Big Ideas - Active Afforestation

      I have remembered one of the reasons for the sand dam, which is to build a dam across the sort of river that only holds water in the rainy season and that the dam after a year or two holds up a lot of sand.
        The reason they gave for having the sand there was that mospitoes can¡t live in water filled sand as they can in a normal resevoir.
      The people dug holes in the sand into which the water welled when they wanted water.
      the dam holds a lot of sand after a year or two because the flowing water of the rainy season contains a lot of sand that being heavy falls to the bottom where you hold up the river with a dam, eventually forming a mass behind the dam, you end up with a wall that holds up a lot of sand but water filled sand. 
      Maybe the evaporation is less from sand filled water than just from water though sand can get pretty hot. . 
      The dams have a overflow sspace at the top of the wall and as the finer mud particles will be floating in the water they get washed over the dam and you end up with a large amount of sand behind the dam that exxtends quite a way back up the river bed and this sand can be full of water does is full of water though why there should be more water held in the sand than there would be without i don't know.

        I thought the idea that mosquitos don't breed in the sand filled water would be usefull in my garden too. I have buried a lot of flower pots i mean to fill with water that would leach through the pot sides and keep the soil my plants are in wet were the drip system we have to irrigate with doesn't reach. A girl in a you tube video says this system for keeping soil wet works very well, she used big bellied, small necked, jars burried in her beds . I have put cement in the holes in the bottom of the pots  and covered them with bits of slate..
      If i can fill the pots with  sand, i can reduce the risk of breeding mosquitos which is something I always worry about when i want to leave water lying around in containers in the garden in summer. agri rose macaskie. .

2 cents.  I don't think many people -- Californians or Arizonians anyway would support forestation of the Mohave or the Anza Borego.

But desertification is a environmentally degrading process.  Where it is occurring,  i.e. non desert ecosystems are degrading into deserts, there is probably room for permaculture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification

Not sure trees are the approprate type of vegetation -- I think some of it in California was chaparral.

  The poll idea is good. How do I start one?

I agree with tropicguy.  If anyone needs volunteers to redesign their country, its Haiti.

Recovery plans need to be focused on rebuilding the economy so that people are dispersed throughout the country to be less vulnerable to subsequent earthquakes  and they are learning self sufficiency.

It is a desperate situation.

Are you only interested in desertification?

If you are interested in culture change -- you need to study something about implementing.  Not everyone would welcome some "permie" planting a bunch of trees in their backyard.

Permaculture is alive and well in New York City.  You may be interested in the practice there
to restore public parks.  The amazing thing in NYC is that the city is supporting permaculture projects in the parks.

http://sustainableflatbush.org/2007/05/03/permaculture-in-nyc-brainstorming-session/

wombat what is implementation.
  some people are good at persuading others tro  do things.
you owuld have thought they wanted trees intheir back gardens in haiti the sun is so hot wouldn't they want the shade and the froitsto feed their hens.
in the book Germinal about emile zola about how an anarchists affect on a mining village in France 1885, the eanarchist starts taling politics in th epub and  the miners enjoy discussing politics so much they start to stay at the pub for later at hi night, they have to wake up early to go down the mine so they were used to going to bed early.  i
      Iyou bring a seriouse enough subject to people they enjoy it, thats humans. The anacharquist in Spain started eduacation at a higher level for the poor, conference groups for the poor in villages, and they had nudist clubs, but they did not approve of drinking or smoking. I dont want to make people into anarchists but they were successfull in improving education for the less well of the underpriviledged, they had some real wins for the underpriviledged.
        Mind you you have to employ someone good at it, some people are and some people aren't. Wangari Mattai got people planting trees in Kenya, so you can get people planting trees if you are brilliant enough. Glenn Beck fires people up, i don't like what he says i find him  a bit scary but he certainely fires them up. agri rose macaskie

Kirk Hutchison wrote:
  The poll idea is good. How do I start one?

Well,  I'm not sure.  I guess first define what you want to know, such as a thread titled  "How many desert permies are on this forum and how many acres do you control?"

Rose:  What I mean by implementation.

I mean if you want to accomplish culture change you have to know something about the culture and how they do things.

If you want to teach people who have lived in ghettos to grow their own food, you have to understand how they get things done--- and it may not be the way we go about getting things done.

For example, Ive heard people say that Haiti is infested with graft and corruption.  But what looks like graft and corruption to us, can be 'paying respects to a leader who in turn provides other goods and services'.

