Issue 402 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

July 2007

Edible Earth: in search of Permaculture

Amidst all the fashionable frenzy about global warming and the end of the world as we know it, we take a calm look at one of the more positive options for a durable, sustainable future. No, not a deep-green gardening cult, the lifestle of Siberia or an extreme haircut; permaculture proposes that we make our peace with naure, abandon misplaced faith in the technological fix and connect through ‘intelligent design’ to a freshly Edible Earth. *NI* co-editor *David Ransom* avoids the airmiles and becomes and innocent at home in Britain. He steps onto unfamiliar territory in his own backyard and explores what some remarkable people are doing to reshape the ugly patterns of unjust, unsustainable consumption.

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In this issue

  • From living roofs and forest gardens to animal tractors and chicken greenhouses.
  • Pakistan’s Intelligence Agency, the ISI, finds out what it is like to be in the firing line.
  • The two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, set the ball rolling – *Russ Grayson* and *Steve Payne* tell their story.
  • When is it fair to criticize Islam and when is it not?
  • *Maddy Harland* outlines the principles that make it beat.
  • Letter from Mauritius
  • A small landlocked state in central Africa, sandwiched between its vast neighbours Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi has suffered as much from ethnic conflict as its other (equally tiny) neighbour, Rwanda. Yet while the 1993 Rwandan genocide continues to commandeer international attention, Burundi’s travails tend to slip under the radar.