More than a decade of permaculture implementation in Timor-Leste is leading to a unique guidebook specific to worldwide tropical climates — that is, if an ongoing crowdfunding campaign succeeds. The practical reference guide – A Tropical Permaculture Guidebook — aims at “assisting subsistence farmers in tropical areas worldwide to gain community, health, economic, environment & development benefits”.
“We need to support farmers in every country to connect with each other and share their knowledge with each other about sustainable agriculture and traditional knowledge”, says Timorese environmental activist and musician Eugenio “Ego” Lemos in an interview with the website Focus on Global South. The founder of the first national organization dedicated to permaculture — Permatil – which is leading the effort to publish the Tropical Permaculture Guidebook, explains why it is important to spread this seed:
We have to claim back our traditional knowledge, protect our lands, seeds, genetic resources and water, and win back our rights of what we want to eat and grow. The world is now facing food and economic crises because those with capital control our world. But we need to change this. If we allow capital to rule the world, it will create disasters and this planet will not live long. We need to reunite the world.
via Spreading the Seed of Permaculture from Timor-Leste to the Tropical World · Global Voices.