Random Gleanings

In this issue of Random Gleanings, we offer you an introduction to the tremendous array of leading-edge social, environmental, business and scientific innovators who will be presenting at this year’s Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change conference. Bioneers by the Bay will be held October 23-26, 2008, in historic Downtown New Bedford, MA.

Register today or call 508.748.0816 for more details.

Thursday, October 23rd

The Green Collar Economy:
How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
October, 2008 | Van Jones

Our country is facing serious times. On the heels of sky-high fuel prices this summer, a massive financial crisis has sent the economy into a tailspin this fall. Green For All founder Van Jones has proposed a powerful green cure. His first book, The Green Collar Economy, hit bookstores on October 7th 2008.

Pick up your copy and learn how we can move the country toward a fully clean and renewable economy – one strong enough to fight pollution, cut poverty and put America back to work. We need your help right now to catapult the solutions in this book into the hands and minds of every policy maker, pundit and person in our country!

Get the book now! And please spread the word and tell your friends about this timely book.

Friday, October 24th

David Orr: The TreeHugger Interview
December 27, 2007 | Jacob Gordon | Treehugger.com

When other people shake hands, David Orr hugs. He’s one of those rare intellectuals. And although he comes from a lineage of preachers, Orr’s ecological conscience is not religious [he didn’t even know that his grandfather presided over Rachel Carson’s christening until reading Silent Spring]. As the Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College, Orr lets his focus range from education to ecology to green building and beyond. His sagely presence is friendly and relaxed, unstained by his five books and multiple degrees. In part one of our three-part interview, David Orr paints his views of patriotism, conservatism, something he calls “happy talk,” and why we can’t build ourselves out of the mess we’re in. [read more]

Part 1: The Preacher’s Son

Part 2: The Carbon Connection

Part 3: Where Hope and Optimism Split

Greening the ghetto
TED | Feb 2005

In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhood suffer most from flawed urban policy. [watch here]

Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm
TreeHugger | March 2008

Before Stonyfield Farm was a $325 million company, Gary Hirshberg was milking the cows and trying to get the bills paid. Now, as the largest organic yogurt-maker, he is fulfilling the original mission: make money and save the world. [listen here]

Part one

Part two

Saturday, October 25th

Good for Mental Health
Peter Fraenkel, Ph.D. | MAPP International

Rha Goddess is a performing artist and social/political activist. Her work has been internationally featured in several compilations, anthologies, forums and festivals. In May 2000, Essence Magazine recognized Rha as one of 30 Women to Watch in the new millennium. Here, Dr. Peter Fraenkel describes how Rha helps him understand the “art of psychotherapy. [read more]

Pioneer of Swiss Biological Medicine;
Dr. Rau interviewed in Alternative Therapies.
August 2007 | Alternative Therapies

During a hectic weekend seminar in the two-year Paracelsus Biological Medicine Network seminar series, two prominent physicians managed to steal away for a cup of tea and a quiet conversation. Dr. Mark Hyman, former Co-Medical Director at Canyon Ranch Lenox, and Dr. Thomas Rau, and author of The Swiss Secret to Optimal Health: Dr. Rau's Diet for Whole Body Healing sequestered themselves for an hour to discuss medicine, well-being and life. Read their fascinating, precious conversation - from the recent issue of Alternative Therapies. [read more]

One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum
August 24, 2006 | The Nation

How do we fix our dysfunctional relationship with food? In 2006, Alice Waters lead a forum with Eliot Coleman, Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Peter Singer and others, who suggest, for starters, that we stop buying factory farm products, get involved in farm policy and outlaw the marketing of junk food to kids. [read more]

Honey, We Shrunk the Planet
October 29, 2007 | Huffington Post | Kenny Ausubel

“The nature of nature is change. Sometimes it hurtles into fast forward, tripping radical shifts. Think of it as nature's regime change. For the first time, people are causing it on a planetary scale… We stand at the threshold of a singular opportunity in the human experiment: to re-imagine how to live on Earth in a good way that lasts.” [read more]

Sunday, October 26th

The South Mountain Company Story
September 2003 | John Abrams

“South Mountain is not a business that developed according to any plan,” writes John Abrams, founder and President of South Mountain Company. “It's a business that happened. In fact, the whole concept of business was, to me, in the late 60's and 70's, antithetical to my sense of my self. What interested me was building community, not business.” [read more]

Making a Living That Affirms Life
Lynne Twist

Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money interests and the calling of our soul. When we’re in the domain of soul, we act with integrity… [But] when we enter the domain of money, there often seems to be a disconnect from the soulful person we have known ourselves to be. [read more]

The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption
June 5, 2007 | Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman spent an hour with John Perkins: a man who claims to have worked deep inside the forces driving corporate globalization. In his first book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, Perkins told the story of his work as a highly paid consultant hired to strong-arm leaders into creating policy favorable to the U.S. government and corporations—what he calls the “corporatocracy.” [read or listen here]

Tea With Nina Simons & Nina Utne
December 2005 | Utne Readre | Nina Utne

Nina Utne writes: “Nina Simons a truly original thinker and longtime social entrepreneur, believes we need to elevate the aspects of our natures that traditionally have been considered feminine in order to restore balance. Nina is a living example of how the feminine can transform our businesses, our society, our relationships, and our lives. She's also a close friend, and we have spent many hours together thinking out loud.” [read more]

We Have Moved!

