“May there be more forests to grow people!” Before coming to India, we planned to volunteer at Sadhana Forest Kenya, but our plans changed. After, we planned to volunteer at Sadhana Forest India, but our plans changed again. As a result, we did not volunteer for Sadhana Forest, but Mathieu had the opportunity to enjoy the Friday-afternoon tour they offer each week to discover the project, its realizations, its vision as well as enjoy a movie and delicious dinner. This article retraces this afternoon and evening. Abstract I tend to write (too) long articles. This abstract gives you an overview of the content and the key messages from this blog post. Feel free to read the complete post 😊 What is your bull’s eye? Is the first question we were asked. Our host then explained the way that Sadhana Forest chose to lead more compassionate and conscious lives. It all started with tree planting and water management to later evolve towards a complete integrated and protracted thoughtful lifestyle that combines karma yoga, veganism, community, renewable energies, no-waste, eco-building, unschooling, compassion, gift economy… In this article I briefly talk about how French and British colonial influence as well as European military needs cleared the forest and caused the desertification of the region. We also relate the solutions implemented by Sadhana Forest to tackle the desertification and rehabilitate the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest, native to the region. Then, I focus more on how Sadhana Forest “grows people” through the promotion of a “conscious and compassionate lifestyle”. Finally, I share some of my thoughts and questions; I look forward to reading your comments and answers. “The path of the arrow” Our host started the visit with a question: “what’s your bull’s eye?” Apparently, “Sadhana” is a Sanskrit word that means “the path of the arrow” (and as many sanskrit words as many other meanings, feel free to look it up). Sadhana Forest’s bull eye is all about service, about leading a conscious and compassionate life. Leading a life of compassion and consciousness is about understanding our responsibility, caring for the earth, caring for the people, connecting to everything. The Rosen family founded Sadhana Forest in 2003. After leading brilliant business careers, they were still missing something and started looking for their own path to “service”. This quest leaded them to Auroville where they found a better-adapted environment to fulfil their desire to serve. The Rosen family looked for a non-profit service for the community and reckoned that trees and forests are undervalued: rehabilitating the native Dry Evergreen Tropical Forest will not generate any monetary profit; that became their mission. Since then, Sadhana Forest has been continuously welcoming from 20 to 174 volunteers at once on site to reach an average 1000 of volunteers per year. Rehabilitate the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest I invite you to read our blogpost about Pebble Garden to learn more about the history of deforestation in the region of Pondicherry. In a nutshell the seek for timber and firewood, fights between British and French colonial troops and some government incentive for cash crops for Europe depleted the native Dry Evergreen Tropical Forest. Less vegetation coverage combined with heavy rain episodes lead to massive topsoil erosion and transformed the luxuriant ecosystem of the plateau into a dry savannah. Harvest water As the reforestation effort began, the results were rather unsatisfactory: Sadhana Forest had an 80 to 90% death rate in young trees… Clearly, something was wrong. The team understood that water was a decisive factor of success or failure. This allowed to shift strategies and to define the #1 priority for Sadhana Forest: conserve water to achieve “zero runoff”! This new priority lead to landscape work: trenches, bunds (now total 50 km length), pits, natural-material-based dams, etc. For instance, the volunteers built a series of seven swales of an average 250-meter length each that, over 10 years, transformed the zone in a jungle. Water has a tremendous impact on the landscape as it creates micro-climates favorable to life. It is interesting to observe the edges and how life thrives on edges. For instance, we saw two different environments on each side of the earth dam the volunteers built 10 years ago: on one side, the water catchment increased the moisture levels and allow the desert to go green, on the other side erosion reduced drastically as the water was not running off anymore. Water conservation work did not only affect the surface: after six years, the underground water table also rose six meters! Previously dry wells were now providing water, not only for Sadhana Forest but for the neighboring community (aquifers do not follow human property boundaries). Plant trees Years before, Aurovillians had already started reforestation effort and had identified acacia as a good pioneer. Thus, many acacia seeds were disseminated in Auroville and its bioregion, some eventually reached Sadhana Forest compound. Acacia seeds can remain viable for 50 years. The water conservation rapidly paid off, as moisture levels went up, life came back! Acacia trees started growing, succession started. As good pioneers, the acacias retained soil in place, reduced soil temperature and surface temperature, provided mulch and biomass, provided shade… The environmental services provided by the acacias and the related benefits lead to a 50% survival rate in young trees. Another interesting aspect of acacias is their short life. Indeed, acacias reach mature size after five to ten years whereas the native species need several decades. On top of that, as acacias originate from Australian outback, they need a lot of sun and would not grow in shaded areas. This means that the acacias will fade out as the native trees grow stronger; succession will follow a natural cycle of life and death without need