I had expected this brand new ‘hot doc’, Fuck for Forests, doing the European circuit to be more sensationalist, funny, perhaps even poking fun during its portrayal of a radical group based in Berlin who produce pornographic material to raise money for environmental causes. Ultimately, though it didn’t sensationalise, it did disappoint, and I’m frustrated at its lack of coherency and structure.

I had heard of ‘Fuck For Forest’ a while back, and enjoyed their website, which has plenty of free images, perhaps defeating the point – although images of human beauty draped in foliage and enjoying their naked bodies in natural spaces is a great thing.

I certainly support that message and hope that their work, with its stated noble aims, might go some way to promote healthy nudity and sexuality in a shaming society.

The film, made by Michal Marczak, picks up on what clearly is a great story.

However, it becomes a semi-psychological profile of the individuals involved in ‘FFF’, yet I felt afterwards it doesn’t clearly portray their vision, or it slowly unpeels that they have little coherent vision, and the camera actually starts to pan between the characters, not allowing a central figure to emerge and dominate the narrative.

One of the main characters is Danny, newly arrived and in possession of a wonderful voice and eclectic dress sense. He has deep personal issues of estrangement, and an other-worldly sense of commitment to his cause, as seen in the closing shot where he asks a group of disaffected Palestinians to come and protest naked with him outside the German Parliament.

However, he isn’t given the central role of the film, and I feel the narrative lacks a structure to hang around, perhaps as the group is composed of strange characters who ebb and flow with their wavering energy levels.

It is clear that ‘FFF’’s philosophy is well intentioned but not so well thought through.

Standing round, smiling either inanely or looking either hostile or vacant, the film does include sex scenes, including a public copulation, where the male, Tommy Hol Ellingsen, smears his sperm mingled with his partners menstrual blood over his face, and declares it “organic”.

It is a rare documentary that leaves the viewer wondering is it the style or the subject that is discordant and under-developed? A few hours after viewing I realise it is actually both. It is a tough proposition to make a documentary about sexuality, without being either gratuitous or academically distant.

The most interesting parts of the film are when the group approach people to come join them and be photographed naked, or filmed having sex. They share the statistic at about 1 in every 10 they approach agree and shed their inhibitions. That is a fascinating study, which the maker could have explored a bit more, including an early scene where a chap with a lot of emotional baggage gets photographed naked in an inner-City park to try to heal.

Naturally enough, they manage to raise a huge sum of money to take to donate to Indigenous groups in the Amazon region, but here is where the well intentioned plan beaches.

When they arrive there, they are welcomed, taken into the forest and the heart of the human community, even given a traditional herb to create hallucinations and open up parts of the mind to a more enlightened state.

But in an excruciating scene, where the group attempt to articulate their vision to the locals, and offer up their overflowing wallet, the community want specifics from them like jobs or self-directed job creation, not idle hand-outs from oddly dressed Westerners.

The group leaves bruised, mis-understood, their vision in tatters, for want of poor research and naïve ambitions. The group splinters, and they all go off on separate journeys.

I’m curious where they all are now, and if they have abandoned the lofty ideals that created ‘FFF’.

A follow up film, going deeper into the individuals involved, finding and following a central point of tension that shifts the narrative down a different course, and more of a challenge to the ‘us against bottled-up society’ as well as how the group might attempt further outreach to the peoples living within the forests, would be welcome.

Fuck for Forest trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

::Fuck for Forest website (warning – the site is loaded with explicit images (eco-porn) that should not be viewed by people under 18)

They can’t read or write but a couple of brave Bedouin women from Jordan travelled far and wide to help their villages become solar powered. The biggest struggle yet may be with their husbands: We’ve covered this hopeful story of Solar Mamas, Bedouin women from Jordan who went to Barefoot College to learn how to solar power their villages. We’ve interviewed the women from solar mamas, and have reviewed the film Solar Mamas, a documentary movie about their journey.

We’ve even covered their plight as these women face pressures in their village from this “wild idea.”

Not long ago Green Prophet was invited to a Skoll Foundation Conference in the UK. Our resident blogger and documentary filmmaker James met the director of Solar Mamas, the film, and was compelled to review the film for us once again.

Here’s his take on the movie Solar Mamas, and why you should watch it:

As readers of Green Prophet know, I’ve spent a fair amount of time amongst the Bedouin population of the Negev Desert in Israel, exploring various cultural and sociological issues that affect their society, and watching various solar initiatives either developed from within, or as Bedouin-Israeli co-operation projects.

I filmed this story in the Negev Bedouin village of  Um Batin where the gift of solar technology has enabled a father to have medical equipment that will greatly enhance the life of a very sick child:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was excited to hear about a new documentary film about a solar initiative with the Jordanian Bedouin population, and met the director, Egyptian-American Mona Eldaief in Oxford recently at the Skoll Foundation Conference.

The Skoll Foundation, a leading social entrepreneurs network, work in partnership with the American Sundance Institute, supporting their ‘Stories for Change’ programme, which films inspiring social change happening around the world. The organization also funds great social programs like those done by Friends of the Earth Middle East in Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

Mona’s film, ‘Solar Mamas’ follows such a project and its many trials and tribulations within the Jordanian Bedouin village of Rawat Bandan, and focuses upon Rafea, the solar mama of the title, and her family.

It is fair to say that much of the film focuses on tension between Rafea and her husband, which represent the wider issues prevalent within the Bedouin community, both in Jordan and in the Negev; the clash between traditional male power within the home and community, and a growing sense of women’s empowerment, through education and employment. Having the husband and wife as antagonist and protagonist at the core of the documentary make for an absorbing film.

Somewhat in the middle of this is the Government, and the film’s ‘fixer’ character is Raouf Dabbas from the Environment Ministry, who seems to be in a constant state of exasperation, negotiating between husbands and wives and broking power deals within family units, as well as arranging the contact with the Indian school, and bringing its founder, Bunker Roy, to Jordan. In early scenes, we see some of the pioneering work Roy has done around the world within rural communities, which gives context to the project being initiated in Jordan.

From my studies in the Negev Desert, given that the Bedouin are such a traditional culture, these changes are happening so fast the sparks flare up time and time again, as the older male custodians find their authority eroded and both women and the younger generations embrace the opportunities that the new values that a modern lifestyle will bring, like cars instead of camels, solar panels instead of firewood and gas.

The first shot of the film shows Rafea emerge from the family tent, then clearing scrub wood in the desert for fire. It is a really powerful scene, with her saying in voiceover: “my life is the same routine.”

We see her devotion to her children, her rootedness in her place and her culture, but also that she has a yearning for something else – change, travel, education, greater wealth etc, and a Government Initiative brings the head of the Barefoot College to her village to talk about the education and training offered at the School in India.

This is where Rafea and others from the village do eventually go and study, and learn how to put together the components for solar energy and create a simple set-up, but for Rafea the journey, and subsequent journeys backwards and forwards between her village and the college in India bring up so many inter-personal struggles for her, she becomes a martyr for struggle and change within her community.

A key scene shows Rafea in her tent discussing her feelings with other women, as the call of the Muezzin sounds outside: “I want to explore the world and I want to learn,” Rafea says, to be met with the response: “we understand but the situation is hopeless.”

Rafea’s husband is the key sticking point in all of this. He feels her place is in the home, with the children and the routine of the household. He is shown numerous times lying down, it is implied he is lazy and his role as provider is questioned, and when Raouf Dabbas visits and calls he smiles and says he does understand the situation and wants there to be change – but at his stubborn pace!

Like many relationships across many cultures, how one person is able to fulfil their own urge for change, travel and advancement, within the bounds of their own personal circumstances, is a key tension, and as most of us will experience this – with all the pain of break-ups and disagreements, it is fascinating to watch and experience it (within the manipulated structure shown to us through the edit process of this film) here.

I felt while watching that the story of bringing solar technology to a small and remote desert village, is almost peripheral – the actual catalyst of change could actually be anything. The shots of the women in India in the classroom learning the technology and passing their exams are great to watch and funny too, providing relief and inspiration in contrast to the trauma that Rafea is going through. Then finally when the shipment of equipment actually arrives, is assembled and there is the final “let there be light, Hamidullah (praise be to God)” moment, brings the arc of the story to completion. There is a final twist with Rafae’s husband, which I won’t reveal here.

‘Solar Mamas” is an important film that takes the viewer right to the heart of a remote Bedouin village and the central issues of tradition and change faced by one family.

I resonated deeply with the story as I’ve experienced it first hand in the Negev, and as a Western anthropologist coming in to study and experience the life of Bedouin culture, know that the weight of expectation placed upon the Bedouin to embrace alien opportunities and technologies is huge (read the story about Arava Power and the Bedouin here). Managing expectation and change is key.  However, you don’t need to have been to these communities to get a lot from the film. It deals with very real human emotions, and takes the viewer on a journey of discovery and inspiration, with very real benefits to a society without many amenities that we take for granted. It charts a very real solar harnessing and transformation project in the deep desert.

WATCH SOLAR MAMAS BY CLICKING BELOW

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bill McKibben was arrested in August this year while protesting against TransCanada’s proposed plans to build a pipeline that would carry oil from the Alberta tar sands to Texas. McKibben has written:  “This is really really important. Jim Hansen, the world’s most important climatologist, has said that if we burn these tar sands in a big way it will be ‘essentially game over for the climate.’ That’s worth reading again. The oil companies and the Koch Bros are willing to take a few years of big profits in return for cratering the planet’s climate system.”

You might think that the facts would speak loudly enough for themselves, but McKibben has also written an introduction to this collection of short stories which aims to show that fiction can speak as persuasively as fact in making the point about the wounds we are inflicting upon our own planet. The book’s title is taken from a quote attributed to the environmentalist John Muir, ”When it comes to a war between the races, I’m with the bears.”

Not-too-preachy

There are ten stories from an impressive array of internationally acclaimed authors who write, for the most part, either literary or science fiction. When I picked it up to read I was truly hoping it wouldn’t be too ‘preachy’ and offputting in its approach to telling tales from a ‘damaged planet’. Of course, since these stories are essentially intended to be  environmental parables for our age, it would be surprising if there weren’t a certain amount of implicit preaching involved. But luckily, I also found a lot of variety in tone and subject matter and the authors’ approach to the topic

The collection begins with T.C. Boyle’s story of eco-activists fighting against deforestation. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sacred Space looks at the environmental changes facing the Sierra Nevada region. As expected, these stories are clearly directly connected to the effects of human environmental destruction.

