Permaculture and Peace

Travels with Martin Edwards and Amal Rashid

The little hotel where I am currently staying in Jordan, and have

stayed before, on my way in and out of Iraq, the Al-Monzer, is a

great place to meet interesting folks who are also in the area

because they are involved with peace and social and economic justice

issues and are not on an expense account which would allow them to

stay in a more expensive hotel. And sometimes, there are others,

who are staying elsewhere, but come here to "mingle" with the rest

of us.

Yesterday evening, these circumstances allowed me to meet a very

interesting Australian fellow, one Geoff Lawton. Geoff's passion,

which he has been living and teaching for the past twenty years, is

permaculture, with a capital "P". And, by the way, in the American

version of the English language, Geoff would be pronounced and

spelled "Jeff". More about Geoff and his work in a little bit.

Please bear with me, as I reflect on, and share with you, related

thoughts that my time with Geoff bring up for me.

Earlier yesterday, as I passed through various sections of Amman,

and later, as I was traveling outside Amman, and several days ago,

as the airplane I had ridden here on from New York, circled out over

the desert wasteland outside Amman, the lack of the color green was

depressing for me, almost, in fact overpowering. Even Amman, with

its hills covered with sand colored buildings looks like a kind of

desert to my eyes. In Northern California, there is at least a

sense, though in many cases a false one, that our species is living

in unity, in harmony, with nature. Here, the stark reality is for

me that humanity is a like swarm of locusts, or a virus, that has

expanded to cover the entire surface of a petri dish, covering all

surface areas within reach, within view, through urban sprawl,

vehicles of every description, and on foot. We are clearly here a

plague upon the earth. It's not that we are, in a sense, any less

an ecological disaster in Northern California. It's just that there

it's not so obvious. Whereas here in Jordan, it's so in my face, I

would have to be walking around in a trance, to ignore it. But of

course, that's exactly what happens once we start to accept what is,

as inevitable, as not our personal responsibility, as someone else's

problem, etc. We cease to see the problem, and blindly continue to

be part of it.

Unlike Iraq which has more water than all of its neighbors combined,

Jordan has almost no fresh water. Northern California, where I have

lived for the past twenty years, is almost all green. And even the

desert areas of California are often covered with large cactus

plants. Here, the sand is covered by sand, and sometimes a very

thin plant cover that greens slightly with seasonal rain, if it

comes that year. Yet, most of the desert areas in this part of the

world were not always desert. Much of what is now desert, was

forested just yesterday, when one measures time by tens of thousands

of years, rather than one lifetime. Man has been cutting down trees

for firewood and construction, and grazing flocks of sheep and goats

here since before recorded history. Areas with little rainfall can

sustain forests and other vegetation, but once the vegetation is

removed, it's very difficult to get it back, because with the

vegetation gone, the soil dries up, the air dries up, and the

climate changes, decreasing further, the local rainfall.

With this background on my mind, into the hotel lobby, last evening,

where I was chatting with another fellow, walked Geoff. I had heard

of Geoff and his work, from the hotel manager, Mr. Mazen, who told

me several days ago that Geoff would be arriving soon. I spent the

remaining five hours of the evening and two hours into today,

talking with Geoff about his work and visiting an internet caf