for human intervention to remove non-native species. Water helped with young tree survival. To plant even more efficiently, Sadhana inspired from the forest: the forest plants above ground. However, they use extra tools such as a tube and an irrigation bottle. How does Sadhana plant trees? Refer to the tutorial “Preliminary installation to plant a tree (Sadhana Forest Method)” . This process is apparently very effective for trees planted in severely degraded places. Once succession started, there is no need for such a heavy process and one can plant without mounds and bottle irrigation. This variability in the forest fertility and more efficient work organization lead Sadhana Forest to define 20 zones of forest. Different zones are taken care of at different times by the volunteers. As mentioned earlier, as trees grow, they provide many environmental services. At Sadhana Forest, we acknowledge that trees also increased biodiversity; this once desert plateau now is home to many insects, birds, mammals including volunteers 😊 Grow people, the Sadhana lifestyle It is not easy to clearly segregate topics about the conscious and compassionate lifestyle Sadhana offers. Indeed, each component is closely linked to other components. I believe that a coherent lifestyle works like an ecosystem and one should approach it with a wholistic way of thinking. However, we segregate the topics for newcomers to appreciate each component and draw the links for her/himself. Karma yoga Karma yoga is often called “the yoga of work”, it is a yoga of selfless action which generates no impressions. The karma yogi should not expect any fruits, pains or gains from the action; she/he does not consider her/himself as the author of the action but as a voluntary servant of the divine will. Auroville is a lot about karma yoga, about incarnation of the divine into earthy reality and work. As such, one does not talk of “work” at Sadhana Forest but “seva”. Everyone is invited to do their share in accordance with their capacities, capabilities and goodwill. Volunteers are free to support the reforestation activities, day-to-day life support activities, community support, etc. Veganism As you might have understood, Sadhana Forest aims at protecting the environment. As a matter of fact, one’s diet impacts the environment. According to some studies, opting for a plant-based diet might be the biggest contribution one can make to reduce her/his ecological footprint. Thus, the kitchen at Sadhana Forest is a vegan kitchen. Since Sadhana Forest sometimes has up to 500 people on site, their kitchen might be the biggest vegan kitchen in the area (in India?). Environmental concern is one reason to go for a plant-based diet, health is another one: “You are what you eat”. It is important to take care of the inner self before one can take care of others. A healthy diet actively participates to well-being and inner balance. What I can say is that the dinner was excellent. The volunteers served the 50+ guests with delicious brown rice, dahl, vegetable curry and chocolate mousse. The food is organic and local. Some people go vegan for ethical reasons. Some of those ethics relate to “antispecism” which, in short, considers that we do not need to exploit animals and should treat all animals as our equals. Sadhana Forest practices “ahimsa” (non-violence) towards animals and treat them as equals. Thus, the “Goshala” is a refuge for injured and abandoned animals. Indeed, even though cows are revered as holy in India, farmers are often troubled after one of their cows has an accident. In farms, cows are supposed to generate monetary benefit, if an accident limits the capacity of the animal to produce milk, then what to do? Many cows are abandoned in the streets with the hope they will manage themselves; bulls are usually sold to slaughterhouses. Sadhana Forest offers a third option with the Goshala where cows can retire with full pension, up until their last day, without being used for any purpose. Sadhana Forests does not even use the cow dung for compost (and anyhow does not really need it since it already has so much humanure…). They plan to use the dung in the future to fertilize the garden that should grow food for the cows. Feel free to read our blogpost about the Permaculture Design Course (PDC) at Arnaya Farm for more insights about our position towards veganism. Community Community is key to Sadhana Forest. You will acknowledge after in this article some of the solutions that they implement to “force” the people to be together and share, exchange, communicate, grow. One goof example of the desire to encourage community is the weekly tour + movie + shared dinner Sadhana Forest offers to guests. A bus goes to the center of Auroville, picks up the guests that are welcomed, entertained and fed by the Sadhana Forest community before being accompanied back to the township center. We enjoyed several short movies about Sadhana Forest’s vision and realizations as well as the selection of the week: a movie about deforestation in Indonesia, its impacts on the biodiversity (on the orangutans for instance), its impact on the local job market and the direct link between worldwide consumer habits and this carnage; when buying wood, mind your true impact; do not buy palm sub-products. Such a movie makes you reflect upon our individual and collective destructive habits. As clarified earlier, the dinner was delicious. Sadhana Forest organize other gathering such as parties, dancing nights, etc. Another good example of community spirit is the openness to neighboring villages. Sadhana Forest has a “children place” for the kids of the neighborhood to enjoy the Sadhana spirit and have good time in Nature. This children place features a main hut, a kitchen, a jungle gym. It is located next to the animal sanctuary (see chapter about veganism) and the sacred grove which is -thanks to the temple attached to it- one of the last remains of the native Dry Evergreen Tropical Forest. The equipment in