Rainforest Etiquette

FoAM and Shibumi Friends International are organising and hosting a lecture by Suprabha Seshan. She is the spokesperson of the Gurukula Botanic Sanctuary in Kerala India. At the rainforest sanctuary local tribal women are trained to become parataxonomists and ecosystem gardeners. Through their work over 20 years Suprabha and the team have seen human pressure, demands and damage on the rainforest increase. She will speak on several topics including the failure of environmental education. The forest needs a particular type of support if it is to survive at all.

This lecture series is an attempt to bring this type of support to a general and expert audience. The Netherlands with its extremely manicured landscape is an almost perfect antithesis to the rainforest. The workshop on 16 October will relate the vast experience gained at the sanctuary to a Dutch context. Thirty years ago the sanctuary started with a fascination for a single orchid; could we also see an unnoticed weed on the sidewalk or a forgotten corner of a park in Amsterdam as an opportunity rather than a nuisance? Could we take our first steps to become ecosystem gardeners?

http://shibumifriends.nl/