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THEWORLDWATCHINSTITUTE

STATE OF TH E WOR LDTransforming Cultures

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From Consumerism to Sustainability

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W. W. NORTONNEW YORK • LONDON

STATE OF THE WORLD

Advance Praise for State of the World 2010:

“If we continue to think of ourselves mostly asconsumers, it’s going to be very hard to bring ourenvironmental troubles under control. But it’s alsogoing to be very hard to live the rounded and joyfullives that could be ours. This is a subversive volumein all the best ways!”

—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy andThe End of Nature

“Worldwatch has taken on an ambitious agenda inthis volume. No generation in history has achieved acultural transformation as sweeping as the one calledfor here…it is hard not to be impressed with thebook’s boldness.”

—Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank

“This year’s State of the World report is a culturalmindbomb exploding with devastating force. I hopeit wakes a few people up.”

—Kalle Lasn, Editor of Adbusters magazine

Like a tsunami, consumerism has engulfed humancultures and Earth’s ecosystems. Left unaddressed, werisk global disaster. But if we channel this wave, intention-ally transforming our cultures to center on sustainability,we will not only prevent catastrophe but may usher in anera of sustainability—one that allows all people to thrivewhile protecting, even restoring, Earth.

In this year’s State of the World report, 50+ renownedresearchers and practitioners describe how we canharness the world’s leading institutions—education, themedia, business, governments, traditions, and socialmovements—to reorient cultures toward sustainability.

Transforming Cultures

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Transforming CulturesFrom Consumerism to SustainabilityFrom Consumerism to Sustainability

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Several million pounds of plasticenter the world’s oceans every hour,portrayed on the cover by the 2.4million bits of plastic that make upGyre, Chris Jordan’s 8- by 11-footreincarnation of the famous 1820swoodblock print, The Great WaveOff Kanagawa, by the Japanese artistKatsushika Hokusai.

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Cover image: Gyre by Chris JordanCover design: Lyle Rosbotham

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BLOGS.WORLDWATCH.ORG/TRANSFORMINGCULTURES 47

Above the door lintels of the cultural museumof Tlaxcala, Mexico’s oldest state capital, aremurals depicting the rise of civilization. Firstthere appear the hunters, clad in furs, withbows and spears. A woman discovers a smallgrassy plant and begins to cultivate it. After atime, everyone is planting it, and the newlydomesticated plants grow as tall as a person.Special tools appear to prepare the ground,plant, harvest, and process the grain. In thewall panels that follow, civilization arrives, inall its complexity.

Something similar to this story is told inmost, if not all, cultures. In the Fertile Cres-cent of the upper Tigris and Euphrates Riversthere are ancient coins bearing images of aplow drawn by oxen. Images of planters andplows appear on pottery from Egypt and Ana-tolia and on rice paper from Japan and China,some of it more than 14,000 years old.1

As the ice retreated and the climate warmed20,000 years ago, the area of fertile soil andsuitable growing seasons expanded, even aswild game retreated and mammoths and otherlarge animals went extinct. About 8,000 yearsago, animal husbandry began to be augmented

by the domestication of emmer wheat, einkorn,barley, flax, chick pea, pea, lentil, and bittervetch. Humans had begun to alter their land-scapes in profound ways, clearing forests forfields, building larger villages and cities, andredirecting rivers for irrigation and flood con-trol. By 7,000 years ago, many, if not most,people in the world were farmers.2

This might have continued until humanityentered the next Ice Age—a world of colddeserts, land bridges, and massive mountainsof ice. But civilization changed that trajectoryby harnessing the coal, gas, and oil that fueledthe Industrial Revolution. Once more, peoplealtered the planet’s rhythms in ways they couldnot fully grasp.

In the span of a single century—the presentone—Earth’s climate may warm more rapidlyand to a greater degree than in the previous20,000 years. Agricultural systems will be pro-foundly challenged, beset by a perfect storm ofdiminishing fuel supply for tractors, fertilizer,and transportation; by crop-destroying heatwaves, expanding pestilences, and decliningwater supplies for irrigation; by growing andmigrating populations clamoring for food,

From Agriculture to Permaculture

Albert Bates and Toby Hemenway

Albert Bates is the director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology and the EcovillageTraining Center at The Farm. Toby Hemenway is Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University and a biol-ogist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild.

especially for meat and processed foods (see Box5); and by the financial instability borne ofexceeding Earth’s limits and having to retrenchto an earlier stage of industrial development.3

Before the mid-twentieth century, mostcrops were produced largely without the useof chemicals. Insect pests and weeds werecontrolled by crop rotations, destruction ofcrop refuse, timing of planting to avoid highpest population periods, mechanical weedcontrol, and other time-tested and regionallyspecific farming practices. While these arestill in use, changes in technology, prices,cultural norms, and government policies haveled to today’s industrially intensive agriculture.The dominant system of agriculture nowpracticed throughout the world, referred toas “conventional agriculture,” is character-ized by mechanization, monocultures, theuse of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pes-ticides, and an emphasis on maximizing pro-ductivity and profitability.

