 Aloha, I'm Kari Lucas, and we're back in the studio today. I've been at the IUCN where I ran into an old friend from Permaculture Adventures, Roberto Perez Rivera, and I said, well, come on down on the show, so here he is. Roberto is famous in large part because he directed, produced this movie. I used to feature on it. You're featured on it. The power of community, how Cuba survived peak oil that came out in 2006. You were here a few years ago, and we did some showings of it, actually. And then a rowdy bunch of people from Hawaii, a ton of us, descended upon Cuba at Roberto's invitation to attend the International Purple Culture Conversions in 2013. So I just, since we're here, and we had that amazing two-week experience traveling around Cuba, which is a lot like Hawaii in a lot of, climatically. Yeah, it's the same latitude, and we're influenced by the climate and the ocean, and the tropics. Yeah. So there were a lot of lessons, I felt, that were very good for us from Hawaii. So let's have some pictures and talk about those features that we saw in Cuba. Well, here's our rowdy bunch. Think Tech fans will recognize Hunter Hevelin on the left, who used to be the coast of sustained Hawaii. And so these are all pretty much people who are active in agriculture in Hawaii to this day. And on the right, Matt Lynch, who's head of UH Sustainability. So while we were there, we were working hard and playing hard. And not just permaculture in ag sense, but we learned about how permaculture was also a way of doing businesses. We visited a place that had this, can you talk about it? Yes. Basically, one of the people that passed the permaculture design certification, and in another photo we'll see that he was having a garden along that road that has a slope, and he realized that he was in the position to collect, not this one, a lot of water. So basically, he came with the idea of having something that he called an eco car washing. So basically, he collected rain water and filtered it, and this is the water that is being used in the car wash that you saw in that photo. And basically, the water that is used there is also filtered in a fat trap and with some natural filters, and it can be reused in the car washing, and eventually it can also be used like to irrigate some fruit trees or trees, not vegetables. I'm sure that the quality is good, but that's what he does. Yeah. So here we can see how... Exactly. Yeah. I also thought this fencing was fantastic. It's a living fence, but in the distance we see that the car wash and then the trees on the side, the bananas that are then watered by the gray water of the car wash. Exactly. He can... As you can see where the people are, there is a slope and all the water goes into his garden. And this is an euphorbia. It's a special... It's not a cactus, but it's on the family of the succulents. They have a very powerful latex also. So it's a perfect for fencing because it doesn't require a lot of water. And you can see how... So by latex, you mean the sap is very acidic. Yeah. It's aggressive. And you can see how he used all the rocks that he collected from the soil to make sort of terracing or erosion preventing walls. So he can level the sites and he can produce a different type of vegetables because in his house that is just back there, when you see the bananas and plantain trees, there are orchards in the back. This is in the famous town of Kohimer, which is famous because Ernest Hemingway lived there for many, many years. And his boat used to be anchored there, too. We drove by the place he stayed? Yeah, the place he stayed at. His favorite restaurant, Lacerasa. So one of the other things that we did was see how people in the US, of course, think about permaculture more in terms of home gardens mostly. But what was really great was to see in Cuba how there were larger both community gardens and larger commercial gardens. And we have some pictures of those, like the suburban farm, which was just...this was just outside Havana, right? This is a typical operation that you would see in the urban part of Cuba. It's called organoponico. It comes from a mix of hydroponic but with organic matter. And you will see it like in different places in the city. Now they're also in the suburban parts. So basically, when you apply the permaculture principles and ethical values to any sort of like agricultural operation, you will get extra...I don't like the word yield, but benefits and produce that are good for the nature, good for the people, and good for the plants itself. And that's basically some of the work that we have been doing with spreading the permaculture in Cuba, is that once the people learn their principles, they can apply in broad acre, like I mean in a big farm, or you can apply in a small community garden or in one of these organic vegetable operations. Okay, so you mentioned hydroponic, but they're not grown in water, they're grown in... Yes, and this is part of a funny story. The name organoponico came because in the 90s, in the city of Havana, there were like maybe 10, 12, I don't recall, hydroponics. Hydroponics is an operation when you need a lot of chemical produce to work as nutrient solutions for the plants. Of course, when we ran out of money, we ran out of nutrient solutions, and