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The Sustainable Hour no. 576 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Truth-telling and permaculture education to close out 2025
In the final episode of The Sustainable Hour for 2025, the team brings together three defining threads of our time: the danger of climate misinformation, the deepening global inequality crisis, and the quiet, practical power of community-led education and solutions.
Climate misinformation in mainstream media – and why it matters
The program opens with a sharp response to a paid climate-denial advertisement published in the Geelong Advertiser. Co-host Mik Aidt questions the responsibility of newspapers in an era of climate breakdown, arguing that publishing misleading claims about CO₂ and plant nutrition is not a neutral act, but one with real-world consequences for public understanding, policy, and safety. With reference to the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion, the discussion reframes climate communication as an issue of accountability, not opinion.
Extreme global inequality and its climate consequences
From there, Colin Mockett OAM delivers a wide-ranging global round-up. Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, progress is described as uneven but real – with clean energy momentum continuing despite political backsliding and fossil fuel expansion, including new gas exploration approvals in Victoria. Colin also highlights shareholder pressure on major Australian banks over fossil fuel finance and deforestation, signalling a shift in where power is beginning to be challenged.
A sobering segment follows on global inequality. New data shows that just 56,000 ultra-wealthy individuals now control more wealth than half of humanity, while their lifestyles and investments generate emissions on a scale that dwarfs millions of ordinary households. The imbalance, Colin argues, is not only unjust but fundamentally destabilising for democracy, society and the climate.
Permaculture as practical food security and community resilience
• Refugee-led solutions in Uganda and Kenya
The second half of the episode turns toward grounded hope and lived solutions. Jessica Perini shares how online permaculture education has connected people across continents – linking Australians with refugee communities in Uganda and Kenya. Through co-design, creativity and persistence, these partnerships have enabled mushroom-growing projects, food gardens, skills training and community resilience in some of the world’s most resource-constrained settings.
Refugee leaders Eric Hakizimana in Uganda and Ruth Akinyi in Kenya describe how permaculture, education and skills-building are transforming lives – particularly for women and young people – by restoring agency, food security and dignity in the face of climate stress and displacement. Their stories demonstrate that climate action is not abstract policy but something built with hands, soil, seeds and shared knowledge.
→ To find out more about Jessica’s work, go to: jessicaperini.com
. . .
As the year closes, the hosts reflect on the values that matter most moving into 2026 – being connected, creative, critical, innovative and solution-focused. The episode ends as it began: with a call to truth-telling, community, and staying engaged, even when the challenges feel overwhelming.
“I started getting this huge cohort from Africa and specifically from East Africa. People from Kenya, people from Uganda, Cameroon, all sorts of places, but mainly Uganda and Kenya and mainly from refugee camps. So I thought… Gosh, that’s so interesting. People are desperate for this knowledge. So I started saying to them, what do you want to learn? And they would say, well, we want the practical skills. So we want to know how to grow maggots for our chickens. Or we want to, you know, how do we deal with water? Or, you know, a whole bunch of issues. So I just thought, wow, what an opportunity!”
~ Jessica Perini, an Australian teaching permaculture to refugees in Uganda
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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“Listen to the Science”
Newsletter by Covering Climate Now on 11 December 2025
“You must listen to the science,” Chris Packham, the veteran presenter of BBC nature shows, implored an audience a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. An invitation-only crowd of about a thousand people, including more than 100 Members of Parliament, news executives, celebrities, and civil society leaders sat before him, joined by a live-streaming audience. The November 27 gathering was billed as a National Emergency Briefing.
“You must listen to the science,” Packham repeated. “Because if you don’t, then things go wrong, and lives are lost.” Quoting from a recent investigation of the UK government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, Packham noted that an additional 23,000 people died during a single week “because scientific advice was ignored,” as social distancing orders were lifted prematurely. “Tragically,” he continued, the threat posed by climate change is “far, far greater…. It’s not thousands, it’s not hundreds of thousands, or millions of lives that are at risk. It’s billions of lives that are at risk.”
