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Courage to leave gaps

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Miriam Scheibe 

futurzwei.org

An association of young designers finds space where there seems to be none at first glance. There they create places of encounter, experience and exchange and transform the structures of their hometown.

Stuttgart. A surrounded city in Baden-Württemberg with a questionable reputation. The most traffic jams in Germany that pollute the air, a train station that could hardly be more controversial (Stuttgart21), rents that are going through the roof, a shortage of living space, no space. This image dominated the public at least a few years ago. The city was “completely privatized,” says Hanna, “there was no opportunity to shape it.” Since then, Stuttgart’s appearance has improved significantly. And Hanna was instrumental in that. As part of their master’s thesis, the architecture student and her fellow student Sebastian sat down with Urban about five years agoCommonsapart, i.e. common areas in the urban space. Where can you create this in a city so overbuilt? How can young people without a large financial budget get involved in urban design? And they found space. Albeit in a figurative sense.

Because vacant lots, at least affordable ones, hardly revealed themselves to the two students during their research. Instead, they found gaps in time, gaps in knowledge, gaps in communication, and the like. In an open discourse format, Hanna and Sebastian invited other interested parties to “collect gaps” every month. The rush was great, which was not surprising given the three architecture faculties in Stuttgart. Sarah also studied at one of these three faculties and took part in the discussion rounds at the time. “During the conversations, a mother gap quickly became apparent,” recalls the former student. This gap, which was mentioned again and again, was the Austrian square.

The square doesn’t look like a gap at first, it’s huge and central, a junction between the center and the southern part of the city. It is covered by two main roads, framed by a Catholic church and the building of a large insurance company, and also a meeting place for many homeless people. “An exciting place, very active and hybrid,” says Sarah. And yet a few years ago there was still a gap in knowledge and communication. “Everyone knew the subway station of the same name. But nobody knew the place itself,” says Hanna. That may be because Österreichischer Platz is owned by the city but was leased to a parking lot company for over thirty years. Only a small free area remained next to the parking lot. A gap from which Hanna, Sarah, Sebastian and the collective began to shake up the city life. The non-profit associationCity Gaps was born.

The aim of the association is not to fill gaps. The city is small enough as it is. On the contrary, the activists are concerned with opening up the gaps that have been found. This means making them visible and making the unused space accessible and usable for people and their needs, as stated on the association’s website. “We see it as an opportunity to create awareness for a common space and for the right to the city,” they write. The team tries to do this in an accessible way, with funny ideas, irritations – and above all with an appealing design.

“Design has something to do with appreciation,” says Hanna. And Sarah adds: “It takes careful design of processes to arouse interest. Simply placing Ikea furniture in public space and then sitting down is not enough.” In order to draw the attention of the city’s residents to Österreichischer Platz, the young designers designed and built a souvenir shop, for example. From then on, lovingly designed souvenirs such as scarves, jute bags and beer coasters helped the people of Stuttgart to remember a place that most of them had never known before.

Unlike in the usual souvenir shops, the memorabilia were not sold, but wandered over the counter for a voluntary donation. All Stadtlücke actions are basically free of charge so that they are accessible to as many people as possible. Another motto of the association: Never finish designing, but leave processes open. Idea cards were also laid out at the souvenir shop. “What could be better here?” It said, as well as a collection of suggestions for improvement for the Österreichischer Platz, which could be voted on locally and online. Within a few days, 12,000 people voted, and in the end a skate park won the race.

Beyond that, everyone was and is invited to get involved. “We have space and electricity. Who wants to do something?” Hanna summarizes the club’s approach. In the two weeks that Stadtlücken was initially on site at Österreichischer Platz, light shows and herb tours were held, and students from the neighboring high school curated an exhibition. And with the members of the Catholic St. Maria Church, who brought the active coffee, the next cooperation came about.

For two weeks in the following year, the premises of the church became the setting for a motley programme. A trampoline was set up there, a DJ put on tunes, and tango was danced. Everything one after the other, of course. “Of course there were also church services,” says Sarah. “But they were designed to be interactive, with a round table at which the future of St. Mary’s Church was discussed.”

