LandPresentations/DemonstrationsSoil Rehabilitation

Darren Doherty Speaking at FACETS 2012

On August 24, 2012 Skillset in partnership with Net Balance and ABC Rural presented FACETS 2012, a TEDx styled event that focused on key issues for regional Australia: Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability.

FACETS 2012 consisted of 16 presentations of no more than 18 minutes each, delivered by passionate and informed people with the aim to empower people, build useful connections and bring about a positive change in our communities.

The FACETS 2012 hub event held at Skillset’s Flannery Centre in Bathurst NSW, was linked live to satellite events in regional locations across Australia, this ensured that FACETS 2012 initiated international, national and local conversations worth having.

5 Comments

  1. Guys – this video dies on me aroundabout 8.15mins, I’ve now tried it on a couple of different computers. Anything you can do? Thanks.

  2. G’day,

    Thanks for the notes and for putting this up Craig.

    Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives (www.ZERI.org) was originated by Gunter Pauli based on the work of people like Dr. George Chan and works to generate high levels of integrated yield. Gunter also promotes his vision of the Blue Economy. We’ve had ZERI courses integrated into our international workshop programs (such as http://www.CarbonEconomySeries.com) and others over the years which have fit the bill in terms of taking some of the Permaculture Design visioning of highly integrative systems which are informed by the work of Dr. Chan, but also of Janine Benyus (BioMimicry), Dr. Lyn Margulis & Dr. Karleen Shultz (5 Kingdoms of Nature) and others whose work would be right at home in the journal ‘Science and Society’.

    WET Systems were developed by a UK Microbiologist and Waste Water Engineer, Jay Abrahams. His insights, which were inspired by his reading of ‘Permaculture: A Designers Manual’ lead to his development of swale-based waste water treatment systems of very large scale. In what Jay calls ‘Low Entropy Systems’, these extremely elegant designs use the soils (more specifically the soil microbiology) in the embankment of the swales as the treatment medium for the effluent waters. These are not recharge swales as is typical to most uses of swales, rather they are highly engineered structures backed up by geotechnical analysis of the site (unlike MOST SWALES!!) to ensure that recharge of groundwaters is restricted during the treatment phase. Planting of the swales is critical for its transpiration and energy conversion (sunlight to polysaccharides etc) functions. Jay was an attendee at our RegenAG UK RAD & RAW at Cowdray Park, Sussex last year, and he also spoke at the Water Management Conference I led at Coventry University also last year. We hope to have Jay come to Australia and New Zealand in 2013 to do some work at our place and some workshops. Keep an eye out for that!

    Thanks and all the best,

    Darren J. Doherty
    HeenanDoherty Pty. Ltd.

    PS I hope that Tom can get through to the end! Try our https://www.youtube.com/user/HeenanDoherty channel as an alternative.

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