“Billions” was no TV star’s rhetorical flourish, a panel of top scientists then explained. A series of 10-minute presentations on the latest research on how rising global temperatures affect food production, public health, economic well-being, and military security offered a fresh take on what thousands of scientists have long warned. Humanity “is hurtling toward climate chaos,” in the words of “The 2025 State of the Climate Report,” published recently in BioScience, “an unfolding emergency… where only bold, coordinated action can prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
Irreversible tipping points, such as the shutdown of the massive ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), absolutely must be avoided, said Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter. An AMOC shutdown would spread Arctic Ocean ice far southward, give London temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) for a full three months of the year, and cut in half the world’s growing regions for wheat and maize, Lenton said, sparking “a global food security crisis.”
Packham also called out his news industry colleagues. The BBC presenter said the public was not “getting access to… the reality of what is happening to our one and only home.” Disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry and its allies is partly to blame, he said. Beyond that, he added, much of the media “is either far from independent, outwardly biased, or simply failing in its duty to explain to everyone the gravity of our predicament.”
The briefing concluded with the release of a public letter demanding that government and media leaders do better. Addressed to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the heads of five of Britain’s national broadcasters and their independent regulatory body, the letter was read aloud by actor Olivia Williams. Declaring that the people of Britain “are not safe,” the letter urged “the Government and all public service broadcasters to hold an urgent televised national emergency briefing for the public, and to run a comprehensive public engagement campaign so that everyone understands the profound risks this crisis poses to themselves and their families.”
Although this national emergency briefing was focused on Great Britain, it’s a wake-up call that needs to be heard in countries — and newsrooms — around the world. Despite an abundance of strong individual stories and a scattering of outlets providing high-profile coverage of the climate emergency, the media as a whole is still not reflecting what science says: Humanity’s planetary house is on fire, but we also have the tools to put that fire out. “Now is the time,” the letter concluded, “to put trust in the public,” which, if properly informed, is empowered to take “the action needed.”
This is the year it became clear that the world is now living in climate overshoot—where global temperatures exceed agreed limits, entering a range increasingly dangerous for both the planet and humanity.
New global analyses show that average warming over the past three years has already exceeded 1.5°C, the threshold nations agreed in Paris we should avoid “if at all possible.” But global averages hide the reality people are already experiencing. Parts of the Arctic, Central and Eastern Europe, and North America are now 3–7°C hotter than pre-industrial levels. Whether this overshoot is brief or prolonged will shape the stability of societies for decades. (…)
The cost of inaction now far exceeds the cost of action. Every year of delay compounds damage and expense. The capital to act exists. What is missing is political coherence and sustained leadership.
The Paris Agreement was never meant to solve the climate crisis in a single moment. It was designed to change direction. Ten years on, the real test is not whether it reassures us on its anniversary, but whether it still makes us uncomfortable enough to act.
→ Time Magazine – 16 December 2025:
10 Years After the Paris Climate Deal: What Went Right – And Wrong
“The Paris Agreement was never meant to solve the climate crisis in a single moment. It was designed to change direction.” By Sir David King
Climate Hot Takes 2025
| A YEAR IN REVIEW: IMPACTS, INSIGHTS, AND ACTION Newsletter from Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration |
| In a year where we saw record-breaking heat, accelerating emissions, and climate impacts arrive faster and harder than even scientists expected, the gap between political rhetoric and physical reality became impossible to ignore. 2025 has made one thing painfully clear: that accelerating warming, tipping risks and policy failure are now colliding at once. In our latest article, Climate Hot Takes, David Spratt reviews a confronting year and cuts through denial and delay to examine what the science actually tells us about where we now stand. He outlines how global emissions and atmospheric CO₂ continue to rise, how the 1.5°C threshold has effectively been crossed far earlier than expected under the Paris Agreement, and why the idea of a gentle “overshoot” followed by recovery is increasingly at odds with the evidence. The article also explores one of the most alarming developments of the year: new research showing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation may be far closer to collapse than previously believed, with devastating implications for Europe, Africa, and the global climate system. Alongside this, the review examines how weakening carbon sinks, approaching tipping points, and the ongoing political protection of fossil fuels are pushing us toward a world of 3°C or more of warming — a level that leading scientists now openly describe as incompatible with a civil, organised society. Finally, Climate Hot Takes looks at how these realities are reshaping once-taboo conversations about restorative responses, climate cooling and Arctic repair even as Australia’s political debate remains dangerously disconnected from the degree of impacts and risk. If you want a clear-eyed assessment of the year we’ve just lived through — and what is at stake in the years ahead — we encourage you to read and share this article. → READ THE FULL REVIEW |
Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’ #Climate
— Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) December 17, 2025 at 4:21 AM
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The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis, scientists have reported.