Oblique twists

But my favourite stories in the book take a more oblique angle on the theme. In Lydia Millet’s Zoogoing there is no immediate, overt environmental angle. Initially this seems to be the story of someone who likes getting too close for most people’s comfort to animals in zoos. But the story goes on to consider a very human angle on what it means to be endangered and waiting for extinction.

Similarly, Nathaniel Rich’s Hermie uses humour, featuring a talking hermit crab. Like so many of these stories it has a tinge of sadness despite the humorous style. But there are plenty of smiles to be found too, with creations like Toby Litt’s ‘Tescocommunists’ and ‘Walmarxists’ in a story which kookily conflates the blitz of the second world war with the blitz club of the 1980s London dance scene,  aping the postmodern way that most nostalgic reruns of historic trends manage to make a mash up of time. Even the title of the story, Newromancer, is a pun on the classic William Gibson cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

Future planet earth

There are two stories set in 2040. Helen Simpson’s contribution is a diary account and possibly the most terrifying vision of societal breakdown to go with climate destruction. David Mitchell’s, The Siphoners is also a scarey vision of the future, featuring a story within a story, reminiscent of the complexity of his novel Cloud Atlas.  But it also involves a sobering reflection upon the possibilities and implications of population control.

One of the impressive features of this collection is the variety of different approaches to the topic, including reflections upon the numerous different ways in which we have trashed our planet, or at least exploited it, and may one day be called to account.  For example The Tamarisk Hunter considers the importance of water supply as a vital resource and extrapolates upon the lengths that people will go to to obtain supplies.

Even the stories that have speculative or predictive elements to them are firmly rooted within the past and the present.  Margaret Atwood’s short-short story ends the book with a creation myth that turns into a destruction myth.  She writes, In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it.

This collection may not persuade everyone to side with the bears, and that’s fair enough, but it does present some of the possible reasons to do so in interesting and entertaining short-fictional ways. Royalties from the sale of this book go to 350.org, an international grassroots movement to reduce the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:
Plastiki: Across the Pacific on Plastic
The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change
A No Nonsense Guide to Climate Change

This review is a collaboration with and will also appear in The Short Review.

Edgelands are the spaces outside of towns and cities that play host to a rough element. Largely considered no-man’s-land, they too deserve attention, Marion Shoard argues. Two poets respond to the call.

The term edgelands was coined in 2003 by Marion Shoard.  She wrote, “The expanses of no-man’s-land which have sprung up on the margins of our towns and cities play host to a mix of uses characteristic of our age. Rough and ready in the naked functionalism of their edifices and in the lawlessness and vigour of their natural vegetation, these places are unappreciated by the arbiters of landscape taste, but they too have their story and their needs. The time has come to give these ‘edgelands’ their due and recognise them as landscapes in their own right.”

Answering Shoard

In their book Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts have done what Shoard requested, presenting a non-fictional celebration of these marginal spaces.  Perhaps, like the process of identifying our own personal limits and boundaries, beginning to understand what happens on the outskirts of our habitable spaces will help us to love and understand these edgelands better, rather than simply regard their rag tag spaces as necessary evils.

This book handles an extraordinary breadth of subject matter with individual chapters that cover different types of edgeland spaces or characteristics, including subjects such as wasteland, dens, landfill, sewage, wire, ruins, piers, mines and bridges.  The writing is not encyclopaedic, more a meditative contemplation, often drifting back and forth within and in-and-out of the declared topic to wander off at a tangent.

The art of the edge

The authors pose the question (and then go on to answer it by example) of how exactly poets can cope with barbed wire fencing and IKEA car parks without becoming prosaic?  How do the metaphors we use about journeying fit in with post- and pre-industrialised spaces?  If Robert Frost regretted missing the path “less travelled by” then the authors characterise their own spiritual path as “a track worn down by dog-walkers and schoolkids, on the outskirts of a north-west English conurbation.

It would start on scrappy grass, then weave its way through a copse of feral trees.  Every now and then a makeshift den or tree house can be seen, or a water tower looming where the trees peter out.  Charred bonfire patches crop up on one side or the other, and the sky is overcast above.”

The book takes many other examples from art,  literature and music to illustrate its thesis: from Marilene Oliver’s sculptures featuring text messages, through the poetry of Philip Gross about communication mast platforms and Keith Arnatt’s photograpy of rubbish to the music of The Fall about container drivers.

There are also painters whose work represents the edgeland landscapes of England, including David Rayson and  George Shaw.  Perhaps we need these artists to moderate some of these landscapes for us, to be able to see their peculiar beauty.  The struggle to perceive is one that the authors document when they describe the act of searching, as adults, for present-day dens that match those of their own childhoods, “…you are aware of how differently you see this world, how you can no longer get your eye in, or realise the imaginative potential in what you see.”

There are plenty of fanciful imaginings of potential in this book.  Self-storage facilities as shrines or temples of contemplation to escape from consumerism rather than spaces in which to store its excesses. Rats are considered as possible communications repeaters, murderers guilty of disposing of their victims to landfill, commuters capable of plucking herbs in the ruins of supermarkets. It is a co-written book, presented in a singular first person plural voice but that ‘first person combined’ voice is not an impersonal one, rather it is something highly individualistic.

At one point the authors list, like verses, the wild flowers that flourish on the wasteland of different cities, following each stanza with the constant refrain of exactly the same array of shopping chains that exist in all locations.

Out of sight, out of mind

“Rubbish is part of the texture of edgelands….The edgelands become a place of forgetting, never more so than when they are used for dumping or for landfill.”  Graffiti and litter are recurring themes in this book, but often they can be swallowed up and hidden by colonising wild plants.

The authors are insistent that edgeland spaces are transient places, always subject to change.  “Edgelands ruins contain a collage of time, built up in layers of mould and pigeon shit, in the way a groundsel rises through a crack in a concrete floor open to the elements.  They turn space inside out….Encountering the decay and abandonment of these places is to be made more aware than ever that we are only passing through; that there is something much bigger than us.”  They also argue that edgelands are some of the most biodiverse environments in England.

In some ways the spaces that fight out the battle between humanity and nature are those in which flora and fauna are taking back for themselves. The former landfill site, Salt Ayre, Lancaster became ‘an unplanned ecosystem’. Gulls established a large colony, attracted by edible rubbish.  Human scavengers settled there too, for what profits could be made, and Salt Ayre once even provided the final resting place for a forty-foot fin whale that had been stranded in Morecambe Bay.

Swaddywell Pit, Peterborough, once a dump is now a nature reserve. “There is wild carrot and yellow wort. Grasshopper warblers reel in the sedge and undergrowth; common darter, four-spotted chaser, emperor and black-tailed skimmer dragonflies cruise the air….Insects and birds and wildflowers are not interested in aesthetics.  All that matters is a biological opportunity.”  Of course, unregulated dumping is no friend to the environment and examples such as some Lebanese landfill sites show what a threat it can present.

The edge of the world

This book is about very English landscapes and spaces.  The mention of “true wilderness”  in the title reminds us that many so-called ‘rural’ spaces in the United Kingdom are closely managed. Woodland is often intensively planted for timber; the National Parks and designated long-distance footpaths are controlled and maintained for leisure purposes; watercourses are strictly managed to maintain levels, supplies and prevent flooding.

Of course, the authors are writing about the edgelands of a country which is not at war with itself or its  neighbours. In times of conflict, some unoccupied, boundary spaces can become far more contested and politically charged, such as the Iraqi Marshlands.  However, the concepts discussed in this book and the device of closely observing and recording could be translated and applied to any country at any stage of development.

For example, the book quotes Jimmie Durham describing the Arkansas of his childhood in the 1940s-50s, “…towns still had edges, no-man’s lands, that were not yet the surrounding farms…where the city’s refuse was casually dumped, so that the edge of town was not a ‘natural’ place. There lived racoons, opossums, rats, snakes, bobcats, skunks, hobos who were in fact outlaws(not homeless street people), families of African Americans and displaced Indians. All of us, shunned by the city, used the city’s surplus.”

It would be fascinating to read similar narratives that chronicle the edgelands of the Middle East. How much of their sights, sounds and smells would be similar and how much would differ from those of England’s edgelands.

For example, the idea of ‘allotment’ gardens for growing vegetables is a very British idea and the plots are often situated in archetypal edgeland spaces.  But a very similar 21^st century Urban Farming movement has emerged from Detroit and spread throughout the United States and internationally.  Today there are urban farming movements in both Israel and Egypt and it is the “waste ground, rooftops, industrial ruins, lost spaces” that become fruitful growing places in cities and on their edges.

Whether urbanisation and industrialisation is expanding, has reached a steady-state, or is in flux and decline, there will always be outer edges and frontiers where settlements meet untenanted and unworked areas of land.  It is to be hoped that Shoard’s challenge to describe these environments will be taken up in the Middle East and around the world.

Reviewer Pauline Masurel is a gardener and writer who lives in the United Kingdom near Bristol.  She is a regular reviewer of fiction for The Short Review website and has reviewed books for Amateur Gardening magazine.  Her own short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on BBC radio and featured online.  She was a runner up in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story competition and is a member of the storytelling group Heads & Tales. More about her own writing can be found on her website www.unfurling.net.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Book Review of Plastiki: Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic

Interview with Locavore Expert Leda Meredith

Book Review: The Ethical Challenge of Climate Changes by Stephen Gardiner

Stephen M. Gardiner regards climate change more or less as an ethical failure on the part of the human race, something that implicates our institutions’ moral and political theories alongside ourselves as supposedly moral beings.

He employs the well known philosophical perspectives the ‘prisoners dilemma’ and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ to support his argument, demonstrating the idea that while it is individually rational to not to cooperate with attempts to curtail climate change, such a stance simultaneously means that we all suffer as a result.

Passing the Buck

He also argues that these two perspectives are in themselves insufficient to describe climate change since the immorality of global warming is ‘inter-generational,’ or in other words, we are ‘passing the buck’ to future generations. This means that the solutions to the previously mentioned philosophical problems are not actually available to us in this particular instance.

Gardiner also refers to ‘game theory’ – the idea that climate change is a problem that focuses on the individual self-interest of nations. Yet he suggests that the drive towards green energy cancels this out since with a green economy there is no tragedy of the commons and no intergenerational prejudice.

