The Berlin conference was held at a 500 year old castle and attended by European academics writers, ecologist, and environmentalist who were wrestling with a working definition of "sustainability" and trying to understand the full impacts of the most pressing environmental issues. In this picture we were sitting at a huge table in the castle garden at 10 pm. The sun was still up because we were so far north.

On my way to Nepal I stopped in Berlin, Germany to attend a conference there that focused on Globalization and its impact on Europe and other areas of the world. My purpose was primarily to meet two British environmentalist, Nick Hilyard and Helena Norberge-Hodge who were presenting at the conference. Helena, in the early 1990s, published a book she and her husband wrote titled, "Ancient Futures" about their experiences living in Ladakh over a 16 year period. They also produced a video titled, "The Future of Progress" that explored mid to late 20th century economic development on the culture of a small non-industrialized country like Ladhak. Teddy Goldsmith, Nick, Martin Khor, and Helena are interviewed in the tape and create a grim picture regarding the future of non-industrialized countries like Nepal.

Nick was the assistant editor of the British scientific journal "The Ecologist" working with the magazine's editor, Teddy Goldsmith, who was legend in the environmental movement in Britain and Europe. In my eyes Nick and Helena are highly respected, educated, articulate, and down to earth practitioners who are far more grounded in reality than a lot of the purely academics folks are. I also wanted to participate in the Berlin conference to better understand the tensions that exist between academics who want to define concepts and practioners who want to achieve a proficient practice "on the ground." The tension was there at the Berlin conference. In one instance the director of the conference, a well known academic, told Helena to "shut up" because she disagreed with him. There may have been gender issues involved in this tiff, but it was clearly a tension of fit between abstract and the "real" .

Nick Hilyard (looking at the camera) is an environmentalist and writer and an editor at " The Ecologist" under senior Editor Teddy Goldsmith. They devoted the entire January 1972 issue of The Ecologist (Volume 2, No. 1) to their now famous "A Blueprint for Survival"; a powerful scientific-environmental statement that laid out all the major issues threatening our planet and defined "sustainability" in ways that put it into a usable context. It really shook the world. It was more overt and comprehensive then anything written prior to its publication and probably since. It's hard to believe that it was written 40 years ago because it's a brilliant effort to alert the world and the world's leaders to the need for deep changes in the infrastructures of industrialization and, particularly, the use of carbon fuels. I'll always admire Teddy and Nick and the staff of The Ecologist for their courageous efforts to create a strident voice for change in the tradition of Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Olaus and Mardy Murie, and a long list of other naturalists and ecologists.

Helena Norberge-Hodge, with her husband John Page, had lived in Ladakh (Little Tibet) for six months a year for 16 years, or 8 years total, and in the early 1990s pubished a book with a video about their experiences. In her writing and video material she has shared an insightful social ecology within the global discussion about the questions our survival. Helena's insights of how the rampant economic development impacts undeveloped countries that can not adapt quickly enough to protect themselves from the industrialization process making them vulnerable to a literal "killing off" of local, indigenous knowledge, wisdom and integrity. Her video was one of the first visual documents to show what's been happening in the "Third World". Her book and video tape are still available (try Amazon.com. Once again her book is titled "Ancient Futures" and the video is titled, "The Future of Progress"). "The Ecologist, Vol. 2, No. 1" is available on the web.

A view of the castle across the moat

The Berlin conference helped prepare me for the Nepal conference. The subject matter was similar and the academic thrust, the intense need to politicize the issues, as I've already described, was also similar. Seeing it in Berlin first and then in Nepal confirmed for me that it wasn't a phenomenon of a "cosmopolitan elite". The Berlin conference helped me to be patient with that academic perspective and to learn how to gently push for a science-based perspective which mean avoiding the tendency to paint everything black or white. This blog will explore these ideas through the roles of individuals, particularly women in impoverished countries, as they grapple with limited resources to really understand the quality of life issues and the real "practice" of sustainability. The critical question on the table (that we're all are sitting at) is: can humanity survive another 200 years, or even another 100 years, or another 50 years on this planet? And if so, how? I don't think any one really honestly knows the anwer.

A few days after leaving Berlin I was in this paradise far from Eurocentric perspectives. I was far, far away in a place where everything was very new (to me) and exciting and delicious and beautiful. At this well (in the photo above) behind the house in Rampur we washed our dishes, our clothes, and ourselves under that hand pump. It was elegantly simple. We walked to the well along that path in the photo below. It was a lovely haven of exotic flowers, ginger plants and mango and lemon trees and a profound silence that was at first shocking and which then became astonishingly essential to me, like a cup of cool, spring water. How often do we get to experience real silence, that essential stillness and peace?

This is the back of the house and shows only a small piece of the larger, productive garden the couple kept. All their organic waste from the toilet and kitchen went into a composter which had to be churned once a day to produce bio-gas which they used for lighting and cooking. They grew 95 percent of their own food including dairy products and vegetables. They ate meat occasionally and sparingly. It's the healthiest diet I've ever lived on. This picture of the family and the way they live is a snapshot of a potentially sustainable life style, but not entirely. It's deceptive and I've discovered that I have to be careful in how I label what is sustainable and what is not. It can be complicated. In this case the house and garden share the same infrastructures and resources that we all do and that we use daily without being acutely aware of the impacts.

This looks a bit like Eden. The area in the back of the gardem with the lighter, horizontal greens is the large pumpkin patch where we harvested greens every day for our main meal.