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Geoff Lawton Interview, 2005

‘Interview’ Articles at Permaculture Reflections

July 17, 2015 by Douglas Barnes Leave a Comment

On October 1st this year, I grabbed Geoff Lawton on the last day of a Permaculture Design Certificate Course he was teaching with Permaculture founder Bill Mollison. Geoff had some alarming things to say regarding the state of the world’s environment.
Image of Geoff Lawton and Douglas Barnes
Douglas Barnes: The last time I saw you, 2004, you mentioned two events – one was a possible event, but the first one you mentioned was the tsunami that you did work on in ’98; and we of course had the big one in December. And the other event was New Orleans, which you mentioned to us and told us what could possibly happen and it wasn’t a conspiracy theory or anything like that. It happened. What are your thoughts on those two events?

Geoff Lawton: Well, the tsunami was one that took everyone by surprise. And the size of the event obviously shocked everybody, you know, how vulnerable people are at a distance to a natural event like that.

One of the great results from the recovery, sort of the design side of the tsunami, was that some of the government agencies listened to our research that we had from the New Guinea tsunami. And the fact that we had researched the fact that tree belts buffered the impact and particularly filtered out the destructive debris in the waves and were a lot less fatal to people when there was a tree belt on the foreshores. And that was very easy to reference in the December Indonesian tsunami because there was so much footage. And it was easy to see if you scanned through the footage that where there were dense tree belts on the foreshore, there was hardly any damage behind and a very significant drop if any loss of life at all behind large tree belts. Although those shots weren’t shown on the news very much because the media, as usual, concentrated on the sensationalism of the catastrophe and the biggest damage. But particularly the Indian government surveyed the aerial footage and they could see very easily that where there were tree belts, there was less damage. And they initiated a planting of 8 million trees in the first wave of repair along foreshores. And they also looked at using trees that would grow on the foreshore and be functional and productive. So, they choose some productive species that would also handle those situations. And they put in a theme of honoring all the people who were lost in that there were trees that were donated to victims, and their families were given permission to plant trees at ceremonies, so they [the trees] are kept alive. So that was good.

One of our directors, Andrew Jones, actually got the job of heading up the post-tsunami rehabilitation assessment consultancy team in Indonesia, based in Jakarta. And we’ve got permaculture education systems going up in the repair of Aceh on the people-scale to start with and the initial reconstruction. And there’s still talk of total redesign in a more sustainable way – but there’s been a large problem with the bureaucracy throughout the Indonesian government on the spending of the money and how it will actually be processed. But we tried our hardest to get those sorts of permaculture initiatives in. And permaculture is written as the main part of the rehabilitation assessment consultancy for the UNEP. So that work goes on.

There’s a gentleman called Steve Cran working for the Bali… well, the Indonesian permaculture group IDEP who are based in Bali. Steve Cran is teaching courses there in Aceh. And there are people working on the ground with reconstruction. So hopefully that goes on as research that will go further into helping any future tidal wave, tsunami-type disasters. It’s obvious that tree belts, appropriately dense tree belts on the foreshore mitigate the power of the tsunamis and definitely filter out destructive debris.

Then we have New Orleans. It was only a year ago when we were there in August the year before Katrina and we were teaching a course there and we were evacuated when Hurricane Ivan nearly hit New Orleans. A million people were evacuated, and we were part of that. And we were half way through a Permaculture Design Course which we had to shift up country a few hundred miles. And now the scenario that’s been painted for a long time, the drowning of New Orleans – there was even a book, The Drowning of New Orleans that described exactly the scenario that’s happened. And the reality is there.

What has become really obvious is the knock-on scenario that when you have a disaster in a first world country, you have this enormous amount of ongoing residual damage because of the amount of possessions and property and equipment ownership of first world people. And the knock-on event that happened with the oil refineries and the oil rigs where 12% of America’s oil got knocked out of production and out of circulation. And that doesn’t sound like much, but because America consumes so much oil, that’s a very large amount of oil out of the world circulation. And it’s had world repercussions, and that’s just one little storm, really. It’s knocked out one city, really, or one area with one major city. So I think what’s happened from that and is still happening is there’s a real serious look now at the global situation of global warming, weather patterns, what’s causing it, why the northern hemisphere is hotter than the southern hemisphere – which is obviously because there are more industrialised human settlements in the northern hemisphere and the separation of the weather systems around the Hadley cell at the equator. And I think it’s crunch time and Bill Mollison’s been saying this for over 20 years; and he’s actually been naming the time frame – “within 50 years,” he said in 1983 when I took my course [Permaculture Design Certificate Course] “you’re going to see major changes.” And here we are just 25 years later, we’re only half way into it and you’ve got it, you’ve got it happening fast.

