Holos Regenerative Design

05/02/2021

Working and visiting friends in the northeastern countryside of Brazil. A place where the tropical savannah (cerrado), the rainforest (mata Atlântica) and the semiarid caatinga. In this farm they take intergenerational farming and family succession seriously. A place where our role as lead species in the regeneration processes understands the need to integrate animals, humans and our culture in primary production.

13/11/2020

"The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIMO climate model the world is already past a point-of-no-return for global warming. In ESCIMO we observe self-sustained melting of the permafrost for hundreds of years, even if global society stops all emissions of man-made GHGs immediately."

Shared by the colleague Hans Eickhoff

The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIMO climate...

30/08/2020

This course by Regrarians will bring to you a decision making process capable of ensuring your quality of life, economic viability and efficient ecological restoration strategies!

Impeccable curriculum, very food didactic and a community of practice to support you along the way.

This REX 13 week program is only available by signing up to the Regrarians Planner membership (USD$85/month for 12 months).

08/08/2020

In this podcast I continue my conversation with Sarah Savory, independent Holistic Management consultant and educator, dedicated to the wide adoption of Holistic Decision Making from managing households to wildlife national parks, and to show how governments and Organisations can use it to develop socially, economically and environmentally sound policies.

Helen Lewis, an accredited Holistic Management consultant, farmer and educator also joins us to share her experience in teaching the holistic decision making for non-land-based managers and regular people.

We discuss the 3 most common reactions we get from people when teaching Holistic Decision Making, and we talk about the 4 Key insights that made Holistic Management possible, with some conversation on how we relate to them in our work and lives. Then we chatted about what the positive knock-on effects of making holistic decisions in our societies would be if the Holistic Decision Making Framework was widely adopted.

We will keep this conversation going in order to learn better ways to teach the importance and application of Holistic Decision Making to people, so that we can facilitate its adoption into society from individual to organisational level, resulting in consistently sound decisions and policies because when our decisions are made within a Holistic Context, we are no longer reacting or adapting to our problems, we are proactively managing to ensure our decisions and policies are bringing about the lives we want in both the short and long term.

If you would like us to cover any specific topic within this agenda, please leave a comment and we will discuss it in our next podcast together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTT8RPyU2ds

In this podcast I continue my conversation with Sarah Savory, independent Holistic Management consultant and educator, dedicated to the wide adoption of Holi...

22/07/2020

Still about plenitude.
It’s not that we live each and every moment and because of it we become pure happiness.
It’s not that we learn to accept sorrow and as a consequence suddenly sublimate it.
It’s not that after the storm comes stillness.
It’s not that at the end the righteous will be rewarded.
Not even that the compassionate ones will thrive!
It’s about sadness and ecstasy nesting in the same chest.
It’s knowing the end encroaches and embracing the present path!
It’s weeping grief and celebratng the gift... all at one sight, one draw of air.

Within the last year I lost my grandfather, who raised me as a son, and my grandmother. Together they thought me many things about hunting, fishing, riding, animal husbandry, cooking, preserving food, etc.

And although I don't have a thenth of their knowledge and wisdom, I feel grareful in ways I can't describe... Because of their love, patience and example I know a simple life is possible and can bring much more satisfaction and happiness through connection... connection to each other, the seasons, the animals and all the life supporting systems around us.

A good friend sent me one of CS Lewis reflections on how eminent death should inspire us to live present and fulfilling lives, so I translated my own thoughts on plenitude. Still not sure about how well the translation carried the original meaning.

11/07/2020

“Growth today is only a profitable business if its costs are passed on to nature, future generations, the health of consumers, the working conditions of employees and, even more, to the countries of the South*”. People who have already launched themselves into various transitions - from the urban to rural areas, from the conventional to the agroecological agriculture, from a life of consumption to one in which we all produce at least a fraction of our neeeds - are among the few who have the courage to break away from the current paradigm.

