A hobbit house for the future

You are looking at pictures of a house I built for our family in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour).

The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.

Some key points of the design and construction:

Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
Water by gravity from nearby spring
Compost toilet
Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Main tools used: chainsaw, hammer and 1 inch chisel, little else really. Oh and by the way I am not a builder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverence and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.

This building is one part of a low-impact or permaculture approach to life. This sort of life is about living in harmony with both the natural world and ourselves, doing things simply and using appropriate levels of technology. These sort of low cost, natural buildings have a place not only in their own sustainability, but also in their potential to provide affordable housing which allows people access to land and the opportunity to lead more simple, sustainable lives. For example this house was made to house our family whilst we worked in the woodland surrounding the house doing ecological woodland management and setting up a forest garden, things that would have been impossible had we had to pay a regular rent or mortgage. To read more about why we did it and why this is an important option to meet the challenges of climate change and peak oil, click here.

Would you like to learn more about this sort of building and gain practical experience? Why not join us on another exciting building project. There will be opportunities for everyone of all abilities and areas of interest. Click here for more details.

Mayurbhanj Chau dance

A film on Baba Allaudin Khan

Order 81, Iraq, and the Decimation of Traditional Seeds

Wafaa’ [INEAS] speaks about IRAQ’s Order 81, which was passed by Paul Bremer on April 26, 2004 to award Iraq’s agricultural treasures to multinational corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill.

The death of the Honey Bee, film

The death of the honey bee - documentary from Jason Greenwood on Vimeo.

Tara Catherine Pandeya: Central Asian dance

Cirque du Soleil in Puerto Rico! 2011

Vandana Siva speaks @ Dominican College, Sept. 14, 2011

http://blip.tv/community-media-center-of-marin-cmcm/vandana-shiva-at-dominican-univeristy-5568745

Compost Toilets and Self-Rule

The ecological toilet is one of today's most hope-filled expressions of people's power and people's science. These toilets—which celebrate Gandhian simplicity and ecological sensibility—recover and honor traditional practices of healing and agriculture, related arts of non-violent living.

In contrast, the abuse of water via flush toilets renders it toxic as well as globally scarce. More than 40 percent of the water available for domestic purposes is used for transporting shit.

Mixing three rich, marvelous substances—water, urine, and shit—turns them into a poisonous cocktail. At a very high cost we seek to separate them again with dangerous chemicals and exotic technologies in “treatment plants.” We reduce our sacred waters into chemically treated H2O that pollutes our bodies and soils and waters.

Ecological toilet users cannot but smile with a certain sadness as they observe how their “free” and “civilized” flush toilet peers' stomachs are attached everywhere to the prisons of centralized, violent bureaucracies—the kinds Gandhi-ji resisted.

Returning our waters to the pristine purity of our ancestors' sensibility and sense of the sacred affirms the dignity and political autonomy of those who resist addiction to the technologies of professionals, bureaucrats, and centralized sewage agencies.

Just as Gandhi-ji's radical act of making his own salt at the culmination of the famous Salt March taught us about power and autonomy, a bucket-ful of soil collected from our own backyards, combined with some lime, can end our addiction to the chemicals and pipes of sewage empires. Incarnating our Mahatma in my own little mud hut, I enjoy the freedom I find in following him, taking hope from his first steps in humble living over a century ago.

And I take hope also in the initiatives for ecological toilets that are sprouting everywhere. Abby Rockefeller, the granddaughter of John D., for years has been championing the use of alternative toilets in New England. A few years ago, a town in Sweden stood first in the return to hu-manure, by rendering illegal continued addiction to the flush toilet.

True, it is not easy to abandon the addiction to flush toilets, and I can well imagine the challenge in places like Chicago or New York. Despite the difficulties of such struggles, serenely engaging in them is easier than continuing our blind race to the ecological, economic, and political disaster toward which we are currently running.

Gandhi was among the first to discover in the beginning of the 20th century that to follow in the economic, industrial, or political footsteps of England, we were joining in the global enterprise of violating and stripping the Earth bare like locusts. Honoring our “shit work” with Gandhi's regard for bread labor, we re-skill our hands and stop making waste, while offering golden soil to our garden's vegetables and fruit trees. Shit and food, no longer schizophrenically separated, come together organically in the great circle and web of life and daily living.
Madhu Suri Prakash wrote this article as part of Liberate Your Space, the Winter 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Madhu studies grassroots initiatives that celebrate people's power in her books Grassroots Postmodernism and Escaping Education. She professes at Pennsylvania State University. Photo of Madhu Suri Prakash

Invocation and Lament for Annapurna, in honor of Dr. Vandana Shiva

performed and created by Barbara Framm

Music by Sonya Drakulic of StellaMara and others (traditional opening Sanskrit chant to Goddess Annapurna)

Pavakathakali Glove Puppets from Kerala

and now for something completely fun and beautiful....Cirque du Soleil...

protests in India against construction of world's largest nuclear plant

Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth

Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth

Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation

John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living with the effects of climate change every day Link to this video

Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

"It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all", said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. "It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration."

The law, which is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. Humans are considered equal to all other entities.

But the abstract new laws are not expected to stop industry in its tracks. While it is not clear yet what actual protection the new rights will give in court to bugs, insects and ecosystems, the government is expected to establish a ministry of mother earth and to appoint an ombudsman. It is also committed to giving communities new legal powers to monitor and control polluting industries.

Bolivia has long suffered from serious environmental problems from the mining of tin, silver, gold and other raw materials. "Existing laws are not strong enough," said Undarico Pinto, leader of the 3.5m-strong Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, the biggest social movement, who helped draft the law. "It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels."

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said Bolivia's traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama was vital to prevent climate change. "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values," he said.

Little opposition is expected to the law being passed because President Evo Morales's ruling party, the Movement Towards Socialism, enjoys a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament.

However, the government must tread a fine line between increased regulation of companies and giving way to the powerful social movements who have pressed for the law. Bolivia earns $500m (£305m) a year from mining companies which provides nearly one third of the country's foreign currency.

In the indigenous philosophy, the Pachamama is a living being.

The draft of the new law states: "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation."

Ecuador, which also has powerful indigenous groups, has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution". However, the abstract rights have not led to new laws or stopped oil companies from destroying some of the most biologically rich areas of the Amazon.
Coping with climate change

Bolivia is struggling to cope with rising temperatures, melting glaciers and more extreme weather events including more frequent floods, droughts, frosts and mudslides.

Research by glaciologist Edson Ramirez of San Andres University in the capital city, La Paz, suggests temperatures have been rising steadily for 60 years and started to accelerate in 1979. They are now on course to rise a further 3.5-4C over the next 100 years. This would turn much of Bolivia into a desert.

Most glaciers below 5,000m are expected to disappear completely within 20 years, leaving Bolivia with a much smaller ice cap. Scientists say this will lead to a crisis in farming and water shortages in cities such as La Paz and El Alto.

Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, has become an outspoken critic in the UN of industrialised countries which are not prepared to hold temperatures to a 1C rise.

Vandana Shiva on recent nuclear protests in India, where one person was killed. Construction of this huge nuclear plant would be in the fertile Western Ghats

"Earth Democracy": A one hour speech delivered by Vandana Shiva @ Portland Community College, Oregon, February 2011

Save the Frogs Day