  • "What is happening here" on the Österreichischer Platz in Stuttgart?

    close closeup
    “What is happening here” on the Österreichischer Platz in Stuttgart?
  • You could buy souvenirs, for example.

    close closeup
    You could buy souvenirs, for example.
  • Or dine together - pre-corona.

    close closeup
    Or dine together – pre-corona.
  • The gaps in the city also found space in the St. Maria Church.

    close closeup
    The gaps in the city also found space in the St. Maria Church.
  • If you didn't feel like talking, you could jump on the trampoline instead.

    close closeup
    If you didn’t feel like talking, you could jump on the trampoline instead.
  • You can also work out on the Österreichischer Platz - at the first public bouldering opportunity in Stuttgart-Mitte.

    close closeup
    You can also work out on the Österreichischer Platz – at the first public bouldering opportunity in Stuttgart-Mitte.
  • To then have the leisure to talk again. With the format "Once a month - who owns the city?". Here on the banks of the Neckar.

    close closeup
    To then have the leisure to talk again. With the format “Once a month – who owns the city?”. Here on the banks of the Neckar.

Again and again the Stadtlücken would like to invite people to see themselves as part of the public space and to get involved in its design. A concept that works and inspires, even beyond the city limits. For example, the campaign in the St. Maria Church received a positive response from the entire Catholic community in southern Germany. And the young designers and activists are also diligently networking with similar projects, Hanna and Sarah name the Platzprojekt in Hanover and the Raumstation collective with offices in Weimar, Berlin and Vienna. But back to Stuttgart. There, in its homeland, the young club has already cleaned up the dusty structures of the speculative city.

You don’t necessarily see how much at first glance. If you enter the Österreichischer Platz today, you won’t see much of the bustling experimental field that filled the square with life for at least a year and a half. At the end of 2019, the experimentation was over for the time being, two table tennis tables and the first public bouldering opportunity in Stuttgart-Mitte remain. A rather quieter place, the new Ösi. But things have been going on behind the scenes ever since. An “Office for Public Space” is to be created on the Österreichischer Platz, and the city gaps have more than one million euros in fundingfor the (further) development of your overall project. “We’ve gotten into the mainstream of urban planning,” says Sarah with a grin. In a one-year break, structures for this “interest group for public urban space” are now being developed. Some of these are quite lengthy processes, says Hanna. But the designers of public space don’t get bored – the next gap has already been found, this time in the middle of the river. On the Neckarinsel (“Yes, Stuttgart actually has a river!”), the discussion format “Once a month – Who owns the city?” Among other things, we discussed who owns the river, who should own it and how its banks can be used as spaces of opportunity. During Corona, the events will take place online on Zoominstead of. Everyone is invited – of course.

stadtluecken.de

pueblos indígenas (1)

Collective instead of collection

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Marlene Limburg 

While at H&M and Co. a new collection – painted green – is waiting for consumers almost every week, the wardrobes are getting fuller and nobody knows the right amount of how much you actually need, a small collective in the Neukölln district shows us that clothes can also be exchanged and repaired.

In front of the brightly painted and postered shop windows of the trial & errors project room, a few people are already waiting for the doors to open. When 4 p.m. struck, the key turned and everyone pitched in. The clothes rails are rolled to the curb and both the clothes rummaging table and the green donation box find their place next to the entrance. The barter shop is open – let’s get started. Neighbors of all ages stroll comfortably through the shop.

Shelves and closets house hundreds of items of clothing, carefully folded in their designated places. On the right is another large table, at which a volunteer sits, who is fumbling with concentration on a piece of clothing, but always lifts his head and greets warmly when new visitors enter. Behind him are sewing machines and colorful spools of thread on the shelves. A CD player plays quietly to itself and you immediately feel at ease.

DSC04749.jpg

On two mirrors is written in blue, squiggly cursive “Wunderbar!” and in bold capital letters “SCHÖN! :)”. These sentences are intended to trick the critical look in the mirror. Small posters in six different languages ​​hang above the clothes rails, asking for a peaceful and respectful atmosphere. That works too.

What is striking is the calm that some of the barter shop visitors radiate and the naturalness with which the clothes they have brought with them are placed on the appropriate shelves. Everyone feels responsible for the shop and appreciates it. “That’s essential for us as a collective,” explains Jule later, who has been part of the collective for seven years. The employee who was still sitting at the table a few minutes ago is now holding up a pair of white and purple patterned trousers from the rope damage. The button is missing, but it shouldn’t fail because of that. He pulls out a small bag full of buttons. You have to sew it yourself, but if you know the collective, you’re no stranger to DIY. So the life of the trousers is far from over.

