PROYECTO ALDEA GRÁIG (a PermaCulture project)

WHY?
Our current development model must change. Planet Earth and the human race are in crisis as a result of this model. Each day, the causes and effects of this crisis become more clear. Alternatively, people are becoming more aware of the connectedness of all things as well. We are realizing that our Collective Being, which is our self, our family, our community, our culture, our species, our brotherhood of Species, and our planet is ill. The question is no longer whether if there is a condition that warrants diagnosis, but how do we appropriately most quickly and effectively take action to heal.
     Our objectives of healing our Collective Being and ourselves, our objective of preserving Earth’s many magnificent life systems, and our hope of having a hospitable and beautiful planet to occupy require taking immediate and decisive actions on a personal and collective level.  

WHAT?

• A Hamlet
       What we are discovering is a new story, a new development model, a model that heals our economies, our landscapes, our cultures, our communities, our families and our selves. This healing is energized by people remembering that the natural world is an extension of our selves and understanding that we each must be the change that we wish to see in our world.
       The new development model is a completely dynamic and ever-changing organism of sorts, an organism that seeks to mimic successful biological models and learn from recurring natural patterns in nature (i.e. economies resemble ecologies, our current development model resembles cancer, etc. etc.). Observation of these patterns and their life/change cycles demonstrates to us what our restoration/remission process will look like.
       Just as the new model is ever changing, it is different for every Bioregion, this is to say that the appropriate development model(s) for San Francisco is quite different from the model(s) for Colorado and both are quite different from model(s) for Costa Rica or for nearly any other location.
  
  The Aldea Gráig Project is a demonstration hamlet, a PermaCulture project in its beginning stages. Aldea Gráig is located in the township of La Lucha on the Southern Pacific Slope in Costa Rica. Aldea Gráig will consult and engage the indigenous group(s) within and without the local group of Bioregions, both national and international Universities and Institutions As well as Governmental and Non Governmental Organizations. Aldea Gráig will invite individuals and communities of all types in order to create an economically and ecologically viable demonstration Hamlet (a replicable model for the township, and local group of Bioregions). The success of Aldea Gráig and subsequent replication will eventuate the Earth’s most potent Biosphere Conservation Corridor. 

•      Specifically the Aldea Gráig Project begins with two areas of focus: practice and education:
   
• 1. Practice (Evolving Agriculture). It is in agriculture that our human economy, culture, health, and spirit are most perceivably and directly coupled with Earth’s environment. Agriculture is the foundation of our economies, cultures and the foundation of our civilization. Agriculture is the greatest part of our human ecology. Only with a Permanent Agriculture will we have a solid foundation on which to build a stable economy, Permanent Human Culture, and whole spiritual future.
•      By painting the landscape with Hamlets planned within the framework of Permaculture Design Strategies a network of reforested biological corridors will be created which mimic the webbed pattern of mycelium (such a pattern of colonization is a symbiotic pattern where energy exchange is most efficient between organisms). In realizing this web of corridors, we will at first slow and ultimately eliminate extinctions resulting from habitat loss.
•      By transforming Agriculture into PermaCulture a resource base will be created which will provide superior nutrition (through the plantings of local, organic, energy positive, proven perennial polycultures), unique and interesting housing (utilizing green, appropriate building materials produced from local polycultures and proven design/construction methods), and raw materials for crafts, trades and necessity oriented small business.
   
•         2. Education (Awareness and Enablement). As important as the realization of the demonstration hamlet will be the integration of a program of Whole Education available to children, adolescents and adults. The program will focus first on the children of the community and family members in direct daily contact with them.  The Aldea Gráig Project will provide perfect medium to incorporate the adults in this program as the vast majority of the local populace are landowners and/or are employed in the agricultural sector.
•      The works of the program will be to augment the academic education already provided by government with sustainability, environmental, music, arts, green science, creative thought and Permaculture curricula.
•      The aim of the program is to revive cultural richness, enable the youth and adult people, and instill a sense of happiness and fulfillment in the community.
•      The strategy of the education program will include National and International student exchanges; cultural, spiritual and arts exchanges; as well as International volunteer participation. These activities will require the construction of a unique and green education/nutrition/conference center adjacent to the high school, an outdoor arts, prayer, meditation center and of a volunteer/exchange program village, which will serve also as crisis sanctuary for children, parents, families, and individuals.
•      Deliberate strategies will also be used to increase involvement of the adults who affect local children (i.e. employment created by the project will be focus on local people who are in direct daily contact with the children of the community etc. etc.).
•     
•      Our new development model(s) will reconnect us to our planet, will simplify our lives, return a sense of right livelihood to those who participate in the new story/model and make the human experience a more whole experience. Just as Planet Earth once supported human cultures as diverse and numerous as the Bioregions they depended upon, we will re-learn many ways of living appropriately in our respective Bioregions. We will become an interconnected, diverse, and indigenous global culture.
•      The Aldea Gráig Project will provide a model to replicate throughout the Southern Pacific Zone of Costa Rica. The project will become a source of hope and of mental and spiritual relief for the region. The project will become a source of genetic, intellectual, creative, economic and spiritual material for replication to a second round of demonstration hamlets in the local group of bioregions. The model divides and grows just as living cells.
     
  The Biosphere Conservation Corridor
•      In the Southern Pacific Zone there are seven major bioregions (if we define them by the historic territories of the seven indigenous groups.) The Bio-regions/Groups are: From the upper Talamanca along the Pacific boundary of Parque Internacional Nacional la Amistad are Ujarras, Salitre, and Cabagra. Below these groups in the lowland Riparian forest are Boruca and Curre. Above these and along Fila de Cal are Guaymi Abrojos Montezuma, Guaymi Coto Brus. Below In the lowland humid forest and completing the Corridor to Corcovado are Guaymi de Osa.

In Cabagra is located The Finca Sota Project. In Guaymi Coto Brus David Gertner is established, and inGuaymi Abrojos Montezuma the president of GAIACulture, Albis Mora Salas is established.
     As there are Seven Bioregions, Seven Projects will be initiated to independently access the potentials and needs of these seven distinct areas. What is envisioned is a 10-year plan where the initial project (The Aldea Gráig Project) is established in Cabagra, The Projects in Coto Brus and Abrojos Montezuma initiate six months to two years later. The remaining four or more projects initiate within the subsequent 1-2 year window. Each project will reapply the strategies and successes of the previous project(s) and other similar projects from around the globe.
     The result will be the creation of a biological corridor by inspiring, educating and enabling the aboriginal, and autochthonous populations. This will be done by application of sustainable community development practices (PermaCulture practices) by these same populations. This incredible transition will be supported by use of media to sensualize the model, gratify its participants, and by creating financial structures to facilitate the implementation of PermaCulture practices. The indigenous and autochthonous People will be a positive part this biological corridor and of a connected economy/ecology. They will become its vowed protectors who are conscious and able to project its continued growth, which will eventually spread beyond The Biosphere Conservation Corridor.

 WHERE?

•      As Permaculturists, it is our focus to perform as many functions as possible with each action. To this end, we act where healthy Earth systems remain, places like national parks and preserves and other places at the edge of the current development model. We also focus our efforts where there is the greatest quantity of biodiversity as these are the most productive to conserve. Within these parameters, we can do the most to preserve and expand Earths remaining healthy ecosystems. It is in these areas where we also experience fertile physical, spiritual, and social conditions, which will contribute to success.
•      It is very important to understand that our energies are precious and need to be focused in the areas that can most effectively contribute to a new story and development model. These areas are those where economic, political, and social influences are most ready to embrace a new healing development model or at minimum not be an obstacle to it. This places us in Costa Rica. We should also focus our efforts where they serve to protect and extend the greatest quantity of life systems. This again places us in Costa Rica, which is host to 6% of Earth’s biodiversity and can arguably be deemed as the momentary epicenter of Earth’s life process. Further consideration suggests that we augment existing natural areas, serve as stewards of these healthy areas and join the remaining healthy areas. This places us specifically between Parque Internacional La Amistad (the largest park in Central America and the United Nations declared Biosphere reserve) and Parque Nacional Corcovado (the park which hosts the greatest density of biodiversity on Earth).

     The Aldea Gráig Project is located in La Lucha de Potrero Grande. La Lucha is a small community located twelve kilometers north of Potrero Grande in the Canton of Buenos Aires of Puntarenas Province.
     “La Lucha” -- meaning the battle -- is nestled in the foothills of the Pacific side of the Talamanca Mountain Range. The areas’ farms range from approximately 600-1000m altitude and currently experience a climate ideal for cultivars from the typical lowland group of tropical crops the highland crops, many of the dry climate crops as well as wet climate crops. In Costa Rica this climate is referred to as Clima Calido.  Although sunny daytime temperatures are quite hot (85-95f), nighttime temperatures are often quite chilly (50-65f), as the Talamancas provide a nightly influx of cold mountain air.

•      The community depends primarily on a destructive and limiting production base of conventional coffee, fully pastured cattle, legal and illegal timber harvest. La Lucha does possess conditions suitable for a very diverse and abundant agriculture, economy, and human culture. The natural resources available for a sustainable agriculture, economic and community development are abundant. These begin with ample sources of clean fresh water, forests, soils, clean air, plentiful flora and fauna, and importantly include a community of well-intended and tenuous people who truly believe in peace, and live-and-let-live as a basic human value.

     The principal argument for prioritizing a sustainable development model in La Lucha is also the principal reason that it must experience a sustainable model and quickly….Humanity desires a beautiful, joyous future and we need to rescue Earth’s biodiversity for this to be a reality.
     The community is a gatekeeper community of Parque Internacional La Amistad and at the heart of what will become an essential corridor between La Amistad and Corcovado Parks. La Lucha is located at the lowermost extension of “La Amistad” and where its expansion into one of the last and largest remaining stands of intact Pacific lowland riparian forest is possible.
     The creation of a biological corridor to tie La Amistad and Corcovado Parks is necessary for the survival of the Jaguar, Danta, and countless other species) it can most effectively and economically begin in La Lucha.

WHEN?

     There is no better time to be in action of the healing than now. Each day we wait makes our ability to avert the gravest of crises more difficult.
     The band of land that separates these two parks is threatened in several ways. First, by conventional agriculture (beginning with the giant agricultural corporation, Pindeco, which, with the recent promise of an implemented CAFTA agreement in Costa Rica, has begun purchasing large farms with the aim of implementing more irresponsible and unsustainable fossil fuel and chemical-based agriculture).  And, by development bank pressure to create a massive water impoundment on Rio Terraba to energize a new industrialization for the southern zone of Costa Rica, Also by foreign influence which will come with great force as result of a planned international airport in Palmar Sur.
     At this moment, in this most important corridor, speculation has not reached the point that it has in other parts of Cost Rica, neither the dam nor the airport have been built and the future can be determined.

•      An organized partnership between Permaculture practitioners, local communities, conscious participants (Individuals and Organizations) and investors, can realize the success of a new healing development model, a new story which will build the most ecologically significant biological preserve on the Earth and become the heart of a new human landscape in Costa Rica, The Americas and the Planet.

WHO?

•      The Collective Self.

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