Spring Antidote to Indifference

2010 SA Blog Awards has been great

Travelling With Grace was nominated in the Top 10 of 2010 SA Blog Awards Old Mutual Best Green category.  Thank you to everyone who made nominations and voted.  This has been my space to find my voice for the Travelling With Grace book project, so I have approached my blog like an author-in-training rather than a traditional blogger.  It has been very inspiring that Travelling With Grace has been recognised by the SA Blog Awards, and I am grateful for the opportunity to think more expansively about the value of the blog.

Well done to http://www.urbansprout.co.za/ and http://www.sprig.co.za/ for making it into the final two.  These are great blogs.  Another finalist that is very well worth checking out is Project 90 by2030 http://www.90x2030.org.za/ . I also find a lot of value and heart at http://www.mothercityliving.co.za/ .

Thanks to SA Blog Awards and its sponsors for providing the opportunity.

The Urban Foodshed

'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard

It is Spring in the southern hemisphere and like most home food gardeners, I have been busy sowing and planting the summer crops.  The news that the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has called an emergency meeting to discuss another looming food crisis has given a certain edge to what is usually a peacful and satisfying pastime.  Once again, global food prices are soaring, with wheat, oil-seed, sugar and meat all at unprecedented premiums.  Riots, that resulted in the deaths of seven people and scores of injured others, broke out in neighbouring Mozambique this week as the government tried to hike up bread prices by 30%. 

Fava Bean flowers

The food price surges are the result of an ever-increasing demand and a critical shortage of supply.  Weather has made a big impact on the poor harvests of the northern hemisphere.  It was an unusually hot Summer over much of Europe and Asia bringing drought and wildfires.  There has been unusually wet weather across Canada, and of course, the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. But, of course, the problem goes a lot deeper than the weather- a resilient food system can withstand such shocks.  The bigger picture is that the global food system is far from strong and hardy; it is patently unsustainable and the need for transformation is urgent. 

Garden Pea

One of the 'bright green' ideas to facilitate this transformation is the urban foodshed.  The term seems to have first been coined by W C Hedden in the 1929 book "How Great Cities Are Fed". It is analogous to a watershed, referring to the geographic areas that feed the urban population centres. Mapping the urban foodshed enables a city to answer the questions - Where is our food coming?  And, how best can we enhance and protect our food system?  The urban foodshed is also being increasingly used as a framework to envision local and sustainable city food systems as the antidote to global and unsustainable ones.

Strawberry flower

Many international cities on the road to sustainability have strategies in place to to enable and strengthen local and regional food systems.  A local urban foodshed is often defined as being within 100 kilometres of city and the regional urban foodshed within 300 kilometres.  Common 2020 international goals are to have at least 25% of the food consumed in city coming from the local foodshed; and 65% from the regional foodshed (which encompasses the local foodshed).  The advantages of a local and sustainable urban foodshed are not least, lower food prices, local supply and reduced carbon footprint. 

Rosa Tomatoes

Growing some of our own food is an action that just about everyone can take, and many individuals are nowadays inspired to get their hands dirty.  City food gardening is blooming all over the world, and not just in the suburban backyard. Urban community gardening projects abound, and city-dwellers are also growing fruit, vegetables and herbs on balconies, decks, rooftops and walls.  There's a growing awareness that the city landscape can, and should be edible.  Urban food gardening is no longer regarded as  a hobby for the green-fingered; but for the green-minded, it is a lifestyle strategy for food security, health and sustainability.

Here you will find a useful paper, "Foodshed Analysis and its relevance to Sustainability" by CJ Peters et al 2008
 http://www.greentechboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Peters_FoodshedAnalysis_2009.pdf

Who Needs the Healing?

UNTAMED is a year-long, living exhibition at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town that combines art, plants, poetry, sustainable architecture and a solar panel.  It's a poignant, pressing statement designed provoke individual consciousness about our relationships to Nature.

The spiraling, solar-powered, naturally-lit pavilion has been designed by Enrico Daffonchio.  The living wall comprised of re-fashioned plastic cold-drink bottles filled with indigenous ground covers was planted by the Kirstenbosch horticulturalists.

The sculptures are by Dylan Lewis, renowned for his animal works in bronze.  Here he explores humanity's balance with Nature in a way that evokes a lost wildness, and a lost serenity.  The words are by Ian McCallum, poet and psychiatrist, wilderness guide and psychological analyist probably best known for his book, Ecological Intelligence.  


I rushed through UNTAMED - after an appropriately wild toddler who loved running the spiral and would not be tamed by the conventions of viewing an exhibition.  But despite this, words by Ian McCallum jumped out at me: "We need to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing.  The Earth does not need healing.  We do."

Because I feel so urgent about giving Nature the chance for the restoration and renewal of wildness, I often think, speak and write in terms of us 'healing the Earth'.  So I really enjoyed the challenge of this statement.  It's not a new idea but it is certainly has value in being revived.  Mr McCallum's view is that we are pathological in our relationship to Nature.  He echoes American monk, 'Earth scholar' and Deep Ecology advocate Thomas Berry who described humanity in relation to Nature as being autistic for centuries.