The idea for trial & error came about in 2010 at the RecycledCreativity Festival . The founders Rutha Vimba and Julia Vernersson had the vision to professionalize the theme of the festival – “upcycling” – and to create a space where you can try things out without fear of failure. Trial and error – trial and error. For Vimba and Vernersson it was clear from the start that making mistakes is an essential part of personal development and that you can only try things out if you don’t have to avoid making mistakes at all costs. Trial and errorsince then has organized a wide variety of projects. In addition to the swap shop, this also includes a textile laboratory in which the “Textile” repair café is housed. As a distributor of the voluntary organization foodsharing – a network to distribute food that would otherwise end up in the garbage – trial & error savesweekly fruit, vegetables etc. and snips and cooks together under the name “Schnippeldisco”. Workshops with a sustainable focus are offered for those who are curious and publications are made available on the website. The aim is to break down knowledge hierarchies and pass on skills: “The idea of ​​Creative Commons is important to us, which is why we say: knowledge must be shared, knowledge should grow and be able to develop further. All this is limited by a copyright.”.

For the people behind trial & error and who are part of the core team, this always means a lot of work. Only four active adults are currently working there, some of whom have been with us for a long time. In addition to this core team, neighbors help on a voluntary basis, mainly with the barter shop and food sharing. The association currently employs two EVS employees (European Voluntary Service) and one BFD employee (Federal Voluntary Service) in the team. The collective relies on voluntary help and finances its projects and premises through donations, external funding, renting out the room and membership fees.

The team organizes itself in plenary sessions that take place weekly and monthly. At the so-called Monday meeting, the main focus is on planning the respective week and discussing who will take over the next shift, for example in the barter shop.

DSC04733.jpgThe swap shop takes up a large part of the work of trial & error , because the idea of ​​swapping instead of buying – and that works wonderfully with trial & error – conserves resources, which is very important to the collective. Textiles that have already been produced, such as the patterned trousers, should not be thrown away or forgotten, but given the chance of a second or even third life through the twice-weekly barter shop – provided someone falls in love with the item of clothing and takes it with them. This is also well received in the neighborhood. If you need some new clothes, come here and swap them – free of charge. If you can donate, anonymously put a few coins or bills in the donation box. Even if trial & errorIf you want to show alternatives to capitalism and establish local cycles, you still have to pay the room rent. However, bartering and donations are not seen as strictly: If you don’t have any money and urgently need clothes, you don’t have to bring anything to barter with you and you don’t have to pay either. The collective wants to create a solidary, non-discriminatory space in which people can network, exchange ideas and support each other.

“I coordinate the textile laboratory as a large project with two others from our collective. Also a neighborly project, which is about living together in the Richardkiez. The revitalization of public spaces is important to us. For example, we do pop-up projects and plant swaps. And I’m also involved in food sharing,” says Jule. Since no large fees can be paid, he worked for a while in a socially insured part-time job. “That’s how many people who are active with us do it,” reports the 36-year-old.

Seven years ago, Jule was looking for ways to swap clothes for her daughter and came across trial & error . The barter shop mainly sells clothing for adults, which is why Jule helped organize the children’s clothing exchange that she wanted. Since then a lot has happened. The collective traveled across the neighborhood several times until they discovered the premises on Braunschweiger Strasse, where they were able to devote themselves to their creativity, which is committed to sustainability – and still do. In addition, the collective has grown since then and has become better known, and when trial & error grows, the rooms have to be changed, like the clothes of a growing child.

Even if the collective has existed for more than a decade, new faces regularly appear in the team and trial & error veterans withdraw because of their own family planning, the idea of ​​the guiding principles for which the collective should stand has not changed: experiencing self-efficacy by you just start and get active and get in touch with your neighbors – but also with people outside your own bubble – and experience community. These are also the reasons that Jule lists why her trial & error means so much, and she also raves about the good team structure and mutual support.

If the white and purple patterned pants ever break again in their new home, they will need to be repaired again instead of going to the trash can – and maybe on a Monday evening they will be lying on the tables of the repair café together with other favorite items and will be made chic again – for her third life.

 

 

pueblos indígenas

Better protection for indigenous peoples – ILO Convention 169 enters into force for Germany

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www.gfbv.de

There are around 6,000 indigenous peoples in the world – and in many places, their guaranteed rights are violated. There is only one internationally binding treaty that protects the rights of the indigenous peoples: Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO). Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is threatening that his country could pull out of the convention, thus undermining its importance. In Germany, however, the convention will come into force on June 23, 2022 – one year after the ratification document was submitted to the ILO. By ratifying the convention, Germany is sending an important signal. However, the symbolically important ratification should be followed by tangible actions.

