I can't clearly remember the first time I have heard about permaculture, agroforestry, or biodynamic agriculture. It's the kind of subject that somehow, comes out in the middle of a conversation, a radio emission, an article… There is something in the air. Many people feel the need to reconnect with nature, as if the invisible link between us (modern occidental homo sapiens sapiens) and our environment (land, plants, animals) is unravelled and requires some urgent repairs. This may be true. It could be one of the reasons why I became interested in these subjects too. It can even be one of the reasons why I felt the need to learn about the functioning of nature and became a biologist. Nevertheless, this sort of “call of Nature” also became a wonderful marketing argument and now it is everywhere around us: natural food, natural cloth, natural medicine… Natur-all? I believe it is important to be able to make the difference between the real and the fake. Sometimes, keeping a clear mind is truly difficult because we tend to imagine that everything coming from nature is good for us. But natural is not a synonymous of healthful! The most dangerous poisons come from natural products. Wild animals are not supposed to be nice with human beings. A natural medicine can be harmful if taken in an unsuitable way.

During Heterotopia in Portugal, we had plenty of fascinating facilitators, interesting workshops and discussions. But sometimes, explanations had the tendency to be human-centred, or to mix belief and evidence. From time to time, some facts were over-analysed and lead to subjective interpretations. As I am a scientist, my brain is trained to doubt and it's really hard to convince me because I need proofs, demonstrations, debates before believing what you are saying. My experience in Portugal showed me that having a critical mind and keeping an objective point of view are fundamental. Here I would like to share some reflections about these subjects and highlight their importance with examples. So, up for some stories?

# critics can be good

#nature is here to cure you #nature is intelligent

#spirituality and scientific explanations #science and myth

I truly enjoy being outside, into nature, walk freely and look what surrounds me. Forests are especially amazing: there is always a bird, a tree, a flower to pay attention to, try to guess the species it belongs to, or just simply appreciate its inherent beauty. I often went on explorations in the woods around our camp. Wood picky was on of my favourite tasks! One day I found a place in which the environment looked different. There were less bushes, more flowers, and trees seemed to be darker than usually. This part of the forest burnt one year ago, but only an aware observer could notice it as everything was green and alive again.
A few day later, we had a workshop about forestry management and fire prevention. The goal was to clear the forest in order to avoid fire to destroy the camp we were building. This region is really dry, tending to become a desert, and fire are common there. Because of the imbalance of the ecosystem and in particular the lack of big wild animals, trees are too numerous and too high. When a fire starts, it runs fast, causing severe damages and fatalities.
The idea was to fulfil the role of these missing animals in order to help restoring the ecosystem. These explanation totally convinced all of us that we were doing the right think, even if it implied cutting trees (which is sort of paradoxical). I had lots of fun chopping wood with an axe, as if I was belonging to some kind of ancient tribe taking care of mother nature! We were doing a pleasant and useful work, trying to prevent fire to spread.
Nevertheless, while I was sawing some branches, i remembered the place i found some days ago, so green and healthy. Is fire actually that bad? It reminded me a course I had a few years ago about fire ecology. In Mediterranean ecosystems, the climate is arid and fire is part of the life cycle. Many species are adapted to fire. Some trees only have branches on the upper part of the trunk so they don't burn completely, others have a thick bark which allow them to survive to fire, and even some seeds are able to sprout only after being subject to high temperature reached during a wildfire. This course changed my human-centred vision of fire as a dangerous devastating force, to a more opened point of view of fire as an irreplaceable element of life and renewing.
In my opinion, this part of thee picture was missing during the workshop. It would have be interesting to create some debate about the vision we have of fire, show that destruction allows a new beginning, and bring to light that something which seems to be negative for us can be positive for another species.

If we continue this reasoning, maybe we also should ask ourselves until which point we are allowed to manage nature in our interest? It leads us to the next story…

# permaculture: with nature or take advantage of nature # expression: anthropocentrism

# theoretical context?

# conclusion: show both sides of the coin, objectivity, importance of expression, rigour