People are very conservative about their own culture, and no one likes strangers showing up telling them they are WRONG and there are better ways to do things.  And sometimes what we want people to do is not the right things for them:  example - the use of pesticides in India which have caused a cancer epidemic. 

The UN for example has been successful implementing agricultural changes in some areas, by providing seed to area leaders.  If the seed had been given to the wrong people, or to everyone, the planned innovations would have failed.

wombat wrote:
For example, Ive heard people say that Haiti is infested with graft and corruption.  But what looks like graft and corruption to us, can be 'paying respects to a leader who in turn provides other goods and services'.

Though this can be true there are probably more examples where "Aid" meant for the poor has enriched those in power.  Examples such as the siphoning of aid dollars and food to support the president and his cronies in Ethiopia and the failed state of Somalia come to mind.  There are numerous counter examples where ignoring the traditional power structure and providing assistance directly to the people in need has been the most effective.  An example might be providing micro loans to the women in villages of rural India.  The men are the traditional power structure, so much so that if a woman's dowry is too small and the new husband sets fire to her the law usually looks the other way or consequences are minor.  The question thus arises how do you determine the difference between corruption and respect? Knowing the culture is definitely important to successfully engineering change.  Supporting an existing structure that is built on power, not respect is simply perpetuating a problem.  Understanding a culture is key to making that distinction.

mekennedy:

Understanding a culture is key to making that distinction.

I agree precisely.  In some cases the culture is so distorted by power that many of the people are economically (and politically) disenfranchised.  Very often this is true for women and 'racial' minorities.  It is a human rights problem.

I think most people recognize that the Haiti disaster was as bad as it was because the population was concentrated in Port Au Prince.  The country is not economically self sufficient although there is that potential.

Let us hope that some how Haiti can be given back to Haitians and be better than before for those who remain.

wombat wrote:
Are you only interested in desertification?

If you are interested in culture change -- you need to study something about implementing.  Not everyone would welcome some "permie" planting a bunch of trees in their backyard.

  No. I share Robert Hart's belief that one of the best possible uses of land is tree planting. That was simply and example, which I felt would be most dramatic.

gary gregory wrote:
Well,  I'm not sure.   I guess first define what you want to know, such as a thread titled  "How many desert permies are on this forum and how many acres do you control?"

So there is no 'new poll' button?

So there is no 'new poll' button?

There's not even a "pull this!" button.

        Wombat, It is hard to start this  conversation as we don't all know each other and so it is easy to have misunderstandings, i used to bend over backwards to understand and appreciate others to an extent that meant that i was as permissive as all hell and it is not easy for a careful person to know when is the right time to put their foot down, i did not used to  eat up any tyrants, though tyrants are so tyrannical that if you say boo to them it offends them so if you know them you get accused of tyrannizing them for the least little thing. The thing they are best at is making others look mean they have to have an excuse for being beastly so they are always looking for way sto turn anything you say or do to good account good account beign to make you look mean. Know them and they will not only use you they will also make it look as if you are the bad one. Tyrant don’t pay you back they think it is very nice of them to let you tie their shoe laces for them so that the only pay back you have is the luck to spend some time in their presence a favor you would rather do without. 
      It was not only because i was so cautious about ruining other peoples cultures  that I did not knock them into order,  it was also because i had no practice and could not have managed such a feat and am still not sure of my tyrant eating abilities, in any country, rich or poor, though i know they are enormously improved.
        Another thing that makes me more likely to eat tyrants now is that i think it is possible to respect the culture of others and try to give a good whacking to tyrants. I am more worldly wise now and expect just as much double dealing among the poor as in Wall street, and I know that that you are often a more useful person if you can mash the strong and help the weak.
      I am inclined to spend a long time deciding if a tyrant is such or not.
      I am the sort of person who finds it hard to believe i could be good at implementing a program among any group of people so to wonder if i would lack respect for their culture is to take things a long way. On the other hand  i know the difficulties of being a foreigner and i am not respectful of the tyrants here but i have not tried to make them implement a plan of mine only mouthed off at them and denounced them when their tyrannies got even more crippling.
        I have a Spanish “part” friend in Germany and he thinks he should be allowed a critical voice in Germany though he has only been their twenty two years and when he expressed this opinion had only been their eight. He would have called the Germans racist if they had not agreed. He is a sort of person who always has it clear that he has rights, so i should be allowed a opinion here or the Spaniards are racists.  It is the place you live in that is going to change your life and your children’s if things get bad in the country and it is annihilation of character if you can’t talk of local things.  Had i been a man i would have demanded that my husband go to live in England with me where my chances of getting a good job would have been greater than his and where it was easier for me to find friends. 
    The political right here think they are Spain but there are parts of the Spanish culture were people think more like me so my criticisms can be knocked because i am foreign by those who want to, but other Spaniards would find me to have the same feelings they did so those in a country who pretend a foreigner is not respecting their culture are usually forgetting that there is  a part of their culture that thinks like the foreigner .
    My sisters mouth was shut by her husband’s family with the argument that this was not her country so she did not understand things and had better keep her mouth shut that is the place she moved to because her husband said he could not live without his family , Belfast, and the family told her what she could and could not say because they said she could not understand Belfast, it is as I said a good excuse for annihilating a person, they were very cautious people, maybe she would have liked to be a les cowardly member of Belfast life and spoken openly of her veiws though they weren't all liked at one moment, one pleases one groupn at one moment and another at another. Sure the Haitians must know what it is like to be told they have little right to open their mouth. Women and Haitians. 
      I know that corruption destroys countries; It makes it too hard to get small businesses off the ground and I have seen bullies squashing first one person and then another, if you don’t deal them you have to watch how others get destroyed so i know that a right thinking person would try to stomp out corruption while holding onto the valuable parts of other cultures. I know what marvelous hospitable people there are in other cultures, hospitable, amusing,  intelligent and good, in parts of the world that aren’t the west as its called and i love these cultures and I don’t want to have everyone like me but i don’t think corruption is a good idea.
      Apparently they have suffered from a lot of religious persecution in Haiti. All the religions i know demonize other religions or so tiu seems to me. I find the catholic church as wicked as anything so I don’t approve or disapprove of any religion, only of some parts of them.