The Coordination Group ILO 169 had appealed to the German Federal Government to draw up and implement an interdepartmental strategy for the protection of indigenous peoples – within this legislature. Such a strategy would have to involve all relevant ministries. “All German projects and investments must guarantee the protection of biodiversity as well as the rights of indigenous communities. We are rights holders, not just pawns in political narratives,” stated Harol Rincón Ipuchima on behalf of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).

Globally, we are witnessing an unprecedented escalation of conflicts and crises in connection with geopolitical problems, human rights issues, and environmental and climate-related matters. It is becoming increasingly evident that a peaceful coexistence is directly dependent on how we treat our natural resources. “Against this background, we see that the territories and the traditional knowledge of the different indigenous communities are more important than ever before with regard to biodiversity, cultural diversity, and the survival of all mankind,” stated Vicky Tauli-Corpuz on behalf of the Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education, Philippines).

Indigenous human rights advocates and environmental activists are key figures in the increasing conflicts in connection with the exploitation of resources all over the world. Although indigenous communities make up only five percent of the global population, more than a third of all attacks on environmental activists and human rights advocates – in the period from 2015 to 2019 – were targeted at members of indigenous communities. ILO Convention 169 is coming into force at a time where the governments of Germany and Colombia are negotiating on stepping up coal exports from Colombia to Germany. However, an increase in coal production poses a major threat to the indigenous communities of the Wayuú, whose rights have been violated by the mining project El Cerrejón for years.

After ILO Convention 169 has come into force, the German Federal Government must live up to its responsibility and pay close attention to the conditions under which imported raw materials are mined. It must try to ensure that the convention is applied consistently – and that the respective rights of the indigenous peoples are respected. This includes the right to preservation of cultural identity, the right to participate in state decisions, and the right to land and resources. “It needs more than just international solidarity to support indigenous peoples and their communities all over the world. Now that ILO Convention 169 is about to come into force, we expect Germany to respect the rights of the indigenous communities and to meet its responsibilities,” stated Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim on behalf of the Association of Fulani Women and Indigenous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT).

The German Coordination Group ILO 169 is a coalition of German civil society organizations, networks, and experts focusing on strengthening the rights of indigenous peoples, human rights, and the protection of the rainforests and climate protection. In 2019, there were 476 million indigenous people in the world, belonging to a total number of 6,000 peoples. They are protecting about 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Five percent of the global population are indigenous peoples. At the same time, they make up 15 percent of the people who are living in poverty – and they are especially affected by extractive activities of international corporations. Their territories are destroyed by non-sustainable development policies, and their diverse cosmovisions and their knowledge are part of the immaterial world heritage.

Contact: Yvonne Bangert, Referentin für indigene Völker und Mitglied im Koordinationskreis ILO 169.

E-Mail: y.bangert@gfbv.de

mANZANAS (1)

Freeway blocking allowed

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By  NICHOLAS BERGER 

Taz.de

“Fridays For Future” is allowed to organize a bicycle demo on the A7. But the group in Hildesheim had to make compromises.

Cyclists are traveling on a freeway

Soon also on the A7: there was already a bicycle demo on the Berlin city motorway in 2020Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa

At first they weren’t allowed, but with a few changes they were: “Fridays For Future” received permission to protest with a bicycle demo on the A7 near Hildesheim. Last year, the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court prohibited the demo. Now the activists have found a compromise in cooperation with the city of Hildesheim and the police. What does this mean for the protest?

The activist group “Last Generation” has recently been increasingly criticized for demonstrations and blockades on freeway ramps. She is accused of blocking emergency vehicles, coercion or extortion. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann even called the sit-in protests illegal. The legal classification of this form of protest is not that easy from a legal point of view.

Freedom of assembly is paramount. Although it is enshrined in the Basic Law, it can be restricted under certain conditions. A central role is played in road blockades by second-tier jurisdiction. She describes deliberately stopping the first row of waiting cars in order to set up a physical barrier for the following motor vehicles as an act of coercion.

If the blockades move in the sense of freedom of assembly, the fact of coercion is still given, but the physical blockade of the cars from the second row is no longer illegal.

The highway is officially closed

The Federal Constitutional Court writes as a specification for the resolution of such actions after a precedent in 2004: “Important weighing elements here are the duration and intensity of the action, its prior notification, alternative options via other access roads, the urgency of the blocked transport, but also the factual connection between the in persons impaired in their freedom of movement and the object of the protest.”