It is amongst and through them that the Sanctuaries of Mental and Ecological Health are born. In these sanctuaries less economy means more ecology, less consumer goods, more free time, less supermarket, more health, less work, more leisure... Because "the recipe for degrowth consists of doing more and better with less *". Hence the need for us to master the various ecological design and rural planning approaches.

It is the ecological and energy literacy, and the investigation of our deepest values ​​that allows us to unite the aptitudes of the land where we live with the passions that move us. It is the creation of a holistic context for decision making that allows us to create sanctuaries that are the expression of our wholeness, to place production systems at the service of our quality of life and land restoration and not the other way around. There can only balance in movement ... otherwise it is not balance it is stagnation! What about you, into which direction are you setting yourself into?!

*

14/06/2020

'The soil', a female noun

“Despite all our achievements, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains”.

The history of all civilizations' downfall always goes through hubris, exploitation and disconnection from the soil we tread on.

The Mother Earth metaphor is an easy one to embrace, after all, we all live in it. But when we talk about where we produce our food we say 'the soil'; a common noun (and a male one in Portuguese). The mistake starts with the type of noun, but it does not end there. We see this life-giving, nurturing layer across the planet as a soulless substrate. A means to profit. We usurp its fertility and disfigure its curves, stealing from future generations the fertility we received from past generations and we do not nurture it.

This is a female layer, it has soul and harbors life. It receives seeds that in it take root. It renews itself every 28 days with the passing of the moon. The vegetation harnesses the sun's energy with which it feeds: from the micro to the megafauna. Rain water runs on and off its hairs, reaching its crevices, recharging rivers, lakes and our water table, but not before it quenches the thirst of all who inhabit in it. Like a mother, it always saves some for providence.

Together with the sun, the water and all biodiversity, this layer creates all life-giving nutrients and the health of the landscape. Complex relationships of interdependence in which one cannot function well without the others. Where each one’s giving creates something new, larger and mysterious.

We should not tread on this layer, but inhabit it. When we see it uncovered, burning in the sun or freezing in the cold, we should cover it. And before taking what we want, we need to nurture it. For when it is nurtured, it provides more than we need. It has a sweet scent! When loved and cared for, it grows in mystery and complexity. It welcomes the sun, purifies the water, creating and nurturing all life on earth.

The 'common, or male noun' cannot represent it properly!
“I cannot imagine anything more important than air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity. These are the things that keep us alive."

05/06/2020

Together with students and friends I have been dealing with a felling of hopelessness… To think philosophically amidst Mother Earth's 6th mass extinction… to feel the planet's pain in this moment, to find companionship in this journey and celebrate life at the same time is not for the faint-hearted ones…

Vortexes conduct energy from the water in a small creek to the planets revolving around the sun while the star travels the universe…

Dendritic patterns exchange information and nutrients from the alveoli in the lungs to the Amazon river basin…

Within networks we materialise experiences from the synapses to the Noosphere and back again…

Everything and everyone is connected and matters in this restorative journey! From the micro to the macro! But to have a chance to plant an alternative future we need to save and seed many seeds… we need to cultivate people, dreams, affection, art, aromas, flavours, music, love and laughter. Lots of love! And lots of laughter.

I rather give in to love (or wrath) than to thoughts. I know them too well as they have been dwelling in my head for too long. But kindness emerges… wrath erupts… love overflows… all invariably spontaneously without the need to think.

featuring in an session

02/06/2020

A friend who’s an agroecology teacher in the Brazilian semi-arid says that when it comes to agriculture we need muscle memory! Today our working bee/class was about pruning, managing banana trees and selective weeding. The wonderful souls attending the were , and ! They have received well some of the ideas I have been brewing in my head and quite soon we’ll have an exciting project happening here!

01/06/2020

We don't have ONE transition to make. We have many! And towards many directions! Neither do we have just ONE-city-to-rural vector...

What we call 'the transition' are, in fact, multifaceted flows. So that the rural life can fulfill its function to give birth to a new reality, it needs first and foremost to make sense in and of itself!