DB: The other day you mentioned the first south Atlantic hurricane in history.

Geoff Lawton: Yeah. Well it hasn’t really been much spoken about in the general press because it didn’t cause a lot of damage. But Catarina was the name of the hurricane in the southern Atlantic below the equator and there they’ve never been recorded. That’s the first ever and meteorologists are really worried about that because that indicates something that’s a first and a new phenomenon. In quite cool water with quite cool weather patterns we got a very large hurricane forming in the south Atlantic for the first time. So that’s a spillover, I think, of the northern hemisphere weather that’s now pushing over into the southern hemisphere. That’s a spill out really. I think that’s how it’s being seen.

And a scenario that’s happening right now is the release of CO2, particularly the release of CO2 in the ocean, which is speeding up with the arctic meltdown. There’s always a knock on scenario. The lack of reflected light from the polar icecap now is speeding up the warming of the northern oceans, and you’re getting a release of CO2 in the oceans at a much faster rate than was expected. And that is becoming carbonic acid, and the pH of the ocean is dropping dramatically. So, you’re acidifying the oceans. And they’re now talking about a possible doubling of the acidity in the oceans in the next year. And that’s dramatic change. That’s whole life systems getting knocked out. There are lots of sea creatures – sea life – that just won’t take that. And that’s more release of CO2 when that death rate comes on.

So, the inquiry for solution-based systems now is, I think, going to exponentially increase. And when you’re sitting in the position that we are as designers and consultants, it’s actually a bit of a worry that you’re going to just get overloaded with inquiry and if it’s possible to get the resources to get the job done – which is really training people up as quick as possible.

DB: You have classes coming up, of course. Any aid work coming up for you?

Geoff Lawton: Well, I have aid work coming up in Vietnam and in Thailand next year, and I’m on consultancy, at a distance, with a lot of different aid work scenarios. And right now, there’s a group of us seriously looking at the possibility of formulating a permaculture aid organisation which can establish NGOs in many places. All of that has to be speeded up, I think.

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Geoff Lawton Interview, 2004

‘Interview’ Articles at Permaculture Reflections

July 17, 2015 by Douglas Barnes Leave a Comment

In this 2004 interview, Geoff describes in his own words what Permaculture is, his work and experiences in Iraq, and his agenda for 2005.
Image of Geoff Lawton and Douglas Barnes
Geoff Lawton is a Permaculture educator, designer and consultant who has taught and implemented Permaculture in 17 different countries. Geoff has been involved in Permaculture since 1982. Having just completed Geoff’s latest Permaculture Design Certificate course, I put down my beer bottle to interview him in Brisbane, Australia.

Douglas Barnes: You are famous for Permaculture. What is that?

Geoff Lawton: Permaculture is a design system for sustainable human habitats that supply human needs in an environmentally sustainable way – an environment enhancing way. That’s a brief way of defining it.

DB: You were in Iraq a year ago. What were you doing there?

GL: I was working on an aid project for Counterpart International to redesign and reconstruct a Kurdish village where the people had been displaced by the Saddam Hussein Regime.

DB: What was it like in Iraq? What was the experience?

GL: Well, it was different. I first went in August 2003 and it was just after the occupation. It was extremely hot apart from anything else. But it was very, very tense and there was a lot of misunderstanding by a lot of people, but there was no organisation of any sort. There was no government, there was no customs and there was no department of any government left in place whatsoever. There was no law, really. We were in the hands of the local people who were organising and running the NGO we were working with and were consulting for. So, I had to trust the local people, Kurdish people mostly, to work with and set up this program and design this village and get it rebuilt.

DB: So there was no infrastructure. No police? No banks up and running? How did the society function?

GL: Surprisingly, the society was functioning fine. It wasn’t until we were arriving almost on the United Nation Humanitarian Air Service flight that I realized that, of course, there’s no customs and there’s no local police. And the American military weren’t really policing the situation – they were occupying the country very cautiously. So, there were no traffic rules – everybody was setting the rules themselves. There was no department of water, no department of sewerage, no department of electricity. All of that was being taken care of by the local people. And there were no banks open either. So, you could only change money on the street. The money that was there was obviously just going around. And everything was functioning fine. There was fresh food everywhere, there was plenty of food. Most services were working. Water and electricity and telephones went off at times, but most of the time were up and running.

