It was a huge pleasure today to give a talk on #Sufficiency and #EcologicalDemocracy at the Greifswald Mire Centre @greifswaldmoor, having been invited by @FranziskaTanneberger (who, by the way, is an excellent choice for the prestigious German Environment Award!).

Before the lecture, and a very interesting tour of the facilities, I had a chance to see the protected coastal mire areas of the Succow Foundation, the Karrendorfer Wiesen: Impressive skies, fall colours, and a myriad of shapes.

New blog! My first substantial writing that I’ve finished to my satisfaction in months!

“Nonviolence is a powerful, active, creative, generative form of resistance to violent systems.”
#peace #nonviolence #change #EcologicalDemocracy #democracy #coexistence

Read here:
https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/peace-is-a-process-nonviolence-is-action/

Finally here is my #Introduction I'm a #Design scholar, working on #Ecodesign #Commons and #ParticipatoryDesign #EcologicalDemocracy #OrganisationalDesign #ClimateCrisis and more.

Currently writing a new #DesignEcologies MA programme at LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY.

How does #change for the better happen? Can our political system deliver the huge changes we need, as urgently as we need them?

I’ve long argued that, in order to tackle the #ClimateCrisis, we need radical political, economic and cultural #transformation. And I’ve always been told that we don’t have time for that.

This week, we’ve seen the real-time impacts of the environment movement’s refusal to think outside the box of existing political power. And the Greens’ failure (thus far) to build the social movements necessary to support our parliamentary negotiations. And, most starkly, the complete corruption of our mainstream politics - the fact that Labor and the press gallery act as mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry and believe political manoeuvring is more important than stopping omnicide.

I thought this would be a good time to re-share this essay I wrote a couple of years ago, explaining my #TheoryOfChange in this moment of #polycrisis.

It draws on ideas of #ecologicalDemocracy and #EcoAnarchism, and forms the basis of a chunk of the last chapter of #LivingDemocracy.

Here it is: https://arena.org.au/theres-no-time-left-not-to-do-everything/

My #TEDx #Canberra on #TransformativeChange #panarchy #moths #LivingDemocracy and more is now live! I’d love thoughts and feedback, particularly from #EcologicalDemocracy folks, but anyone, really :-)

https://youtu.be/GtlZydpQGc0

Starting a thread on #CommunityWealth. This is one area that Ecosteader's mission as a B Corp can begin to be elucidated. It's more than my "hope"; it is my firm belief that #EcologicalDemocracy is the only way to build a sustainable wealth cycle for a community: one that endures.

"For community wealth building to work among tribal nations, it must match indigenous philosophies and values. It must be-come the community’s own by grounding the frame in the cultural values of the community and translating it into the lived realities of the people."

Another important spoke of consideration is to listen ; meditation is balancing the inner

ears are things that listen

https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/CommunityWealthBuildingALakotaTranslation-final-web.pdf

Interesting #conceptual design making agriculture in "hot and dry coastal regions" all the more efficient...

It a seawater-powered #solar #greenhouse and it's engineered to work with the variety of climatological region that has easy access to salt water, but maybe not fresh water... yet still do water-intensive agriculture.

"A #seawater greenhouse produces crops year-round in hot dry areas using only seawater and sunlight. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, strawberries, herbs—anything that can be grown in traditional greenhouses—can be grown in seawater greenhouses. The award-winning technology, invented by Seawater Greenhouse Ltd. founder Charlie Paton, was inspired by the natural water cycle where seawater heated by the sun evaporates, cools to form clouds, and returns to earth as precipitation."

"The idea behind the process is simple. It combines two unlimited resources - sunlight and seawater - to provide ideal growing conditions for crops in hot, arid environments.

The innovation [uses] the cooling and humidifying power of water vapor produced from evaporating salt water. Using modeling and simulation techniques developed in collaboration with our partners at Aston University, we are able to process local climate data to predict greenhouse performance and inform the design. The combined effect of reducing temperature and increasing humidity, together with providing a protected environment for crops, results in up to 90% reduction in Evapotranspiration. This to greatly reduced irrigation requirements, which can be provided by desalination, and improved growing conditions."

Sources: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/02/18/seawater-greenhouses-produce-tomatoes-in-the-desert/

https://seawatergreenhouse.com/technology

#SolarPunk #Agriculture #EcologicalDemocracy

#EcologicalDemocracy

Designs (plural). Because they can be applied locally.

#DemocracyNotAnarchy

As the population of cities increases, there cannot be mistakes in the overestimation.

Balance in what is sustainable has to be defined.