This type of agriculture is unsustainablebecause it destroys the resources it dependson. Soil fertility is declining due to erosion,compaction, and destruction of organic matter;water supplies are being depleted and polluted;finite fossil energy supplies are being exhausted;and the economies of rural communities are leftin shambles as agricultural outputs are shippedto distant markets. The shortage of productivecropland, decreasing soil fertility, and the enor-mous waste and imprecise management asso-ciated with industrial-scale food economics areresponsible for the world’s recurrent and accel-erating food and water shortages, malnutri-tion, mass starvation, and loss of biodiversity.In addition, agriculture accounts for about 14percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and from1990 to 2005 global agricultural emissionsincreased by 14 percent.4

Humanity now confronts a critical challenge:to developmethods of agriculture that sequestercarbon, enhance soil fertility, preserve ecosystemservices, use less water, and hold more water in

the landscape—all while productively using asteadily compounding supply of human labor.In short, a sustainable agriculture.

Defining Sustainable Agriculture

Fortunately, for the past half-century somepioneers have been preparing the agricultureof the future, and their ideas are now movingto center stage. Organic no-till, permaculture,agroforestry, perennial polycultures, aquapon-ics, and biointensive and biodynamic farm-ing—long considered fringe ideas—are nowconverging as serious components of a sus-tainable agriculture.5

One of the foundation stones was laid earlyin the twentieth century, when Franklin HiramKing journeyed to China, Korea, and Japan tolearn how farms there had been worked forthousands of years without destroying fertilityor applying artificial fertilizer. In 1911 Kingpublished Farmers of Forty Centuries: or Per-manent Agriculture in China, Korea andJapan, which described composting, crop rota-tion, green manuring, intertillage, irrigation,drought-resistant crops, aquaculture and wet-lands farming, and the transport of humanmanure from cities to rural farms.6

King’s work was inspiration for many,including Sir Albert Howard. In 1943 hepublished An Agricultural Testament, whichdescribed building compost piles, recyclingwaste materials, and creating soil humus as a“living bridge” between soil life, such as myc-orrhizae and bacteria, and healthy crops, live-stock, and people. At the heart of Howard’swork was the idea that soils, nutritious crops,and organisms in general are not just arrays ofminerals but are parts of a complex ecology ofcycling organic matter, and that these life-supporting cycles are critical for a self-regen-erative agriculture.7

Howard became embroiled in a mid-twen-tieth century conflict. On one side were disci-ples of chemists such as Carl Sprengel and

48 WWW.WORLDWATCH.ORG

From Agriculture to Permaculture STATE OF THE WORLD 2010


STATE OF THE WORLD 2010 From Agriculture to Permaculture

While many different combinations of foodswill meet a person’s dietary needs, dietarynorms are for the most part shaped by theindividual’s culture, typically very early in life.Traditionally, these preferences were in largepart shaped by the foods that were available topeople in their bioregion.

In today’s globalized world, however, morepeople can choose from a wide array of foods.While increased choice is theoretically a goodthing—giving people variety and the opportu-nity to choose diets that are healthy and havelittle ecological impact—dietary norms havebeen reshaped in an increasingly unhealthyand unsustainable manner. Easy access tohigh-fat, high-sugar foods combined with bil-lions of dollars spent annually on marketinghave dramatically shifted what is considered a“normal” diet—from the number of caloriesper meal to the amount of meat, sugar, andrefined flour consumed. All of these in turnhave contributed to rising obesity levels andhave had significant ecological impacts.

Today 1.6 billion people are either over-weight or obese, and 18 percent of green-house gases are produced by livestock thatare raised to feed humanity’s growing demandfor meat. In 2007, people ate 275 million tonsof meat, about 42 kilograms per person world-wide and 82 kilograms in industrial countries(2.7 servings every day).

By cultivating new dietary norms, food cancontribute to good health and possibly evenhelp heal the planet. A study of several of thelongest-lived peoples in the world found thatthey ate just 1,800–1,900 calories a day, noprocessed foods, and minimal amounts ofanimal products. By comparison, the averageAmerican consumes 3,830 calories a day.

Food writer Michael Pollan explains suc-cinctly what a healthy, restorative diet couldlook like: “Eat food, not too much, mostlyplants.” By food, Pollan means that people

should avoid food-like products with so manyadditives, preservatives, flavors, and fillers thattheir nutritional value may be compromised.

And by eating fewer calories (while ensur-ing those calories are high in nutrients), over-all health and longevity can be increased—afinding that has been borne out in several dif-ferent animal species, including humans.Moreover, eating fewer calories means havinga smaller ecological impact. For example, if aperson starts adhering to an 1,800-calorie-a-day diet at age 30, he could live to the age of81 before consuming the same amount ofcalories as a person who follows the typicallyrecommended 2,600-calorie diet would by theage of 65.

Eating “mostly plants”—not necessarilycompletely vegetarian but, as in many culturesthroughout history, eating meat infrequently orperhaps even just ritually—will have significantecological benefits. According to agriculturalresearcher David Pimentel, a vegetarian dietneeds one third fewer fossil fuels than a meat-based diet. Another study found that produc-ing just 1 kilogram of beef involves as muchcarbon dioxide emissions as the average Euro-pean car being driven 250 kilometers.