somebody had the brilliant idea to dig all the sand from this hydroponic, put compost, organic matter, organoponico. Organoponic, intensive organic production. In California, they would use the word maybe biointensive, using the ginger ones, like... But basically, this was like part of the massive transformation of Cuban agriculture from a conventional to more based on natural... I won't say organic because it's a lot more than that. It's low emission, it's low energy, it's socially fair and chemically free. So I know that organic means all of that, but I like to make that. It's not necessarily only chemical-free production. And especially since organic doesn't... It just means fossil fuel-free. Exactly. But yours is actually based a lot on vermicast, right? Vermicast, composting... I've never seen these amazing, huge... Biofertilizers. And even... You will see a lot of tractors and a lot of... On the contrary, they're oxen. And there is also a lot of people working hard, but the difference is that you can have more people in one acre, you know? So there is one operation that I remember a lot because there's like 100 people operating 11 hectares. And some people that visit from the US and from other countries say, oh, this is very labor-intense. What's wrong with 100 families eating and having a good job? Maybe only one tractor and somebody really struggling there compacting this or that much in the plants. But it's just different. I'm just explaining how it works. And it was lovely. And I remember we visited one outside of Havana and one of the principles of the operation had been a physician and she decided she would rather be a farmer. Exactly. Many people that day were, you know, drivers or doctors, lawyers or, you know, different, they decided to switch. And they decided to switch at a certain point in time. This visit that... In the 90s. In the 90s when the Soviets left abruptly. Exactly. There was no food in the country and some people started like to self-sustain the family. So basically producing some food in their patios or raising some, you know, chickens and things like that. And then they just realized that it was fun and that they can make money of it and they like it. So that's why now we have almost a million people doing some forms of urban agriculture, permaculture or not. We try to infect the permaculture, bugging all of them. Here's a great example of that. So there's... Exactly. I would love to see urban community gardens like that here. There... Ours typically everybody has their own little... Aluminium. Their little whatever it is, 10 by 10. But the way it's done here more... I don't know how you guys make it work so that everybody feels like they're getting their fair share, but it seems to work. Basically the word that people were sharing is not that my little square here and your little square there because in that way you spend a lot of space on, you know, and more pipes. There was only probably... Everybody was sharing one pipe for the water or buckets. So the people design in a different way. They try to optimize the space and then they share the food according to the number of hours that they were doing in the garden. More hours you do, you get more food. That was in the very beginning. Then when the permaculture techniques were introduced they just realized in nature they're not square ends, the square angles. So why making boring, long and narrow pathways? And that's when you're going to see all of these circular, oval patterns that are very common in permaculture but not very common in conventional agriculture operations. And they look nice. They are gorgeous. I still have visions of the permaculture gardens in Cuba. Last week on my show I had two agroforestry practitioners from Hawaii Island here and they showed pictures of their agroforest plots. And there's... I mean agroforestry is one of the tools of permaculture just to kind of explain that to people who might have seen last week's show. But this is a way to do planting of crops but have it be quick crops but have it be accessible, easy to maintain, not for humans, not for machines. Exactly. Basically the plants and animals that we eat and they taste the best are not exactly the ones that have been produced massively because those ones they ripe, they have hard skins because they need to be transported from long distance. But what we want is plants that are not all the fruits ripe at the same time. From two to day to tomorrow that they taste very good and the skin is not that hard. So those varieties can grow so much better with this different space. We call it microclimates. So maybe you don't have a swamp in your house but you can create one microclimate and one corner of your garden receive more water because the water accumulates there. So then you plant your taro or your water-loving plants there and then in another little corner of your garden when it's drier you plant other crops. So that's basically the permaculture trying to maximize the habitats. Okay, beautiful. You are here this time because of the IUCN happening at the Convention Center and we're going to take a short break and come back and talk about what's new and what's happening at the IUCN. That can be great. This is the other part of my big vlog. For a very healthy