→ The Guardian – 17 December 2025:
Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’
“Region known as ‘world’s refrigerator’ is heating up as much as four times as quickly as global average, Noaa experts say.”
→ Earth.com – December 2025:
How the Arctic atmosphere is amplifying global warming
“The Arctic may feel distant, but some of the most important climate changes on Earth are unfolding there right now – quietly, rapidly, and largely out of sight. Above ice and snow, the atmosphere is no longer just responding to warming; It is helping drive it.”
→ The Guardian – 9 December 2025:
‘Food and fossil fuel production causing $5bn of environmental damage an hour’
“UN GEO report says ending this harm key to global transformation required ‘before collapse becomes inevitable’.”
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Good climate news this week
Compiled by Assaad Razzouk
1) EU agrees legally-binding target to cut emissions 90% by 2040
2) UK: Gas consigned to history as pipeline of renewables and storage 2.5 times the size of the entire electricity grid is confirmed
3) China: Oil demand expected to plateau as soon as this year
4) US: Texas solar overtakes coal
5) US: Texas increasingly replacing oil drilling with geothermal
6) UK: Energy costs to halve by 2050, says system operator
7) China: EVs up 4% in November, petrol cars down 22%
8) Australia: Discharge of large batteries beginning to surpass peaking fossil gas generators for 1st time
9) US: Federal judge rules ban on new wind projects illegal
10) UK: Shell facing 1st UK legal claim over climate impacts of fossil fuels
11) US: Federal judge blocks FEMA from cancelling climate resiliency grants
12) UK: Eight more universities sign up to end recruitment ties with fossil-fuel industry
13) US: Youth activists who won a landmark climate case in 2023 against Montana sue to push for court enforcement
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 576
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General (00:00)
We are at the moment of truth, but we have a breakdown of trust.
Jingle: (00:14)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour podcast. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, always was and always will be First Nations land. As they nurtured both their land and their communities for tens of thousands of years before their land was stolen by the first white colonisers, they accumulated a great depth and width and breadth of ancient wisdom. The same ancient wisdom that we’re going to need as we face up to the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt: (01:18)
Last week in the Geelong Advertiser... – I actually bought the paper because there was a lot of talk about school kids, graduation and so on – and to my surprise, just on the next page, there was an advertisement with the headline, ‘The Science Of Fossil Fuel CO2 For Plant Nutrition’. And then a story about, you know, the usual climate denying thing about ‘CO2 is not a problem’, ‘the plants need CO2’, and then there’s a graph even showing that there has never been less CO2 in the atmosphere than now.
A complete false and misleading ad that the Geelong Advertiser puts in their paper and publishes, raising serious questions – in my opinion – about the responsibility and the journalistic standards that we can expect of a newspaper. Geelong Advertiser is the only paid newspaper in Geelong. And I think with that comes some responsibility in terms of not taking on ads that so clearly are like almost criminally disseminating false and misleading information about the climate.
In July, we had this International Court of Justice delivering what they called an advisory opinion which clarified that states have an obligation when it comes to climate change and that also comes to public communication. Okay, so states have an obligation, but newspapers don’t? Yes, they do! Accountability requires an editor and staff that refuses to present misinformation as if it was science.
Jingle:
Scott Morrison, former Prime Minister:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.
Sheldon Whitehouse, American Senator:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
Mik:
If you want to know more about this, I put out a blog post on climatesafety.info.
Christmas is the time when we get together and suddenly again we have to listen to Uncle Bob or someone sitting there at the Christmas table and saying, ‘Climate is a hoax’. ‘Trump has said this’ and ‘Trump has said that’, and ‘Therefore we don’t need to take any climate action and we should abandon goals of reducing carbon emissions,’ and so on.
It’s something we need to speak up against. We need to come together around the science and around the facts.
So let’s switch over to Colin Mockett OAM, our news reporter who keeps an eye on what’s happening globally in the space of climate and sustainability. Over to you, Colin.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Well, thank you, Mik. I want to know when you met my Uncle Bob?
Tony, you’ve got something you wanted to say to Mik on that little rant?
Tony:
I just… Did it cite, like, who was paying for the ad? Who put it in, was it a group or?