the children place is made of local material and/or upcycled material. For instance, most of the playground installations are made of upcycled rubber tires (and look like a lot of fun!). Another good example relates to the “no waste” philosophy. Even though Sadhana Forest could power all the buildings on site, they decided to only power the offices and the main building. This means that volunteers do not have electricity in the dormitories and must charge their electronic devices in the main building. This also means that the main building is the only place with light at night. The idea here is to recreate the traditional atmosphere of evening community gathering around the fire. This allows people to meet, share and live together; the default option at Sadhana Forest is to be together Renewable energy Sadhana Forest has its own photovoltaic power installation with sufficient capacity to run all installations at once and cover 99% of the needs: water-pump to allow gravity-fed irrigation, water filters, offices, main house, extras such as beamer for cinema events. You might wonder about the 1% needs? Sadhana Forest has a “fitness room” with four cycling dynamos; a team of nine can pedal for one hour to charge phones for half an hour (two teams of four pedal for 30 minutes each, mate #9 plays the drums to keep the rhythm). The “fitness room” is a good way for people to understand the true cost of energy and to gracefully accept shortage and “energy diet”. As stated earlier in this article, Sadhana limits its consumption to a minimum and this might explain their autonomy. Moreover, Sadhana Forest favors manual mechanical solutions to electric solutions; for instance, whenever one wants to take a shower, that person must fill her/his bucket from the water handpump available in the kitchen. This allows people to understand the true cost of energy (how much energy is required to pump water up from aquifer to the surface) and to reduce consumption (20 liters of water weigh twenty kilograms and one does not need more than 10 liters of water to shower). Similarly, in the kitchen, they opted for rocket stoves. Rocket stoves are among the most efficient heating solution. Dead wood and/or mature wood is collected directly on the site and used as fuel for the rocket stoves. The ash is then used to wash dishes (no waste philosophy). No waste Earlier, we mentioned the ecosystemic way of thinking and way of working. Nature does not produce waste; waste and pollution are excess of unused resources. To achieve no waste, we can inspire from Nature and “close the loops”! the products of one process are the inputs for another process in such a way that, at a higher system level, there is no waste nor pollution. No waste and energy topics are closely related. The example of kitchen ashes reuse is a good example. After our delicious dinner, we were invited to use three buckets to wash our dishes:
Plastic bottles are not welcomed at Sadhana Forest or, at least, should be reused to maximum extent. For drinking water, water filters are available on site and volunteers are invited to use their own bottle to fetch and store their drinking water. Eco-building The buildings are built with locally-available material such as hand-processed granite pillars, strong eucalyptus beams, bamboo for roofing and cabling, coconut ropes + woods + leaves for the roof. Some buildings also integrate upcycled material such as Tetrapak sheets and rubber tires for roofing. Feel free to have a look at the pictures to acknowledge the beauty of the buildings. Talking about the main building, I particularly appreciated their extension approach: the initial main building was smaller; as the project grew, the main building also needed upsizing. How to do that with limited construction skills on site? Apparently, a volunteer had a dream, he saw a whale eating a shark… and this set the guidelines to extending the main building: instead of making the initial one bigger, they added a bigger building “eating” the other; it looks fabulous. Feel free to read our blogpost about sustainable architecture at the International House in Auroville for more insights about the topic. Unschooling Sadhana Forest over time attracted many parents and kids interested in unschooling solutions. In a nutshell, they believe that children should be free to learn joyfully at their own rhythm; whenever a child wants to learn something, the community makes sure to provide the best support to the kid for him or her to learn efficiently. This philosophy lead to the creation of a “children room” in the main building: only children are allowed inside the children room; adults can enter only if invited by a child. We also mentioned the “children place” located at Sadhana Forest. Not only does it participate to the community spirit, it also gives children a space where they can experience autonomy and learn from each other and learn with adults; in the kitchen for instance. Compassion As stated on their website , “Sadhana Forest launched the UniverCity of Compassion (UCC) – a Sadhana Forest residential natural learning program! We believe that every action can be performed in a compassionate way, a way that benefits every living being. The UCC is a space for discovering and nourishing ideas for compassionate action, within the setting of a self-organized community of learning. We warmly invite people of all ages and all walks of life to join our compassionate learning journey!” Gift economy Sadhana Forest does not seek monetary profit and relies on gift economy, donations and volunteer work. Apparently, this principle pushes Sadhana Forest to opt for efficient work and seek for best use of resources, i.e. the greatest result for the lowest input. This need for efficiency lead to innovation in tree planting as presented above. Did I mention the weekly tour, movie and shared dinner? It also was a gift and I thank them for that. Sadhana Forest expansion Sadhana Forest is not only present in India. It now