The Layman

I’m not a particular convert to the philosophical approach to climate change politics myself, having read a number of psychological texts on the issue. I find therefore that Gardiner’s book is rather a complex mix of theoretical assumptions, models and hypotheses which, while interesting to the academic, would certainly serve to deter the layman.

I find the most convincing argument put forward by Gardiner to be the intergenerational prejudice idea, something that I have encountered before and fully accept. He also correctly identifies the prospect for abrupt, sudden climate change, the nightmare prospect of runaway global warming, being exacerbated in itself by three very difficult blocking factors – economics, psychology and the intergenerational problem, all of which serve to create a sense of political inertia that rather stifles action for change.

Ethical motivation

This is all rather deep stuff and it can be difficult to wade through at times, but nevertheless Gardiner has expertly explored some very instinctual and vitally important considerations which cannot realistically be ignored. In his conclusion he argues that self-interested consumption and group-focused politics is unlikely to meet the challenge. Rather he proposes a channeling of ethical motivation through political groups and institutions and thereby into people’s individual character.

He nevertheless warns the reader that, though essential, this is a major task which requires the participation of all disciplines, particularly psychology, law, economics, political science and sociology.

The most positive function of the book, ultimately, is to argue urgently that the major business of the day is to confront and challenge the notion of ‘business-as-usual’. Although, I suspect somehow that most of us already realise this, it’s just that not many of us are quite sure how to go about it.

In essence, difficult but required reading.

‘ A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change’ by Stephen M. Gardiner, published by Oxford University Press, UK, 2011

Reviewed by Robin Whitlock, a freelance writer and researcher with a special interest in environmental issues – particularly climate change and energy – as well as mythology and history. Based in Bristol, UK. Robin blogs at: http://robinwhitlock.blogspot.com/

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:
Book Review: Plastiki – Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic
Book Review: A No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change
Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach

Ken Finn is a passionate man. Sitting with him in his Brighton kitchen (which he built himself), our conversation ranges from his book, ‘My Journey With a Remarkable Tree’, to the current state of the economy: “We’ve got to decouple the juggernaut [of economic meltdown] that is hurtling towards us” is a memorable quote from him: to the recent summer of unrest throughout the UK, and both the malaise and regeneration of human, tribal, society, to an exploration of the benefits of travel and our human stories.

I’m here to talk to him about the book, and to be interviewed for his radio show (more about this later), but mainly because since we met at the UKAware Festival 2 years ago in London, I’ve wanted to catch up and have a longer conversation with this deeply engaged individual. I find him warm, deeply articulate and insightful on what he sees around him.

Ken’s concerns start on a very local level, from the foxes and huge seagulls that seem to dominate Brighton, to the slowly building strength of the Green Party locally – they control the Local Council and Caroline Lucas (the GP Leader) is the local MP, both firsts in a stagnant British political system; through to deforestation and the ruination of the world’s natural resources, and particularly on to the human story of Sena, a key character in the book, whose life was threatened in Phnom Penh and who has recently fled to Holland.

‘My Journey’ is both a travelogue of Ken’s movement with a mission through Cambodia and Vietnam, and a tragic, dispiriting account of the impact human greed has upon the forest and those who have depended on it for their livelihood and well-being for centuries.

When I read of the corrupt rangers being bought by local province governors and politicians not to protect the forests but instead to allow them to be clear-felled and destroyed in the name of personal and corporate profit, I felt as sick as the author. He travelled with various guides (Sena being the most involved with the campaign against felling) and met Shamen and forest dwellers who revere their spirit trees.

Some of the book reads like a lulling motorbike read, bumping along forest tracks, immersed in sights and thoughts of food and the oddness of global travel, and then he is into an encounter and right into the experience, for good or ill – such as with the guards at a checkpoint who after consuming a crate of beer, suddenly seem to understand English, or the times he gets trapped into tourist nightmares and tries to wriggle out.

“I was ready to ask the questions I’d wanted to ask since I’d arrived. “So do you use any Cambodian timber?”

“No, nothing from Cambodia.”

I changed track, “My clients only want to buy environmentally sound products. What safeguards to you have in place to make sure that what you use is sustainable?”

“Everything is FSC certified, so you know it’s sustainable. See it’s here in our brochure.”

I could feel myself going red, ‘the fucking liar’ I said in my head but kept cool. “But that can’t be. Laos and Vietnam have no FSC accredited forests and there are only three small ones in the whole of Malaysia.”

Now he wasn’t sure, I’d set off alarm bells and definitely pissed him off.

“No, everything is sustainable.” He was closing the books and closing our meeting. He was avoiding eye contact too. He didn’t mean it of course but he didn’t know if I was trouble. I hoped I could be.

“Of course, I will be in touch.” I said, somehow wanting it to seem like a threat. It was over and Hai walked me out to the car. I let out a shout inside my head.”

All of us who’ve travelled and found ways to engage with communities will identify with this book. I understand when Ken tells me about the struggles to continue the campaign, and re-adapting afterwards to our Western lifestyle, where casual consumer use and throwaway culture still predominates. Garden furniture (and many other wood products) is everywhere in the UK and the Middle East, and much of it remains made out of illegal timber. Always look for the FSC logo I preach (Forestry Stewardship Council).

‘My Journey’ is also a book to invigorate anyone who believes in protecting something natural: a kind of manual for the journey. We will not win all our battles, much will be lost, but the journey itself is often remarkable. Thanks Ken for articulating that passion.

http://www.eye-books.com/remarkabletree/author.htm

Ken Finn also hosts a radio show, ‘Earth Boots’, on Brighton community Radio. Find podcasts from his shows, and one featuring our extended conversation, at: http://kenfinn.podomatic.com/entry/2011-10-03T16_45_21-07_00 his own website is at: http://www.ken-finn.com/

Read more Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Book Review: Plastiki – Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic

Book Review: A No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change

Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach

Renown economist Partha Dasgupta’s recent book, ‘Human Well-being and the Natural Environment’ is not for the faint-hearted. It is academic in style and suitable for ‘economists, and students of economics, environmental studies, political science and political philosophy’, as is described on the jacket. It would also interest motivated readers.

Not being familiar with economic theory, equations or statistics, I did find this a challenging read and much was inaccessible to me. I am an intuitive person by nature and was attracted by the title. I am grateful that it had such appeal because it is unlikely that I would have picked it up if it had been called, ‘An in-depth theoretical study of how to evaluate policy change impact on social well-being and the natural environment in regions of poverty’, which may have been more accurate. Having said that, this book gave me much food for thought and stimulated a desire in me to speak with the author.

I gained much from this work including an insight into: the importance of which indicators can be used to measure well-being, particularly when studying ‘poor people in poor countries’ i.e. ‘private consumption per head, life expectancy at birth, literacy, and civil and political liberties.’; the limitations of using GNP (Gross National Product) as an indicator of social well-being; the need for a holistic understanding of the non-market transactions of a community prior to implementing change; and the difficulties of fully accounting for the impact of change in a meaningful way.

I gained a fuller understanding of the complexity of human existence across a range of countries and the interrelationship between democratic processes, civil conflict, war and the natural environment. For example, the author notes that, ‘the majority of the poorest countries today lie in the tropics. In contrast, most of the rich countries are in the temporate zones’, equally, ‘many infectious diseases are endemic in the tropics and subtropical zones…..Warm climate enables the pathogens to flourish over the entire year, making it that much more difficult to control diseases.’

Where malnutrition plays a part in a country’s well-being, the author notes, ‘Undernourishment displays hysteresis. (Stunting and cognitive disability, caused by early malnutrition and infection, can’t be erased in later life.) This makes the labour and credit markets discriminate even more against those who are poor.’

I was made to consider the various stakeholders of the natural environment; ‘Watershed forests purify water and protect downstream farmers and fishermen from floods, drought, and sediments. In tropical watersheds, forests house a significant quantity of carbon and are the major location of biodiversity, A forest canopy can house several thousand species of living forms in a single hectare…..Some of the products of watersheds are necessities for local inhabitants (forest dwellers, downstream farmers, fishermen), some are sources of revenue for commercial firms (timber companies), whilst others are luxuries for outsiders (eco-tourists).‘

For me, as a concerned citizen and as a keen traveller who has visited some of these so-called ‘un-developed countries’ Dasgupta describes, it has opened up a whole new world of looking at what we value, how we evaluate the impact of change and how we need to understand the cultural differences of ‘poor’ communities where there may be a need to intervene.

I was left with a question: How does one calculate the increase to the power base of a company that exploits small local communities for its own ends? It is, after all the power base that will enable the company to continue to exploit further local communities and influence government decision-making. I feel if this measurement isn’t included and accounted for against the social and natural environment costs, the long-term costs of globalisation on social well-being and natural resources will continue to be underestimated.

‘Human Well-being and the Natural Environment’ by Partha Dasgupta, 2010
Published by Oxford University Press, UK

Louise Gethin, reviewer, was brought up in Bristol, where she currently lives, though she has lived in France, Germany and New Zealand, and has spent time holidaying in Jerusalem, Spain, Ireland, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. She’s a keen amateur photographer, cyclist and hockey player. Her biggest ambition is to publish her collection of short stories ‘Anecdotes of Love and Death’.

Want a reference book to living ethically? Want to know the truth about the costs of globalisation and profit-driven business practices on our health and society? Want to know what you can do to bring about change? This is the book for you.

Unlike the other books by Leo Hickman that I have reviewed (The Final Call and A Life Stripped Bare), the absence of the writer’s perspective and his interactions with others in A Good Life makes the book a bit harder to read.

It is much more about the theory of ethical living, about the origin of our food and what’s in it, power dynamics of globalisation, the costs to health, society and our environment of living unethically, and the different ways we can live more ethically.

I do like the way this book has been organised.  The eight chapters are broken into logical topics: Food and Drink, Home and Garden, Travel, You, Family, Community, Money and Work. At the end of each chapter there is a directory of related organisations, websites and magazines.

There are also ‘Explainer’ sections with a detailed explanation of terms like Toxic Chemicals, Fairtrade, Organic Food, Climate Change.

The ‘Dilemma’ boxes are useful throughout for exploring such questions as: do we need to wash our hair? Incineration or Landfill? Should I employ a cleaner?

