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Permaculture Around Latin America – Bolivia

The following two videos showcase Permaculture meetings in Bolivia.

This first video showcases a pond and garden being made with Super-Adobe, in Samaipata. The instructor, Daniel Ardita, highlights the importance of building with dirt found in the land itself, and gives us a bit of background knowledge on this relatively new building technique, which came about in the 1990s.

Next up, we hear from Daniel Arce, once one of Bolivia’s most prominent cow breeders who later fell in love with Permaculture and worked to green the National University’s agronomy careers. He characterises Permaculture in Bolivia as “developing in specific locations… efforts that are somewhat isolated, with some organizations building dry toilets…. But what Permaculture has done, is doing is gathering everyone in one network to achieve more interesting things.”

There are several Permaculture Locations in Bolivia for those interested. There’s the IBP (Bolivian Institute of Permaculture), The Ná Lu’um Permaculture Institute, which regularly organizes PDC courses, and Sachawasi (House of Trees), the Bolivian Center for Andean-Amazonian Permaculture, which is an ‘Eco-libertarian tribe/community center/ecovillage that has a population of 300, of whom 97% are Quechua.

Quechua farmers, known worldwide as guardians of the rich history and diversity of the potato (there are over 2500 different varieties!) are particularly vulnerable to what Cultural Survival calls ‘biopiracy,’ the “illegal commercialization of biological materials.” Climate change also continues to affect their established agriculture-based cultures, and it is very important to highlight, champion and protect Permaculture work that is being done alongside indigenous populations.

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