DB: How could they be running without government help?

GL: Well, I asked that. The local electricians got the energy systems running, the power stations running and the electricity grid up and running to the best of their ability. The plumbers had the water running and the sewage working. And everybody just worked together in the local community. Everybody just cooperated. And most things looked quite normal on the street and there didn’t seem to be many major problems at all.

DB: So the community, perhaps, was tight enough that these sorts of systems could work out on their own? People could rebuild themselves, as it were?

GL: Yeah, I asked those questions as to how it was organised and how people cooperated and how they knew what needed doing. The local population were well over 90% Muslim and the mosque was the main centre of communication. And when there’s five prayers a day, there’s plenty of time and opportunity to meet. So, the mosques were used as a communication system for coordinating what needed to be done for the local community. It was very much a sort of cooperative society with no particular problems – people policing their own community really. And setting their own boundaries within their religious convictions actually.

DB: How successful was the project you were sent there to do? Did you achieve what you hoped to?

GL: Well, we got the job done and we got the village reoccupied. Fifty-three houses were built and a community centre. And fifty-three families reoccupied a village that had been first evacuated in 1995 or displaced by the regime in 1995. But it was actually a village that was originally at least 500 years old. Some extra houses were built, but we got 53 built with all the infrastructure.

DB: Well, you’ve recently come back from Jordan and Mexico.

GL: Mexico, New Orleans, Egypt and Jordan.

DB: What’s next?

GL: Well, next it’s back to the farm in New South Wales. But possibly in March, we’re over to the eco-show in New Zealand and a small educational tour talking to dairy farmers in New Zealand for about 10 days. After that a national conference in Melbourne and then a [Permaculture Design Certificate] course in New York in a catchment of New York in the Catskills. And in September, a course in Melbourne with [Permaculture founder] Bill Mollison co-teaching, which will be filmed as an educational video. And then in October, a course in Northern New South Wales. That’s all that we’ve got on the potential horizon.

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Interview

‘Interview’ Articles at Permaculture Reflections

August 30, 2009 by Douglas Barnes Leave a Comment

I was interviewed by Bob Ewing of Digital Journal. The interview can be found here.

BE: Why is permaculture relevant today?

DB: I think more and more people today are realizing that the current industrialist-consumerist game is up. It is obvious to anyone who stops to look that we are burning through the earth’s capital in a way that will end in a very ugly manner in the not-too-distant future. We are currently in what is a serious economic crisis under our current economic model. World leaders are struggling to try to get us back to 2% growth, or thereabouts. Well, that means an economic doubling in 35 years. Now, doubling the economy requires the consumption of all of the resources used throughout history up until the time of the moment you are doubling from (i.e. all the resources used throughout history until now). Anyone who doesn’t recognize that this is a catastrophic disaster in the waiting is someone who is not willing to face the facts – and that is of very dangerous thing to do because reality always gets the last punch.

Read more:http://digitaljournal.com/article/278481#ixzz26NSyJN00

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Keith Johnson Interview

‘Interview’ Articles at Permaculture Reflections

February 27, 2009 by Douglas Barnes Leave a Comment

In September, 2007, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Keith Johnson and a team of other designers on a 25-acre property near Hamilton, Ontario. Keith and I, together with one other designer, walked a section of property designated to us to design. It was a tremendous learning experience for me. Working with Keith is extremely easy to do – he finds the humour in any situation, making everything more enjoyable. After our preliminary designing was finished, Keith graciously agreed to the following interview.

Douglas: Who are you and what do you do?

Keith JohnsonKeith: I’m Keith Johnson. I teach permaculture design with Peter Bane. I help him on the Activist mostly as the web guy but occasionally, if I ever get enough energy, I do a little bit of writing maybe a little bit of reviewing. But it’s been a while since I’ve done that now. (Laughs) But I love doing the web-work. And we also design and consult together with our company Patterns for Abundance. And I am the gardener at home. I’ve now got about a half acre garden almost and we’re putting in a forest garden. So we are slowly developing our base in Bloomington where we’ve been for about a year and a half now.

Douglas: You also mentioned some other places earlier as well. California was one.

