Geoff Lawton speaks in Sydney

Written by Victoria Walker

An event in Leichhardt recently celebrated the opening of a new sector of local permaculturists, Permaculture South.

Their opening happily coincided with a visit to Sydney of  the fabulous Geoff Lawton and his wife.  

Geoff was speaking about his newest venture: his involvement in ‘Masdar’, the world’s first attempt at a carbon neutral city. Masdar is heavily technology based but has its heart in the right place. The new city is considered to be an important model for research in large-scale sustainable design. It is straying far from the concept of a simple life with ‘small and slow solutions’ but is, I suppose, appealing to the desire of many for comfort, style and sophistication.  A far cry from composting toilets and animal husbandry. (haha)

Geoff’s involvement is, of course, in the field of food production and ‘plantscaping’ due to his extensive experience in desert food production. (see film ‘Greening the Desert’) http://permaculture.org.au/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-on-youtube/.  He endeavoured to soften the landscape, increase productivity and reduce the ‘wind tunnel’ effects by increasing productive urban plantings and replacing straight lines with carefully conceived productive windbreaks.

Intensive orchards will surround the city providing a large amount of their food needs and rooftop vegetable gardens will be fed with grey water from apartments and offices. These gardens will both provide food and cool the spaces below them.

Energy will be sourced from incredible numbers of solar panels, and water  from a solar powered desalination plant, which recycles salt into building materials. (tricky!!) All production and transport of the initial building materials will be factored into the future ‘carbon neutral’ status.  The plan is that the city will eventually produce energy to be consumed by other settlements. The designers hope that within ten years of completion, the city will have ‘worked off’ all the carbon accumulated in the construction process and will become neutral.  It is intended that eventually the city will be carbon negative, actually produce more energy than it consumes.

The Australian architect Chris Bosse sees that technologies used will be particularly appropriate for use in Australia due to our large desert areas and good sun exposure. He notes that we would require a shift in attitude towards more communal living spaces, as opposed to free standing houses with large travel requirements.

Geoff Lawton has been criticized by some in permaculture circles for his involvement in such a large-scale corporate project. Some consider working in high technology developments as a contradiction of the simple life advocated by permaculture principles. He made some very relevant comments in response to this criticism. To paraphrase, he felt that any person genuinely contributing to our goal of a sustainable, regenerative future for our world is to be commended.  Spending time in judging others for their avenue to this goal is pointless and counter-productive. Just because we all agree that action must be taken for our future, does not mean our acion will all follow the same path. We must celebrate each other’s contribution and get on with our own.

Geoff’s talk was down to earth, informative and inspirational.

Its good to remember that regular people can achieve remarkable things.

Geoff’s designs of Masdar are available on his website.