Mik:
The advertisement is signed by ‘The Climate Study Group’. And who is the Climate Study Group? I have no idea! But there are some clear links in the text to some authors of papers that are long-standing climate contrarians, you could call them.
And can I just say about the misinformation point that that graph that they’re showing is not in itself false. It’s just misleading because it doesn’t make any sense to talk about how much CO2 there was in the atmosphere millions and millions of years ago when there were no humans on the planet.
Tony:
Yeah, and it’s right in that plants need carbon, carbon dioxide, but it’s like saying to someone who’s in the water drowning that water’s not toxic.
Colin:
And there’s plenty of oxygen in the air above you. So I get really, as you are angry about that, Mik, and how misleading it is and how it can appear in a news bulletin, we can do a little bit of digging and see what we can come up with.
Mik:
And can I just say the reason I get upset about it is because climate and trying to say that it’s not a problem with carbon emissions and so on actually affects how we deal with this problem. And that means it affects our food security, health, infrastructure, as we are seeing with the flooding, with the bushfires. There are people getting killed in Australia as we speak from the consequences of climate in action.
So the public actually deserves to know, you know, and not open their newspaper and get some paid misinformation that is presented as if it was science, but it’s not.
Colin: (06:12)
Yep. Look, I have to say that the Geelong Advertiser is not just the only paid newspaper in our region. It is the oldest morning newspaper in Victoria, and it had a proud history. Its early, well, its founder and its early editor, James Harrison, was bankrupted by a court case for telling the truth, and he… on several occasions, he also was the correspondent for The Age and The Times from Geelong during that time.
But look can I now start on my world report please?
Mik:
Absolutely – and be honest!
Colin:
And I’ll be honest. Yeah, look, if I really am honest, the Geelong Advertiser is owned and run by the Murdoch News Group and I worked for them for something in the region of seven years. It was a very different outfit then. And we used to really take a lot of care to print the truth and also check through advertisements before we put them in.
Now our roundup this week begins in Paris, where this week marked the 10-year anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Now that treaty was an historic step in responding to climate change. It set the stage for a coordinated global effort to commit to limit warming, enhance climate resilience, and mobilise finance for sustainable solutions.
The 10-year report showed, well, let’s say uneven progress with global carbon emissions still rising and political challenges still slowing collective action. The United States has left the accord. A third of the parties have failed to update their climate pledges and critical negotiations such as all plans for phasing out fossil fuels still face opposition. Yet despite all that, a significant amount of momentum and collaboration is uniting the global climate community. Across continents and sectors, governments, investors and innovators are coming together and driving solutions, sharing knowledge and accelerating actions.
We are a very different global community to the one that was 10 years ago. And you only really have to look around you to see that, at the number of electric vehicles on the road, at the number of panels on people’s roofs. We are, despite what our mainstream media is saying, we are succeeding. There is a momentum going.
And Paris will again become the hub for climate action in April next year, April 2026. That’s when the Sustainable Investment Forum Europe and the Nature Finance Forum Europe will bring together investors, policymakers and innovators to push positive strategies that will deliver the next draft of environmental and financial impacts worldwide.
One of their tasks is to address the nations that signed to the Paris Agreement originally while actually working against it. Now this includes Australia, which continues to be one of the leading climate change imposters. A good example also happened this week when our state, Victoria, approved exploration licences for two new gas projects in the Otway and Gippsland basins. Our state government then invited the private sector to tender to develop new onshore and offshore reserves.
Now this announcement was welcomed by the energy producers but met with dismay from environment groups. Environment Victoria Senior Climate and Energy Advisor Dr. Kat Lucas Healy said “the move would undermine Victoria’s emissions reduction targets. The government has completely ignored community concerns about seismic blasting”, she said. “Because that’s basically what it means. It means that the government, our government has said, hey, come on in and frack.” There’s a possibility of gas here.
Still in Australia, and the world acted against two of our big banks last week. That was when Overseas Pension Funds, managing hundreds of billions of dollars, threw their support behind environmental shareholders that were pushing for change from Westpac and NAB at both of their annual meetings last week.
Westpac’s fossil fuel lending was a key topic of discussion in Sydney after environmental group Market Forces put forward a resolution requiring them to prove how its fossil fuel financing, which includes to oil and gas businesses, aligns with global climate goals.
