhaps communities of other classes that can organise themselves sufficiently and form symbiotic neofeudal relations).

Trapese have an excellent resources page Do it yourself; A handbook for changing our world, some highlights

• Why we need holisitic solutions for a world in crisis and How to get of the grid.
• Why do it without leaders. Seeds for change collective.
• Popular education and social movements
• Presentation on popular education (powerpoint)
• World time line (powerpoint)
• Introduction to permaculture

Radical Routes

Via another climate camper, a radical UK cooperative federation was suggested , Radical Routes.

Here we are in twenty-first-century Britain, in a world not of our
making but one that has been moulded over thousands of years of
exploitation and injustice.

Our world is shaped by the forces of greed, capitalism and
materialism, where maximum production and optimum profits are
vigorously pursued, making life a misery for many and putting us and
the environment at risk.

The system is ultimately controlled by the rich and powerful,
the capitalists and bureaucrats, through the use of many mechanisms
such as ownership of the economy (making people slaves to a job) and
control of the media (creating a passive culture).

Radical Routes is a network of co-ops and individuals seeking to change all this.

 Once again, this is exactly the correct position,

The specific means it is pursuing are:

• The setting up of housing co-ops to
  house people and projects with the above aims.

•  The setting up of workers co-ops which operate with the above aims.

•  The promotion and organisation of participatory education through
  skills- and knowledge-sharing events, Taking Control events,
  informative material and workshops.

•  The raising of finance to take control over resources (property,
  technology, land...) through co-operation and economic interlocking of
  the co-ops.

•  The support of like-minded projects.
  

 

Radical Routes have an ethical investment arm Rootsock

 

Rootstock is a social investment society set up as an initiative of
the Radical Routes network of co-operatives. Radical Routes is a
growing network of housing and workers’ co-operatives working for social change.

Radical Routes co-operatives are active in many fields, including:

Sustainable land use through permaculture, land restoration, 
woodland creation, and growing and distributing organic food.

Communal housing - co-operatively owned housing is a resource
for the whole community rather than a commodity for the profit of a few.

Resource centres for communities

Information through publications, radical bookshops and
practical support for new co-ops.

Campaigning on issues such as ecological preservation, animal rights and housing.

International peace work

Home education

Electrical, plumbing and small scale building work

Support services including Book keeping and accountancy,
Computer services, Training and consultancy,
Mediation and group working ­

­

Transition Towns Totnes

TTT have dropped to the bottom of my list of permaculture cooperative investigations.

Coming from the Mondragon-Permaculture investigations and most recently the activism of Scottish Climate Camp, the Transition Network seems naive and New Age at best, a kind of group therapy focussed on community gardens and workshops. I also have serious reservations about the pyramid selling business model of Transition Towns.

Conclusion

In the next two weeks we have an enormous amount to do; wrap-up this phase of the Mainshill campaign work, the Coal Health Study, a trip to the sustainable Isle of Eigg, presentation of our work at a workshop at London’s Climate Camp (possibly volunteering in the Indymedia again) and also the Permaculture cooperation network in the UK.

On the agenda with the Permaculture Association of Britain, Trapese, Radical Routes & Rootstock would be the creation of a global permaculture cooperative group or network of groups. Making real many of the projects listed on GaiaPermaculture.com.