The interpretation in individual cases is possible within a relatively large framework. Even if the demos against food waste by the “last generation” always raise the question of the material reference, the legal scholar Tim Wihl argues in a guest article for the legal magazine LTO that there is a kind of “permanent emergency” especially in the climate crisis. In the climate emergency , the factual reference could be justified by the fact that the object of protest is omnipresent in society.

Legally, it’s even easier with Fridays For Future. “The content of the demonstration focuses on climate protection in the transport sector, where Germany is still stagnating at the emissions level of 1990,” writes “Fridays For Future”. The reference to the people restricted in private transport is therefore clearly given in a demonstration on the motorway.

With the agreement with the city and the police, however, the activists have circumvented the legal dispute: the motorway is officially closed, traffic can easily bypass the area with a detour of about ten minutes.

Demo on Sunday instead of Friday

The fact that the protest was now approved was justified by the city with the new time of the action, reports “Fridays For Future”. In 2021, the demo was still planned for Friday afternoon, but now they want to start cycling on Sunday, July 10th at 9.30 a.m. with 600 participants at Hildesheim Central Station. It’s about three kilometers on the A7, until 11 a.m. at the latest, motorized traffic is allowed to drive unhindered again.

The group chose the route via the A7 “to give our demand for a traffic turnaround more emphasis,” Vera Wagner from “Fridays For Future” Hildesheim told the taz. They also hoped to attract new participants with this form of protest. After all, cycling on the autobahn doesn’t work every Sunday.

The fact that the protest will not hit too many cars on a Sunday morning and that a detour is possible due to the route is the price for the city permit. Stop the climate crisis yes – but please only on Sunday. After all, nobody has to deal with the interpretation of the right to demonstrate anymore.

mANZANAS

La Impossible, the Mexican cooperative that invented a way to get to a fair price

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By Stella Álvarez

FoodConciencia

This week we spoke with Luis Bracamontes, an agronomist and currently a doctoral student, manager along with 30 other people, most of them women , of the “La Imposible” Cooperative located in the Colonia Obrera in the Mexican capital. We were surprised by his youth and tenacity to create and above all to persevere in a management model that, as his name indicates, may seem unfeasible. And it is that if there is any difficulty in this type of process is to build an alternative to achieve a fair price.

They were born in 2015 as a collective response of small producers and food processors that supply markets in the capital of Mexico. They had in common the discomfort with the forms of dominant relationship generated by supermarkets, which in most cases are harmful to the producer, the consumer and the environment. Thus, that group decided to embark on a challenging dream that they called the Impossible because, according to what they say, “It is hard for more and more people to join in solidarity.” But it is that in addition to the difficulties inherent to these projects, although the cooperative apparently resembles other experiences of alternative food networks, it has a substantial difference and it is the novelty of its mechanism for establishing food prices.


Similar to other projects, La Imposible sells food grown or processed by its partners who are small producers and processors; Its offer includes, among other things, vegetables, fruits, eggs, chicken, grains, dairy products, chocolate, beer and artisanal bread. Every two weeks they ask the producers, through an electronic platform, what products they can offer because some of them grow seasonal foods or sometimes they do not produce the necessary volumes to guarantee permanent availability. With the response received, they make up a list that they send to consumers, so that they can place their orders, also using the same electronic platform. A small group of 15 people manages this process, organizes food on the premises, which they share with others solidarity community projects and everyone prepares for the delivery day, which is on Saturdays every two weeks. That day consumers go and take their order. Each provider sets the price of their product. The consumer knows that value recognized to the producer, which at the same time is the basis of what he or almost always she must pay and freely chooses to contribute between 5 to 20% more, due to the administrative management carried out.

The innovative system for setting prices has allowed them to guarantee stability for consumers and producers throughout the year. Obviously, that confidence in the criteria and commitment of the consumer caught our attention. We also learned that they have had cases in which people justify that they cannot make a contribution to administrative management and it is also valid. We asked Luis how much they trust in the fairness of consumer decisions, and he told us clearly: “When an organization promotes a logic of solidarity in its practices, people react in the same way.”

He also told us that within their activities they also advise groups from all over the country, which fortunately are more and more, willing to change the ways of producing, exchanging and marketing food. For example, they will carry out this June 22 the “Fourth workshop on the organization of alternative food networks.”

The Laimpossible cooperative shows us that it is necessary to turn to creativity to achieve the objective of a fair price for both links in the chain, which have lost their connectivity and their sovereignty in the hands of the decisions made by the large supermarket chains. A face-to-face meeting between those who guarantee us food and consumers can bring out the face of solidarity.

