Within this context, and taking in another significant interest of mine, is the exploration of what can be achieved when permaculture meets technology. Not necessarily natural bedfellows, there are however great opportunities to diversify rural incomes, strengthen food networks, retain heritage and natural capital and potentially reverse the trend of depopulation.

We are fundraising in Bitcoin (BTC) here: https://tallyco.in/s/daahxi/ and ETH is coming soon (our Fiat fundraiser was pulled because we mentioned blockchain – naughty!). All funds will be used to develop a demonstration Food Forest and a national Rural Tech Network. From our Food Forest base we will run workshops, public learning opportunities and develop other ideas as we grow, for example a nursery and heritage seed centre. Our overarching ambitions are to deliver the following:

1. Build a strong, diverse Network of producers and related organisations to share knowledge, learning and challenges. By organising at a national level, Network members will be able to better coordinate between each other, share their success and explore new opportunities.

2. Creating a working Food Forest, combining permaculture and regenerative agroforestry – this will be a space for the Network to come together and for wider public learning and research.

3. Explore the challenges of climate change, resilient food systems, biodiversity loss and regenerative agriculture through peer-to-peer learning, expert training and action research.

4. Onboard villages and support technological advancement – provide training for technology and projects, buy infrastructure (computers, wifi hubs, etc) to ensure access and engagement where necessary.

5. Support the development of rural, hi-tech hubs – explore the transition towards smart-farming, encouraging a new generation of food producers and building resilient food networks.

We unashamedly come from an environmental background, and have necessarily learnt to evaluate nature and landscape in monetary terms. We believe that by exploring the opportunities of technology, and taking these directly to the communities who will benefit, the Network can support various ambitions; promote regenerative agriculture to provide a wider variety of crop types, enhance spaces for wildlife, deliver a vibrant and diversified rural economy, encourage more young people into rural life through greater access and involvement with technology, and more that we don’t even know yet! The power of the Network will be in bringing together a wide variety of voices, sharing stories and learning together.

UPDATE @ 24/03/2022 – We are happy to announce the support of the Minga Cooperative (https://mingamontemor.pt/) in the development of this project. Minga bring seven years worth of experience, peer support, learning and networking. Already discussed, is how any network can provide incubation expertise for new cooperatives, such as business planning, legal advice and product and packaging design. FuturEcoLogic will be helping to support their inaugural conference planned for June 2022.

As an environmentalist looking at the climate and biodiversity crisis, I could easily fall into the vision of the future where technology has diminished and humanity has reconnected with nature. It’s a beautiful vision and one that calls many environmental types. It is also highly unrealistic. Technology, for good or ill, is a manifestation of human innovation and therefore, is unlikely to be suppressed to achieve climate stability.

As I explained recently, there is no single pathway through this crisis. Each person needs to regain their citizenship (listen to this podcast — it is utterly brilliant) and have agency over decision-making going forward. My pathway leads me to interrogate new innovations, those which talk of changing the world and our lives, and how these can be applied. Here, at this intersection, between the real and virtual, our climate and biodiversity needs, the future paths are tangled. Our new project, the Rural Tech Network, aims to explore, share and learn about this space, where permaculture and regenerative farming can utilise technology to diversify income streams and build resilient communities.

I’m ready to get vilified for this by some sustainability practitioners. Only the other week, a passionate and committed environmentalist, whom I admire and respect, was discussing how potentially destructive blockchain, Bitcoin and other technologies are. I have done a fair bit of research around this subject, and like anything, it’s not black and white. Yes, there is energy consumption with blockchain technologies, but this is like any other industry, it is where the energy comes from that determines how ‘green’ the process is. Two useful links are here and here.

Now, this might be my own cognitive bias at work, but I have long been part of multiple networks that recognise the failure of our economic system. We are seen and treated as consumers (please listen to the podcast!) and this shapes our world views. Bitcoin was created expressly to combat the frivolities of economic puppet-masters. There is no central bank, no bankers who lunch with politicians, no billionaire get-togethers to discuss the future of the planet without any little people involved. There is only an algorithm, a transaction settled by cryptography and the ability for me to pay you without any one else involved. No Visa, no Mastercard, no entity that you’ve never heard of, nada. This excites me; a liberated currency.

There are lots of problems with this space. It can feel like capitalism on steroids, but equally I’m getting some returns, interest if you like, that I wouldn’t be getting with our money sitting in the bank. The space feels male dominated and again, here I think we need to encourage a wider range of voices (as we do with COP), not try to stop the technology. Out there are great projects, ones that aim to tackle our climate challenges, ones to connect far flung parts of the world to the internet, ones that aim to crowdfund and open the use of this funding through Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). This again is exciting.

Back to our Rural Tech Network and how this will be used to explore the space. There are some big challenges around rural development — depopulation, quality and standards for small-scale producers, climate resilience, diversification of income to name some. Technology offers support for some of these challenges. One recent UK-based project could be easily replicated across local areas, supporting the rewilding of landscapes, improving biodiversity and potentially reducing the risk from wildfires across unmanaged lands.

We are crowdfunding, both in fiat (Euros) for the initial start-up costs and in Bitcoin (Eth soon), for the wider development. The business plan is being written and the networking platforms created. Watch this space, the space between.

