Operation Fruit Tree

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 280-365

I will plant a fruit tree this year and I will invite 5 friends to do the same.
I found this ideea on facebook and I thought that is a great idea.

You have the ability to send a ripple that travels around the world. Together, we can inspire the planting of millions of trees that feed our communities this year. Let's make this year count!

Amazing initiative regarding replanting trees

The Food is Free Project Austin, Texas USA grows community and food, while helping gain independence from a broken agricultural system.  The Food is Free Project is a community building and gardening movement that launched in January of 2012. They teach you how to connect with your neighbors and line your street with front yard community gardens which provide free harvests to anyone.

The gardens are built and offered for free using salvaged resources that would otherwise be headed to the landfill. By using drought-tolerant, wicking bed gardens, these low maintenance gardens only need to be watered every 2-4 weeks. This simple tool introduces people to a very easy method of growing organic food with very little work. A wide variety of vegetables along the block promote neighbors to interact and connect, strengthening our communities while empowering them to grow their own food.

The Food is Free project not only transforms neighborhood blocks, but has installed gardens at Elementary schools, community arts spaces, Farmers Markets, churches and small businesses.

More and more people are recognizing the importance of local food and supporting our communities at home. Food is Free provides a platform for community interaction that opens doors to further collaboration and connection. Imagine driving down your street, where the majority of homes host a front yard community garden, neighbors come together for potlucks, establish tool-sharing and community composting programs while creating safer, more beautiful neighborhoods.

Never underestimate your power to inspire

“Never underestimate your power to inspire and affect your community around you. Even the smallest of acts can really ripple out.” - John VanDeusen Edwards, Founder of The Food is Free Project 

The ideea is already spreading in Australia  and Tasmania

Food is Free Project - Australia is non profit organisation with the brilliant idea that food should be free be the change you wish to see in the world :)

Here is their facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Food-is-Free-Project-Australia/761196423910893?sk=info&tab=page_info

Build your own self-watering garden

The founders of the project realized that most people don’t grow their own food because of financial considerations, as well as the time it takes to maintain the plot. Through an ingenious and easy-to-build design — which uses recycled materials — participants can have a flourishing garden up and running in very little time. The best part, however, is that the bed only needs to be watered once every 2-4 weeks. 

This not only reduces time spent on upkeep but also drastically lowers the amount of water used. Another advantage is that there is no need to invest in building materials or an expensive drip system. The bed utilizes recycled wood pallets, scrap PVC pipes and wood, tumbled glass from the landfill, donated soil, burlap, political signs and (for the cost of around $2.00) a plastic tarp. The bed takes about 30 minutes to build — or less, once you get the hang of it.

A zany video demonstrating how to build the raised bed, along with a wealth of other gardening resources, can be found at the Food is Free Project website. Examples of additional drought-resistant techniques include wicking 5-gallon bucket planters, watering with buried clay pots, Hugelkultur beds and a documentary about growing with mulch.

Links

http://foodisfreeproject.org

https://twitter.com/foodisfreeproj

http://wakeup-world.com/2014/08/04/diy-2-self-watering-garden-bed/

Liliana Usvat - Reforestation and Medicinal use of the Trees : Forests and Indigenous Tribes of Peru and Brazil

Liliana Usvat - Reforestation and Medicinal use of the Trees : Forests and Indigenous Tribes of Peru and Brazil

Forests and Indigenous Tribes of Peru and Brazil

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 279-365

We need to protect those those that cannot protect themselves. We need to speak for those that cannot speak for themselves.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest in Peru live tribes who have no contact with the outside world.

Oil workers and illegal loggers are invading their land and bringing disease. They won’t survive unless this stops.

An indigenous group living in extreme isolation in the Amazon rain forest has stirred fresh controversy and new concerns over the fate of the region's so-called uncontacted tribes. They are  at risk of extinction from disease and land theft.



Aerial footage of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes has been released. Survival's new film, narrated by Gillian Anderson, has launched our campaign to help protect the earth's most vulnerable peoples.

Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, has confirmed the presence of 27 indigenous groups living in extreme isolation in Brazil's vast Amazon region, making it the home of the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world. (It's possible Brazilian forests may shelter as many as 84 such tribes.) After Brazil, Peru has the second largest number: 15.

A meeting took place between Brazilian and Peruvian officials in Lima, where the two countries agreed to strengthen cross-border monitoring of the volatile region to protect the uncontacted indigenous groups.

Peruvian loggers and The Brazilian state oil company Petrobras is prospecting for gas in the state of Acre, and that is increasing pressure on the tribes.

The Acre state government is reported to have recently built a road straight into the remote region. Experts agree that road construction in the Amazon rain forest leads to land speculation, rampant deforestation, and grave risk to indigenous populations.

Kawahiva tribe, an isolated indigenous people whose few dozen surviving members live in a state of constant flight from loggers and land speculators who have invaded their territory.

Brazil's constitution guarantees indigenous populations the right to the undisturbed use of their traditional lands and obliges the federal government to intervene to protect them.

Uncontacted tribes are extremely vulnerable to any form of contact with outsiders because they do not have immunity to Western diseases.

International law recognizes the Indians’ land as theirs, just as it recognizes their right to live on it as they want to.

Everything we know about these isolated Indians makes it clear they seek to maintain their isolation.

On the very rare occasions when they are seen or encountered, they make it clear they want to be left alone.

If you want to understand the society follow the money!

More than 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been leased by the government to oil companies. Much of this includes regions inhabited by uncontacted tribes.

Oil exploration is particularly dangerous to the Indians because it opens up previously remote areas to other outsiders, such as loggers and colonists. They use the roads and paths made by the exploration teams to enter.

In the past, oil exploration has led to violent and disastrous contact with isolated Indians.

In the early 1980s, exploration by Shell led to contact with the isolated Nahua tribe. Within a few years around 50% of the Nahua had died.

Now a consortium of companies led by Argentine Pluspetrol is working on the Nahua’s land and plans to expand the massive gas project. It is Peru’s largest gas field, and is known as ‘Camisea’.

Loggers

The other principal threat is illegal loggers, many of them after mahogany. Known as ‘red gold’, mahogany commands a very high price on the global market.

Peru’s rainforest has some of the last commercially viable mahogany stands anywhere in the world, prompting a ‘red gold fever’ for the last of them.

Tragically, these are the same regions where the isolated Indians live, meaning that loggers invade their territory and contact is almost inevitable.

In 1996 illegal loggers forced contact with the Murunahua Indians. In the following years over 50% of them died, mainly from colds, flu and other respiratory infections.

Loggers have also been forcing members of an uncontacted tribe to flee from Peru across the border into Brazil.

Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUVqF4kLJKA

http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/theevidence

http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/uncontactedencounters