Unfortunately, today the dietary norm thatis spreading around much of the world—dri-ven by the media, government subsidies,advertising, and even by parents—is the con-sumer diet of high quantities of meat,processed foods, refined flours, and sugar.

What is needed is the intentional cultivationof sustainable dietary norms—an effort that isgetting started, thanks to books like In Defenseof Food, documentaries like Food Inc., govern-ment programs that promote healthier eating,social enterprises selling healthier food, andmovements like “Slow Food” that enouragepeople to consider carefully what they eat.

—Erik Assadourian and Eddie KasnerSource: See endnote 3.

Box 5. Dietary Norms That Heal People and the Planet

Justus von Liebig, who advocated fertilizingprincipally with nitrogen, phosphorus, andpotassium minerals and promoted a mechan-ical approach, arguing that plant growth isboosted by adding the scarcest, or limiting,mineral. This soon became a widely acceptedagronomic principle and the basis for the GreenRevolution. On the other side were the organicadvocates, adhering to Howard’s view thatcrop health depends on maintaining soil ecol-ogy by returning to the soil not just the min-erals lost in farming but also the organic matterthat supports the nutrient cycles of soil life.Howard’s position was, in the words of biol-ogist Janine Benyus, that it is life that bestcreates the conditions conducive to life.8

Howard lost that battle but may yet havewon the war, as it becomes apparent that manyaspects of industrial agriculture are unsustain-able, from the topsoil loss that approaches 75billion tons annually to the looming deple-tion of the critical fertilizer phosphorus and thenegative returns typified by crops that use 10calories of fuel energy to produce one calorieof food energy.9

Twentieth-century agriculture has badlydegraded nearly every ecosystem it has encoun-tered while consuming roughly 20 percent of

world energy production. The style called“conventional” depends for nearly all of itsworkings on a dwindling and increasinglyexpensive supply of fossil fuels.10

Sustainable agriculture, in contrast, can bepursued indefinitely because it does notdegrade or deplete the resources that it needsto continue. Since most of Earth’s arable landis already under cultivation and human popu-lations are continuing to expand, an even bet-ter goal would be to actually improve thecapacity of the land to produce.

Some net gain approaches are coming intoview, but they are not magic elixirs. Whileoptimized farming practices can increase thecapacity of the land to produce over the longterm, they cannot be considered in isolation;a robust solution to humanity’s continuedexistence on this planet must include adoptingsustainable lifestyles and maintaining humanpopulation at sustainable numbers.

Organic Agriculture: An Overview

Key features of organic agriculture are the useof biologically produced fertilizers such as car-bon-enhanced manures instead of manufac-tured inorganic nitrates and phosphates,infrequent use of biologically derived pesti-cides rather than routine application of syntheticand systemically toxic compounds, and—mostcritically—maintenance of soil ecology andorganic matter through cover crops, greenmanures, crop rotation, and composting.11

A long-term comparison done by theRodale Institute from 1981 to 2002 found thatorganic systems provided crop yields equivalentto those of conventional methods. The trialsshowed that when rainfall was 30 percent lessthan normal—typical drought levels—organicmethods yielded 24–34 percent more thanstandard methods. The researchers attributethe increased yields to better water retentiondue to higher soil carbon levels.12

Data gathered from the trial have revealed



The face of agroforestry at the Maya MountainResearch Farm, Belize.

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that soil under organic agriculture manage-ment can accumulate about 1,000 pounds ofcarbon per acre-foot each year. This is equal toabout 3,667 pounds of carbon dioxide peracre (4,118 kilograms per hectare per year)taken from the air and sequestered into soilorganic matter. Also, organic methods used28–32 percent less energy and were more prof-itable than industrial methods. These resultssuggest that organic methods offer greatpromise for reducing fossil fuel use and green-house gas emissions. The study suggested thatconverting the 64 million hectares of U.S.cropland currently planted in corn and soy-beans to organic methods would sequester264 million tons of carbon dioxide; this is theequivalent of shutting down 207 (225-megawatt) coal-fired power plants, about 14percent of the installed coal electric capacity ineither the United States or China.13

Perennial Polycultures

Wes Jackson and his colleagues at The LandInstitute in Salina, Kansas, have been devel-oping new perennial crops to replace annualgrains that must be replanted every year. Thesegrains are grown in polycultures, mixed withother perennial species that fix nitrogen for fer-tility, and produce seed oil for food, fuel, andlubricants. These polycultures mimic the plantcommunities that make up wild prairie.14