Now that resolution was co-filed by the fund manager, Australian Ethical, and was backed by offshore funds, including the New York City Pension Fund, Norwegian Pension Fund, KLP, and the 500 billion dollar fund for Californian public sectors that’s called CalPERS.
For its part, the NAB faced a resolution over its financing of businesses allegedly involved in the clearing of natural forests, which was lodged by the shareholders working with the Australian Conservation Foundation. CalPERS also backed this as the 200 euro Italian asset manager named Anima.
Both resolutions were opposed by the bank’s boards and they were both voted down, but they scared both boards and highlighted the banking industry’s central role in our nation’s lack of purpose in shifting from fossil fuels to green energy.
Now there was another new report that was released last week and it showed that globally approximately 56,000 people control the majority of money in the world. Now that 56,000 ultra-rich people who make up just 0.001 % of the population, yet they have three times as much wealth as half of the humanity on the planet.
Now that’s according to the latest World Inequality Report that was released last week. The report’s data show that the top 10 per cent of income earners are taking home more money than the other 90 per cent combined. It also showed that the wealth of multi-millionaires has increased at twice the rate of the bottom 50 per cent.
The researchers who compiled the report called on governments and policymakers to reduce these extreme divides, which they say are threatening economies, democracies and the planet’s health. And just to put it into perspective, that 56,000 people can fit comfortably into Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium in Docklands. Or if you invited them to the MCG, it would be a little over half full. There’s not that many of them. But here’s the reason that I’m bringing it up here. The report also detailed where those ultra-rich people are investing their billions of dollars, and it isn’t into the environment, or art, or education, or social programs, or anything that would improve the planet or benefit humanity or close the wealth gap. Their top investments are in real estate and that’s followed by mansions, high-powered cars, private jets and then luxury yachts.
Now, there are exceptions of course like Andrew Forrest, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mike Cannon Brooks, but in truth they are a very small minority among the billionaires. The vast majority of those 56,000 billionaires are only interested in living in luxury or piling up more money. And one of the starkest findings of the report is that their wealth is growing at a faster rate, close to 5 per cent annually, compared to 3.4 per cent for the rest of us. So the gap between rich and poor is forever widening.
And a separate report this week from The Guardian revealed that 12 of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, their private jets, their mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of two million average homes. Not people, homes.
Now it’s very hard to compare those two sections of global society since the 56,000 is a tiny fracture compared to the 2.8 billion adults in the rest of us. But here goes. The 56,000 will fit into Marvel Stadium or Dockland Stadium as that used to be known or half of the MCG.
So how many MCGs would it take to fit the rest of us non-billionaires? Do you want to take a guess? The number of MCGs to put the rest of us who aren’t billionaires? Well, you don’t, so I’ll tell you. It’s 100,000 MCGs. And that’s more capacity than every sports stadium on the planet.
That’s not just footy stadiums or cricket stadiums that includes tennis, that includes anything, all sports. Every stadium on the planet will be filled and overflowing and all of their money will be controlled by those in Marvel Stadium. If you put it that way, it gives you an idea of just how powerful those figures are.
It makes you wonder whether we’re doing the right thing by protesting to the public and saying we should all get behind it. We should be protesting to that 56,000 people and trying to change their mind because they’re the ones that are causing all the damage and they’re also the people who own the shares in the fossil fuel industry. But of course, they build walls around themselves – financial walls, lawyer walls. They’re very, very difficult to track down or even discover who they are.
But the difference between them and us is getting wider all the time and that is unhealthy. Apart from the fact that they’re shoving an awful lot more CO2 in the atmosphere, it’s unhealthy to have such an imbalance in society. A small number of people have got an absurd amount of money and they’re not using it to benefit the others.
And that leads me, believe it or not, to the world’s greenest football team, Forest Green Rovers in Gloucestershire, England, which has a stadium capacity of 5,400 people with around 2,000 of them seated. At the weekend, the Rovers were at home to Western Supermere and they won 4-0, while the Rovers women’s team played the top of the ladder team, Sherbourne Town Women, and they won 2-0. Now that puts both Rovers teams one point behind the leaders in their divisions, and it gives a satisfying end to this round up all about sports stadiums.
