Should we strive for more equality in our societies?

Dear Friends,
The first image has nothing to do with the topic of this blog, unless the phenomenon of a guy making chutney connects with equality. We had a glut of zucchini, so several of us made a large amount of excellent chutney a few days ago. These are fellow Atamai villagers, Craig and Lynda. Took us all day.

OK, back to work. I read this book because other things I was reading referred to it. I thought it was very good; it has me thinking seriously about the issue. A young Green party friend says that all the politicians are reading it.

See what you think yourself.

Book Review of Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, New York, Berlin, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2010

The merits of societies more equal in income and wealth have been discussed for centuries. In the late 19th century, Edward Bellamy published two novels in the US – Looking Backward and its sequel, Equality. The plot of both involves a young man, Julian West, who goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find that the US has undergone an economic revolution. All persons, male and female, are now economic equals. The two novels are an extended elaboration on the implications of this change and moral arguments for economic equality. Looking Backward became the third best-seller in the US at the time and gave rise to ‘Bellamy Clubs’, to several attempts at communities founded on these principles, and to a spate of books written in response to Bellamy’s ideas.

In the real world, inequality within countries has increased, at least over the 50 years for which we have adequate data . The increase is attributed substantially to increased wealth of the uppermost 20% of each country’s population. Does this matter, in that, in almost every country, per capita income has increased over this period?

Wilkinson and Pickett, UK public health scholars, bring a great deal of evidence to support their assertion that income inequality is a crucial variable in a great range of dimensions of human well-being. Their data apply only to high income countries, those on the plateau of the curve of happiness or life expectancy plotted against income, where more income does not mean more happiness or years of life. In those countries, it seems, more equality does mean more happiness. More equality correlates with more child well-being, more trust in other people, higher status of women, more of the national income spent on foreign aid, less mental illness, less drug use, greater life expectancy, lower infant mortality, fewer obese adults and overweight children, higher maths and literacy scores, fewer teenage pregnancies, fewer homicides, less bullying in children, fewer people in prison and more social mobility. These trends are derived from data of the 20 richest countries and also data on inequality levels for all US states. What is enormously interesting is that people at all income levels, not just the poor, do worse in unequal societies. And at any given income level, a person will be better off in a more equal society. Interestingly, the relationship does not apply for inequalities in small local areas.

What is it about living in an unequal society, both at a country level and a US state level that could contribute to such a wide range of physical and social ills? Social relationships, as measured by social cohesion, trust, involvement in community life, are better in more equal societies, and are known to be important correlates of health and well-being. Conversely, social hierarchies appear to be bad for health and well-being. People experience social evaluative situations, where they see themselves being compared with others in some way, as particularly highly stressful. Assigned social status, or in more rigid societies, caste, is a cognitive organiser of social evaluation. Income and its visible markers of house, car, clothes and possessions are prominent markers of social status. People lower on the hierarchy are stressed by their position relative to others, and strive to attain markers of higher status.

Herve Kampf, in the forthrightly titled How the Rich are Destroying the Earth cites research showing that the greater the gap between where a person regards themselves as situated on a social scale and the reference group for their aspirations, the more hours they will be prepared to work. People in more unequal societies work many more hours per year.

It is this behaviour, ‘conspicuous consumption’, that is a major driver of carbon emissions, other pollution and habitat reduction. So inequality, say the authors, is a significant contributor to climate change and the many other survival -threatening aspects of the degradation of Nature.

What is to be done? Wilkinson and Pickett argue strongly for the adoption of means towards a more equal society. They point out that a more equal distribution of income can be achieved at the point of salary received or taxes paid. There can be both ceilings and floors on allowable salaries. There can be agreed ratios in corporations between highest and lowest earners. A few corporations have already adopted such a measure. Their most favoured measure is the conversion of hierarchical corporations into workers’ cooperatives, where decision-making power, responsibility and salaries are shared equally. Interestingly, this happened inadvertently during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The rich fled the region, and workers took over the factories and corporations – successfully, it seems. Equality was a strong value in these organisations. Mondragon, the world's largest workers' cooperative, in the Spanish Basque region, has recently made an agreement with United Steel Workers to set up cooperative structures in Canada and the US. This is an extremely interesting development. Mondragon's salasry ratio is never more than 5:1. (This compares with 400: 1 in some corporations.)

The findings put together so masterfully by Wilkinson and Pickett have major public health significance generally. In New Zealand, the Green Party has explicit measures to achieve a more equal society in this highly unequal one. There are implications for our village. There are wealth differences in the beginning population of the village. The social structures of the village equalise this, but beyond this settlement’s enthusiastic beginnings, will that prevail? Or will wealth and income differences create a social hierarchy with its very many attendant ills? We must try to avoid this.