The ‘Spotlight’ topics focus on our love affair with MDF, Trash Miles, Carbon Neutral, the rise of ‘unethical’ investments’, along with other highlighted issues.

It is well researched and packed full of useful information, including a section on further reading and resources, but it is text heavy and more a study of ethical living than an easily accessible practical guide.

I recommend A Good Life as a reference book, dipping into the different sections and accompanying directories when looking for something specific at a particular time.

A Good Life – The guide to ethical living, by Leo Hickman. Transworld Publishers (Eden Project Books).

This review was written by Louise Gethin of Bristol, UK.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Review of Leo Hickman’s ‘A Life Stripped Bare’

Living A Simpler, Deeper Life With ‘The Moneyless Man’

It is a gentle meander through England, a ramble across the counties, a dip in the sea, a view from a cliff, a walk on the moor, an exploration of people who have created or conserved spaces of tranquility, and a discovery of unspoiled and restored locations.  It is also a tribute to those who strive hard to create a Slow Life and run a business.

For any reader who thinks Slow is easy, they will soon discover it’s not. As demonstrated through the life stories of the people named in “Go Slow England,” time, commitment, hard work and an ability to balance organic dreams with making a living are essential ingredients for success.

The underpinning concepts of Going Slow are an appreciation of community, family and environment as well as a meaningful understanding of the impact of our actions on others.  Many of the businesses profiled have been started by people like James & Siận at the Royal Oak in Somerset who state ‘We wanted to change direction and be closer to our parents.’  All of them have a desire to create positive change in their lives and in the lives of those around them.

There are role models who put their money where their mouths are and, like Susan Lilienthal at the Parsonage Farm in Somerset, offer discounted accommodation to those who arrive on public transport, bicycle or on foot; there are many who buy only locally-produced and preferably organic food for their kitchens, grow their own vegetables, make their own bread, keep animals, sell locally-produced and home-made goods.

Most of the settings are rural, but not all. Cottages, hotels, manor houses, farms, a semi-detached redbrick house in London and even a Tipi site nestle comfortably next to each other in this book.  Each location has a distinct flavour that blends the creativity and dreams of its host/hostess with the local landscape and community.

The book is broken into digestible sections, starting with Cornwall and Devon, moving through Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, onto London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, up to Suffolk, Norfolk and Northamptonshire, across to Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, into Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, and finally landing in Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland.

Interspersed with photographs, recipes, (I would love to try Glynis Bidwell’s Plum Fudge Pudding on page 58), poems and historic anecdotes are indexed maps, pricing information, contact details, useful websites and even a comparative guide on ‘How to be fast’ and ‘How to be slow.’

It would take a lifetime to visit all these places and do them justice.  In fact, having reviewed Go Slow England, I see no reason to ever go abroad for a holiday again, unless, of course, I am searching for a guaranteed blend of sunshine, blue skies and high temperatures which, being in England, none of these locations can offer.

Go Slow England by Alistair Sawday and Gail McKenzie. Publishers: Alistair Sawday Publishing Co. Ltd, ISBN -13 : 978-1906136-03-1

‘It is an enviable life, but they have worked harder than we can imagine to create it.’ (Go Slow England – Page 107)

About the reviewer, Louise Gethin:

Originally trained as a nurse in Bristol, she spent four years working with people with HIV in the mid nineties. Highlights of her life include: trekking to Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal; working in New Zealand; being an aunt to three nephews and two nieces; and living for three years on a houseboat only a stone’s throw away from Windsor Castle.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

A Review on Bill McKibben’s “Deep Economy”

Julian gets to grips with green business in a double book review

You’ve heard of tobacco and cannabis but what about jimsonweed or torchwood?  This book demonstrates that there’s a lot more to smoke created from plant material than just nicotine and narcotics.

We are familiar with plants as a food source or sometimes a construction material, but this volume is a fascinating excursion into a facet of plants that I’ve never seen discussed in this way before.  There are over two thousand reported uses of plant-derived smoke.  It has been used down the ages as insecticide, medicine, fragrance, food preservative, recreational drug, poison, disinfectant, magical agent and spiritual purgative.

Uses & Abuses

Incense is “any material that is burned or volatized to emit fragrant fumes” and it has been used for over five thousand years by cultures including the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Hebrews. The resins from the torchwood family of trees of southern Oman, including frankincense and myrrh, were once part of a trade that was probably more valuable than today’s oil markets.

It has been suggested that plant smoke was used by the Delphic oracles of ancient Greece to produce hallucinogenic vapors. Since then, many plant substances have been smoked by people around the world in the hope of inducing psychedelic visions, including a craze in the 1960s for smoking banana skins.  Research by the US Food and Drug Administration concluded that any such affects were due more to psychic suggestibility than the effects of chemical substances within the peel.

There are over a thousand reported medical uses for plant-derived smoke. It has been used for everything from aborting pregnancies, to strengthening newborn babies. Inhalation is a particularly effective way for the body to absorb the substances present in plant smoke. Plant smoke has sometimes been used as a painkiller and cannabis is perhaps the most controversial example of this. It has also been used for respiratory problems, for example Datura stramonium (or jimsonweed) has been widely used by asthma sufferers.  It was also used for “dulling the sense of people sacrificed during ceremonial executions” and for its hallucinogenic properties.

Toxic smoke

Unfortunately, jimsonweed also contains lethal toxic ingredients and there is ample evidence of the dangers of inhaling its smoke. A number of the other plants listed in this book can be used to make thoroughly nasty poisons, such as poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and ricin which is derived from the castor-oil plant, Ricinus communis. So it’s no surprise to learn that the latter plant has also been used as an ingredient in smoke that was intended to cause blindness in one’s enemies.

The authors point out that their information is drawn from many different sources and whilst every effort has been made to ensure its accuracy, survey data is subject to different methods and rigor and even the correct identification of a plant species may be in question for some ethnobotanical field studies.  And just because a particular plant material has been used as part of the rituals of a particular culture somewhere in the world, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea to try setting light to it in our own homes.

This book provides no endorsements for plant smoke and even where it gives indications of the ingredients in historic recipes, there’s no suggestion that these are suitable for the home-grower and smoker.  This is not, therefore, a book for home experimentation with plant smoke.

List of plants

The first part of the book is a fascinating read and I was disappointed when it ended all too soon and gave way to the list of individual plant species.  This main part, the directory of individual plants, also contains some real gems, but I was left wishing that some of this information had been gathered together into a more discursive exposition that grouped plant smoke uses together in terms of other characteristics such as belief systems and geographical location.

The plant list also presents some problems for a lay reader. Despite a few line drawings of plants, it’s a rather dry prospect, visually,  and organised alphabetically by Latin plant names. So you either have to be prepared to browse this un-appetising-looking directory and dip in at random, or use the index to look up plants by their common names. In some cases this isn’t easy either.

For example, Papaver somniferum can be found in the index under ‘opium’  but not under ‘poppy’. You can only find plums if you happen to know that their botanic name is prunus. However, it does contain some fascinating revelations which repay the effort of finding your way around and it would be a very useful source book for anyone researching individual plant species in detail.

And there’s still much of interest here for the general reader. For example, anyone who has ever followed a recipe that requires you to dry-fry a fresh chili pepper will know that the resulting smoke can provoke a choking cough. So it’s interesting to discover that a tribe in Ecuador used to punish their children by making them stand over fires into which quantities of the plant had been thrown. An equally curious practice is the burning of a mix of garlic and pig excrement which has been used in Hungary to calm frightened children. Definitely not a recipe that many people will be tempted to try at home.

The future of plant smoke

Plant-derived smoke has a long history, but it also has a lot of future potential. The book’s preface offers the tantalising proposal that “few of the plants listed in this book have been studied for novel compounds that arise from the combustion of their parts. A whole new class of compounds quite possibly awaits discovery.” There may be a lot more uses for plant smoke and its derivatives.

Although this book remains morally neutral on the rights and wrongs of smoking various substances, it goes some way towards countering the view that plant smoke is always a bad thing.

This book was reviewed by Pauline Masurel, a Green Prophet guest writer

Uses & Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke: Its Ethnobotany as Hallucinogen, Perfume, Incense & Medicine (Marcello Pennacchio, Lara Jefferson & Kayri Havens) Oxford University Press

More stories about plant uses:

TransAlgae Seeds A Need For Green Feed

4 Unique Aloe Vera Juice Recipes for Summer and Health

Are You Growing Poison In Your Garden?

image via Stinkie Pinkie

Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins are authors of ‘Local Food, How to make it happen in your community’ – a big, hearty book. In a time when the supermarkets look set on taking over, they give  practical guidance on how to set up community projects to help us gain more food independence: food security, self-sufficiency and organic eating are central to their message. ‘Local Food’ is packed with real- life examples of community schemes including farmer’s markets, community gardens and school projects.

Dig in

Not only a handbook for those looking to create a neighbourhood project, ‘Local Food’ is also an informative, inspiring read that is relevant to the current food-crisis. It seems to me that more and more people are buying local produce, preferring organic food and feeling the need to get back in touch with nature and the soil.

After many years of people growing more dependent on supermarkets for their food and losing touch with where that food comes from, there seems to be a shift occurring, even in the mainstream, back to the 1930s when the ‘Dig for Victory’ movement was beginning as a result of rationing during the Second World War. As Rob Hopkins points out, ‘By the end of the war, 10 percent of the nation’s diet was coming from allotments and back gardens…Nutritionists argue that the nation had never been healthier.’

Even when the government was rationing an average adult one egg and the value of 6 pence of meat per week (with other essentials in equally low amounts) the people of Britain were healthy due to working their own land. For me that shows how much more we could be doing in England today.

Juicing the fruits of labour

This book raises awareness of what is possible and how, with some planning and a few loyal helpers, we can all eat food grown in our local soil. On a personal level I have seen how effective a community project can be. My parents planted an orchard in 2007 with the help of neighbours as part of the Gloucestershire orchard group.

Next weekend we will be picking and juicing the apples from the forty-year old apple trees in the garden; we also have plums, quinces, pears and mirabelles. Everyone involved works hard to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Not only have we created a beautiful organic orchard of splendid trees but our village community is stronger as a result.

‘Local Food’ champions Britain as a nation of potential ‘produce- consumers’ by giving working examples of projects as well as ideas such as ‘The Great Reskilling’ described in chapter two.