Keith: Well yeah. Prior to Bloomington, I was 10 years in North Carolina outside of Ashville at Earthhaven Ecovillage where Peter and I lived for six years in a clay straw home we built for ourselves. And prior to that, I was in California teaching permaculture and I had started Sonoma County Permaculture. And I was landscaping for about 10 years all together all through the Bay Area. I had to get away from that. It was too crazy. Although, when I left I cried because I have so many dear friends there. And it was my friends I missed rather than the place itself, although, it’s pretty lovely despite eight months a year of no rain.

Douglas: How did you get your start in permaculture?

Keith: I discovered Permaculture One in about 1978 or 79 when I read about it in the Whole Earth Review which was also known as Co-evolution Quarterly. And also I am pretty hip to gardening and natural things because when I was about five years old I learned via my grandmother, who was doing lots of genealogical research, that I’m related to Johnny Appleseed.

Douglas: Oh wow!

Keith: So, I thought that was cool. And he was always an early inspiration to me.

Douglas: You aren’t dropping seeds out of your pocket as you go around are you?

Keith: I do! Sometimes I drop them into people’s hands but it’s very common for me to have seeds in my pocket. Very, very common. I don’t specialize in Apple’s, by any means. I’ve been a big seed saver for the 34 years I’ve been gardening. I guess I got started gardening really when I was about 25. My first gardening books were Organic Gardening Magazine and Ruth Stout’s book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back and Gardening Without Work – all about mulch gardening. I am also a big fan of medicinal and edible plants. My dad is one of the last of the hunter gatherers. He grew up in Northern Michigan, where I also grew up for my first nine years. Wild foods were always high on the list of things that got us excited – collecting mushrooms and wild fruit and so on. Any time I go and see my folks my dad always a few places he wants to take me for wild food – get grapes or raspberries or juneberries, or take me fishing on the beaver ponds.

Douglas: It sounds like you didn’t find Permaculture, it found you. It was the thing to come waiting to happen.

Keith: Yeah.

Douglas: Maybe about four years ago on the Australian scene, permaculture “tipped” as Malcolm Gladwell would say. It’s basically a mainstream now. How would you say it’s doing in North America?

Keith: It’s coming on a little slower. But in just the last half a decade, there’s been a big shift. More people are tuning into it. More people are writing about it. I have read at least five different science fiction novels in which the word “permaculture” showed up.

Douglas: Really?

Keith: In one case, it was permaculture in an artificial environment in orbit around the earth. Kim Stanley Robinson recently wrote a trilogy of books about climate change. In one of the books, he used the word permaculture at least a dozen times. So, word is getting out.

Douglas: I hadn’t heard anything about that!

Keith: Read Kim Stanley Robinson, anything he’s written is very, very good.

Douglas: I’d love to but there’s so many things I need to know, and I guess I’ve always been like this, but I always read nonfiction almost exclusively. People always ask me why, and I always say “It’s not real.”

Keith: Well, you watch television don’t you?

Douglas: (Awkward silence.)

Keith: No?

Douglas: (laughing) No. (laughing)

Keith: I’ve never owned a television. My parents have television, people I visit have television. When I meet them in front of one, it’s sort of like an anthropological study, really. (Laughs) Cause I’m just kind of curious because seeing what people are watching is interesting feedback about the culture. And so, that’s always intriguing to me.

Douglas: I’m having flashbacks of Japan now and the culture of there. Anyway, that’s another story.

So, what we’ve been working on this site, Ian Graham’s property – designing it up with a whole bunch of people together – I’ve found it to be extremely productive to bring people together. It’s a great learning experience. There’s so many things I’ve learned, and I hope other people maybe picked up something from me as well. What advice do you have for people who are getting their feet wet with permaculture?

Keith: Read a lot. Start collecting the seed and plant catalogues. Study them. They are an enormous source of data. Get yourself a good library. Shop at the Permaculture Activist catalogue online.

Douglas: Of course. (laughs)

Keith: (Laughs) Permaculture Activist dot net. You’ve gotta put in a plug there.

Douglas: (Laughing) Of course!

Keith: And don’t waste any time is the next thing I’d say. And get help. Don’t try to do this by yourself. Start small, gain some mastery. Take care of zone 1 – that area 50 feet from your kitchen door all around the house. Get some greens and herbs going and start seeing what it takes to take care of oneself and family. Learn to live on things that don’t travel a great distance. Find your entertainment nearby so you don’t have to travel all around. And then when you do travel, it’s all the more valuable. You’ll make much more out of it. And when you do travel, go to people who are doing something intelligent – people who have gained some kind of mastery –and learn from those people. And they are all over the place, you just have to start looking for them. Start connecting yourself up to them and help them connect with others. Basically, we just have to let each other know we are there. This is one of the reasons why for the last 10 years, I have emphasized the Planetary Permaculture Directory where I try to keep track of all the permaculture contacts that I can, so that others can be found.