Markus Jantti and Susanna Sandstrom. Trends in Income Inequality: A critical study of the evidence in WIID2. 2005. http://www.rrojasdatabank.info/widerconf/JanttyStr.pdf Accessed 2010 Jan7.
Herve Kampf. How the Rich are Destroying the Earth. Vermont, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing company, 2007.
Ted Trainer. Inspiration for Local Economies Today: The Success of the Spanish Collectives. Pacific Ecologist 19, Winter/Spirng 2010, pp43-47.

Biochar book review

Dear Friends,

The first photo is a pile of biochar. Also in view are our new solar panels and barrels of cow manure collected by Jack and Jeff for compost. (This stuff us as gold around here. I considered an armed guard but it seems inconsistent with the hope of building trust in our village!)

Below is a book review. There's reason to be modestly hopeful about the potential of the use of biochar in farming and gardening to have a useful impact on sequestering carbon.

This is particularly interesting to me, as we use it here regularly when we plant anything, even little seedlings. Atamai has a biochar-based soil amendment. The formula was put together some years ago by village founder Jurgen Heissner and colleagues. It includes rock dust, effective micro-organisms and much more. We are in general very pleased with its effects, but very much need to do systematic trials.

Update on us:

Healthy, active, enjoying the addition of our youngest son, Jeff to the family. The guys are outdoors a fair bit. Right now, Jack is mowing grass with a crawler and Jeff is assisting the masons who are laying blocks in our new house.

The new house is progressing, but some months off moving-in time.

Atamai Village: There has been a surge of new interest in the village, with two couples having committed themselves over last weekend and a third looking likely. They are from Australia, the US and New Zealand. All of them share our worried projections for the future of the mainstream economy, and see strong reasons to aim for self-reliance in basic needs.

Transition Town Motueka: A low level of activity specifically organised under this aegis, but considerable activity on the things that matter. Riverside continues to run workshops on relevant skills. this weekend's is on how to build yourself a solar shower. The Motueka Community Garden is developing. I continue with my radio show. The upcoming session will be an interview with a fascinating man who keeps a team of Clydesdales, has the remnants of a bullock team, and has a full range of horse-drawn agricultural implements. He sees these as of historic and tourist interest. I see them as valuable potential assets for the future. Lester Rowntree, the man with the horses and bullocks, has been ploughing the community garden with them, a very picturesque sight.

The review has been written for Peace Magazine, published in Canada, which I recommend to you.