‘We need to relearn all the skills and trades that once made up the thriving local food economies of a pre-oil society and that will help us to steer a steady course through the times of unprecedented change that lie ahead,’ they write.

Easy nibbles

I know that I need training from experienced people to become an active gardener, a preserver and a forager. This book has reminded me that I want to learn about edible wild plants such as blackberries and elderflower to further my current ‘easy nibbles’ repertoire. I also like the idea of a community composting scheme because, even without an allotment, I am adamant that my lovely compost will go to help some needy soil just down the road from my house.

If you are a budding community project organiser, or just an intrigued reader, the personal stories and photographs from established initiatives, as well as the engaging text on climate change, peak-oil, supermarkets, and growing your own food should entice you to get your nose deep in this book. I have!

This review was compiled by Ellen Grant. Ellen was brought up to love animals and plants and when, at the age of fourteen, her family moved to an old farmhouse with fifteen acres of land Ellen was infected with the green bug. She now lives in Bristol and attends Bath Spa University.

Read more about sustainable food:
How Does Your (Community) Garden Grow?
Edible Weeds In Your Middle East Garden
RECIPE: Mulberry Chutney ]]> http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/10/ellen-local-food/feed/ 0 http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/09/ben-law-woodland-year/ http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/09/ben-law-woodland-year/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:28:58 +0000 James Murray-White http://www.greenprophet.com/?p=30062 More green wisdom from the United Kingdom: this week Clare unravels the many reasons to celebrate and cherish woodlands.

Anne Frank found solace in the giant Chestnut tree that stood outside her home, while a Moroccan activist risked arrest to protect a precious stand of Cedar trees. And in Israel, to the outrage of Omer’s Mayor, the Bedouins are accused of cutting down thousands of trees on disputed lands.

Though they have spiritual significance to some and spell money to others, trees are critical to breathing our carbon emissions, and according to essayist Chip Ward, “sweat” the moisture that is necessary for agriculture. They prevent soil erosion and provide fuel and building materials. The numerous reasons we should protect remaining trees are hard to illustrate, unless you’re Ben Law. Clare Reddaway reveals what he knows.

Celebrity woodsman

The author of ‘The Woodland Year,’ Ben Law is something of a celebrity woodsman in Britain. He is particularly famous for his sustainable wooden house in the forest, the building of which was filmed for Channel Four’s ‘Grand Designs.’ I have never seen the programme, but I instantly warmed to Ben’s apple-cheeked wide smile, and his open, passionate and knowledgeable writing about his wood.

The book is divided into the months of the year. In each chapter Ben describes the work that takes place during that month. This could be coppicing the hazel, steam bending sweet chestnut for the crown of a yurt, felling larch for floor joists, or harvesting nuts and blackberries. He describes how the wood is managed productively as a sustainable woodland and how it provides an ecologically viable way of life. He also relishes the glory of nature as the year passes, and shares some mouthwatering recipes created out of foraged food.

Each chapter has a piece written by other woodsmen and women from all over the country. Rebecca Oaks contributes from the Lake District, Stewart Whitehead from Ceiriog Valley in Wales, and Anthony Waters from Cornwall. They each focus on their own areas of interest. Frankie Woodgate describes working her wood with heavy horses. Hugh Ross writes about making charcoal. Paul Morton tells how three years ago he was working in a jam factory; now he is earning his living from 38 acres of woodland, which he owns and manages.

Cramp balls

It is not only the beauty of the photographs that brings this book to life. It is the intimacy of the writing and Ben Law’s extraordinary, wide-ranging knowledge about woods. The reader learns that King Alfred’s Cakes or cramp balls, black fungi that grow mainly on ash trees, are nature’s firelighters. Law describes coming across a badger’s set with debris piled outside after a spring clean, noting that badgers are clean animals. He lists the uses for each type of wood. Who would have guessed that alder makes the best clog soles, or that wood from the wild service tree is much in demand in France by musical instrument makers?

Snedding  is the removal of side branches and the top of a felled tree, and those side branches are known as ‘brash.’ When berries are softened by frost they are ‘bletted.’ I reveled in the names of English wild flowers:  Dog’s Mercury, Spurge, Enchanter’s Nightshade, Stitchwort. I might even be able to indentify them from the photographs.  All of this speaks of a man who is steeped in his craft and that craft has its roots in ancient woodland lore that has been all but forgotten in modern Britain.

Shiitake spawn

There was one activity that I particularly enjoyed. In March, Law inoculated logs with mushroom spawn.  After ten years of trials, he has discovered that his most reliable inoculation has been the Japanese shiitake mushroom into sweet chestnut logs. He drilled holes in the logs with a specialist Japanese drill bit and then filled them with spawn-impregnated sawdust. The holes were sealed with wax and the logs stacked in the shade of the woods for the mushrooms to colonise. Sometimes the logs were ‘shocked’, by plunging them into water to stimulate growth. A few days later he would have a log full of shiitake to sell to the local gastropub. So that pile of rotting logs in the woods is in fact a woodsman’s log larder.

This is not a ‘how to’ book for a trainee woodsman. It is more of a lyrical call for readers to work more in harmony with nature, and to appreciate the resources that lie around them. As such it works. I, for one, will be walking in my local woods with my eyes newly attuned to my surroundings. I shall search out local charcoal made in local charcoal kilns. Although I think it’s unlikely that I will try Ben Law’s recipe for squirrel stew, I am waiting for the first frost to ‘blett’ the sloes so that I can pick them for sloe gin, and I’ve got my eye on my beech hedge for beech leaf noyeau (more gin).

Not all of us can live the life that Ben Law lives, but through this book we can get an idea of the importance of his work. He is leading a woodland renaissance in Britain, and reading about it is a tranquil pleasure.

THE WOODLAND YEAR By Ben Law
Published by Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire, UK http://www.permanent-publications.co.uk/index.htm

Reviewed by Clare Reddaway

More books to check out on Green Prophet:
Sustainable Love and the Five Percent Rule: Who Comes First?
Living A Simpler, Deeper Life With ‘The Moneyless Man’
Green Student Life Using “10 Ways to Change the World in Your Twenties”

If we take green living seriously, we all must examine every aspect of life, from consumerism through to energy use and our personal economic and social attitude. This is what Mark Boyle has done, to an extreme level – he has forsaken our regular monetary exchange system, and has lived and looked outside its constraints (and luxuries) for a year (and more) and written it up in ‘The Moneyless Man – A Year of Freeconomic Living’.

“Money no longer works for us. We work for it. Money has taken over the world. As a society, we worship and venerate a commodity that has no intrinsic value, to the expense of all else. What’s more, our entire notion of money is built on a system which promotes inequality, environmental destruction and disrespect for humanity.”

What you didn’t know about mushrooms

It is an illuminating tale of the practicalities and difficulties of managing life without the lubrication we all moan about, struggle to earn (or revel in its abundance), and the network of transactions we associate with money.

Here on GP we’ve written about making your own soaps and cleaning solutions; Mark goes much further and describes how he makes toothpaste from cuttlefish and fennel seeds, and ink and paper from foraged mushrooms. He forages for food, grows his own, barters his time and energy in exchange for sacks of wheat (and is living on a farmers land in exchange for time given to the farm growing food).

He shuns buses and public transport, relying instead on his legs, his trusty bike, and occasionally sticking his thumb out.  There is a wealth of practical ‘how to’ information interspersed throughout the book. He includes tips on low impact transport, hitchhiking, keeping clean without toiletries, a hay fever remedy, making booze for free, and even offers up advice on menstruation!

He writes memorably about getting from Bristol to his hometown of Ballyshannon in County Donegal in Ireland (a distance of some 500 miles) by hitching.

Celtic Tiger Economy

Ironically, I lived just outside Ballyshannon myself a few years back, and resonate with how Mark painfully describes how the traditional way of life in Ireland has changed, all due to a growing economy and society’s shift to being part of a market-led and pressure-driven system, where we have less time for anyone else’s well-being. Rural Ireland is not anymore the peaceful haven of stone cottages with turf smoke lingering in the air; it is now the land of a virulent Celtic Tiger economy and its depressed aftermath.

“Another major motivation is much simpler and more emotional – I’m tired. I’m tired of witnessing the environmental destruction that takes place every day, and playing a part, however small, in it. …. I’m tired of seeing families and lands destroyed in the Middle East so that we in the West can fuel our lives on cheap energy. And I want to do something about it. I want community not conflict…”

Here in Bristol, Mark is a local hero: as well as being a warm and genuinely compassionate guy, he has set up the freeconomy network,  ran freeskilling evenings in a local café, where anyone could learn or teach a new skill ranging from yoga through to beer-making and identifying trees, and organised the Freeconomy Feast in November 2008, which fed 1000 people a meal from foraged and found food (for free), and provided entertainment and inspiration for at least 4,000 in a single – entirely moneyless – day!

Freeconomic Community

This is all detailed in chapter 14, but take my word for it, it was a hell of an achievement. I know he has even bigger plans in the pipeline: all proceeds from this (already best-selling) book will go to the creation of a Freeconomic Community, living communally together, based on values of mutual co-operation and trust, out of the regular economic system.

“ Living the slow life is definitely more time-consuming but I’d rather have it consumed this way than in watching a reality television show in the room we call ‘living’…if I didn’t really believe this, I wouldn’t put myself to so much trouble.”

Despite all this frenetic activity promoting the freeconomic life, Mark lives simply and frugally in a small caravan. He is the living proof that we don’t need to dispense with all the trappings of modern life, such as a phone (incoming calls only!) and a laptop – just power them from renewable sources. He has carved out a media career writing and philosophising about his efforts, and has been much sought out by the media.

I was bemused recently when I saw him on a daytime TV show where the presenter wove her piece around the question of whether a ‘moneyless man’ could be a good catch! Mark played along, using even this rather inane opportunity to cheerfully get the message across with a grin and his wonderfully distinctive Irish brogue. Many of the media images of him show him shirtless, chopping wood or just loving being in the natural surroundings of his home.

Far and wide

He lives deep in the English countryside, between Bristol and Bath, but his message is spreading far and wide. ‘The Moneyless Man’ has just been published in Korean (surely it must be coming out in both Hebrew and Arabic soon?), which shows how this simpler, more thoughtful and more turned on lifestyle really touches a nerve.

Watch video on Mark’s life:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read this book if you care about the human impact upon the earth, if you are similarly angry and frustrated about this corrupt, oil-based economic system we live under, and read Mark’s book if you too want to make a difference.