Jingle: (19:33)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony:
Colin has more than highlighted the incredible inequality on the planet at the moment and the problems that that causes. Our next guests are from Africa, which is probably the place where it’s the most extreme in many ways. Recently, we spoke to Jess Perini, who’s Australian organiser for refugee camps in Africa. And with Jess’s facilitation skills, we got in touch with Eric from Uganda and Ruth from Kenya.
Jessica Perini:
I come from a background in publishing and I’ve spent about 20 years publishing different books but I’ve got a huge interest in sustainability and particularly permaculture and permaculture is all about fair share, people care, earth care so you know I’ve got my permaculture design I’ve got all sorts of education around that. I’m always thinking, what can I do with that? And I’m on the keyboard all the time. I’m a keyboard warrior, but at the same time, I want to do something practical. I make these books, but I really want to do something practical for the earth. And I run all sorts of organic gardens and stuff. I just thought when COVID came around, I thought, well, why don’t I?
I use the technology and start running permaculture sessions online. And so that’s what I did. And it was kind of a funny situation because I, interesting part of my story is that I’m agoraphobic and have been for about 20 years. And so I don’t travel. And COVID just presented this really strange situation to me where the entire world came on par with my situation. So all of sudden, everybody was agoraphobic. Everybody was stuck at home. Everybody was online. And that was kind of funny and interesting to me because we’re all on the same level. First time in 20 years of my life where I felt like everybody knew where I was at and I knew where everyone else was at. That was actually a very safe space for me. And I hear all these people complaining about Zoom and I thought, you know what? This is great! I love it!
So I just leant into it and I leant into it and I thought, okay, what do people want to learn? So I started running these sessions and introduction to permaculture, introduction to mushrooms, growing maggots, all sorts of really strange and bizarre topics that I was just doing what people were asking me to do.
So I started getting this huge cohort from Africa and specifically from East Africa. People from Kenya, people from Uganda, Cameroon, all sorts of places, but mainly Uganda and Kenya and mainly from refugee camps. So I thought… Gosh, that’s so interesting. People are desperate for this knowledge. So I started saying to them, what do you want to learn? And they would say, well, we want the practical skills. So we want to know how to grow maggots for our chickens. Or we want to, you know, how do we deal with water? Or, you know, a whole bunch of issues. So I just thought, wow, what an opportunity.
And the more I got to know them, the more I realised, well, there’s such a great need there, but how do we do this without any seeds? Or how do we do this with no established networks? So, given I had the internet, given I was very internet savvy, I go, okay, who’s in the area? Who knows what they’re doing?
So, do a bit of research, find out who knows what they’re doing, who’s already doing permaculture. Okay, do they have seeds? Do they have resources? Do they have tools? Do they have knowledge? Can they go from this place to that place to help teach?
So I built up all these little networks and I thought, okay, well I know this person here, this person there, so I start putting people together and all sorts of fun things started happening. was a really, really wonderful experience.
Then I met Elijah at some stage during that experience, probably about two, two and a half, maybe three years ago. And he was just one of the super keen people. I mean, I was doing yoga teacher training. He was teaching yoga in the camp. So at one stage he said to me, can we do yoga sessions? I said, sure. If the internet holds up. Then we transitioned to talking about soils. And I remember this one day where it just changed everything. We were talking about soils and all his group wanted to talk about were mushrooms.
So I said, okay, all right, let’s talk about mushrooms, but hey, you’re going to need some different things to grow your mushrooms. So why don’t we plan a session, plan ahead and let’s see how we can get it happening in a practical way. So I just said, yeah, absolutely. Can we get this happening? So I said, yeah, yeah, let me just think about it for a bit. So I went back and I thought about it and I thought, okay, what can I do to get this happening? And I thought, I ought to talk to my mushroom people here.
And it just happened to be that the people I’d done my permaculture design certificate with, Milkwood, were also the mushroom people to go to. So I had since that time done some work with them, done some writing, and worked on different courses with them. So I rang them and I said, look guys, I’ve got this group in Naka Valley and they want to learn about mushrooms, could you come online with me? We’ll do a session with the Western audience and with the refugee audience together and we’ll raise some money for them and then they can buy the spawn, the buckets, all they need to get it happening.
And of course, Nick Ritar, who is one of the co-founders of Milkwood said, “yeah, absolutely, let’s do this”. So, he brought his considerable resources and networks and put the word out to his people and I put the word out to my people. I run a group called Permaculture Partners on Facebook. That’s very informal, we just spread the word. The people who came from the industrialised side of the world paid for the two hour session and the refugees came in for free.