Listen to the full interview:

joya

The dilemma of glamour

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Valentin Rickert 
A young jewelry designer develops her own idea of ​​luxury and entrepreneurship. Gold mines with poor working conditions and polluted soil are not among them.

Whether as thalers or bars: gold has been in great demand for thousands of years and has shaped the world like no other commodity. Whether in ancient Rome, in the colonial empire of Spain or today on Wall Street: the precious metal enchants, intoxicates and destroys at the same time. In Germany, the shiny form miracle is most often used in the manufacture of jewelery and jewellery.

Pforzheim, the sunny city on the edge of the Black Forest, is a traditional stronghold of German jewelery and watchmaking. In the so-called Gold City, the precious metal also entered Guya Merkle’s life. The daughter of jewelery designer Eddy Vieri Merkle got to know the jewelery hype of gemstone fairs and champagne evenings at an early age. Today, the 32-year-old scratches the facade of pomp and showmanship in search of new splendor.

Guya Merkle in her office
Guya Merkle | Photo: Valentin Rickert

But for now she had other things on her mind. She studied entrepreneurship in Potsdam. Just grown up, the 21-year-old wanted to make a difference socially and started at the betterplace lab in Berlin . But the jewelry world caught up with Merkle again. After the sudden death of her father, she took over the family business. Without any practical experience in company management and the jewelry trade, she began to rediscover her once childhood environment. For professionalization, I went to London to the GIA , the Gemological Institute of America, the hotbed for today’s gemologists and gold specialists. With the common good in mind, Merkle quickly asked herself where and, above all, under what conditions the gold for her jewelry was mined. The GIA was of little help in this regard, which is why Merkle called fairtrade without further ado .

Searching for gold

Back then, in 2009, the fair trade organization had only just begun to take an interest in gold. She invited Merkle on a trip to a Peruvian mine. And so it went, despite the fear of flying, to Lima and further over bumpy roads in the direction of the gold mining community. A journey that got the cornerstone of the Merkle corporate philosophy rolling. The landscape was “great great great”, but at the end of the street a slum was waiting at over 3,000 meters above sea level. Merkle was advised against eating and drinking because the water and food quality at that location was too poor. The problems were omnipresent: rampant poverty, difficult working conditions and extreme health and environmental burdens due to mercury.

Merkle looked at everything: she climbed into the mine, talked to the people and – plagued by hunger – ate the food. What did you take away from your visit? Disbelief – “Dear jewelry industry, you can’t be serious!” – and food poisoning.

The social vein

Gold mines like this: not with Merkle! That much was certain. In Germany, however, doubts were already waiting. How could it be otherwise? How to continue “Dad’s life’s work”? In any case, the public should learn about the grievances. Merkle established a foundation, the Earthbeat Foundation. It should be a mouthpiece for gold mines, their workers and their families. Over 100 million people worldwide depend on gold mines.

FUTURZWEI DesGlamoursDilemma RobertHoernig
A mine shaft in Uganda | Photo: Robert Hörnig

A trip to Uganda came about with friends from Viva con Agua . The Earthbeat Foundation made initial contacts with a gold mining community and local activists and made a film. That alone wasn’t enough: “First you’re a beacon of hope and then you’re gone again quickly.” E arthbeat wanted to provide lasting help and organized new equipment for the work in the mine. But when the workers put on their helmets, safety shoes and goggles, they just laughed at the ballast and said: “We’ll never do that, it takes us 20 times longer”.

The mistake became clear: the conditions in the mine were the wrong starting point. The community lacked alternative sources of income. People mine gold because they have no other options. So they have to take the risk of spills and mercury poisoning and keep gold supplies at rock-bottom prices. Only the other beads in the supply chain earn money.

A “learning” from the initial phase, Merkle sums up. That is why the foundation now focuses on creating alternative sources of income. She promotes permaculture gardens whose plants clean up the contaminated soil, donates goats and teaches imbeekeeping craft. The Earthbeat Foundation has declared war on the gold mines per se. Building fair trade mines is too complex, explains Merkle. The market is too complicated to be transparent. In case of doubt, poverty remains. So the goal: no more people underground.

The foundation would also like to continue to provide information, but it is easier to make progress in Uganda than to make a difference on the consumer side in this country. Merkle should know, because as an entrepreneur she still deals with consumption on a daily basis. Your family business continues. However, it has undergone a few restructurings. Named after Merkle’s father, the company is now called Vieri and only produces jewelery from recycled gold. There are refineries that recover the precious metal from cell phones, laptops and old jewelry.