‘The Moneyless Man – A Year of Freeconomic Living’ by Mark Boyle Published by www.one-world-publications.com 2010

More Green Book Reviews:

Green Student Life Using “10 Ways to Change the World in Your Twenties”

Mazzy reviews ‘The Story Of Stuff’

Review of Leo Hickman’s ‘A Life Stripped Bare’

Instead of being a part of the disposable fashion industry, I am reusing loved clothes as well as donating my own. I am one of a growing breed of charitable, fashionable students without a guilty conscience.

Libuse Binder would be proud. Her book “10 ways to change the world in your twenties” is full of similar stories and messages, which ring true for me as a student who strives to be as eco aware as possible in everyday life. Binder focuses on how we can simply and practically change our habits and actions to benefit the wider world with bold heading, chunky boxes, and relevant logos.

This book, as Binder says, “is not limited to any age group.” However, the presentation of facts and suggestions  makes for easily digestible reading, a rare thing in the world of eco-literature and a bonus for any busy student.

Helpful lists of suggested eco-organisations, websites and volunteer positions (although American) coincide with basic messages that are inspirational as well as manageable.

She writes, “changing the world is deeply personal,” understanding that striving for change can seem a daunting, often unachievable idea. But as the book recommends and advertises, focusing on what means the most to you makes it easy to achieve your personal goals.

Most inspirational of all are the success stories that Binder includes amongst the facts and figures, which tell of people in their twenties who have made it their focus and in many cases their careers to fight for change and help others. If they can do it, so can we!

In a nutshell

The chapter, Ways to live, give and thrive through volunteering, describes in a nutshell all of the reasons I feel the need to get involved in volunteer work.

“In order to break down the walls of hopelessness, poverty, and cultural isolation, we need to foster a greater awareness of what is happening in the lives of both our local and global neighbours,” says Binder.

She presents the challenge of becoming a volunteer in such a refreshing and optimistic way that I am now looking at how to become a WWF volunteer and last weekend volunteered at an organic farm in the UK (I also wwoofed last year in France and love the idea of helping organic farmers and becoming a part of a community).

The experiences that I accumulate push me to do more and give more time to worthy causes. This book highlights the small as well as larger decisions one can make to help the world become more humane, and generally a healthier and happier place to live.

Throw an eco-party

Binder not only tackles ways of reducing waste at home, but also throws parties to get friends on board worthy ventures, and finds ways to travel in an environmentally friendly way; she introduces ideas about boycotting companies with bad values and practices, and networking in order to bag the “perfect world changing job for you.”

Although these more active and vocal missions may cause some students to shy away, for me they are Binder’s freshest suggestions. In some cases she seems to be spelling out ways in which we can live ecologically that are already ingrained in daily life for a lot of us (for example recycling, reusing plastic bags and reducing water use by flushing less and not letting taps run). However, for students newly arrived on the green scene the information in this book is so neatly presented that new habits could be easily adopted.

Thrift by name, thrift by nature

“10 ways to change the world in your twenties” has given me new ideas as well as reaffirmed my current beliefs and actions; by the time I start my new university term I will have swapped some books (thrift by name, thrift by nature), radically reduced my use of plastic containers and food wrappers, volunteered in my local area, and continued with my compost-making mission.

As an example of Binder’s target audience, if I am inspired, then I’m sure other students will feel equally motivated. Whether you are a student or not, this book is sure to get you on (or back on) track with changing the world.

This review is by Ellen Grant. Ellen was brought up to love animals and plants and when, at the age of fourteen, her family moved to an old farmhouse with fifteen acres of land Ellen was infected with the green bug. Now living in Bristol and attending Bath Spa University, Ellen is not only aware of her responsibility to be an eco-student, but seeks to make writing about the environmental crisis her career. After months spent in the city she likes to take time in the summer to go wwoofing or volunteering at festivals and farms.

Read more on green volunteering:

Organic Kibbutz

National Pollution Prevention Volunteer

Wwoof Middle East

The Story of Stuff is subtitled “How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health – and a vision for change.” Its author, Annie Leonard, is not anti-stuff but she explains that, “I want us to value our stuff more to care for it, to give it the respect it deserves. I want us to recognize that each thing we buy involved all sorts of resources and labor.” Leonard describes Stuff as “manufactured or mass-produced goods, including packaging.” Hence, this book is all about “Stuff we buy, maintain, lose, break, replace, stress about, and with which we confuse our personal self-worth.”

Stuff is a global problem

Annie Leonard is an expert in sustainability and environmental health issues. She has campaigned and investigated factories and waste disposal systems for over twenty years, working with groups such as Greenpeace International and the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance.

She writes from her own perspective as a US citizen, but makes it clear that stuff is a global problem, in its construction, consumption and its disposal. She gives numerous examples of how these things are interconnected across the world. When the richest 20% of the world’s population are responsible for over 75% of its consumption and the world’s poorest 20% responsible for less than 2% then there is plenty of scope for some global redistribution of Stuff.

This book is not a guide to living a greener life, although Leonard does provide some ideas for individual actions. Rather, it is a critique of the dogma of economic growth, capitalism and above all, consumerism and over-consumption.  It contains five main chapters that cover the life cycle of every product we use in our our homes and our lives namely: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal.

The life cycle of Stuff

Extraction often involves the destruction of whole landscapes to obtain minute quantities of ore from tonnes of rock. The horror stories in Production include the former Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Leonard argues fiercely that if any industrial process is too toxic for communities in the developed world then it should also be banned in the developing world.

In Distribution there is discussion of the local food movement, a hopeful trend to reduce food miles and invest in local communities.

In Consumption she considers some of the reasons we seek to acquire stuff beyond our real needs.  Unfortunately, she concludes, “Stuff doesn’t make us happy,” and focuses on advertising and planned obsolescence as devices that have promoted unnecessary consumption.

In Disposal Leonard concentrates on the need for systemic changes, often requiring input at the production stage.  Such changes might include the introduction of returnable containers, reducing packaging waste, composting, designing modular and upgradable electronics products. Leonard argues that incineration is easily as bad as landfill.

Exporting toxic stuff

Exporting our toxic waste to other countries in the guise of  recycling is not the answer either. Leonard recounts the story of the Khian Sea, a ship which set out  carrying incinerator ash from Philadelphia and  dumped some in Haiti under the guise of importing ‘fertilizer.’ It went on to spend twenty-seven months at sea in a desperate search for somewhere to unload its toxic cargo, finally dumping it illegally in mid ocean.

Leonard is realistic in this book about how complex it is to make changes and how the choices are not always straightforward. She champions political and community engagement, believing that it is not enough for people to simply recycle, particularly if waste goods are simply ‘downcycled’ in the production chain, so that new raw materials are  still needed to replace the original products. She argues that there must be full-scale system changes.

Low impact choice

Society needs to change so that the default action is a low impact choice.  In the book’s epilogue she suggests four major paradigm shifts that need to take place, shifts which would “lay the groundwork for creating an ecologically compatible life on earth – life with greater happiness, greater equity and for many of us, less polluting, wasteful, cluttering stuff.”

According to Annie Leonard, we need to redefine progress (away from GDP as the main measure of how well a country is doing), do away with war (which costs governments so much and prevents them doing more worthwhile things) and internalize externalities (by making producers pay the full cost of the damage they do to the environment and societies).  Finally, we need to “value time over Stuff”.

The Story of Stuff provides ample information for those campaigning for such changes.  Although there are moments when her arguments sound borderline obsessive, for example when writing about the evils of some products such as PVC, she also offers resources to back up her revulsion (www.besafenet.com/pvc/).

More resources

And ultimately, it is her passionate belief in the need for change which drives this book. Leonard writes,  “take an inventory of your interests, passions, and skills and then look out in the world and see which organizations are a good match.” There are a vast number of useful online resources to be gleaned from this book, many of them international in their remit. To give you some ideas, they include the following:

• Wiser Earth  http://www.wiserearth.org/
• Freecycle  http://www.freecycle.org
• Happy Planet Index http://www.happyplanetindex.org
• Earth Rights International  http://www.earthrights.org/
• Human Rights Watch  http://www.hrw.org/
• Good Guide  http:www.goodguide.com
• Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives  http://www.no-burn.org/
• Toxics Use Reduction Institute  http://www.turi.org/
• Clean Production Action  http://www.cleanproduction.org
• Green Science Policy Institute  http://www.greensciencepolicy.org
• Rainforest Action Network  http://ran.org/
• End Mountaintop Removal  http://www.ilovemountains.org/

“There’s so much work to be done in over-hauling our current systems that it doesn’t really matter which issue you choose; what matters is that the work is done towards the broader goal of a sustainable and just world for everyone.”

If you enjoy The Story of Stuff then you might also want to read Fred Pearce’s Confessions of an Eco Sinner which covers some very similar territory but has more in depth personal case histories tracking down where his stuff comes from and where it goes to.

If you’re into the practicalities and politics of human waste and sanitation then Rose George’s Book The Big Necessity is a compelling read. Annie Leonard’s own The Story of Cosmetics has just been launched and is available at her website http://www.storyofstuff.com/ where you can also see the original film that led to the writing of The Story of Stuff.

Reviewer Pauline Masurel is a gardener and writer who lives in the United Kingdom, near Bristol.  She is a regular reviewer of fiction for The Short Review website and has reviewed books for Amateur Gardening magazine.  Her own short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on BBC radio and featured online.  She was a runner up in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story competition and is a member of the storytelling group Heads & Tales. More about her own writing can be found on her website www.unfurling.net.

More Book Reviews:

Review of Leo Hickman’s ‘A Life Stripped Bare’

Book Review for Light Summer Reading: French Lessons by Peter Mayle

Louise Reviews Eco-Tourism Book ‘The Final Call’ With A Questioning Eye

Like another of Leo Hickman’s books we’ve reviewed – ‘The Final Call’ - this book still has much to teach us today.  What I liked best was the honesty of Leo Hickman as he sets out on a journey and works hard at trying to live ethically.  The book highlights, in real terms, the difficulties of doing this in an era of globalisation and mass consumerism, where, at times, the actions of the individual can seem like a drop in the ocean.

Hickman is helped along the way by his wife Jane; the ‘ethical auditors’: Hannah Berry from the Ethical Consumer magazine, Mike Childs from Friends of the Earth, and Renée Elliot from the Soil Association; and readers of his Guardian blog who write to him during this project, from all corners of the globe.

