FOREWORD Someone wiser than most pointed out that the problem with utopia is that it can only be approached across a sea of blood, and that you never arrive. Also, someone's utopia is another's dystopia.
Nonetheless, The greatest threat to planet earth is the belief that someone else will save it, some leader will fix it. That is the kind of wisdom proffered by the pixies at the bottom of our gardens. Sustainability is a way of life, its not a trend and it is not a buzzword put there to placate ordinary people aspiring to live ordinary lives.
Then there is that Chinese proverb that tells us that the very best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is right now. So, it follows that IF a society, a culture indeed, seeks sustainability, the time to work towards that goal is right. Moreover, that goal can only be reached incrementally and one step at a time.
Prudently banking resources, here WOOD, holds the promise of sustainability. Otherwise we might contemplate dytopia brought on by our own hand.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
To acknowledge the value in, and facilitate the utilisation of 'WOOD'in all its forms. Plus having done so bank the MATERIALresources invested in 'WOOD'located in urban, peri-urban and managed rural landscapes.
OBJECTIVES
ONEtree at a time utilise 'WOOD' in the context it plays in MATERIALcultures'realities, and holistic cultural landscaping, exploit the resource values invested in 'WOOD' do so in environmental sustainable ways:
• To respectfully honour and bank the resources invested in trees, ONEtree at a time, within a network of WOODbankers while looking ahead towards sustainable resource management in a changing world.
• To build, develop and bank a sustainable wood resource in context of the ecosystems and the cultural landscapes that the resources are drawn from – urban, rural, industrial and in 'natural environments'.
• To initiate projects and programs that belong to and in places and that honour and celebrate the importance of trees. That is the resources and carbon invested in trees in the context of cultural landscaping and the communities that shape and make HOMEplaces in them.
• To commission designers and makers and cultural producers to realise their work, using WOODbanked resources, collaboratively or cooperatively relative to the available banked wood resource.
• To generate and seek investment funding and in-kind support for WOODbanking initiates within cultural landscapes – local, regional, national.
• To proactively publish, promote and market WOODbanking initiatives and its outcomes in cultural landscapes to the Communities of Ownership and Interest relative to WOODbanking and the cultural discourses that give such projects sustenance.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Notwithstanding that the open question that has been hanging in the air forever to do with 'placedness' being the imperative that shapes and makes 'human cultural realities', there is a need to test and contextulise and explore new ways to think about 'placedness' in more holistic ways.
In the context of WOODbanking rather than thinking of 'wood' as a FORESTresource there is a social benefit in exploring a community's 'wood resource' in the context of ONEtree at a time. That is, looking towards optimising trees' utility holistically while looking beyond imagining components of the resource as 'marginable and expendable'.
Alternatively, it might be that more expansive ways of understanding 'human cultural realities' come into play. If so, that may ultimately determine 'placedness' in more expansive and holistic ways. Moreover, resource management and resource recovery may well become a key factor in the holistic 'shaping' of places in PLACEmaking – a factor in transforming spaces into places.
Whatever it is, currently humanity is faced with dynamic change largely of its own making and there is no escaping that reality. – ideologically or politically.
When imagined simply as a 'resource' – just so much wood or timber – trees become vulnerable, sometimes expendable – typically so and all too often.
Alternatively, it might be that more expansive ways of understanding 'human cultural realities' come into play. If so, that may ultimately determine 'placedness' in more expansive and holistic ways. Moreover, resource management and resource recovery may well become a key factor in the holistic 'shaping' of places in PLACEmaking – a factor in transforming spaces into places.
Whatever it is, currently humanity is faced with dynamic change largely of its own making and there is no escaping that reality. – ideologically or politically.
When imagined simply as a 'resource' – just so much wood or timber – trees become vulnerable, sometimes expendable – typically so and all too often.
Importantly, in the context of cultural landscaping where 'places' are understood to belong to 'people' rather than people and communities belonging to, and in, their cultural landscape, this becomes the point of conflict between humanity and 'placedness' and the resources invested in places that make 'spaces' habitable and amenable to habitation.
It is particularly so in the context of:
It is particularly so in the context of:
- Dynamic change relative to impending climate change;
- Cultural change relative to emerging and evolving technologies; and
- The increasing likelihood of virulent global pandemics; and
- Cultural realities that are faced within communities managing 'their place' in evolving and sustainable economies and in ecosystems within which 'trees' as 'carbon sinks' at the very least play an important part.
In this context there is much yet to be discovered in the context of unanticipated and unanticipatable consequences of 'change' brought on by humanity's over exploitation of the planet's resources. Likewise, there is ever likely to be unanticipated consequences to banking wood. In any event it is worth remembering that 'the proper way' is that straight and narrow pathway that leads all the way to mediocrity's front gate. Enter there and die a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment