Region ... West Africa
Land ... Permaculture

Permaculture ... Earth Rights Institute anticipates using permaculture in West Africa

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Permaculture ... Earth Rights Institute

ERI work in West Africa

The Earth Rights Institute proposes an integrated solution to community development that is intended to be socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable. This solution is based on the model of the “eco-village”.

The eco-village is a community where human activities are harmoniously integrated into the natural world, in a way that is supportive of healthy, human development, and can be successfully continued indefinitely into our future. An eco-village relies upon the integration of ‘green’ infrastructural capital and traditional socio-cultural values to create a community that thrives on renewable energy sources and permaculture, local purchasing to support the village economy, local food production and distribution between neighboring villages, and community led education initiatives. In accordance with local normative social and value interests, an eco-village develops consensus decision-making for governance through an active choice to respect diversity. We have launched eco-villages in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Ivory Coast, and work in partnership with the Global Eco-village Network’s 45 Eco-villages in Senegal.

Example: ERI Jatropha plantation West Africa has secured 700,000 ha in Popo community, Ivory Coast for cultivating jatropha and other subsistence crops in communities that have been neglected both by the government and NGOs due to the ongoing civil war. Jatropha plants help revitalize and recover the watershed regions of the Niger and Volta rivers. The initiative is designed to support a sustainable local economy and restore ecological systems so that people devastated by years of civil war can create peaceful and sustainable communities.

Earth Rights Institute is designed to be an equilateral knowledge platform, where local people collaborate with academics and development professionals both local and foreign by exchanging skills, experiences and knowledge to solve crucial development issues such as widespread poverty, land right disputes and environmental degradation. ERI believes that the empowerment of local communities begins with re-conceptualizing the role and meaning of ‘expert’ in development models. We are bringing development studies back to local communities so that development knowledge and strategies are cultivated locally, and ‘experts’ of sustainable development are formed at the grassroots. This means that the power and authority to manage local development, lies with the local people.

Earth Rights Institute
PO Box 5404
Santa Monica, CA 90409 USA
(310) 881-7265
annie@earthrights.net
Incorporated in 2001 and recognized as a 501 (c) (3) organization by the American Internal Revenue Service, Earth Rights Institute (ERI) is a nonprofit organization initiating innovative development solutions and dynamic partnerships empower local communities.