The Biochar Solution by Albert Bates.
Gabriola Island, BC Canada: New Society Publishers, 2010.
We are in big trouble, as readers of this magazine know, from our violent
relationship with the Earth. We risk runaway climate change, and even the aware
among us shrink from imagining what that would be like for our children
and grandkids.
Biochar to the rescue? Of course not. Sorry. We know perfectly well there is no
one solution, nothing that will absolve us from the strenuous task of working out
how to live with less and then no fossil fuel. That is and will remain our first
duty to the Earth and our offspring. I get irritated by writing that includes the
word 'offset', as if we can keep polluting the atmosphere as long as we offset our
sins by planting more trees or some such activity.
But biochar may play a modest but significant role in bringing carbon back down
to safe enough levels for human civilization to continue. Albert Bates's book does a
splendid job of telling us how this could be done, and giving a global coverage of
who is doing what in this arena. Bates has impressive credentials for exploring
alternatives to our current suicidal patterns. He shared the 1980 Right Livelihood
Award for work to preserve the cultures of indigenous people and is co-founder of the
Global Ecovillage Network, which he represents at the UN climate change talks. He is
a practical man who has made and used biochar himself. And he is a good story-
teller.
His book is full of fascinating stories - of the discovery of Amazonian biochar,
and of the many people who have followed up on this, in one way or another. The book
is fun to read. In addition, Bates does a good job of explaining the science behind
charcoal, the nature of soil, climate change and so on.
Here's the plot. About 10,000 years ago, agriculture began in the Fertile
Crescent. The technology of ploughing and irrigating the soil were steadily refined.
These were wrong turns for humanity. The ploughing depleted the soil web of life and the
irrigation salinated the soil. Over time, the Crescent became a desert, and the
civilizations that once flourished there disappeared. This story has repeated itself
on most but not all continents. Australia's Murray River basin tragedy is the latest
episode. In two places agriculture took a different turn. In China, extensive
composting returned to the soil what was taken out, even to the extent of routinely
taking the humanure from cities back to the fields. Forty centuries later, the soil
continued to be fertile (1). In Amazonian South America, a pattern of composting
incorporating charred biomass developed. Bates believes it was sytematic, done to a
recipe. The soil remains highly fertile, much more so than the surrounding rain
forest soil, to this day, and even 'grows', apparently drawing nutrients in to the
soil life from the surrounding area. When rediscovered last century, it came to be
known as 'terra preta' , black earth. . Bates cites recent archaeological evidence of the remarkable
population density of pre-Columbian Amazon civilization, supported by this soil. When it fell
suddenly after Spanish contact, their agricultural methods and the adapted cultivars they had used
perished too, along with the formula for terra preta
Other early agricultural and pastoral practices began to increase atmospheric
carbon dioxide long before the fossil fuel age. Flooded rice paddies produced
methane, as did increasing flocks of domesticated animals. Burning forest areas to
clear land produced carbon dioxide and decreased the carbon dioxide 'sink' capacity
of the disappearing forest. By 1000CE, most of England's trees were cut down. By taking off crop after
crop and dispersing the biomass, soil carbon decreased by 30-50% in most places, thus increasing carbon in atmosphere and ocean. In our reasonable focus on the role of fossil fuel in climate change, we tend to ignore the contribution of land use and change in land use, such as deforestation, in sending carbon into the atmosphere. It is substantial, perhaps responsible for a third of the excess greenhouse gases.
After 6000 years of ploughing we are relearning how to grow food while maintaining the health of the soil, including its crucial carbon content. We need to change our patterns of land use and agriculture urgently in ways that sequester carbon in stab le form. It can be expected to remain sequestered in this form for centuries or millennia, and this is a vital parameter in the dynamics of the carbon cycle. In fact, the potential of massive programmes of soil and biomass carbon sequestration could make a difference to atmospheric carbon in the next two decades – a time scale much faster than the probability of effective action from technologies now being invested with questionable hope, such as new fuels and carbon capture at source.
So-called carbon farming involves no tillage of the soil, organic growing methods, using crop residue as mulch (thus returning its carbon and other nutrients to the soil), using cover crops between the food or fibre crops, rotational grazing of pasture animals, turning from annual crops to perennial polycultures, employing the great range of Permaculture strategies, agroforestry, leaving wild plant strips, keyline water management and subsoil ploughing. And incorporating biochar mixtures in recreated terra preta-type soil amendments. These methods also have the potential to eliminate the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers – an important source of the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.
The programme needs to involve massive global tree-planting, stopping deforestation, carbon farming and biochar sequestration. Bates suggests that carbon farming could sequester 1 Gigatonne of carbon a year in both labile (short-term) and stable (long-term) carbon. Biochar use could sequester another Gigatonne a year in stable carbon. . Reforestation on a massive scale could sequester 4.5 Gigatonnes a year. There are about 800 Gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere, so we could slowly reverse the current disastrous accumulation of carbon.
Bates tells us how biochar is made and why it works so well. There is a fascinating chapter on stoves, especially low-cost stoves to replace the smoky cooking methods responsible for a fair slice of low-income country mortality and morbidity. Some of these inventions also produce biochar which can increase garden fertility for the owners.
Bates doesn’t deal with the limits to biochar sequestration in soils with high carbon levels, or with the issue of loss of nutrients other than carbon in forming charcoal rather than letting biomass rot back into the Earth.
This book sent me into action – joining the International Biochar Initiative, and going to inspect our ‘terra preta’-enhanced tree plantings which experts say are doing remarkably well. I like to think of the biochar around their roots, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries.
Joanna Santa Barbara is working to develop Atamai, a New Zealand ecovillage trying to respond to peak oil and climate change issues. She and her colleagues use a biochar mix in all their plantings.

1. FH King. Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea and Japan.Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2004. (First published in 1911.)

Transmitting knowledge

Dear Family and Friends,
I recently read the book shown in the photo.
My friend, Metta, has been working towards it almost as long as I've known her. As I've said in my review, below, it made me think a good deal about the importance of cross-national, cross-cultural transmission of knowledge.