HIckman begins by inviting the ‘auditors’ into his home where they examine all aspects of his and Jane’s daily living, including choice of nappies (clean ones, of course), toiletries, insulation, heating options, cleaning products, holidays, transport, waste disposal, banks and groceries.Then, he sets off to follow their recommendations.

Clearly, he wants to get it right.  But it takes time and effort.  He has to check the food he’s buying is locally sourced; that meat (should he be eating this anyway? another dilemma he faces) has been organically reared and not subject to cruel conditions when alive; that cleaning products don’t contain harmful toxins; which nappies to use to protect the environment and stop leakage at night; which companies offering financial services are not involved in ethically dubious activities and which ones invest in ethically positive ones.  And, Hickman has to do this in collaboration with Jane and baby Esme.  So many things to think about!

For the vegetarians, vegans and fruitarians among you, I would skip the ‘Rat incident’.  Honest, brutal and necessary. What do you do when rats move in?  Some may think they have a right to life.  This anecdote drew on something primal about a man choosing to defend his family.  He used the example to make a comparison with how many of us eat meat with little thought of the source animal.

It made me think of the one occasion I went fishing and caught a Red Snapper. I was humbled as I ate it later barbecued with a splash of lemon. Never has my connection with what I’m eating been so strong.  Like Hickman, I question how many of us would continue to eat meat if it was our job to take the animal’s life first.

(Green Prophet’s Daniella writes an excellent piece on her experience witnesses a ritual Muslim slaughter).

Hickman made me reconsider the sanitised breasts of chicken; efficiently-sliced cuts of steak; chops and joints carefully placed in plastic trays in supermarket fridges which belie the misery of the animals while alive.  And, of course, it’s not just the treatment of animals; in the process of mass production landscapes and environments are changed and depleted, leaving long-term damage to the ecosystem.

Perhaps the best example of trying to live ethically in the real world is during the time when his baby daughter, Esme becomes unwell and has to go to hospital.

Leo comments:

Sitting by Esme’s cot over the next two days with little to do, we find ourselves discussing the various ethical dilemmas of modern medicine…………….But concerns about the drugs’ origins evaporate when the paediatrician tells us what Esme needs to take to get better.  I admit it freely: we entrust Esme’s well-being entirely to the hospital’s staff.  If one of them had come up to me and said, I should inform you that over a thousand rats died a painful death to allow this antibiotic to be here today,’ I would still have said, ‘Fine, let’s proceed.’”

Hickman loves gadgets and is eager to purchase the latest, most up-to-date electronic item on a regular basis. He has to take a good look at this and consider the costs to the environment of built-in obsolescence, energy used to produce new products and what happens when they need to be disposed of.

He and Jane take a week off television and soon realise how much time is spent in front of it.  He learns to switch things off and not just leave them on standby. I only recently learned how much energy is used up this way and have consistently switched off the monitor on my computer ever since watching ‘The Age of Stupid’ (reviewed here).  I don’t have a television, although, I freely admit there are days when I would love to do nothing more than spend an afternoon or evening, remote in hand, flicking from program to program.

Alongside details of his practical attempts to start a wormery, recycle with vigilance, wash nappies, negotiate the use of ethical painting products with a traditional builder and decorator, start a veg plot and much more, the book is interspersed with extracts of the auditors’ recommendations and discussions as well as emails of advice from his blog readers.

It encouraged me to do a mini audit of my ethical living.  I still have some way to go!

All in all, this is an inspiring read.  It really is ‘A Life Stripped Bare.’

More about this Green Prophet Reviewer, Louise Gethin:

Brought up in Bristol, Louise has lived in France, Germany and New Zealand, and has spent time holidaying in Jerusalem, Spain, Ireland, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. Originally trained as a nurse in Bristol, she spent four years working with people with HIV in the mid nineties. Highlights of her life include: trekking to Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal; working in New Zealand; being an aunt to three nephews and two nieces; and living for three years on a houseboat only a stone’s throw away from Windsor Castle. She’s a keen amateur photographer, cyclist and hockey player. Louise has also reviewed ‘The Guardian Green Travel Guide’ for GP. Her biggest ambition is to publish her collection of short stories ‘Anecdotes of Love and Death’.

The cover of ‘Everyone Can Be a Hero‘ is promising.  It’s made of cardboard, laced with rough string, and my worries that this would mean it would be hard to open the book properly were not fulfilled.  The paper is recycled.  All of which sets the scene well for a new reality in which resources are scarce.  Life is indeed different in this 2040 world. Roads have returned to wilderness.  Children skate to school.  Families all have allotments and grow their own food.  There are some great ideas in here:  I particularly liked the annual M1 sailboarder race.

The leading character in the book is Kirk, a teenage boy living with his family in a tower block in London.  He is introduced as a keen gardener.  He is looking after a flat for a friend, and it has been taken over by luxuriant, thriving edible plants, to the amazement of  Maria, a schoolmate who comes to visit. The two bond when they realise that they are both concerned about the trains which have started to travel at night.  They believe the trains are carrying nuclear waste, and they decide they need to find out the truth.  With a group of friends they bicycle down to Kent armed with cameras and memory sticks, determined to track the destination of the locomotives and their sinister cargo.

There is a good story struggling to get out of this book. However, at the moment, it is bogged down with confused narrative, poor character definition and a wobbly grasp of the new reality that the author has created.  So, the nuclear accident that has paralysed Britain has wiped out cars (oil?), but not computers, the internet or television.  No-one appears to be suffering from the after effects of radiation, although the population is much smaller.  The ocean levels have risen, flooding swathes of London and the south-east but this causes few problems, except that railway lines vanish underwater.  Life does not appear much changed, except that people grow their food and are much, much nicer.  Crime, somehow, has been eliminated.

It would be possible to overlook these issues if the narrative was exciting.  This story follows the well-trodden, classic structure of a quest.  A small band of travellers cross hostile terrain and pass through a series of menacing obstacles to attain their prize, which they must then bring back in order to triumph.  However, in ‘Everyone Can Be a Hero’, there are few obstacles to surmount.  There is no conflict.  So many convenient ‘friends’ emerge to help the group on their travels, that the reader thinks the underground organisation that Kirk and his mates belong to is far more well-organised than the government.  Although there are a number of shadowy figures that appear to be following the group, they never materialise into a real threat.  The tension is not ratcheted up so the suspense vanishes.

The overwhelming impression that this book leaves is that the author is passionately against nuclear energy.  The world that JR Birch has created is wish-fulfilment – everyone has allotments, they are all kinder, they live simpler lives, and the government is characterised only as Bad.  Whilst it is a pleasure to get away from the current vampire obsession in teenage fiction, and there is no doubt that teenagers are greatly interested in environmental issues and have the capacity to become really engaged in debates about their future and the future of the planet, they do not need to be preached at.  Teenagers don’t like stories that are worthy, and they don’t like to be told what to think.  Unfortunately this book falls into those traps, and I cannot therefore believe it would appeal to its target audience.

‘EVERYONE CAN BE A HERO’ By June Rosemary Birch, Published by Insider Outsider Publications, Telfs, Hendon Wood Lane, London

Our reviewer Clare Reddaway worked for the BBC and Granada Television before turning to writing short stories and scripts for adults and children.  Her work has been has been broadcast on local radio stations and published in magazines, on the web and in anthologies.  Her scripts have been produced in the theatre and as audio drama.  She can been seen performing throughout the south-west with live fiction group Heads and Tales. 

She has recently recorded an audio story-walk for them, available at www.headsandtales.org.uk – a new way of experiencing both fiction and the environment, at the same time.  She writes occasional articles for the Bath and Bristol Magazines and is a regular book reviewer for a number of publications both in print and online.  Clare lives in Bath with her daughter.

photo credit: Midnight Digital via flickr

This American journalist/author has written several prize-winning books, including ‘In Defense Of Food’ reviewed here on Green Prophet, ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and my personal favourite, ‘Second Nature – A Gardener’s Education,’ all of which uncover what really is going on in the world of food and agriculture.

Much of it is terrifying, much of it is actually against nature, and as he told a packed audience in Bristol, UK this week: “Monoculture is really the crux of the problem with food in the Industrialized world.”

Pollan is currently in the UK to promote his new book ‘Food Rules – An Eater’s Manual,’ and he spoke to a Bristol audience as part of the ongoing Festival Of Ideas, which links in all kinds of discussions and lectures upon the environment, climate change, history, culture, philosophy and religious values from a wonderful cornucopia of speakers.

‘Food Rules’ is a pocket-sized book, small and yet a robust dissection of trying to understand what food actually is, and very explicitly, what it really isn’t.

Pollan goes further – exploring how it contributes to both our health (like how to eat what we want to conserve), and our sense of well-being, as well as our disease.

He started his lecture by contrasting the current food fadism of “satanic nutrients versus blessed nutrients (like we ask in our post about fish) and that “we now need a nutritional priesthood to tell us what to eat!”

He has a great passion for telling his journey of discovery within the wonders of food, both on the page and to an audience, and I for one amongst many (many members of the audience worked for, or are members of the Bristol-based Soil Association, the UK’s leading organic certification body) am glad that his clear and questioning journalists eye fell into the vast soup that is the human relationship with what we eat:

“Food is an incredible mystery. We have other tools than science to navigate culture and our relationship with the natural world, and I collect wisdom from traditional cultures about food.”

He peppered his talk with facts gleaned from the diets of indigenous peoples worldwide: the Inuit of Northern Canada eat a diet which is roughly 75% fatty meat and blubber, yet are incredibly healthy.

I have met Tibetans in exile in the west who once ate a meat-rich diet in their homeland, and after discovering a sugar-rich western  diet, quickly develop diabetes and rapid weight gain.

Pollan makes it abundantly clear that processed foods in the industrialized nations contribute to cancers, heart disease and diabetes. I was shocked to hear him talk about American experiments that have led to pigs and chickens being bred together to create a lean super meat.

Ugh! This is surely a genetic abomination, regardless of whether you eat pork, or meat at all, and should really be a clarion call to come back to the natural world with more respect for its resources.

‘Food Rules’ is made up of 3 short sections, an exploration of the 3 questions ‘what should I eat?’, ‘what kind of food should I eat?’, and finally ‘how should I eat it?’.