Douglas: Excellent advice. Thank you very much!

Keith: You are very welcome!

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Daniel Jaramillo Interview 2005

‘Interview’ Articles at Permaculture Reflections

September 14, 2007 by Douglas Barnes Leave a Comment

The following interview was conducted on October 15th, 2005 at the University of Melbourne. Apart from being one of my heroes, Daniel is one of few designers and teachers out there putting permaculture to its full effect: redesigning society. Apologies for making you wait so long to see this.

Douglas Barnes: Could you give us a brief outline of your permaculture history?

ColombiaDaniel Jaramillio: Alright. I learned about permaculture in 1997, while studying agronomy in Costa Rica, from Introduction to Permaculture and I thought it was very interesting. I had been going that way. I had been studying agronomy for 2 years and I realised how there were a lot of nutrient cycles and energy cycles that were just broken by our own stupidity, really, you know? And that could be put together to make something that makes more sense. So I was thinking that way and then I found permaculture and I was really excited because then I didn’t have to figure it out. That would save me a lot of time, yeah? Someone had done it already, so I didn’t have to do it. So, I just started from there.

Then in 2000, I finished school and I was looking for what to do. I was living in the United States then ready to leave. And I found that they were teaching a course at Tagari Farms, Mollison’s farm. But the course was taught by Geoff [Lawton], and I applied for a scholarship. And they gave me a scholarship, so I flew into Australia and I stayed in Tagari Farms for a month and a half. I took the course and spent another month working. We were doing a lot of work with the chinampas.

Then I went back to California, which is where I was living, to meet my girl then. And my daughter was born in February and we moved down to Mexico to Guajaca, to the coast of Guajaca to work in a small village. It’s a little village on the coast with campesinos there. And we started doing a community project. We created a community compost piles, we introduced bamboo there because they used to use a lot of mangrove. But the mangroves were gone because of a hurricane. Anyway, I stayed there for that year then went to Colombia.

In 2002, I sent up a centre again in Mexico, a demonstration and education centre. We designed that and did the earthworks with Geoff. Geoff flew there. And then last year, I taught a course together [with Geoff] in Mexico again. And I registered myself as a teacher with the Institute in December. I taught my first PDC this year in March and here I am.

Douglas: You’ve done a lot of work in community building. Could you tell us more about that?

Daniel: You’ll find a lot of ideas and approaches to permaculture. But I believe that if we are really into preparing the ground and set up for some kind of change, we need to work with the community. We have to stop thinking that very western way of thinking of fencepost to fencepost, yeah? Because it doesn’t work like that. It won’t work like that. I mean, we can’t keep on doing things in so selfish a way. So, I think one of the most important tasks in permaculture and what permaculture is really about is community work.

Obviously in community work, we use appropriate technologies or appropriate techniques that can be based on the permaculture ethics of care of the earth, care of the people and sharing the surplus. So, you kind of build up capacity in people. And it’s very clear how you can definitely make a strong statement to them of what the problems are. I’m in the third world, yeah? So, we definitely don’t have to look far to see the problems that we have there, yeah? How they suffer and how easy it could be to just solve those problems if we start being responsible for our own basic needs. That’s all it is about. But always from a community point of view, not in a selfish way. Then we can help each other because we don’t have to all grow our own potatoes, you know? There are many things that need to be done and many jobs that, if you spend your time growing your corn or your potatoes, you won’t have time to do. You know, each one of us has a role in the community and the bioregion.

So, I’m living in a community that is all doing community work, and that’s all we do, really. I mean, I have some private things, and also, well, the family is mine, but the family reaches out to the community because I feed, like, 40 families with organic vegetables. Some of them are in the rich part of town. But some of them are very poor people and they pay less or they actually pay me with other things. We barter, yeah? But because you cannot just grow organic food for the rich and let the poor eat chemically grow food. So, it’s all about, for me in Colombia, it’s all about healing community. And obviously you know the problems that Colombia has. You know Colombia is a very troubled country. There’s a lot of creativity in the people. It’s just that energy is put into war, so people just see war or drug trafficking, yeah? We can focus that in more creative ways that would heal our society, you know?

Douglas: In your presentation that you gave this week, you mentioned that in Northern Colombia, a village you were working in reached a food emergency state. What happened there?