“Here’s where we have to be thinkingdeeply,” Jackson says. “Agriculture had itsbeginning 10,000 years ago. What were theecosystems like 10,000 years ago, after theretreat of the ice? Those ecosystems featuredmaterial recycling and they ran on contempo-rary sunlight. Humans have yet to build soci-eties like that. Is it possible that embedded innature’s economy are suggestions for a humaneconomy in which conservation is a conse-quence of production?” Ecological wealth,Jackson argues, is a more reliable sponsor ofhuman food systems than fossil fuels, bank

loans, or government subsidies are.15Land Institute research shows that com-

pared with annuals, perennial food plants pro-vide more protection against soil erosion,manage water and nutrients more effectively,sequester more carbon, are more resilient topests and stresses, and require less energy,labor, and fertilizer. Yields are currently lowcompared with annual crops, but they are ris-ing. Studies performed in Africa suggest thatmany grains, fruits, and vegetables now farmedin annual monocultures will produce similarresults when farmed in perennial polycultures.16

Agroforestry

Agroforestry combines trees and shrubs withannual crops and livestock in ways that amplifyand integrate the yields and benefits beyondwhat each component offers separately. Likeother methods of sustainable agriculture, it isbased on observing productive natural ecosys-tems and mimicking the processes and rela-tionships that make them more resilient andregenerative.

In one form of agroforestry, called alleycropping, grains or other non-woody cropsare planted in strips between rows of nut, fruit,timber, or fodder trees. Cattle, poultry, orother livestock can be pastured in the alleys orfed from the crop yields.

Near the town of San Pedro Columbia, inSouthern Belize, Christopher Nesbitt has beengrowing food crops in this traditional foreststyle at his MayanMountain Research Farm forthe past 20 years. He mixes some fast-growingnative tree species, some annual crops, andsome intermediate and long-term tree crops tobuild soil and produce continuous harvests.Some of his trees are leguminous and holdnitrogen by the microbial attraction of theirroots. Some are pollinator-friendly and attractbees and hummingbirds to transfer the fertilepollen of important food plants. Understorytrees like coffee, cacao, cassava, allspice, noni,



ginger, and papaya benefit from intercroppingwith high canopy trees like breadfruit, açaiand coconut palm, cashew, and mango. Fast-yielding crops such as avocado, citrus, banana,bamboo, yams, vanilla, and climbing squashesprovide an income for the farm while waitingfor the slower harvest of samwood, cedar, teak,chestnut, and mahogany to mature.17

The World Agroforestry Centre reports thatmethods like these can double or triple cropyields while reducing the need for commercialfertilizers. A U.N. Environment Programmereport estimates that if best management prac-tices were widely used, by 2030 up to 6 giga-tons of CO2 equivalent could be sequesteredeach year using agroforestry, which equals thecurrent emissions from agriculture as a whole.18

No-till and Low-till

Some of the nutrient-accumulating and -con-serving features that allow natural ecosystemsto build and sustain soil fertility include min-imum soil disturbance, the presence of a pro-tective layer of plant residues covering the soilsurface with no large bare areas for any lengthof time, and a constant covering of living plantsto take up and store any nutrients that becomeavailable through decomposition. These nutri-ent-building and -conserving features can beincorporated into cropping systems by con-verting to no-till or low-till methods, such asreducing the period of bare fallow, plantingcover crops, reincorporating stubble and plantresidues, keyline plowing, and reducing aera-tion of the soil.19

On his 2,000-hectare farm near Wellington,New South Wales, in Australia, Angus Mauriceis convinced that permanent pasture and whathe calls “no kill” cropping systems will be thefuture of grain production. “We have seen sig-nificant recruitment of perennial grasses in thepast five years, which is encouraging,” he says,“but we realize to reach the system’s full poten-tial we would have to eliminate the use of her-

bicides altogether, which is something we canachieve through fine-tuning and successfulrecruitment of the right grasses.”20

Long-term research studies reveal averagelosses of 328 pounds of organic matter per acreper year with plowing, whereas no-till studiesreport an average increase of 956 pounds oforganic matter per acre per year. Erosion froma conventionally tilled watershed has beenfound to be 700 times greater than that froma no-till watershed. No-till systems that usehigh-residue cover crops build soil organicmatter content and slow the movement ofwater over the soil surface, allowing more ofit to penetrate. In New South Wales, Mauricereports his most interesting finding: soil carbonlevels were significantly higher in areas ofperennial grass in the remnant vegetation—about 4 percent, compared with 1.5 percent inpaddocks coming out of the old continuous-cropping system.21

Permaculture

The term permaculture, a contraction of “per-manent agriculture,” was coined by AustraliansBill Mollison and David Holmgren and refersto a systems approach for designing humanecologies, from farms to houses to cities, thatmimics the relationships found in natural bio-mes. It integrates concepts from organic farm-ing, sustainable forestry, no-till management,and the village-design techniques of indigenouspeoples. It applies ecological theory to under-stand the characteristics of and potential rela-tionships among different design elements.22

The discipline uses a set of principles adoptedfrom ecosystems science. One principle is to usethe cradle-to-cradle model of recycling allresources and producing no waste. Another isto promote interactions between componentsso that needs and yields are integrated withinthe design. For example, a chicken needs food,water, safe habitat, and other chickens, and itproduces eggs, feathers, meat, and manure, as



well as services such as weed-eating and insectcontrol. A design that integrates chickens wouldmeet their needs from on-farm resources andallow the chickens’ outputs to meet the needsof other elements in the design, such as cropsor an aquaculture system.