Merkle combines many things that appear contrary. As a jewelry designer, she is against gold mines, and as an entrepreneur, she says the unusual: “Less consumption!” That is her credo. She wears little jewelry herself. She shares her office in Berlin with others. And Merkle prefers to give away time, beautiful experiences and emotions. Jewellery, these are ultimately just objects on which emotions hang. A luxury that no one really needs, but which can be beautiful. Merkle doesn’t understand why some people don’t care where these objects come from: “You can’t call anything a luxury if you know that the world will perish because of it.”

The new luxury

honey in a pot
Liquid Gold | Photo: Timon Koch

The small company and its principles are well received. With the #VieriWoman campaign , the company presents women who are enthusiastic about Vieri jewelry and its ideals. Among them are prominent names, such as blogger and journalist Kübra Gümüşay. Merkle is happy about that: “I have really great customers”. And it’s not just an upper class that buys their ethically correct jewellery. Sometimes eight months are saved for a new chain.

The fruitful mixture of company and foundation should continue in the future. For E arthbeat to other countries and hopefully to the first complete decommissioning of a mine. For Vieri in the trade, to compete with the conventional products and to stimulate discussions. And Merkle? She has bigger plans: “I would really like to turn the economic system upside down”.

Well then, luxury for everyone!

www.earthbeatfoundation.org

www.vieri.com

 

 

Puñado de ragi

Local food: the not-so-secret ingredient for sustainability

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By Gautam BishtonApr. 22, 2022

Sometimes, the way food gets positioned socially may have no relation to how science determines its nutritional value.

As evidence around climate change and its impact becomes more glaring, many people believe reor­gan­i­sing the global food system is one possible strategy to combat this challenge. Studies sug­gest that our current global food system (that entails various aspects of production, transportation, and consumption) results in roughly one-third of the total carbon emissions. Current food practices are affecting the health of the people and the planet in equally negative ways. One proposed suggestion, as part of the reorganisation of our food system, is the concerted effort to engage in methods such as agroecology, decentralised small-scale farming and engaging with indigenous knowledge sys­t­ems. But how do these global designs affect the everyday living in remote Indian villages? How does this relate to young indigenous people who may be attracted to individual social mobility, rather than thinking about climate change and sustainability? How do they look at their own indigenous food systems and practices?

Motilal Hansda, 21, is part of an online English writing class that our organisation (sinchan.co.in) conducts for rural youth. He belongs to the Santhal community, a historically marginalised social group categorised as a Scheduled Tribe. He lives in the Chakai block of Jamui district in Bihar. Declared as an ‘aspirational’ district by the Indian government, Jamui has some of the lowest indicators on sustainable development goals, and has the presence of left-wing extremism. Hansda is representative of the aspirational indigenous youth here. During the Covid lock­down, Hansda (re)discovered sing ara (a green vegetable foraged from the forest). In a conversation that started with his frustration over closed markets, his grandmother told him about the local foods that her generation ate, some of which are still available but not readily consumed. “She told me about a time when they did not eat rice and wheat, but mainly edi arba matkom (edi and arba are different kind of grains; matkom is a form of mahua—sacred tree for Santhals). I wonder why we have overlooked all this food present in the village and the forest,” says Han­sda. For the English class, he intends to write an article exploring the reasons for why and how the Santhal food plate transformed. There is no one absolute answer to the question Hansda poses, but one dimension of it lies in the syst­e­matic invisibility, and often devaluation of indigenous knowledge systems.

Since food is entangled with identity and culture, it tends to encode and reinforce social hierarchy. The complex religious affiliations of Adivasis—Christian, Sarna or Hindu orientation—also has its own unique effect on what food practices they take up and what they let go. Sometimes, the way food gets positioned socially may have no relation to how science determines its nutritional value. Take the well-known case of millets. Somewhere down the line, millets got so entangled with economic status that it infamously became the ‘poor man’s food’. Escaping from millets and transitioning to rice became a way to ‘move up’ the social (food) ladder. In the last decade, Odisha, followed by other states, backed the resurgence of millets, citing its superior nutritive value and climate adaptability over rice. Communities have even replaced multiple varieties of local rice (brown rice in Chakai) for the polished ‘high yielding’ market variety. Emulating the food choices of dominant caste and class groups is one of the reasons that you­ng Santhals have turned a blind eye to the rich local resources. A plethora of uncultivated forest foods and herbs that has been part of the Santhal life is now in a state of decadence. Therefore, I reinstate Hansda’s question: how is it that something superior in terms of its nutritional values and climate adaptability is considered a poor person’s food?