He goes into some detail and analysis of his findings and reflections upon these questions, and focuses the reader upon always trying to recognise exactly what food really is.

The crucial test, apparently, and one which we should remember and apply, is “would our grandma or great-grandma recognise this alleged food item as food?”

To illustrate this point, Pollan had been to a local supermarket and selected some items: some low-fat yet high-sugar yogurt; some processed stringy squeezy cheese (packaged and aimed at kids….), and an apple.

Which would you choose?

Ultimately Pollan unpacks his ‘Food Rules’ into the simple 7 word mantra which answers the questions posed by the 3 parts:

‘Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.’

And there’s the magic formula. If we get that right, we could, possibly, eat our way back to health.

But the Bristol audience peppered him with questions about food addiction, GM crops (a hot topic here in the UK as the new environment minister in our new Government is allegedly pro GM crops), pesticides and scientific attempts to discredit organic foods.

There is so much to contend with in the food arena, whether you are tucking into amazing hummus or shakshuka in Jerusalem, fuul in Amman or mezze in Cairo. Or even falafel or burekas in Bristol. ‘Food Rules’ is a really important book for all to read, keep with us as a reference and to dip in and out of, and to help each and every one of us, despite our ethnicity, our class or our income, to consider what we put into our bodies and what fuels us.

‘Food Rules – an eater’s manual’ by Michael Pollan, Published by Penguin, UK

Micheal Pollan’s own website contain a list of downloadable resources on sustainable eating, as well as great resources for journalists.

This book is unusual.  Firstly, by virtue of covering the topic of forest gardening at all, but also unusual in another respect.

Many gardening books either concentrate on being packed with practical How-To information, or on offering glossy fantasies for gardeners.  In Creating a Forest Garden Martin Crawford has expertly covered both bases.  There are lots of mouthwatering pictures and great ideas to fire the inspiration as well as detailed, knowledgeable advice on how to achieve the reality.

He begins by describing what he means by the concept of a ‘forest garden’, namely  “a garden modelled on the structure of young natural woodland, utilising plants of direct and indirect benefit to people – often edible plants. It may contain large trees, small trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, annuals and root crops, all planted in such a way as to maximise positive interactions and minimise negative interactions, with fertility maintained largely or wholly by the plants themselves.”  Hence, some of the principles underlying this book are allied to those of permaculture, although Crawford also includes annuals and biennials and short-lived climbers within his plantings.

He explains how a forest garden can be low maintenance, highly efficient for food production and even contribute to ‘food security’.  If successfully planned, with the soil covered most of the time, there should be little weeding required.  A forest garden can be diverse, sustainable, resilient to climate extremes and also beautiful, but it’s certainly not quick-fix makeover gardening.  This book is definitely about gardening and not simply food production agriculture, but it does concentrate on plants which are both useful and edible.  Nor are the possibilities limited to those with large areas of land.  A forest garden can be a small back  garden and the book highlights which subset of plants would be most suitable for this.

Crawford established his own forest garden fifteen years ago in the South West of the United Kingdom.  Due to the mild climate of that region of the country, and somewhat international approach of the author, he is by no means only writing about traditional English woodland plants.  He discusses the aesthetics, philosophy and practicalities of native and non-native planting and comes down in favour of a distinctly pragmatic approach.  Many of the plants described within this book, such as mulberry, almond, myrtle, grape vine and strawberry tree would not be out of place in the Middle East.   The luscious plant directories contained within the book give information about hardiness of plants and their sun and shade preferences and tolerances, which is a useful distinction to make.  He also writes about water requirements and  irrigation, although perhaps not in the detail required by a reader in the Middle East wishing to establish a forest garden from scratch. (we’ve written recently about using forests as carbon sinks – that post is here.)

Somewhat counter-intuitively, Crawford explains that if you want a forest garden it is easier to start with a field rather than a forest.  Converting existing woodland will require extensive thinning and replanting.  He describes the processes and cycles required to plant your own trees and begin to establish the layers of planting beneath this, with an upper canopy of trees, a middle layer of shrubs and lower, perennial ground cover, to create something between a natural woodland and an orchard garden in character.   He also addresses how prevailing levels of light affect planting.  For example, the depth of shade beneath tree cover in a Middle Eastern forest garden will be less than for the same density of planting in a UK garden.

This wealth of knowledge on how to create a forest garden from scratch leaves little space for describing gardening interventions in existing woodland. This was one of the few aspects of the book which disappointed me, since forest gardening principles might offer exciting possibilities for gardeners wishing to productively cultivate tree-covered land without first clearing it.  However, this is a small criticism, because there are many useful tips which could be adapted by someone gardening in established woodland.  For instance, Crawford gives advice on the optimum design of clearings, and on which plants will require additional nutrients or inter-planting with nitrogen-fixing plants.  His calculations on the  quantities of different substances which can be used to fertilize different plantings even include the use of human urine.

Image by Robert Paterson

This book covers everything from mulching methods and grafting to wind protection and raising your own trees from seed.  Creating a Forest Garden is both an invaluable reference book and a fascinating coffee table volume.  If you are seriously considering the creation or maintenance of a forest garden then you would do well to have this book on your shelves.  Even if you are only looking for novel ground cover suggestions in shaded areas or approaches to inter-planting beneath trees, then this book offers bountiful food for thought.

Reviewer Pauline Masurel is a gardener and writer who lives in the United Kingdom, near Bristol.  She is a regular reviewer of fiction for The Short Review website and has reviewed books for Amateur Gardening magazine.  Her own short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on BBC radio and featured online.  She was a runner up in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story competition and is a member of the storytelling group Heads & Tales. More about her own writing can be found on her website www.unfurling.net.

Top image by  ScubaMom Lyn McKamey

‘The Final Call’ is a thoroughly good read and I had to remember that I was actually meant to be reviewing it.

In The Final Call, Leo Hickman takes the reader on a journey to the most popular tourist destinations in the world and uncovers the facts about the impact of tourism: exploitation of citizens in developing countries; destruction of natural resources and ecological systems; imbalances of power and control.

The book is well researched and includes reference to reports, documents, policies and initiatives from all the major players in the industry, whether they are governments, environmental and campaigning organisations, tour operators, or travel guide writers.

He balances facts and figures with personal observations and behind-the-scene interviews with bartenders, prostitutes, cruise captains, local people, industry leaders and public officials. Exploring the rights and responsibilities of all concerned, he highlights the socio-economic factors at play in countries aspiring to develop and gain wealth; the increasing uptake of opportunities for tourists; and globalization.

For me, the chapter that conveyed the extent of human exploitation the most was A Message for Mr. Average, based on the Sex Tourism Industry and the sexual exploitation of men, women and children in Bangkok and Pattaya, Thailand.

In it the lives of some of the women who work in the industry were portrayed. One was described as follows: ‘The others all call her ‘Superstar,’ as she regularly attracts two men a night to pay to have sex with her.’; another disclosed “I’m a bad girl, I know, but I feed twelve people in my family by working here.”

The stories captured what human price is being paid to keep sex tourists entertained.  The chapter also explored the dynamic between tourists and those who sold their bodies to them as well as the impact of work being done to stop child prostitution.

Some tourists felt they were enabling the prostitutes to gain wealth, others saw the opportunity for cheap sex.  ‘Several said they would never use a prostitute anywhere else in the world.  Thailand is different, first because “it’s very easy and convenient” to buy sexual services here, and second because Thai women are so “natural” and “innocent” that the transaction doesn’t feel purely commercial.’

Leo Hickman is not afraid to the point the finger at the real winners: those with the money and power to invade a destination; mine its virgin territories; leave it hollowed out and conquer somewhere new.

The bottom line?

Action needs to be taken on a global and individual basis to stop the destruction of the world’s natural resources, the exploitation of local communities in developing countries and climate change.

This book gave me plenty to think about.

Having read it, I can see that it will take a concerted and persistent approach to bring about change, particularly in aviation; air travel has the largest carbon footprint.

At one point, Leo Hickman draws a parallel between the Tobacco Industry and the Tourism Industry. I’m writing this review in Bristol in the UK, a city that has been founded on tobacco and slavery.  It is plain to see that it has taken decades since governments and tobacco companies were first informed that cigarettes damaged health for real change to occur in cigarette consumption.

This has involved heavy taxation; health promotion and information campaigns; banning cigarette adverts and promotional activities; introduction of health warnings on cigarette packets; numerous Stop Smoking initiatives; and, most recently, banning smoking in public venues.

Cigarettes are still sold and people still smoke.  And what of the individual’s response?  Unlike the smoker, who pays through the nose for a packet of cigarettes, starts to feel unfit, begins to cough and suffers increased respiratory infections, the impact on the average traveller of their carbon footprint or relationship with local communities abroad is not personally apparent, so it is easy to turn a blind eye to any damage caused. There is a lot to learn from this parallel if we want change in the tourism industry.

How many decades could it be before we see effective change in the Tourism industry? (like cycling)

The book left me with many questions: Of the sex tourism Industry.  If we believe we shouldn’t provide brothels in Britain, why should we ignore Britain’s using them abroad?

Of the cruise industry.  If we wouldn’t empty our sewage into the local lake, why should we empty it into someone else’s?

Of the exploitation of workers’ rights.  If we demand a certain standard of pay and safe working conditions here, why should we not demand the same for those who work elsewhere?

With all that said, this book gave me a desire to see the places Leo Hickman visited and go on a cruise.  And why shouldn’t I?  I have the right to, don’t I?

‘The Final Call’ by Leo Hickman (editor of the Guardian newspaper’s environment pages) published by Transworld, UK

Reviewer Louise Gethin was brought up in Bristol, Louise has lived in France, Germany and New Zealand, and has spent time holidaying in Jerusalem, Spain, Ireland, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. Originally trained as a nurse, she spent four years working with people with HIV in the mid nineties. Highlights of her life include: trekking to Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal; working in New Zealand; being an aunt to three nephews and two nieces; and living for three years on a houseboat only a stone’s throw away from Windsor Castle. Now she shares her Bristol allotment with Green Prophet’s reviews editor James!  (read Louise’s earlier review of ‘The Guardian Green Travel Guide’ here)

This review is the first in a new summer season here on Green Prophet of environment-focused book & documentary film reviews. If you have, or know of a book you’d like to see reviewed (or would like to review it yourself!), get in touch!

Top image via The Guardian.