Once set in motion, permaculture designsevolve naturally, capture synergies, and producea high density of food and other productswith diminishing labor and energy inputs overtime. One example of a permacultural strategyis the combining of crops in synergistic alliancescalled guilds, such as the traditional blendingof corn, beans, and squash. Researchers havefound that these combinations can increasetotal yields two- to threefold over monocul-tures of single crops.23

One of the better known examples of suc-cessful permaculture is found in one of theleast hospitable places on Earth for farming. Inthe Kafrin area of the Jordan valley, 10 kilo-meters from the Dead Sea, the nearly flatdesert receives only two or three light rainfallsin winter. The fine-grained silt is salty, andeven the wells in the area are too saline to beused for irrigation.

It was there that Geoff Lawton and his teamof permaculturists set up a small, 5-hectarefarm and in 2001 began digging swales—2-meter-wide mounds and shallow trenches thatcrossed the farm in wavy lines on contour.They planted leguminous forest trees in themounds to fix nitrogen and make leaf fodder.Each tree was given a drip-node from an irri-gation line coming from a water dam built tocapture road runoff; the lake formed by thedam was stocked with tilapia and geese, whichcontributed organic fertilizers for the trees.24

In the moist trenches, they planted olive, fig,guava, date palm, pomegranate, grape, citrus,carob, mulberry, cactus, and a wide range ofvegetables. Barley and alfalfa were planted aslegumes and forages for farm animals betweenthe swales. Tree and vegetable plantings weremulched with old newspapers and cotton rags,

and animal manure was added before and afterplanting. Animals raised on the farm includedchickens, pigeons, turkey, geese, ducks, rabbits,sheep, and a dairy cow. They were fed from thefarm once there were enough trees and plantsgrowing to harvest regularly without overtax-ing the system.

Within the first year the soil and well-waterbegan showing a marked decline in salinity, andthe garden areas had significant increases ingrowth. Pests were minor and largely con-trolled by the farm animals. The combining ofplants and animals brought about the inte-gration of farm inputs and outputs into a man-aged ecosystem of continuous production,water conservation, and soil improvement. Inless than a decade a permacultural balance hadbeen achieved, with lessening inputs andimproving outputs.

Transitional Agriculture

The early corn-growers depicted in the muralsin Tlaxcala would not have imagined theywere transforming humans’ relationship withEarth’s ecology. Although it might be inspir-ing to have a grand mission like restoring thebalance of nature, most farmers who ventureinto sustainable agriculture are simply inter-ested in improving crop yields or saving laboror money. While tradable credits for seques-tering carbon could soon provide anotherfarm revenue stream, many farmers will likelygo into sustainable agriculture simply becausegas-and-oil-dependant agriculture is becom-ing more expensive.25

As Angus Maurice’s family farm in Aus-tralia demonstrates, sustainable agriculture isnot an either/or proposition, and there willnecessarily be a period of transition from thecurrent system to a more sustainable one. Evenif most farmers do not go all-organic or applypermaculture principles, they can still improvetheir fortunes—and that of the planet—byadopting bits and pieces, a little at a time.



women in non-western societies from Judi Aubel,Ibrahima Touré, and Mamadou Diagne, “Sene-galese Grandmothers Improve Maternal and ChildNutrition Practices: The Guardians of TraditionAre Not Averse to Change,” Social Science & Med-icine, September 2004, pp. 945–59.

7. United Nations, World Youth Report 2005(New York: 2005), p. 76; Cara Heaven andMatthew Tubridy, “Global Youth Culture and YouthIdentity,” in Oxfam, Highly Affected, Rarely Con-sidered (Oxford: 2008), pp. 149–60, with quote onp. 154.

8. Akopovire Oduaran, “Intergenerational Soli-darity: Strengthening Economic and Social Ties,”Background Paper, Expert Group Meeting, UnitedNations, New York, 23–25 October 2007, pp.1–13, with quote on p. 10.

9. Haatso Youth Club of Ghana fromOxfam, op.cit. note 7, p. 157; quote from Senegalese manfrom Grandmother Project and World Vision, op.cit. note 2.

10. Jan Servaes and S. Lui, eds., Moving Targets:Mapping the Paths between Communication, Tech-nology and Social Change in Communities (Penang,Malaysia: Southbound, 2007); quote on media rolefrom Oxfam, op. cit. note 7, p. 154.

11. Grandmother Project field notes, Koulikoro,Mali, June 2004; maternal and child health pro-grams from Judi Aubel, “Participatory Communi-cation Unlocks a Powerful Cultural Resource:Grandmother Networks Promote Maternal andChild Health,” Communication for Developmentand Social Change, vol. 2, no. 1 (2008), pp. 7–30.

12. Deepa Srikantaiah, “Education: Building onIndigenous Knowledge,” IK Notes (World Bank),No. 85, 2005; Pat Pridmore and David Stephens,Children as Partners for Health: A Critical Reviewof the Child-to-Child Approach (London: Zed Books,2000), p. 127; G. Mishra, “When Child Becomesa Teacher–The Child to Child Programme,” IndianJournal of Community Medicine, October-Decem-ber 2006, pp. 277–78.