The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy by Metta Spencer.
Lanham, USA: Lexington Books, 2010.
Joanna Santa Barbara
In 1982 I was in Moscow with Metta Spencer, the author of a remarkable book on the transmission of ideas, in this case, ideas about peace. We and several other Canadian peace activists were on our way to participate in an international peace conference in Vienna. Metta had a telephone number of a dissident peace organisation in Moscow. We found our way to a small apartment and met with members of the Trustbuilders Group. This group aimed to counter Cold War mentality on both sides of the Iron Curtain by fostering people-to-people relationships and joint projects. The members were being persecuted, for example by being fired from their jobs, because they stood as independent thinkers outside the government system. Metta established relationships with the people in this group that have lasted to this day, and began pursuing a 28 year-long trail led by her curiosity about the impact of western peace researchers and activists on the tortuous development of Russian peace and democracy.
The Trustbuilders exemplified what Metta called ‘barking dogs’, those who spoke up outside the system, the critics. These people suffered, often seriously, from their courageous expressions. Her typology of actors includes ‘termites’, those within the system who were quietly critical and actively searching for new ideas. When Mikhail Gorbachev, a termite who had assimilated the most important concepts peace research had to offer, assumed power, history took several dramatic turns. The typology is completed with ‘sheep’, the large majority of citizens who accepted life as it was, and largely accepted the framing of reality presented by the state.
We learn how the ideas of the great 20th century peace researchers, such as Anatol Rapaport, Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fischer reached the inner circle of Soviet policy-makers around Gorbachev, and how, much earlier, President Kennedy, influenced by Charles Osgood’s ideas on Graduated Reciprocation of Tension Reduction (GRIT) made several unilateral disarmament moves. Each was immediately reciprocated by Khrushchev in a series abruptly ended by Kennedy’s murder. GRIT, the ideas of common security, non-offensive defence, reasonable sufficiency in weaponry (rather than ruinous arms races), confidence-building measures, non-intervention in other states, the necessity for nuclear abolition were assimilated by Gorbachev and became part of his ‘New Political thinking’. Lithuania, after becoming an independent state, even adopted the idea from peace research of civilian-based defence.
While peace theory took root, a highly creative process of citizen diplomacy occurred through the 1980s. Brilliant solo players such a Norman Cousins, Jeremy Stone, Bernard Lown and Ernst van Eeghen played their parts, backed by organisations such as the Dartmouth Conferences, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Pugwash, and Parliamentarians for Global Action.
These processes seeded new ideas in receptive Soviet minds, worked out implementation processes together and formed relationships of trust. Many readers of this review will have played some role in this chapter of history. Metta reviews the outcome to the present – the transformation of Eastern Europe without violence, the end of proxy wars, avoidance of nuclear war and progress in nuclear disarmament. She examines the sad question of why Russians are willing to tolerate authoritarian government, reversing the moves towards democracy that Gorbachev began. She focuses on the low levels of social trust in Russia, between people and between citizens and their government. It is worth considering what community-building processes might remedy this.
Metta has an engaging style of writing, very like a personal conversation. The book is deeply interesting for its theoretical content, and fascinating for the cameos of extraordinary people who appear in the pages. Metta has created a website with photos of these people, and the full texts of the hundreds of interviews that provided the substance of this work. (http://russianpeaceanddemocracy.com )
I found myself pondering after I finished reading. When the cross-national transmission of ideas can yield such important results, what are the responsibilities of intellectuals and activists? Are these processes relevant to the other daunting task many of us face – how to end the destruction of Nature through human economic activity and population growth, most acutely in climate change and biodiversity loss? It is extraordinary to consider that, whereas in the historic episode Metta documents, it was the impact of ideas on Soviet minds that was the focus, now it is US and Chinese minds, as well as those in our own societies that might be thought crucial. Might cross-fertilising conversations with two-way learning get us over the present terrifying stalemate?

Working together

Dear Friends and Family and other readers of this blog,
We recently had a rather marvellous day working on building a huge compost heap and preparing stuff to stimulate micro-organism growth in the soil.

I discovered through last week's communal garden building for the Motueka Community Garden, and this week's Biodynamic Day at Atamai (more explanation
later) how much pleasure I can get out of a community working effort.
I have for decades enjoyed the pleasures of working with others towards important goals in peace, and latterly ecological issues. Sharing intellectual capacity, creative ideas, working hard together, sharing laughs has for a very long time been one of the good things in my life. But, amazingly, there's even more of a 'high' for me in joint physical work towards a shared goal. Two weeks ago it was the creation of a community garden for the township of Motueka, a large project that will require more work. I personally won't benefit from this, but people who want to grow things but have little or no land on which to do it will benefit. It was a great feeling to be on a wheelbarrow or wield a shovel alongside others, strangers getting to know each other while we worked alongside each other, and seeing the garden grow while we worked.

This last weekend, Atamai was the host for the regional biodynamic group. This group, followers of Rudolf Steiner's ideas about agriculture, meets once a month on someone's property to see what they're doing and work together according to biodynamic principles. I have an ambivalent intellectual relationship with these ideas, some of which seem quite mystical to me.
However, I'm challenged by data that suggest that biodynamic horticulture really is more productive, stores more carbon in the soil, and so on. And I'm entirely unambivalent about the people involved, who comprise many of my good friends. So the group, ranging between a dozen and 30 at various times of the day, consisted of about half Atamai people and half outsider biodynamicists who came to put in a day's work. Adrienne, a committed biodynamic gardener (and nurse) works most days at Atamai taking care of the orchards, and was the host for this day. (Her orchard work is sweat equity towards the acquisition of a lot at Atamai. She has done a lovely job on the orchards, which are looking beautiful.) Adrienne began working towards this day months ago. The cow manure, necessary for both compost building and biodynamic preparations (something like fertility stimulants) had to undergo special processes before it was ready for use. She had worked for months removing gorse from gullies in the orchards, and had made big cylindrical piles of rotting gorse for use on the compost pile. She had cut large bags of nettles grown (deliberately) on her own property. As she passed through Picton a month ago on her way back from a retreat for anthroposophical nurses (this is Steiner's philsophy on health), she had bought a load of seaweed, and it came in a large winebarrel.