Daniel: Well bro, in Colombia you have a lot of coca. There’s coca growing all around to make cocaine, yeah? The United States through the Colombian government – this is the new type of dictatorship state – they have this spraying program, yeah? They are spraying Roundup and all sorts of things. Campesinos tell you like a year and a half ago, they started seeing all these little worms appearing in all their crops. And they are sure it came from the airplanes. But, supposedly, it says in the papers in the States that it’s just Roundup. Well, it’s not just Roundup. But still, we don’t know exactly what they are spraying.

But they sprayed this area, which has a lot of coca. It’s a very frontier area of Colombia, yeah? Where there is not much presence by the state. I mean, maybe there is presence of the illegal groups [right-wing paramilitaries] and with some of the groups you can clearly see how they cooperate with the state, yeah? And the only presence of the state is just the army that goes in and out and just wreaks havoc, yeah? But there is no presence of the state for health or social services – what people really need, yeah? So people need to look for a way to live and they were ripped of all their traditional knowledge, you know. And now they are dependent on money. Well, the only thing they can grow to make some money is coca, so they grow coca.

And the thing is that they are spraying this right now with Roundup. They’ve been doing that for many years now around Colombia. But they are now spraying even the national parks because some people have started to live in them in the frontier areas of the national parks planting coca and they [the government] just go and spray them, you know? There is no social program that would accompany that. So, people who are chiefs, are corrupt or are secure, they don’t really need that. They are just, you know, who knows the senator that is being supported by Monsanto which does all the lobbying – the United States senator says we’re going to spray down there. You know how those things are.

So, yeah, they are spraying all around Colombia. It’s United States contractors that they want to spray. It’s not the Colombian government spraying. It’s United States pilots, United States planes. Colombian army helicopters accompany the airplanes that spray. They not only spray the coca, they also spray the forests and the waterways. I mean, bro, there’s so much evidence and so many stories from the campesinos of what they are suffering with these sprays, yeah? Because all their food is gone. All the cash crop is usually gone, too. But the weird thing is they tell you and you see it too, and I’ve seen it with my eyes – I won’t be afraid to tell anybody this – you see big crops of coca high in the mountains not being sprayed. But the small ones low in the valleys, the small ones, the campesino ones are the ones sprayed along with their food.

What happens with these people is the war gets there, they hear these planes, they go to poor areas of the cities, you know? And they become really cheap labour to export [cheap goods] that work without any social benefits or anything. So that’s why I work with community in Colombia, yeah? Because we need to build capacity. And the state programs are not building capacity.

And we are pretty much like the lawn of the United States. They go there and do whatever they want to. If they did good things, they would be very welcome. But they are just ripping our country apart and killing our people.

So this community is in a food emergency. It was sprayed two weeks ago and as we speak they are in a food emergency. They don’t have any food. And the problem is that the paramilitaries, the right-wing paramilitaries, which do cooperate with the state army and police – they are illegal – they deal a lot with drugs and that’s well known all around Colombia in newspapers and magazines and the government knows that. But they also know, and I have seen it with my eyes, I have seen how they cooperate. There’s a roadblock, a police roadblock, but there’s a paramilitary telling them who to stop. So, they do cooperate. They don’t let food go up because the guerrillas live up in the mountains.
So these [villagers] are the people who are in between. I mean, they are confined, you know? And now they come and spray them, so they are in a food emergency. The only food that really reaches those parts is the food that is sent by the World Food Program or these humanitarian aid organisations backed up by the United Nations. But the paramilitaries don’t let any food go up, so it’s really tough, yeah? We were there. You know, we go up because we are being contracted by an international aid organisation, a human rights organisation. So, yeah, we usually have a very high political price, yeah? So, we can just go in and out. And usually all the permission is taken. We ask, we send messages and things.

And now that they have sprayed, their crops are gone, so they don’t have food. And we need people to know this. That’s why I’m not afraid of saying this because we need people to know this everywhere in the world because borders are really obsolete, yeah?

We get to a point where we know that if in Japan they pollute the air, that air is going to reach Colombia some day. Or that water, too. So we have to work together all around the world. Everybody has to know what is happening there as much as we have to know what is happening here. But people just don’t know. And the governments, the empires that are ruining the world and that we are supporting by the way we buy, by the way we consume, by the way we think, by the things we say, by the way we behave. All these things are doing those there, yeah? And we cannot support that anymore.

Filed Under: Article Tagged With: interview

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