13. Description of many intergenerational pro-grams in North America is found on the Web site

of Generations United, a U.S. nonprofit organiza-tion, at www.gu.org.

14. “Lelum’uy’lh Child Development Centre,”at cowichantribes.com/memberservices/Education%20and%20Culture/Child%20Development%20Centre.

15. Judi Aubel et al., Rapid Review of ‘Time withGrandmas Initiative’ (Accra, Ghana: Governmentof Ghana and U.N. Population Fund, 2007).

16. Judi Aubel et al., The “Custodians of Tradition”Promote Positive Changes for the Health of New-borns: Rapid Assessment of Ekwendeni Agogo Strat-egy (Lilongwe, Malawi: Save the Children–US,2006).

17. Ian S. McIntosh, “Nurturing Galiwin’kuYouth in Northeast Arnhem Land: Yalu Mar-rngikunharaw,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, sum-mer 2002.

18. For information on the Grandmother Pro-ject, see www.grandmotherproject.org.

19. “Enquete d’Evaluation Finale: Rapportd’Analyse,” INFO-STAT, Bamako, Mali, 2004;Christian Children’s Fund project from Aubel,Touré, and Diagne, op. cit. note 6.

20. Quote from World Vision and GrandmotherProject, June 2006, Velingara, Senegal.

21. Findings from group interviews with com-munity members from 12 villages, Girls Develop-ment Project, World Vision and GrandmotherProject, Velingara, Senegal; Bam Tare local radio sta-tion, Velingara, Senegal; author’s field notes duringan intergenerational forum, SareFaremba village,Velingara, Senegal.

22. Helen Gould, “Culture and Social Capital,” inUNESCO,Recognising Culture (Paris: 2001), p. 69.

From Agriculture to Permaculture

1. Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and theOrigins of Agriculture (Cambridge, U.K.: Cam-bridge University Press, 2000).


Notes STATE OF THE WORLD 2010

2. Ibid., pp. 51–61, and Jared Diamond, Guns,Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (NewYork: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997); StevenMithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History20,000–5,000 BC (London: Weidenfeld &Nicolson,Ltd, 2003), p. 4.

3. A. P. Sokolov et al., “Probabilistic Forecast for21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties inEmissions (Without Policy) and Climate Parame-ters,” American Meteorological Society’s Journal ofClimate, 19 May 2009; Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M.Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson, eds., Global Cli-mate Change Impacts in the United States (Cam-bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009),p. 12; J. Schahczenski and H. Hill,Agriculture, Cli-mate Change and Carbon Sequestration (Fayet-teville, AR: National Sustainable AgricultureInformation Service, 2009), pp. 15, 104–05; JosephTainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cam-bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990);Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: Cat-astrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006). Box 5 fromthe following: Patricia Gadsby, “The Inuit Para-dox,” Discover, 1 October 2004; Committee onFood Marketing and the Diets of Children andYouth, Institute of Medicine, Food Marketing toChildren and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? (Wash-ington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2006),p. 164; World Health Organization, “Obesity andOverweight,” Fact Sheet No. 311 (Geneva: Sep-tember 2006); greenhouse gases from HenningSteinfeld et al., Livestock’s Long Shadow, Environ-mental Issues and Options (Rome: Food and Agri-culture Organization (FAO), 2006); meatconsumption from Brian Halweil, “Meat Produc-tion Continues to Rise,” in Worldwatch Institute,Vital Signs 2009 (Washington, DC: 2009), pp.15–17; long-lived cultures from John Robbins,Healthy at 100 (New York: RandomHouse, 2006),p. 57; U.S. consumption from FAO, “DietaryEnergy, Protein and Fat Database,” 7 August 2008,at www.fao.org/economic/ess/food-security-statistics/en/, viewed 22 September 2009; MichaelPollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto(New York: The Penguin Group, 2008); calorierestriction from JosephM. Dhahbi et al., “TemporalLinkage Between the Phenotypic and GenomicResponses to Caloric Restriction,” Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences, 13 April 2004, pp.

5,524–29, fromMichael Mason, “One for the Ages:A Prescription That May Extend Life,” New YorkTimes, 31 October 2006, from Ricki J. Colman etal., “Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset andMortality in Rhesus Monkeys,” Science, 10 July2009, pp. 201–04, and from Roy B. Verdery andRoy L. Walford, “Changes in Plasma Lipids andLipoproteins in Humans During a 2-year Period ofDietary Restriction in Biosphere 2,” Archives ofInternal Medicine, 27 April 1998, pp. 900–06;ecological benefits from Erik Assadourian, “TheLiving Earth Ethical Principles: Right Diet andRenewing Rituals,” World Watch, November/December 2008, p. 32, from David Pimentel et al.,“Reducing Energy Inputs in the US Food System,”Human Ecology, August 2008, from Akifumi Oginoet al., “Evaluating Environmental Impacts of theJapanese Beef Cow-calf System by the Life CycleAssessment Method,” Animal Science Journal, vol.78, issue 4 (2007), pp. 424–32, and from DanieleFanelli, “Meat is Murder on the Environment,”New Scientist, 18 July 2007.