The biodynamic way of making hot compost involves using hay or grass with the dew still on it. Adrienne started on the land by torchlight on Saturday morning, about 5.30am. When I got up at 6.30, I could hear her mowing over on the hillsides. The time for gathering for raking the grass was 7am. I got there at ten past, and there were already four people (outsiders) raking. We raked for a few hours and Adrienne, seemingly out of nowhere, began cooking buckwheat pancakes, which were eaten with damson jelly of her own making. I provided the tea in big thermoses. Coffee was made over a clever device in which a double metal cylinder holding water between its two walls is placed over a little fire. The inner cylinder acts as a chimney for the fire which draws well and heats the water. We sat around eating this feast for a while, then got back on the rakes, wheelbarrows, forks and shovels. By that time we were also forking gorse and shovelling manure in layers on to the compost pile. This pile began with a 9 1/2 x 3 metre base. There were a few layers of nettles, which to my astonishment, people handled with their bare hands, while I went to look for gloves. 'Doesn't it hurt?' I asked. 'Only a bit,'
was the answer. At various stages layers of seaweed (very smelly), ground dolomite, and rock dust were added. Every layer got a sprinkle with the hose. The manure, after its long treatment, wasn't at all smelly. Adrienne compared the process to baking a cake. After about 4 hours of work, the pile was two metres high. You couldn't see people working on the other side.

Adrienne climbed on top, used a crowbar to make eight deep holes through the layers, and dropped little clods of special biodynamic preparations down each hole.
Everyone cheered and rejoiced and then went home.

At 4pm people reconvened for the next phase, coming to a higher terrace on the orchard for the process of making and spreading biodynamic preparations. This was the more mystical side of biodynamics, but the quietly sceptical also joined in. You can see me stirring the mixture (first clockwise, making a vortex, then reversing) and Jack sprinkling the mixture on to the soil.

Finally we had a wonderful picnic on the still sunny terrace, with the many little kids rolling themselves down the grassy slopes and laughing.

This was the first large occasion of communal work at Atamai, although our tree planting last year involved 8-10 people at some stages. We plan in the future to build an implement shed, and a picnic shelter in this way. There are many other possible projects.

Warmest wishes,
Joanna

Atamai Village Update

Dear Friends,
I'm eager to give you an update on us and on the village. We're well and quite busy - Jack with tree-planting on the land around and sloping down from our house. In the previous two autumns there have been large-scale plantings of mainly natives for wind-break and slope protection. In the last month and continuing there has been planting of fruit and nut trees on the sunny terraces - cherry, plum, pear, nashi (a Japanese pear), peach, almond, hazelnut. Apples yet to come when we can get the varieties we want.
I'm largely occupied with the people side of the village - helping where it's needed, organising the communal meals and the village council meetings. A big day coming up is next Saturday when the regional biodynamic growers' group will meet here for a compost -making day and also to make biodynamic preparations. (Adrienne, who cares for the orchards, is strongly oriented to biodynamic growing.)

As you can see, the house is progressing. It takes an inordinate amount of our time too. Millions of mini-decisions.

Jurgen has just written a whole village update, which I'll now include. It gives you a good overview of where we are in village development.
This image is part of the garden Jurgen is developing adjacent to his house site. The house doesn't yet exist, but will be Japanese in character.