Not only has Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change moved, but the Marion Institute has as well! Our offices are now just around the corner, in a beautiful historic home, carefully restored using modern green building practices and materials.

Our new address is:
Marion Institute
202 Spring St.
Marion, MA 02738

If you are in the area please stop in, we would love for you to meet the team and check out our new digs!

Thursday, November 6th

Two Angry Moms | Fighting for the health of America’s children.

Find out how you can get more nutritious food in your child’s school!

Two Angry Moms is a documentary that asks the question: What happens when two “fed-up” moms try to change the school lunch program?

This FREE event will be held on Thursday, November 6th at the Marion Music Hall, Marion, MA from 6-8pm, and will include the Two Angry Moms documentary film, our special guest and filmmaker of Two Angry Moms, Amy Kalafa. In addition we will have exhibitors in the fields of children’s health and wellness and the food industry and a panel discussion on how to implement nutritional change in your local school.

For more information, click here.

“Bioneers is central to the re-imagination of what it means to be human."
- Paul Hawken

Register today for Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change or call 508.748.0816 for more details.

Proudly sponsored by the Marion Institute, Bioneers by the Bay is a Beaming Bioneers Satellite site of the internationally-acclaimed Bioneers conference.

Bioneers by the Bay is a project of the Marion Instiute.

Amazonian Indians learn how to farm fish to survive in a land of polluted rivers
Jeremy Narby | Nouvelle Planète

The inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon eat three times more fish than meat, according to official estimates. Here in the heartland of biodiversity, the rivers teem with fish, which are easy to catch and good to eat.

But in recent decades petroleum companies have contaminated entire regions. Operating in isolated parts of the forest, they have poured huge quantities of toxic substances into rivers. The problem is that each barrel of oil extracted from beneath this rainforest comes out of the ground with up to nine barrels of near-boiling “formation waters”, which are laced with hydrocarbons and heavy metals. In the Corrientes Valley, which produces half of Peru’s oil, an estimated 42 million gallons per day of formation waters were poured into the ecosystem over a thirty year period; one company, US’s Occidental Petroleum, discharged a total of 9 billion barrels of formation waters into the Corrientes River.

Production waters piped into the Corrientes River, at Trompeteros, Block Eight, one of the main oil wells.

Pollution on this scale assaults the entire ecosystem, including humans. It contaminates rivers and soils, and makes animals and fish improper to human consumption. One recent study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health showed that 98.6% of Achuar children and adolescents living in the Corrientes Valley have blood with cadmium and lead levels above the acceptable limit.

Five hundred miles further south, the Urubamba River has also suffered from oil and gas extraction. Under the Urubamba Valley lies one of the largest natural gas fields in the world. Argentine petroleum company PlusPetrol has set up a giant operation on the banks of the Camisea River, one of the Urubamba’s tributaries; known as the “Camisea Gas Project”, it has caused local fish stocks to plummet. For the Matsigenka Indians and colonists who live in the area, this has meant the loss of their main source of animal protein.

CEDIA, a Peruvian NGO that has received support from the Marion Institute in the past, is currently working on alternatives with representatives from Matsigenka communities and colonist stakeholders. CEDIA is providing training in fish farming, and helping set up a network of family and community fish farms across the Urubamba Valley.

This initiative seeks to promote native fish, which do no harm to the environment if a dike breaks, or if a pond floods over. Native species are adapted to the environment, and raising them requires no chemicals or antibiotics. And local people know them well, and are used to fishing them.

Peruvian aquaculture experts have had excellent results with several native species, including gamitana and pacu. These fast-growing fish are vegetarian, and can be fed with locally cultivated plants. This makes them ideal for fish farming in forest-based indigenous communities. And they also command good prices in local markets.
 

Matsigenka man with mature fish at IIAP, February 2008.

Under CEDIA’s auspices, four Matsigenka Indians and one colonist spent 6 weeks in early 2008 at the Institute for Investigation of the Peruvian Amazon (IIAP), in Iquitos. These individuals were designated by the communities of the Upper- and –Lower Urubamba to train as fish farm promoters. During their time at the research station, they learned how to prepare growing ponds, produce larvae by artificial insemination, make feed for fingerlings, and capture mature specimens.

The Peruvian rainforest is ideal for small-scale fish farming. It abounds with streams, ponds and lagoons that can be damned up, or dug out by shovel.
And pond maintenance is simple, and requires only locally available materials, such as a canoe and a net.

A family fish farm in an indigenous community.

Though rainforest waters tend to be acidic, an average growing pond of 200 m2 produces an estimated 288 pounds of fish a year, or about _ of a pound of fish per day.

Thanks to CEDIA’s initiative, members of five Matsigenka communities in the Upper-Urubamba are currently digging 20 growing pools, which will harbor young fish in September. In the Lower-Urubamba, three other indigenous communities will have their ponds ready in October.

Family fish farms using non-destructive organic methods provide a source of food and income without endangering the fragile rainforest ecosystem. They constitute a useful survival strategy for people living in Amazonian regions devastated by the oil and gas industry.