4. Union of Concerned Scientists, IndustrialAgriculture: Features and Policy (Cambridge, MA:2007); D. Pimentel et al., “Impact of PopulationGrowth on Food Supplies and Environment,” Pop-ulation and Environment, September 1997, pp.9–14; A. Bouwman, Global Estimates of GaseousEmissions from Agricultural Land (Rome: FAO,2002); C. W. Rice, “Introduction to Special Sectionon Greenhouse Gases and Carbon Sequestration inAgriculture and Forestry,” Journal of Environ-mental Quality, vol. 35 (2006), pp. 1,338–40; U.S.Environmental Protection Agency, Global Anthro-pogenic Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gas Emissions:1990–2020 (Washington, DC: 2006).

5. Secretariat of the United Nations Conven-tion to Combat Desertification, “SLM TechniquesRelated to Climate Change Mitigation/Adaptationand Desertification,” North American Biochar Con-ference, 2009.

6. F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries: orPermanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan(Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1990, originally pub-lished in 1911).

7. D. C. Coleman, “Through a Ped Darkly: AnEcological Assessment of Root-Soil-Microbial-Fau-


STATE OF THE WORLD 2010 Notes

nal Interactions,” in A. H. Fitter et al., eds., Eco-logical Interactions in Soil (Cambridge, U.K.: Black-well Scientific Publications, 1985), pp. 1–21; B.Anderson, “Soil Food Web—Opening the Lid ofthe Black Box,” The Permaculture Activist,fall 2006.

8. J. Benyus, “Nature’s Designs,” TED Talk,February 2005; see also J. Benyus, Biomimicry:Innovation Inspired by Nature (New York: WilliamMorrow, 1998).

9. D. Pimentel, “Soil Erosion: A Food and Envi-ronmental Threat,” Environment, Development andSustainability, February 2006, pp. 119–37; PhilipH. Abelson, “A Potential Phosphate Crisis,” Science,26 March 1999, p. 2,015.

10. Francis Urban, “Energy, Agriculture, and theMiddle East Crisis,”World Agriculture, April 1991;D. Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and theComing Crisis in Agriculture (Gabriola Island, BC:New Society Publishers, 2006).

11. For information on recalcitrant carbon, suchas found in biochar or terra preta, see J. Lehmannand S. Joseph, eds., Biochar for EnvironmentalManagement: Science and Technology (London:Earthscan, 2009).

12. P. Hepperly, Organic Farming SequestersAtmospheric Carbon and Nutrients in Soils (EmmausPA: Rodale Institute, 2003).

13. U.S. Energy Information Administration,“Existing Electric Generating Units in the UnitedStates, (2007),” at www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/capacity/capacity.html; U.S.Department of Energy, “Carbon Dioxide Emis-sions from the Generation of Electric Power in theUnited States (2000),” at www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html.

14. E. R. Ingham, D. C. Coleman, and J. C.Moore, “An Analysis of Food-web Structure andFunction in a Shortgrass Prairie, a MountainMeadow, and a Lodgepole Pine Forest,” Biology andFertility of Soils, July 1989, pp. 29–37.

15. Robert Jensen, “Sustainability and Politics:An Interview with Wes Jackson,” Counterpunch, 10

July 2003; T. X. Cox et al., “Prospects for Devel-oping Perennial Grain Crops,” Bioscience, August2006, pp. 649–59.

16. M. H. Bender, An Economic Comparison ofTraditional and Conventional Agricultural Systemsat a County Level (Salina, KS: The Land Institute,2000); J. Dewar, Perennial Polyculture Farming:Seeds of Another Agricultural Revolution? (SantaMonica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007).

17. Nesbitt from A. Bates, “Going Deep inBelize,” The Permaculture Activist, spring 2009; seealso R. Nigh, “Trees, Fire And Farmers: MakingWoods and Soil in The Maya Forest,” Journal OfEthnobiology, fall/winter 2008.

18. World Agroforestry Centre CommunicationsUnit, “Trees on Farms Key to Climate and FoodSecurity,” press release (Nairobi: 24 July 2009); K.Trumper et al., Natural Fix? The Role of Ecosys-tems in Climate Mitigation: A UNEP RapidResponse Assessment (Cambridge, U.K.: UNEP-WCMC, 2009).

19. P. Bohlen and G. House, eds. SustainableAgroecosystem Management: Integrating Ecology,Economics, and Society (Advances in Agroecology)(London: CRC Press, 2009); R. Hotinski, Stabi-lization Wedges: A Concept and Game; Carbon Mit-igation Initiative (Trenton, NJ: PrincetonEnvironmental Institute, 2007).

20. A. Lawson, “Never Let Paddocks Go Naked:Family’s ‘No Kill’ Pasture Cropping Plan,”Meat &Livestock Australia: The Land, 24 July 2008.