Hi everyone
Looking for the last update sent to everyone I realise that 10 months have gone by without a word from us to the friends of Atamai far and wide. Not surprisingly it is not due to all being quiet in the village but rather an unintended by-product of intense activity. Including everything that has happened and is going on would see you read for hours, so here is just a selection of some of the more important developments:
The land
Over the last months a good number of property changes, boundary adjustments, title issues and acquisitions have happened. A block of adjacent land of about 10 ha has been added to the village as well as another one of the existing houses on the ridge top. The house, a 400 sm high quality residence including a large independent flat, is being retrofitted with solar panels, an additional room and some landscaping changes and will be available for sale as part of the village at the end of the summer.
Food security, which was mentioned already in our mailout last summer as an upcoming crisis point is now emerging rapidly as an issue of serious concern around the world. Food prices are expected to rise by up to 30% in short order and food shortages in many countries are expected to continue to make headlines again. Last week a UN conference on the issue was called.
In the tradition of transition towns Atamai continues to work on practical preparations for local food security. The Mediterranean garden is in very good shape this spring, a private and established leasehold garden plot has been added to the village production pallet for a number of years and row crops are being put in for the first time for bulk staple foods.
The community orchard has been extended significantly over the winter planting season and is being lovingly cared for by Adrienne, who is now on the crew full time.
The nursery had an additional well water source added which we don’t expect to ever run dry.
Over summer we will put up the new green house to have more scope for shoulder season production (see nursery remarks below).
More maintenance and food production equipment has been purchased for the village including a small tractor with mower and front loader.
Village Development Process
We were fortunate to have two very talented landscape designers from London, Paul and Anise work for us over winter developing a Permaculture landscape design methodology which can now be used for the planning of all the new private sections. It makes the creation of effective permaculture systems a much easier, structured and satisfying process. It also saves a lot of effort and provides a means of integrating landscapes on private titles into the bigger Atamai permaculture picture.
The Sustainable Villages development team achieved a significant milestone and filed the application for the second residential stage of Atamai Village last month. This second stage comprises the balance of the larger sections scattered around the denser village core. The denser village core is the third stage which completes the village. The third stage is now planned for consent filing mid next year.
Stage two consists of 24 new residential sections, 7 of which are ‘sold’ or spoken for at this stage. The plan for the sections has been posted on the web site.
Building projects & Sections
Jack and Joanna’s house will have the ‘roof shout’ party for the first Atamai Eco House on the 29th of October. The roof is on, structural timber walls are up, windows are going in and it is making progress in leaps and bounds due to the diligent work of Greg Law and his ‘ORCA Development’ crew. Greg is looking forward to build as many of the homes and buildings at Atamai as possible.
One of the next buildings to be put up will be a stone clad implement shed on the commons.
Village community
Quite a few changes have happened and there is now a number of households living on the Atamai land. Craig and Tracey and their little son William have moved onto the site (renting), as have Wulf and his son Christian into their house and Greg and Isabel and their 4 children Noah, Sophia, Fin & Nathan (renting as well). Craig and Tracey will be starting to build as soon as possible on Lot 4. Greg and Isabel are waiting for their section (Lot 9, stage II) to become available. So all in all there are currently 6 households already on site with Adrienne and Lynda keen to join as soon as possible. Plans for Adrienne’s house on Lot 5, stage I, are also close to complete.
Sadly Geoff and Leonora have decided to stay in Nelson at this stage and have put Lot 0, which they purchased last year back into the pool of available properties. Their lot 0, stage I is one of the two only elevated properties currently available with brilliant views.
Rob and Lisa have decided to be part of Atamai and intend to purchase Lot 8 Stage I, as has Lynda.
With more people on site the social aspects of the community are coming along nicely and a number of events, pot lucks and working bees are planned for those interested to join in.
One of the more hazardous aspects of the emerging village live is that one has to watch now for increasing numbers of little knights with wooden swords on wooden cycles ambushing residents and practicing their chivalry skills on unaware passersby.
A good number of visitors have announced themselves for summer this year to check out the site or stay for a little while to see if they like the village project. We really look forward to welcome you all.
Business Opportunities
The brick/block making operation has now been fully set up and three varieties of bricks are in production. The first batches of about 8000 bricks have been made and most of them will be used in Jack & Joanna’s house and for landscaping. Atamai recently acquired a large production green house and a nursery utility building at an auction and they have been moved onto the village grounds and should be completely installed over summer. Lynda and Joni Bridge will be operating the nursery initially until either an enthusiastic owner operator comes on board or a cooperative forms itself.
A business plan for a third enterprise, the production and sale of the Terra Preta soil conditioner has been completed and is also awaiting an owner operator.
So if you are interested in taking up either of these three ready to go businesses as a livelihood, let us know.
Rob Malloch has converted the Hangar at TeMara into a well equipped engineering workshop as a base for his village business and has spent a number of months now bringing all of the machinery and vehicle fleet up to scratch. His next project will be to complete development of the Lister engine powered generators.
Organisational Changes
After more than two years of planning, preparation and legal work the villages governing body which will also hold all the commons asset has now been formed and is duly incorporated as a society. It is officially called ‘Atamai Village Council Inc’. The trust, which is the ‘developer’ of Atamai, has been renamed ‘Atamai Trust’ so we could keep the more appropriate ‘Council’ name for the actual village body.
The next step in the formation process is to split the trust into the charitable part which will undertake the educational work in the future and a private trust which will complete the village implementation and then dissolve.
Earthworks
The earthworks for Jack & Joanna’s section were completed last summer. The sections 9 & 10 started in late autumn but have been stop and go all winter and spring due to persistently unfavourable rainfall patterns and amounts. Some progress has been made in spite of it and the drainage systems and silt retention measures have coped well with the abundant rain. The ground is now drying out now a we look forward to have the sections completed before the end of the year.
Web Site
As part of a major advertising initiative to sell the remaining sections of stage I and II the web site will get another major overhaul in the next weeks. Information on the sections, layout, pricing, updates on developments, progress with the permaculture land use planning and implementation will all be posted as a resource.
Expect another email update when it’s ready!
kind regards
Jurgen Heissner, Executive Board Member

Back to my comments now: this is a complex and difficult project, and I feel good about how far we have come. The people side of the village is coming together. The nicest aspect of this is the delightful kids involved. Conflicts, of course, have already arisen,as expected. Is someone experienced enough to keep a cow on their land? Does adding biochar conflict with organic gardening principles? I'm confident that we are dealing with these in a constructive way, although we will have to attend closely to the process of living in this way, partly communally, as distinct from the way we have all been socialised.

You can learn more details about Atamai on our website www.atamai.co.nz

Warmest wishes to all,
Joanna

Can soil carbon sequestration contribute to mitigating climate change?