My work as a sustainability consultant largely involves making sense, or finding a pathway through complexity. The word sustainability itself is loaded with so much meaning, politicism and overuse that it often fails to inspire. Responses to my work and job title don’t generally elicit an understanding of what I do or what sustainability is. Personal assumptions, cognitive bias, all these inherent traits, conspire to deprive us the opportunities for the depth of conversations needed. Our echo-chamber, algorithmic virtual lives don’t help.

My Facebook algorithm pinged up an article in The Economist by Ted Norhaus. The clickbait worked (here I am writing this) and it also got me thinking, once again, about the nuances of the climate and sustainability work I undertake. Ted clearly carries his distinct bias for technological revolutions. Many of the environmentalists I know, shun the possibilities of nuclear power, geo-engineering and the like, but happily promote renewables and electric cars. A handful recognise the downstream impacts from source materials, with all their inequalities and poverty.

How many of us (in the West) generally accept the hidden poverty, inequalities and tragic ecosystem losses that are embedded in our day-to-day lives? We all do, we all live with these, environmentalist or not. The global north is built on pollution, whether that’s tangible on the land or in the ocean, or within our souls, from the blood of colonialism to rampant consumerism. Ethics explode in this minefield.

Recently with a client, we were discussing the broad parameters of sustainability thinking within different business fields. Now I know in my heart that much of what is discussed is, in reality, just tinkering around the edges (I told them that too). My role there was to guide them through the path towards sustainability, not to provide answers. Much like stockmarket analysis, no one has a crystal ball.

It is important to remember, that there are clear benefits for much of the established resource-use efficiencies work. Saving energy, water and waste are no brainers, common sense. It hurts trying to say this though, when the other end of capitalism brings us the necessity to fly empty airlines to retain their slots. Herein lies disorder.

Navigating the nuances, oppositions and dilemmas of building the brave new world, in whatever form it takes, will be all of us. No one single technology or zero-carbon strategy will be perfect. Our complexities, personal, societal, geographic and more, will require equally agile and tactical responses. It is worth being open to all ideas and innovations, interrogating and researching rapidly to quicken progress. One size will not fit all. Pushing specific pathways whilst dismissing historic legacies or utopias of environmentalism diminishes our collective efforts.

Sitting with these challenges, as a human, shaped by the very specific circumstances of my life, is a task. I do not have faith and therefore cannot rely on a God, definite afterlife or spiritual guide to answer these questions (I don’t think I need this either, but respect to everyone who does). I empathise, as best I can, with those who lives do not match the easy freedom I have. My Mum use to call this our ‘accident of birth’, living in this society, in this bit of the world and at this time. Her way of keeping us positive when guilt for this privileged position became overwhelming as a teenager.

Inconsistencies between what I say and how I act are, I believe, inevitable to some degree based on this accident of birth. Ruminating on history will only get us so far and so I try to focus on solutions. I endeavour to try harder; recycle obsessively, buy less plastic, buy less everything, eat less meat, quit smoking (with its eventual increased healthcare resource loading). I try and fail to break all these ingrained habits completely, importantly I keep trying.

Sheer bloody mindedness, focus, easy to say and hard to practice. In amongst the normal family dramas, realities of moving country, learning a new language and trying to work and volunteer, attention and focus is thin on the ground. Distractions, as I have written previously, abound. Getting through a day is hard enough without taking on a world of global challenges.

A friend shows me their farm, which we could stay at for free. It’s beautiful, or it will be. Really, it’s little more than a shell. No kitchen or bathroom, electricity or running water, flooring and the odd missing door. I can imagine roughing it here, with the little kids, in a yurt or caravan, but not with the teenager. The additional expense of a temporary shelter would eat further into the modest inheritance, currently our sole source of income beyond intermittent bits of work here and there.

This inheritance carries the burden of legacy, both from my parents and onwards for the children. Each month of rent, bill or other expense erodes its value and the dream of owning a little family space seems a little further away. Our budget is small but still possible, for a patch of land, maybe with existing fruit trees, water and space to rebuild or build a home. This area needs real focus, urgent focus.

Yet bathtimes come and go, school homework completed and refreshed anew and another week passes. The system of work, the need for constant capitalisation of our time and energy, is something I’ve never been great at. I’m good at the work, not the constant self promotion. This is a rub when you’re a sole trader, Jack of all trades, master of none.

Apparently, manifestation is what is needed. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I kinda believe that the universe helps out occasionally but not reliably so. I’m pretty sure I’ve been dreaming about painting walls and growing a garden for donkey’s years, but not quite manifested it yet. We’re closer to the idea and open to the universe. I pursue leads, new projects and opportunities for work.

It’s not growing trees though. The seeds I have bought with me from England remain carefully stored in their tin. My other trees are getting used to this new climate. They remain in their pots, waiting for release, watered to combat the weeks without rain. It feels obvious, even to a newcomer like me, that this is not normal winter weather. And thus, we come full circle again.

Around me the winter landscape bakes in the sun, without rain for weeks. Farmers appear regularly on TV bemoaning the weather, pictures of water reserves empty and without rain forecast. The situation is not normal.

Despite its complexities, the difficulties and challenges, tomorrow again, I and many, many others, will look to climate change. We will confront the huge, terrifying reality. We will remain open to solutions, be they technical or nature-based, as long as they are honest and transparent.

Our little dream of a farm, the whisper of its reality, will be part of the solution… one day.