        What I said before is that we dont' damage people by influencing them too much, we damage them by giving them too little information to deal with, this invalidates them in the world  that we have put the poorer countries, we put poor countries in the world  financially. We have persuaded people in many parts of the world to grow things and make things for the world market rather than for themselves but we don't give them enough information to stop them being duped by the tigers of the world market or for the adaptability that is necessary in this market.
        Information is power, the rich spend years at school before getting independent, information first, money later. To pretend it is money we don't share is to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, it is information  that is really valuable and which we have managed to hide. Our real meanness is knowing more than others and not sharing the knowledge and pretending that it is the distribution of money that matters.

    What was that enormous port in Haiti for, Port o Prince looked big, what are we getting off Haiti?
     
      I have heard the excuse that ti is traditional so you must do it to as a reason for mollycoddling the powerful before, I am sick of it. Agri rose macaskie.

How much north americamn tourist go to Haiti. You just have to sell sell nice trees at the air port, it seems that Haitis turned into a desert, and  anyone living in a climate like that must want a bit of shade i only want shade in spain and the tropics have much higher insolation than spain. What about those deliciouse green coconuts, they must want them. i would have thought that they woud just be soo pleased with hmore hens and more pinapples and advocada trees they have so little. The easy aquisition of these things, i know how expensive it is buying a few trees, they are cheap but but ten of them and you are spending a hundred dollars the cheap aquisition of these things must be something they all want. What about sand dams that dont brign mosquitoes and do hold water. monkey puzzle trees, this is not changing a persons culture it is just helping them to be a bit less miserably poor.  Their culture must have bee the cultivatio of tropical frutis before it was desertified. Coffee, cocao, mangrooves i think tha tcan be a fooder plant and a shrimp growign plant or crabe feedign plant. what other usefull plants are their for the caribean, make them cheap enough, that has to be very cheap i suppose and they will buy them. agri rose macaskie.

  What about taking incubation boxes to Haiti if they have electricity then they would have advanced manners of haivng lots of chickens. I supopose they are good at chicken anway, that is what dave chappelli would call a racist comment it is also a comment i could not have made if i had not whatched dave chappeli.
  papayas.
   The anarchist in spain educated villagers to a very high level it is educationg people to a low level that perpetuates poverty. 
      Those charities who say we are so sweet we teach people to read and write, is that good? They got a university education and they teach others to read and write, that is condescending. agri rose macaskie.

Kirk:  You could propose to Admin  (Is that Paul?)   to make a sidebar poll of the type you are talking about.
Ive noticed many sites do have those on various topics.  I don't know what happens to the results -- but it does solicit opinions on a specified topics for the duration of the poll.  That format is good for seeing what other people think and it is a narrower discussion than a regular thread.