The images here are intended to illustrate two aspects of soil carbon (or organic matter) - firstly the production of good food (on my kitchen bench), secondly the need to reforest and to implement careful management of soil to enhance its organic matter (a slope at our new place). Increasing soil and biomass carbon will decrease atmospheric carbon, thus having a significant impact on global heating.

Dear Friends,
I continue to fret about Climate Change. In January, after the shocking failure of the Copenhagen talks, several of us got together to share our distress and work out what to do next. One person suggested we push for the personal carbon quota. In this system, everyone has an equal share of the total allowable annual carbon emissions. You have a strong incentive to live with less than your budgetted amount, and then you can trade the extra with someone who wants to exceed their budget. The total allowable amount diminishes with time.


Jack wanted to explore the role of global elites - the ultra-wealthy, the media controllers and so on, in blocking action on climate change. Since then he has been conversing with folk in the International forum on Globalization about a possible project on that topic.


I wanted to explore the idea of carbon sequestration through agriculture and forestry - by biological means. It seemed to me that the focus had been on fossil fuel carbon emissions and alternative energy. Several points began to become evident to me, alongside one that is well-known - carbon losses through deforestation.
*Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are a significant proportion of the total - 13.5% globally, about 50% of emissions in New Zealand. The global figure rises to 51% if land use and land use change are included in the calculation. That's emissions from deforestation. The emissions comprise nitrous oxide, largely from the enormous and rising use of nitrate fertilisers; methane from the guts of ruminant animals; carbon dioxide from deforestation to clear more land, soil management practices, fertiliser manufacture and fossil fuel use in agricultural machinery. Many readers of this blog will know that nitrous oxide and methane are many times more potent in reflecting solar heat back to earth than carbon dioxide is.
* There are quite well-known ways to cut agricultural greenhouse emissions, and many of them, eg no-till agriculture. . Furthermore, there are multiple ways to build soil carbon. That is, not only cutting emissions, but pulling down CO2 from the atmosphere into the soil. Some of those ways are designed to keep stable carbon in the soil for centuries. Composting would be the best known of this cluster of strategies. Biochar burial in soil is another.

* Better still, all of the practices referred to above shift agriculture from being an unsustainable practice, exhausting the soil over time, to a perhaps perpetually sustainable activity.

* Better yet, some of these practices bear the promise of greater food productivity. Not all of them.



So we should surely talk more about this issue.



I registered for a conference on New Zealand Soil Carbon. With the help of my friend and mentor, soil scientist Don Graves, I put myself through a little crash course on learning about soil. I cycled to Don's one day to pick up a primer in the nature of soil. I had to come back with the car to collect the ten volumes of essential reading Don had for me. What a revelation! It's another world down there! And to think I've been walking around on top of it all, largely oblivious to the teaming life in ultra-complex systems beneath my feet.



The conference was an interesting experience. The participants were mainly farmers, fertiliser makers and soil scientists. Highlights in my quest to answer the question that heads this blog were:

* the presentation by Australian climate activist (and much else) Tim Flannery. Here are his major points:
o Half of avoided emissions to deal with climate change need to come from the biological systems of agriculture and forestry.
o Emissions need to start coming down by 2015; this requires rapid action. (Agriculture doesn’t even enter the NZ ETS until 2015.)
o Carbon can be sequestered in soil in three ways – holistic stock management; enhanced humus production and retention (by a variety of methods comprising biological farming); and charcoal sequestration in soil.
o NZ’s effort in research in this area, $5million per annum, is ‘pathetic’. Much more is needed.
o It’s good that NZ at least has an ETS (compared with Australia) but it needs major revisions to incentivise individual farmers to sequester soil carbon. (I noted that many farmers present were anxious and negative towards the ETS, concerned that they wouldn’t be rewarded for their carbon achievements.)

The other highlight was a ‘break-out session’ hosted by me on the potential of Soil Carbon sequestration to contribute to Climate Change mitigation. These were the major points:
1. There’s loads of potential for increasing soil C in NZ; in fact, it will be dangerous if we don’t do so and fail to retain C in some soils.
2. Biological farming is the way to do it. Get C deep and stable by means of plant choices.
3. We need to be able to measure it.
4. You can make changes that have to do with increasing soil carbon very quickly eg in a year. This contrasts dramatically with the lead time needed for other CC mitigation strategies, eg alternative energy solutions.
5. We need to incentivise the costly transition to biological (different from subsidising production). But note – Carbon and Energy footprint reducing measures are often intrinsically money-saving.
However, on a panel of six speakers later asked about the potential of biochar, several were sceptical because of cost-benefit issues and the carbon costs of transport of feedstock and making the biochar compared with carbon savings in sequestration. One was enthusiastic.

Where do I go from here on this? As soon as I complete another major task I'd like to address this one. It feels very urgent. I'm not sure what the next step is. Probably to get a few minds together. If any reader of this blog wants to go further on this issue, please let me know.

Also, I can send my full notes on this conference to anyone who wishes to see them.

Warmest wishes,
Joanna

Eating locally, Atamai progress.