Leveraging community knowledge

Over the years, the developmental impulse to mainstream Adivasis through schools and other institutions have reinstated their status as nutritionally deficient. Through the rhetoric of development and modernity, these communities are trained, insidiously or explicitly, to look at themselves as lacking. Not to say that these communities are not facing any real challenges. In India, 45 per cent indigenous population consists of poor, ingenious women and children, among the worst affected by malnutrition, according to the NFHS-4 India Report. But sometimes in the process of defining the poor, we constitute them and their world as poor. This conflation of actual cases of economic deprivation and the subject effects of being termed ‘backward’ has implications that further deteriorate their condition. Today we have a growing body of evidence to show how the consumption of uncultivated foods in rural communities could help achieve food security and nutritionally diverse, sustainable diets. But in places like Chakai, uncultivated foods and their consumption are threatened. The first major reason is the loss and degradation of environments in which wild foods thrive, often due to deforestation and mono-cropping-based agriculture. The second major reason, and one we have been discussing in the article, is the social attitude of the others and Adivasis towards foraged food from the forest, which reinforces the image of junglee, something young educated Adivasis want to avoid. In the school curriculum, chapters on nutrition and balanced diet fail to recognise indigenous food practices. There are severe implications of this social and curricular ‘removal’ on this knowledge system. The region suffers from a high rate of malnutrition and poverty, and yet people fail to capitalise on “uncultivated” or “wild” foods, which are cultural assets.

Even today, rice and potatoes are the staple food in many Santhal hou­s­e­holds. Though easily available, local foods are not part of their meals. Another contributing factor is the labour-intensive process of procuring and preparing these local foods. Government and non-government organisations usually work on two major approaches to tackle the health problem of rural communities. The first step is to introduce the concept of kitchen gardens; the second is to ask people to produce cash crops that could enhance their income. There is an assumption that people can improve their health with more income.

Indigenous foods (1st row, from left) mushrooms; wild snails; ants; (2nd row) Santhals being trained to document their food systems; weevil larvae; and crabs

Thus, there are efforts to link people to markets and enhance their capacity to buy different kinds of food items. Though these approaches remain relevant, there is a growing need to actively complement this approach by putting local food systems at the forefront. Currently, I am associated with one such project that engages with indigenous food systems. Given the lack of knowledge and consolidated information about these food items, a major part of our project is to document and exhibit them. We did so by using methods of community participation, placing local youth at the centre of change. To encourage and attract local youth, we used creative mediums of films, theatre, and community radio. Eventually, the locals did not just produce but also exhibited many films on forest foods. The project got the youth collaborating with their community elders in exploring many sources of locally available nutrition from vegetables, fruits and meat. We also partnered with community experts like Boro Baski to create graphic stories for children. Beyond our own project in the last couple of years, there has been a rise in social media channels that share Adivasi foods. There has been an emergence of entrepreneurship models that are creating products from local items and developing restaurants to serve Adivasi delicacies.

Global health, local taste

Food systems are dynamic, and keep changing. The real questions are how they change, who decides its course and for what ends. As Hansda wonders about the evolution of the Santhal plate, he may also actively envision the future of what his plate would hold. In a turn of eve­nts, his plate may potentially hold answers to global problems, and science may be catching up with his community’s age-old wisdom.

This would need a lot of in­v­estment from key sta­ke­ho­l­d­ers, at the level of policy and practice, to incentivise the drive towards indigenous food systems and their systematic evaluation. However, all problems and their solutions are bound to be political. The trend towards homogenisation of food, tastes and identities is a strong local force likely to pose challenges to indigenous knowledge systems. The other major difficulty would be to work on material conditions that sustain this local knowledge.

Transforming social attitude is just a precondition for eventually work towards regenerating forest cover and refashioning agriculture. Both steps involve substantial upheavals that will upset the currently acknowledged logic of development. Gradual reduction of forest, market dependent agriculture and eventually ‘buying what you eat’ is considered historically inevitable and developmentally desirable, to suggest and assert otherwise would not just be considered unfeasible, but also dangerous.

(This appeared in the print edition as “Scientifically Rich, Socially Poor”)

First published by Outlook on 22 Apr. 2022

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