There is a path from a rural approach that is an accomplice to the rationale that usurps from soil to culture to a rural that connects small properties in bioregional networks. There is a path from a rural that is patriarchal to an integral one in which men and women complement each other. There is a path within which energy efficiency nurtures quality of life and not the maximisation of production. These are all transitions to be made...

We need to embrace "people, animals, plants, chocolate, wine, pleasant chats, friendship, love". Because as Drummond used to say "poetry is in all these things."

What sense there is in thinking "one" transition from city to country, when we are still constrained by the idea that the function of the rural life is to produce for those living in very cities and towns we would like to empty?

"To love and to change things is what interests me the most..."

25/05/2020

For a Brazil without Salles, the Anti-environment Minister

Note: Some of my friends have been asking for information about Brazil in the context of agriculture and environment. Here it's a dire summary.

A video of a ministerial meeting that took place on April 22 was released by the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF).

This video was mentioned by the ex-Justice Minister Sérgio Moro as evidence that Bolsonaro is intervening with ministries and with the federal police to avoid his family being investigated for corruption. Even though most Brazilian newspapers focussed on the president's use of course language, other statements from the president and his ministers are much more serious because they disclose treason against the country. I single out below some of the most criminous statements of the president and most importantly by the Minister of Environment, Ricardo Salles.

Bolsonaro made it very clear during the meeting that he will interfere (read manipulate) with ministries and the federal police to hinder current corruption investigations against his family. Other statements, however, disclose a criminal agenda against indigenous people and the environment, especially the Amazon Forest.

Paulo Guedes, the Minister of Economy, said that public resources should not be used to save small business, but that large corporations should be saved. Guedes also made it clear that he wants to privatise all the main state owned banks; which are the only banks the poorest cohort of the Brazilian population and small farmers can go to in times of need. Guedes' statements clearly align his agenda with the interest of international corporations.

Weintraub, the Minister of Education, stated that if it was his decision who would have all judges from the Supreme Court in jail. A clear strike against one of the 3 powers that balance Brazilian's already fragile democracy. Weintraub also said he hates the term "indigenous people", that there is only "the Brazilian people" and that he would like to end the privileges of these peoples. The absurd in his statement is that the Brazilian national identity cannot deny the original nations rights, much less be culturally regulated by a groups of the privileged elite.

However, the most criminal of all statements was that of the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles because it clearly revealed this government's alignment of foreign powers, the intention to use the COVID-19 pandemic as smoke screen to weaken and corrupt environmental laws, and moreover, without any revision from congress.

Salles said it clearly that the current government has "the possibility, in this moment that the whole media is almost exclusively turned to the COVID-19 pandemic coverage, to pass the infralegal deregulation and simplification reforms [of the environment protection laws].

This agenda was never a secret. However, Salles statement also reveals this government's subservience to foreign forces. According to Salles, the ministers Paulo Guedes, Minister of Economy, Tereza Cristina, Minister of Agriculture and Tarcísio de Freitas, Minister of Infrastructure, were told in international trips to weaken (read corrupt) Brazilian's legal security, to make (environmental) procedures more predictable and to simplify environmental laws in order to serve foreign powers. Clearly a treason crime!

Towards the end of his statement, Salles requested that all Ministries worked together to fast track the regulatory simplification (read corruption). In other words, Salles called the Economy, the Agriculture and the Environment Ministries to corrupt laws whilst thousands of Brazilians die in the pandemic in order to serve foreign interests. In this sense he also asked the support of the Federal Attorney General to protect these Ministries while they carried the deregulatory reform based on fake reports, as an strategy to avoid revision by congress.

Salles finalises explaining that the mainstream media focus on the pandemic opens a huge space for such deregulations and that all ministries should act together now to pass any reforms they think necessary. A true scoundrel!

I'm not sure what value international signatures would have, but I'm pasting a link to a petition asking for his resignation in the comments!