What they, and many other sustainable living activists, are saying is that we won't get sustainability right without addressing the fundamental problems in the way we see and relate to Nature.  While we exist in a paradigm that disregards and attempts to dominate Nature; while we find the most value in Nature in terms of what we can extract from it, instead of learn about it; we will remain in opposition to the force that gives us life - eco-illiterate, pathological, unresponsive - doomed.  The challenge of awakening to respect,  love, appreciation, even reverence for Life - ours and all others, is an individual one.

Gardening for Resilience

We have such a deeply ingrained urge to cultivate. Maybe one day they'll find a genome for it! The second last chapter of Stewart Brand's book, Whole Earth Discipline, is called: "It's All Gardening". He writes: "Ecosystem engineering is an ancient art, practiced and malpracticed by every human society since the mastery of fire. We would be fools to repeat their mistakes and just as foolish to ignore some of the brilliant practices that worked for them."

How should we be gardening today?

We are facing unprecedented challenges. The ways we choose to garden will have an impact on our resilience in the face of climate change. We should be gardening for biodiversity, for local and sustainable food, for sustainable water and for zero waste. Here's an example of a folly in my home city, Cape Town:

- a rose garden in the showpiece Company Gardens - Why? It even gets a mention on the city's "green map". Why? The Cape Town city and environs is blessed to be home to one of the unique floral kingdoms of the world. The smallest floral kingdom in the world in terms of space but the second most diverse in terms of species - and that's second only to the Amazonian floral kingdom that spans multiple countries and continents. Why aren't we proudly growing our native flora in our showpiece urban garden? Why are we growing roses?

It's time - let's grow for food and biodiversity. Let us plant native plants and restore our biodiversity. Let us plant for food and create an urban foodshed. Let us get off the train at the new revamped Cape Town station and pick a banana or an orange on the way to work. Let us plant an Erica or Buchu on our balcony and feed a butterfly and a bee.

Let the landscapers give up on the hungry lawns and sterile exotic palms. Let us create food-rich, nature-rich local environments that make us strong.

Nature Play

Today's parents are beset by anxieties about providing our children with the 'right' development opportunities that will prepare them for "success". The current children of the developed world are the most over-regulated, over-organised, busiest children in human history - and some would argue, also the most limited. The greatest of these limitations is not being able to roam freely in Nature. Fear for children's safety and dwindling Nature are just two of the reasons why children of today spend far less unsupervised time outdoors than their parents did. The commercialisation of childhood is another major factor. Indoor play areas have become big business in the same way that video and TV products evermore replace a child's primary experience of the world.

In his influential book, 'Last Child in the Woods', Richard Loev proposes that in fact enabling our children to play freely in Nature every day, come rain or shine, is one of the greatest things we can do to prepare them for fulfilling adult lives. He presents a vast array of studies that indicate that unstructured Nature play impacts positively on physical, cognitive and emotional development. For instance, a comparative study of pre-schoolers in Norway and Sweden showed that children in a 'green' playschool who spent most of their school time rambling outside in a natural setting had significantly better physical prowess than their counterparts who were engaged in some organised physical activity on a level playground. The Nature children, who ran and tumbled over uneven ground, climbed trees, waded in water and built forts in long grass had better muscle tone and strength, greater balance and co-ordination skills.

Physical development may be the most obvious benefit. However, Nature play is also increasingly being used with promising results as either an alternative or supplementary therapy for children diagnosed with ADHD. Parents involved in these studies report both the immediate calming affect of Nature on their children and an increased capacity to focus after Nature experiences. In a world with an increasing demand for innovation, it may also trigger the ambitions of some parents to know that studies show that children who play often in Nature show markedly greater capacities for quality creativity.

Scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson uses his "biophilia" hypothesis to argue that humans have a biological need to "affiliate with other forms of life" - that is, a physical connection to the natural world is fundamental to our individual development.

Leap for Sustainability

Bright Green thinker and writer, Alex Steffen of http://www.worldchanging.com has long maintained that we cannot achieve sustainability by taking little steps. He also warns that focusing on small, simple changes can dangerously distract us from taking the necessary big leaps that the complexity of our world demands. Instead Mr Steffen urges us constantly towards consciousness of the whole system in which we are embedded, as well as high level actions on political and personal levels.

In this article, How to Really Green Your Home, Deep Down

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011094.html you can watch Catherine Mohr's entertaining and smart TED talk of how she grappled with her ecological impact when she was building a new home. Its provides great insights into embodied energy and water, and shows how to take them into account.

For many of us, our homes represent the largest systems that we have control over, and they are therefore the most significant places where we can make an impact on sustainability. It is important to fully understand our homes in terms of processes, networks and relationships. Bits and pieces of green technologies and some 'simple' actions won't make the difference that is possible with a whole-systems understanding and approach.