extended to Kenya and Haiti, sharing the same values and commitment to human unity. Moreover, since food security including malnutrition is a big issue, Sadhana Kenya and Sadhana Haiti also focus on perennial food trees to tackle malnutrition issues. To do that, they identify stewards among the communities and support them with planting and growing the food trees on their private land. Complementary and subjective remarks Renewable energy: is solar renewable? I know there is a debate about solar energy. Apparently, if one uses the embodied energy (eMergy) method to analyze the “sustainability” performance of photovoltaic cells, result is rather unsatisfactory. Other studies tend to demonstrate that if one manages to use PV cells for more than 20 or 30 years, we reach neutral impact… Can we manage PV cells from cradle to cradle using solar energy? I rephrase: can we produce solar panels without using fossil fuels to extract material, transport it, transform it, package it, handle it, store it, install it? Does anyone have experience or knowledge about wood gasification? Is it a cleaner alternative to solar panels? As our host told us during the tour: solar panels are a first step towards sustainability, however: “nothing is free, nothing has no impact”. I guess the best energy is the one we do not consume. Local food Food production is not a priority in Sadhana Forest India. Apparently, Sadhana Forest as a well-established network of local farmers that provide enough organic foods to feed the community. I would still be interested in combining reforestation with food forests. Sadhana does it in Kenya and in Haiti but Sadhana Forest. However, in Kenya and Haiti, Sadhana only supports with perennials; for me this is partial: one cannot only feed on perennials. I would recommend integrating at least 20% annuals to allow a nutritious and balanced diet, as well as to diversify and increase the yield of the concerned farmers. I understood that agriculture is not Sadhana Forest’s core field of expertise and, thus, does not push in that direction. I strongly believe that mixing their reforestation initiative with regenerative agriculture practices and support would have great impact! Autonomy Except for food, Sadhana Forest seems to satisfy all its needs from energy to shelter to community and self-actualization. However, I also acknowledge that Sadhana Forest benefits from a substantial workforce with 1000+ volunteers per year! Each volunteer pays for food and accommodation. I wonder if such a model is sustainable and repeatable? I have no clue about how the finances work for Sadhana. Sadhana Forest receives donations. On top of that, I guess that the 500-rupees daily participations from the volunteers help to cover day-to-day expenses. I usually question paying for volunteering, how does it relate to “fair share”? Is that model sustainable? Finally, is such a big effort and workforce needed to reforest the 70 acres near Auroville? I feel that Sadhana Forest India now focuses more on growing the volunteers than the trees, on raising awareness to promote a conscious and compassionate lifestyle; the volunteering experience becomes a retreat Community dynamics Sadhana Forest must deal with a big turnover of volunteers. To mitigate governance issue, I understood that they implemented a centralized decision-making policy and clear hierarchical structure between short-term volunteers, mid-term volunteers (several months), long-term volunteers (a year or more) and the founders. Short-term volunteers do not have influence on the operations, mid-term volunteers can manage some operations, long-term volunteers can participate to the decision-making process with the founders. One afternoon and evening do not allow to draw any conclusions; it would be interesting to volunteer there to understand how the community spirit is created, maintained and shared among all. As guests, we felt that communication, image and notoriety are very important to Sadhana Forest. There is a big push on guests for likes and sharing on social networks. Before the movie, we were invited to review the procedure to give five stars on Google. As I publish this blogpost I will proceed with the procedure to salute their effort and thank them for the nice afternoon and evening. I ask our host “What makes you stay?” We talked about the community and sharing experience and also about how comfortable it is for his for mind and conscience to live and volunteer at Sadhana Forest. It seems more difficult to lead such a conscious and compassionate life back in his country (United Stated of America). So I asked him how could we apply the Sadhana Forest in “Western countries”? We do not have any cleat answers at this point in tome; it seems tough due to administrative constraints, cultural blockages, social environment… let’s move forward, one day at a time. Go futher… Webiste: http://sadhanaforest.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sadhanaforest National Geographic “picture story” about Sadhana Forest: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/08/reforestation-india-sustainable-sadhana-community-desert/ DIY tutorial “Plant a tree (Sadhana Forest method)”: http://wikifab.org/wiki/Tree_planting_preparation_(Sadhana_Forest_method) Article about Pebble Garden: https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/blog/discover-auroville-pebble-garden Blogpost about the “Permaculture Design Course (PDC) at Arnaya Farm” (veganism discussion): https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/blog/pdc-at-aranya-farm Blogpost about the International House in Auroville (sustainable architecture): https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/blog/discover-auroville-international-house Learn more about our projects: https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sustainomy/ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2L1bbFz
1 Comment
|
Author
Laura & Mathieu Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|