LANDcare arguably laid down its foundations upon a number of international PLANETaware inititivies. Kerala’s most innovative development effort was the People's Resource Mapping Program (PRMP), which mobilised villagers to inventory their resources on maps that was arguably a subliminal influencer.
Kerala being India’s most literate State meant that THEpeople used these maps to understand ‘their’ resources and on what they understood to be ’their’ land/place. The outcome was Kerala farmers et al innovated AND found ways to do new things and live more productively and more sustainably. The LANDliteracy MINDset that evolved out of PRMP has made Kerala an exemplar in the discourse to do with environmental sustainability.
A feature of the KERALAmodel is that it is arguably a BOTTOMup community initiative that relies upon the community’s ‘exemplary literacy levels’.
In India Kerala stands out as an exemplar with other nations still trying to achieve its goals. Kerala maintains one of the highest literacy rates in India, with estimates currently ranging between95.3% and 96.2%. Approximately 50% of working-age Tasmanians (aged 15 to 74)are considered functionally illiterate. This indicates that they struggle with daily tasks requiring basic literacy, such as filling out forms, reading medical instructions, or navigating modern digital demands.
In Tasmania this adds some perspective to LANDuse management given the paucity of PLANETawareness and LANDliteracy. That leads to the lack of understanding of resource management matters.
Consider initiating a People's Resource Mapping Program (PRMP), and mobilising people to undertake a resource inventory in Tasmania for a moment. Given that anything resembling a Citizen's Assembly/Jury has been
The political appetite for change is tempered by the perception that 'fiscal dividends’ outranks and tends to veto any appetite for social and cultural wellbeing – indeed it is typically asserted that wellbeing is tied to fiscal wealth. All the while direct and incisive critical deliberation is stifled.
Resistance to change should be a thing of the past if climate challenges are to be confronted and societies are to develop via ‘fully literate and numerate’ incremental growth mindsets. Clearly, humanity needs to create multifaceted organisations populated by well informed people living in culture realities that in turn are sustainable CULTURALlandscapes.
Typically LANDcare launches projects that allows members to submit Expressions of Interest (EOIs) outlining projects they want to deliver - from habitat restoration to weed control, dam improvements and community education, whatever. "Once approved", these projects are listed on a website, ready to be matched with grants, partnerships, or new funding opportunities. It’s touted as an effective system that helps small ideas grow into ‘sanctioned’ and fully funded, on-ground outcomes, while also enabling members to showcase their projects and connect with others interested in similar initiatives.
While all such projects are laudable they compete for funding with some (many?) falling by the wayside – some even being deemed to be unsantionable .
LANDlieracy might well fall outside such funded projects in that, at their best, they inform day to day LANDuse initiatives and imperatives. Oftentimes this involves contesting the purposefulness of authority funded, TOPdown ideologically driven, initiatives. That is projects that all too often serve the maintenance of the largely investment and exploitive oriented status quo that seeks, above all else, a set of fiscal dividends.
LANDlieracy arguably functions best, or better, when structured rhizomatically given that under such modelling there are multiple engagement and disengagement points. This mindset efforts unlikely and sometimes audacious outcomescand discoveries. Rhizomatic refers to a non-hierarchical, interconnected network structure that allows any point to connect to any other, operating without a central authority or linear, TOPdown organisation.
Coined by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,”rhizomatic" describes systems that grow horizontally, similar to plants like bamboo, asparagus, and ginger, emphasising multiplicity, change, and adaptability. The philosophy is antithetic to hierarchical systems given that they can only be as strong as the weakest element.
A 1980s green project by the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) has inspired contemporary cultural activism, hopeful ‘performances/actions', an regeneration projects – and the power of nature.
In 1982, Beuys, artist, environmental activist and German Green Party founder began what was arguably his most seminal work: the planting of 7,000 oak trees around a city in central Germany. Beuys conceived 7000 Eichen (or Oaks) as a way of re-connecting the traumatised citizens of Kassel – which had been heavily bombed in World War Two – with their natural environment, and to offer them alternatives to the societal structures that had taken them into war in the first place.
As each tree was planted, it was paired with a pillar of basalt – the inky black, iron-rich rock formed in the cooling of a volcanic disruption – taken from a pile that Beuys' had arranged messily on a neoclassical lawn in front of the city's public Museum Fridericianum.
Joseph Beuys was a revolutionary German artist known for his conceptual art, performance art, and social sculptures. His philosophy centered on the idea that "everyone is an artist", and he used art as a tool for political, social, and ecological transformation.
Beuys’ 7000 Eichen/Oaks remains one of his most enduring legacies, as the trees continue to grow and reshape the urban space in Kassel today and well into the future. More to the point, this seminal ‘work’ has become a precursor for tree based culturally cum socially driven environmental projects/enterprises – LANDcare among them.
Given the current political dystopia and the Climate Crisis, PLANETawareness and LANDliteracy seem to be on the cusp of gaining real community engagement. Nonetheless modes of ‘governance’ will need to be disrupted and the status quoists are ever likely to resist. However, with a catastrophic world conflict in prospect watch this space.
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| DEMONSTRATABLE ANTITHISIS TO ‘PLASTICS |
IN SUMMARY: Currently in the INVESTMENTdriven cum FISCALdividend paradigm there is arguably a need to disrupt the so-called economic base that it is founded upon. IF Kerala is used as a reference, then Kerala’s People's Resource Mapping Program, arguably it should be a model for Community of Ownership and Interest inclusion.
Likewise, England’s COMMON GROUND PARISHMAPPING project would be a companion model. Here there is the acknowledgement that THEexperts reside in the ‘place’ being mapped and that they are the leaders in the mapping – not those being led. This is in direct opposition to TOPdown resource surveys that typically in the end turnout to be PUSHpolls driven by ‘investment imperatives’ and are thus often politically loaded – and arguably in the service of fiscal empire building.
It is worth remembering that Kerala was the first jurisdiction to ‘elect’ an Communist or Communist-led governments elected in a free and fair election. It held office in Kerala from 1957 to 1959, 1967 to 1970, 1980 to 1982, and 1987 to 1991. Popular agitation compelled a centrist coalition that governed from 1970 to 1980 to carry out many leftist programs. In fact, unions and peasant associations have been able to pressure even conservative ministries into making some improvements in the lives of the poor.
Typically, Communist cum Socialist governments elsewhere come to power via revolution and remain in power via autocratic cum military authoritarianism. This is typically the case for authoritarian and totalitarian generally governance generally. Kerala offers an alternate vision and one that is the outcome of a literate constituency that is also demonstrably LANDliterate.
The socialist/capitalist binary needs to be disrupted as by-and-large the contest ensconces more and more of the same and largely in recognition of this Albert Einstein said, ... "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" ... and ... "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” And so we have his theory of relativity.
EXAMPLE OF RESOURCE INTERROGATION
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