summer watch Viva Hawaii. I'm giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva health coach. Viva la comida saludable. Hi, my name is Justine Espiritu. This is my co-host Matthew Johnson. Every Thursday at 4 p.m. we host the Hawaii Food and Farmers series. This is the place you can come to for insight on the perspective and history and passions of Hawaii's farmers and all folks involved in Hawaii's local food system. What kind of folks do we have on? So we have everyone from local farmers. We have foodies, chefs. We also have journalists, researchers, anyone who's actually working to help make Hawaii's local food system that much better. So join us every Thursday and tweet in us and ask us some questions and leave your comments as well. Welcome back. I'm Kawi Lucas here on Think Tech Hawaii with Hawaii is my mainland this week. I have Roberto Perez Rivera from Cuba and he is a permaculturist and an educator in all things agriculture and environmental. He's been with the F... I'm going to do the acronym of it. F-A-N-J dot org. For some 20 years, it's a nonprofit organization in Cuba that teaches about the environment and climate change and all those really important things. So you're here with the Fondacian Antonio Nunes and what are you doing at the IUCN? Basically, apart from being in the organizations and in the Illinois, a small group of Cubans and Australians that were bringing the permaculture, the Fondacian for Nature and Humanity, it's an environmental grassroots organization. We don't have a membership but basically we work with Cuban communities in order to bring the different dimensions of sustainability. One, we have been talking in the first part of the show that is basically food security and healthy ways of agriculture and the other one is basically to try to preserve the base of the ecosystems of the country. And in that work, we became members of IUCN, the International Union for Nature Conservancy, in 2004 and have been with other organizations in the island Caribbean in order to preserve the base of the biodiversity but also in order to bring a better quality of life and sustainable practices all to the communities that are near those very sensitive ecosystems. And in this case, what we are bringing to the World Congress here in Hawaii and thank you for the hospitality because it's been great so far. In these two days, it's a great place, a very unique place to celebrate one of these congress. What we're bringing is a documentation of the work that we have been doing with these ecosystems and these communities in the coastal and in the mountains in order to preserve as much as possible from the impacts of climate change. The funny thing is that what we bring is images like photos and videos in 3D. What do you mean? Basically it's that a bunch of people have been working very, very hard in order to try to film of these very difficult to access spaces of Cuba in order to show in 3D very high quality like the little wonders of the Cuban biodiversity but also the work that those communities and we have been very proud and humbly facilitating in different places of Cuba in order to minimize the impacts of the climate change. So we talked a little about how things are in Cuba with respect to climate change. What are the most deeply felt climate impacts? First, we believe in climate change. It doesn't matter what we believe but I know that it's a contentious issue in U.S. and climate change is in our door. It's happening in the Caribbean. We're feeling it and it's bringing negative impacts and in terms of the island Caribbean, the main impacts are an alternation of droughts or flash floods because it rains out of season and then it doesn't rain in a couple of years and there is also the elevation of the temperature of the Caribbean Sea which have two among all the problems. One, the potential correlation that is happening in many places in the Caribbean fortunately not so much in Cuba. I'm not saying why. Why are the Cuban reefs doing that? There are different explanations for that but in those areas there is not so much pollution, not so much sedimentations and sand is still going into the coral so they can respond better to the conditions of high temperature. These are contentious issues but they can resist better than that and the way that the currents were and the depths of the places is something that we have to take in account when we mentioned the temperature in centigrade. Anything over 23 degrees is very potentially very bad for the Caribbean but it's something that is happening. The other thing is that the hotter the water of the Caribbean is the hurricanes and cyclones that forms there they are more intense so I think it's important to clarify that the number of hurricanes per year most of the scientists don't think is affected by climate change but other meteorological phenomena but the intensity, the heavy intensity of some of the hurricanes, Katrina style that we see in the Caribbean are for sure the rays of the temperature of the water. The other classic that everybody is expecting is of the rays of the level of the ocean but we have to take in account that when the sea level rays there is a lot happening on the ground because there is something called the saline wedge so it's that the