Dear Friends,

Transition Town news.
On Saturday we held an Eating Locally event, to both celebrate our local foods and to explore ways of further localising our food consumption. I'll go into a bit of detail, becuase we were happy with how the event played out, and think this may be helpful to others considering something similar.

We held the event at Riverside, which has a large kitchen, all that you need for a potluck meal for lots of people, and facilities for music performance. We put some trouble but little money into advertising - posters in shop windows, library display with appropriate books, fliers, radio, newspaper and online ads (all free). People were invited to bring a potluck meal made with local ingredients, together with its recipe to share.

On the day we prepared a beautiful display of local produce, as you can see above. In the picture is Tanja, a remarkable young woman, who did a huge array of things, usually two or three at a time, always with little Leenas (seen here) strapped to her back, and with her 4 and 7 year-old girls nearby, the 7 year-old being a real help in any way she could. Also in the picture is Richard, the Good Bread Man, who baked a batch of sourdough rye especially for the event. The aroma of the baking bread greeted the guests on the day.

We began with an intro of why we should eat locally. We can think of many reasons, as you will see below. Then the 7 year-old sang a food-blessing in Maori and we enjoyed some very creative ad delicious food. Our friends, Dawn and Emery, played mellow jazz and folk on the piano as background.

Then we reorganised the tables to use a World Cafe procedure. Some of you will have experienced this applied to other topics. It was my first experience and I recommend it. It's fast -moving, gets people thinking about the issues, and good ideas emerge. In this case we considered firstly what we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner, how far it travelled to get to us. Then we thought about how we could make that meal local, and finally we thought about the 'gaps' - food from far away that we can either think about growing nearby, or substituting something else, or doing without.

There was then a competition for the best menu using local foods, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Prizes were donated by local producers. Finally a brilliant group of local musicians, the Northern Lights, entertained us.

We had about 40 people there, some very original food (yakon, radish seed pods, chocolate chestnut pie, achachas stuffed with feijoa and goat cheese), good ideas and great music.

Atamai Ecovillage news
The village has been working at its formal structure, with the help of lawyers. To have Commons land doesn't fit well with normal legal structures, so it has taken a lot of work to shape the necessary entities. There will be an Atamai Land Trust whose task is to develop the land into individual lots and the shared Commons. The Trust uses a company, Sustainable Villages Ltd to carry out the development. The lots are sold to individuals who also buy a share of the Commons, and agree to certain covenants. The Commons will be owned and governed by the Atamai Village Council Inc., comprising all villagers who have bought into the Commons. All the normal developers' profits will go to the Commons.

Jurgen and Kyoko, and our builder, Greg Law and his wife, Isabel, have just bought one of the existing large ridgetop houses and will share it, for as long as it takes to be able to build their own homes on lots they've selected, This means that we'll soon have five little kids as neighbours, ranging, I think, from 3 to about 9.

Jo and Jack
We've both been involved in the evolution of the village, and I've spent time on the Eating Locally event and also on my radio programme. I've been writing bits and pieces for the Reconciliation book, some of which readers of this blog have seen. One you haven't seen is on reconciliation in East Timor, which is, I think, a case study in what happens when one party is immensely more powerful than the other. Basically, the big power gets away with murder, multiplied many times over.

We've spent a little time on the house, which now has its concrete foundation. Jack has spent a lot of time with a team of six, planting 2000 trees, bushes, grasses to stop the terrace slopes from washing down.


The village baby, William, turned one yesterday, so we had a birthday party for this happy little chap.

REcommended film: Mao's last Dancer. Wonderful ballet in this.

Now, here are 15 points about eating locally:
Why do we want to eat locally?• It’s nutritious. And delicious. More nutrients in fresh food.
• It reduces carbon emissions, and helps mitigate CC.
• It helps prepare us for coming fuel scarcity, when the faraway food might not get to us at all.
• It gets us growing and considering what’s in the soil, or puts us in contact with the grower,, to inquire about pesticides , herbicides etc.
• It’s cheaper.
• Strengthens the local economy.
• Helps our kids understand where food comes from
How do we do this?
• It means we eat seasonally, and learn to preserve summer’s abundance for the winter.
• It may mean we’re prepared to do without some things eg bananas.
• It means we read labels when we shop, and try to buy Top of the South whenever we can.
• Some of us grow as much as we can in our own gardens. No food miles or km, just metres.
• Some of us further strengthen the local economy by trading for our food in TALENTS.
• What we don’t grow, we get mainly from the following places (showing the map): Motueka Sunday Market; Riverside Friday Market; Arcadia Organics; Toad Hall; Victoria Gardens.
• We keep our eyes open for roadside stalls and buy from them when possible. (Asparagus, lemons, nashi, kiwi fruit, blueberries – lots of wonderful things, usually just picked.)
• Some of us get our milk direct from a farm to avoid the long distances milk travels, at high energy input. We make our own yoghurt and cheese and butter.


OK, that's it for now, dear folks.
Much love,
Joanna