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LAS GAVIOTAS

Our local office for various environmental projects (I can't tell you which year) once circulated an old photocopy of a story about a sustainable fantasy dream-project called Las Gaviotas.

Big dream indeed!

And the article had photos. That meant that the place was real. The article was copied again and again, circulated around different offices, three hole punched and displayed in a coffee table binder of projects that gave us inspiration—set our own dreams alight.

And the pictures we saw? (I wish I could show you!)

Life of a forest coming from desert: we saw sandy dry soil and trees being planted in channels in the middle of nowhere, seesaws pumping water, a windmill....

I'm quoting the next couple of paragraphs here from the book description of, "Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, 2nd edition", by Alan Weisman, that "... in the late 1960s, a young Colombian development worker named Paolo Lugari wondered if the nearly uninhabited, infertile Ilanos could be made livable for his country's growing population. He had no idea that nearly four decades later, his experiment would be one of the world's most celebrated examples of sustainable living: a permanent village called Gaviotas...

"Over time, the Gaviotans' experimentation has even restored an ecosystem: in the shelter of two million Caribbean pines planted as a source of renewable commercial resin, a primordial rain forest that once covered the Ilanos is unexpectedly reestablishing itself... Paolo Lugari (has been called) "Inventor of the World." Lugari himself has said that Gaviotas is not a utopia: "Utopia literally means 'no place'. We call Gaviotas a topia because it's real."

Between desert-like dry conditions and flooding, the grassy savannah with a soil PH of 4 was too acidic to plant. The Gaviotans with their determination and perseverance observed bio-diverse clue after clue, until challenges thwarted were all laid to rest and the forest that once had existed 30,000 years ago slowly began to regrow.

First they had found a type of young pine, a rare tree seedling that might take to the soil with its PH. The Gaviotans cultivated these to provide the beginnings of shade. They accidentally learned that some of the trees stood a much better chance in the presence of certain soil fungi during the minimal growing time in the region.

The shade from these pines then lowered the temperature of soil, thus adding moisture and increasing the microbial web. Another synergistic enzyme made the pines hardier, resilient too. And so on it goes...

Humidity from the processes and breathing of trees and bacterial presence in air increased the rainfall, gradually regenerating two hundred and fifty new species of plants, including medicinal ones presumed to be dormant, re-catalyzed from ancient rainforest seeds during the restoration of soil PH to 6.5.

Fresh water aquifers added to deep soil water basins and further new kingdoms of life sprang up. Medicines allowed for health care of local groups and animals.

With more growing life, increasing forest products permitted the residents bio-based economic activities and their larger community provisions with food, water, products and education from reforestation.

Quality wood made musical instruments. The Gaviotan pine resin turned out to be valuable for turpentines on the international market and with biofuels too.

The empowered villagers using clever solutions in biology, physics and green chemistry, with a zero waste biorefinery for their resin packaging right at it's core, built many inventions: a water-pumping children's playground, processing facilities for mineral waters with packaging to be recycled as toys, a manual well-digger, ox-drawn land graders; peanut shellers, balers which compressed hay into bricks, solar grain dryers, pedal-powered grinders, sugar cane presses, solar panels, solar kettle, micro-hydro plantation and a naturally ventilated and UV purified hospital with sterilization and distillation for surgeries too.

Lugari declared their community neutral in an area where conflicts and kidnappings were normal, and as long as no one brought weapons in, rebels included were offered medical help in exchange. And they thrived.

Creative dynamic ideas and solutions unleashed through the chatting of casual "one hundred dinners," Lugari says, is how they arrived at multi-functional systems-solutions—solving all problems together at just the same time—synergistically whole.

Originally financed entirely from carbon credits of Millennium goals, numerous eco-products from this newly restored (at first) 4,000 HA eco-forest (then 8,000 HA at fourteen years) enabled Lagari to double average worker wages, increasing dedication and loyalty of a full thriving village. (The new goals then shifted to 80,000 HA at Gaviotas, with the creation of a new 45,000 HA forest in nearby Marandua.)

Lugari and his team had clear social, ecological, appropriate eco-technology and economic goals in what it "had" to become, says Alexander Prinsen, ecological thinker and innovation expert. (And from whose case study work the above list of inventions was gleaned.)

Innovative bio-solutions—from what was not there—stimulated healthier soil and diversity through Gaviotan passion and care.

Las Gaviotas has successfully generated a haven of non-abusive engineering wonders and proven to a stunned United Nations that land restoration can indeed be woven together with economic development which could restore all life as we go.

And that's why I wanted Las Gaviotas to be the start of the project 'whys' in this scrapbook. The proof does exist.

We know so many people these days charging ahead with bio-reclaimation, regenerative forestry and agriculture, permaculture and sustainable development, carbon sequestration—in all parts of the world.

We need re-foresting cover back on at least fifty percent of our current bald planet. And people are planting—madly in fact.

How much can we share with our internet skills or intentions about rebuilding the soil? Our own greatest achievements in life may be the measure of how many cubic metres of organic microbial soil we each build or contribute as we plant through our days.

Gaviotas was an inhospitable desert and now sustains life. From desert to village to sustainable planet—real people thrive. Can we do this in time? (I just offered to plant lavender here this year for our friend May on the other side of the planet.) What else can we grow that connects us to life for each other?

Perhaps it's not been the 'what' we've had wrong, It might be the "how'. What else don't we know or believe until we can see it?

Singing off note...

Changing Our Hearts

If we live in the city, do we work in the world? Where can we (part or full time) grow the lifeweb of soil?

Here's a rare video about Gaviotas, below, but the rhetorical prompt I intend with my questions comes more from the charming second TEDTalk video below on education:

** Note: LINKS not appearing here on WP will one day be posted on my BLOG (when I EDIT the website... but not really soon I'm afraid with tech limits ongoing.)

Las Gaviotas by Gunter Pauli.mp4


A TED Talk I would like to call, Build for Beebo, but it's real title is "A Better Education: Lonny Grafman at TEDxYouth@HumboltBay"

https://youtu.be/pc3C6OwfhOE?list=FL01xD3RFZ1J1kQ3NQw9Kg4g

Or, if you get truly hooked, you might want to look into something like these courses. I know at least a couple of you, I'm thinking of here. :) In Canada here are two examples: Queen's University course / primers for student or auditing citizens in mechanical engineering MECH424 Sustainable Product Design

& "Mech425 Engineering for Sustainable Development" should you want to check content, and follow up with your own success story projects. Mech425 "...covers aspects of appropriate technology, green engineering and materials, resource conservation, renewable resources, and design for extreme affordability."

And some course videos from the Oregon State University Ecampus, which might be even more accessible to everyone here:


And several more example videos of who's doing good work and 'how' we can nurture, reforest, rebuild and replant:

People Doing Good / Features Archives - Rob Greenfield


Change the Rules of the Game: Gunter Pauli at TEDxMaastricht


GREENPOWERSCIENCE - YouTube


NCATATTRA - YouTube


Article: The Paradigm Shifted: The Renaissance of the Rainforest - How Las Gaviotas (Colombia) moves from a pilot to a megaproject, by Gunter Pauli, Founder of ZERI, Summer 2005

But best of all, Paolo Lugari can be found most prevelantly under 'videos' in a wide Google search (although still quite rare to find anything since they have no internet).

Here's one: Paola Lugari: Founder of Las Gaviotas (in Español with Simultaneous English translation)

And an exploding number of 'appropriate technology, tiny home, permaculture and off the grid sustainable living videos will give us all endless ideas for our skills while re-building life's soil.

Hope you're inspired! :)

—/

Next post will be: "Placemaking"

Cheers from me here,

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