salty water will go inland and with damaging to soils it can be arable land or it can be other coastal ecosystems that they get salinated. So this is something that is happening and only like trying to restore the native coastal ecosystems like mangroves and seagrasses and preserving the health of the coral reef because they make a system together will increase what scientists call resilience of the ecosystem in order to resist those impacts and not dying and not making like big losses and of course you know all of these touristic areas that are in the coastal systems they will be imperiled because of the you know the wave, the winds and some of those things these are in a nutshell there are so many things that cannot be predicted that we just see now but this is the work that we do. So you talked about how the I hadn't heard of this before that salt water that it for every inch that it the sea level comes up it contaminates the soil up to four kilometers because it's a little bit complex but you have a very low coast for example it can be a swamp, it can be a low coast and then what happens under that area is there is an interaction where there is a layer of fresh water on top and salt water on the bottom when the layer of fresh water gets thinner and thinner and thinner because we overuse that water because the sea level is rising then this wedge goes inland in the aquifer and the moment that the fresh water disappears and the salt water touches the soil it gets salinated and that's very bad for the crops very bad for some plants fortunately mangrove trees can resist that coconut trees in seasons if they get access to fresh water they can also do well for the plants in saline conditions they cannot survive and it's very bad so this is something that unfortunately is happening we cannot deny that and we need to prepare for that well I can't not ask because of the recent political changes can you talk about that a little how has that affected life in Cuba that our countries are now officially speaking to each other how has it changed? I think that there is something very good one of the last dinosaurs of Cold War finally came down we're talking and we're neighbors we are both sides of the flood we have access to the Gulf of Mexico along with Mexico and at least on the environmental issues there is a lot to talk about disaster reduction, risk reductions and I think that that is happening like the relevant organizations of both countries on the government level and the government level are having dialogue on that in the terms of the lifting of some of the restrictions of the embargo that we call blockade some of them they are still in place because it took 50 years to put it the way it is it would take some years to eliminate but without any doubt they have been some lifting of restrictions they would be regular flights between the two countries and there is like some business together what about the internet? in the case of the internet the Cuba was joined to the bourbon of octifibers by a cable that came from Venezuela so there is also the possibility to make use some of the US cables that goes on the water and that but not that I know that it hasn't happened yet but I know that several telephone companies are making agreements for roaming text messages that was like very difficult and of course you know there are a lot of Cuban families that live in Florida and in US also and there will be agreements for calling and that things the access of the internet have been increasing the country I don't have that data to tell you but there are wifi areas in all the cities of the country where people just can go with the phone and connect wow that's a huge difference before it was very slow, very narrow bandwidth I know it can be better but you know it's a process and basically when many people are waiting for it will be a big wave of tourists from US to Cuba so far there are like 12 different allow occupations of ways that you can go to Cuba but still you know there are some restrictions on that but without any doubt it has been increasing the number of US citizens visiting Cuba for different reasons still it's not like millions but it can potentially be so I think the country needs to prepare for that in order to protect the natural heritage talking about diversity and your natural, it's a beautiful countryside that's one thing and also try to make a tourism that is more ethical and linked to the values of the Cubans like the music, the culture the landscapes, the food why not the realm I think I'm not a very aseptic international touristy you can see in Cancun but it's a challenge in our last minute or so can you talk about when your production is at the IUCN it's a social event in a very awkward time 7.30 on the Sunday 4th of September the room 31C 7.30pm yeah, tonight, yeah I hope they in C316 316C room okay, this is at the convention center and this will be the three dimensional exactly, Cuba in 3D Cuba in 3D it sounds very intriguing I'm definitely going to be there and perhaps you can say something in Spanish because there's a lot of Spanish people going to it and let them know thank you Roberto, so good to see you again we'll have to go visit some more farms oh yeah, I will be after the event here Jesus, He will take me