21. S. W. Duiker and J. C. Myers, Better Soils withthe No-till System (Pennsylvania Conservation Part-nership, 2002); Lawson, op. cit. note 20.

22. B. Mollison and D. Holmgren, PermacultureOne: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settle-ments (Tyalgum, NSW, Australia: Tagari Publica-tions, 1978).

23. D. A. Perry, “Bootstrapping in Ecosystems,”BioScience, April 1989, pp. 230–37; S. R. Gliessman,Agroecology: Ecological Processes in Sustainable Agri-culture (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Press, 1998).


Notes STATE OF THE WORLD 2010

24. For an overview of this project, see “JordanValley Permaculture Project,” The PermacultureResearch Institute of Australia, at permaculture.org.au/project_profiles/middle_east/jordan_valley_permaculture_project.htm.

25. Credits for sequestering carbon are discussedin Lehmann and Joseph, op. cit. note 11.

Education’s New Assignment: Sustainability

1. UNESCO, “Educating for Sustainability,” atportal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1216&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.

Early Childhood Education to TransformCultures for Sustainability

1. A. N. Meltzoff, A. M. Gopnik, and P. K. Kuhl,The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and HowChildren Learn (New York: William Morrow &Company, Inc., 1999); J. P. Shonkoff and D.Phillips, eds., From Neurons to Neighborhoods: TheScience of Early Childhood Development (Washing-ton, DC: National Academy Press, 2000); D. Bailyet al., Critical Thinking About Critical Periods (Bal-timore: Paul H. Brooks, 2001); Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development(OECD), Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Edu-cation and Care (Paris: 2006). Box 6 is based on thefollowing: healthy and ecological development fromS. Clayton and S. Opotow, eds., Identity and theNatural Environment: The Psychological Signifi-cance of Nature (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,2003), from P. H. Kahn and S. R. Kellert, eds.,Chil-dren and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, andEvolutionary Investigations (Cambridge, MA: TheMIT Press, 2002), and from R. Louv, Last Child inthe Woods (updated ed.) (Chapel Hill, NC: Algo-nquin Books, 2008); U.S. youth outdoor partici-pation rates from Outdoor Foundation, OutdoorRecreation Participation Report 2008 (Boulder,CO: 2008); negative health effects of sedentaryactivities from R. R. Pate, J. R. O’Neill and F.Lobelo, “The Evolving Definition of ‘sedentary’:Studies of Sedentary Behavior,” Exercise and SportSciences Reviews, vol. 36, no.4 (2008), pp. 173–78,and from C. Torgan, “Childhood Obesity on theRise,” Word on Health: Consumer Health Infor-mation Based on Research from the National Insti-

tute of Health, at www.nih.gov/news/WordonHealth/jun2002/childhoodobesity.htm; positiveexperiences from Sustainable Development Com-mission, “Outdoor Experiences,” at www.sd-commission.org.uk/breakthrough.php?breakthrough=22,viewed 6 August 2009, and from Kahn and Kellert,op. cit. this note; No Child Left Inside Coalition,“About the No Child Left Inside Act,” atwww.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=948; outdoor andwilderness traditions from L. Cook, “The 1944Education Act and Outdoor Education: From Pol-icy to Practice,” History of Education, vol. 28, no.2 (1999), pp. 157–72, from B. Humberstone andK. Pedersen, “Gender, Class and Outdoor Traditionsin the UK and Norway,” Sport, Education andSociety, March 2001, pp. 23–33, from P. Lynch,Camping in the Curriculum: A History of OutdoorEducation in New Zealand Schools (Canterbury,New Zealand: PML Publications, 2006), and fromR. Ramsing, “Organized Camping: A HistoricalPerspective,” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clin-ics of North America, October 2007, pp. 751–54.

2. M. Woodhead, “Early Childhood and Pri-mary Education,” in M. Woodhead and P. Moss,eds., Early Childhood and Primary Education. EarlyChildhood in Focus 2: Transitions in the Lives ofYoung Children (Milton Keynes, U.K.: The OpenUniversity, 2007); UNICEF, The Child Care Tran-sition. A League Table of Early Childhood Educationand Care in Economically Advanced Countries (Flo-rence: UNICEF Innicenti Research Centre, 2008);OECD, Starting Strong: Early Childhood Educationand Care (Paris: 2001); UNESCO, EFA Monitor-ing Report 2009. Education For All (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2008).

3. International Workshop, “The Role of EarlyChildhood Education for a Sustainable Society,”Gothenburg, Sweden, 2–4 May 2007; Centre forEnvironment and Sustainability, The GothenburgRecommendations on Education for SustainableDevelopment (Gothenburg, Sweden: Chalmers Uni-versity of Technology and University of Gothen-burg, 2008), p. 28.

4. I. Pramling Samuelsson and Y. Kaga, eds.,The Contribution of Early Childhood Education toSustainable Society (Paris: UNESCO, 2008); thelist of 7Rs has been expanded from the 4Rs modelproposed in L. Katz, “The Role of Early Childhood


STATE OF THE WORLD 2010 Notes

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