And what we did was I basically just gathered all the money from the people who paid and about a week before the session I funnelled it through to Elijah and then he trotted off to Kampala which is the capital of Uganda which is quite a big trip. But the refugee camp is so remote and has so few resources that he really had to go that extra distance.
He went off to Kampala and sourced up the materials that he needed to do the mushroom workshop and then spent some time, we had to work on resources because things are very different in Africa. So pH strips, know, figuring out the pH of stuff, we couldn’t find that kind of thing. Gypsum, we had some problems.
There’s all sorts of resourcing issues. You try and find something in a place like Uganda and it’s like, well, okay, what do we use instead of that? So we had to think, okay, can we use ash? Boiling water is a problem in a refugee camp. Do you go and collect wood to, which is, the trees are pretty much gone.
So we ran up against all sorts of issues. So can we drown any of the bad organisms in water without boiling it? So we had to just sit down and research all the alternatives and say, okay, we can be creative about this. We can use red cabbages to do a pH testing and we can, you know, we had, we can use ash to raise the pH. So all of these ways in which we had to apply our design knowledge to that very different situation to work with the refugees to make it work. So it’s not just about fundraising, it’s very much about co-design and working with SCANT resources in the camp, and just figuring out how, you know, how we do this with a Swahili speaking audience or an audience that speaks multiple languages.
So, yeah, was quite an adventure and tricky in so many ways, but so rewarding in the end because we got them going and they did the session. I think they had about at least 25 people in the room and we had a whole bunch of people online. They had a projector, they projected it up and lots and lots of questions, really, really lots of enthusiasm. And then after that point, we just said, okay, it’s great, but how do we get them sustainable? They have the knowledge now. So we thought, well, we need to do more sessions. We need to raise more money. We need to get them set up because they didn’t have anywhere to grow the mushrooms in a way that they wouldn’t get cooked in the refugee setting. mean, it gets incredibly hot in Uganda and then it rains like crazy. So how do we deal with that kind of environment? So the answer was that they needed to build a special building that was secure and that wouldn’t be exposed to the rigours of all that climate. The other issue was that food is scarce.
So what do you do in a situation where you’re about to grow a whole bunch of food and people are very hungry? So we had to think, well, part of the budget has to be some security for the building.
You know, it has to be closed. You can’t have someone there all the time. yeah, so that just, we did extra sessions. People heard about what we were doing. A lady from America heard about what we were doing. Her name is Emily. And Emily came on board with her group Changemakers and Rainmakers.
And Emily was just like, ‘Okay, I’m going to take this to the next level.’ And she just took it to the next level, which was amazing because I have limited resources. I’m just one person spreading the word. So when people just hear about things and they come on board and then they can do the next round of fundraising or they can do the next round of design or co-design and work with the local groups to do the next level thing that is just best case scenario. Because at some stage I have to go back to paid work. So yeah, it’s just that was a fabulous situation and in the end she ended up raising enough to build the building and get rainwater tanks on site. We did another session, we got Elijah went off, did some more training, he did a training, an internship with people who actually grew mushrooms a few hours away. So all of these pieces had to sort of come together and we did have some failures along the way which is an important part of the learning and design process. So the first batch didn’t quite work but the second batch I still remember getting phone call from Elijah saying: ‘Jess, pick up, pick up’ – and I’m on the phone later, and he’s like: Pick up, now! Exclamation mark.
It’s like, hang on, there’s an exclamation mark in here. That’s a lot of energy for Elijah. And so I rang him back and I said, Hey, what’s happening?
And he, just raises up the bucket, and you know, there’s all these mushrooms spilling out and their second batch has worked.
So that was a hugely important step in that process. now they’ve bought buckets, which is the original way we had hoped. Originally they started with plastic bags, which wasn’t sustainable, but when they use the buckets, they can reuse them over and over again. So that’s the method that Nick of Milkwood teaches and that’s what they eventually got to which was awesome. And now they are consistently producing mushrooms.
Eric: (34:45)
My name is Emmanuel Hakizimana. You can call me Eric. That’s also my name. I’m a principal of African Basic Care Center Initiative. It’s a refugee-led organisation that also runs a school. And then the school goes by ABC High School. This one also started in 2021. And we’ve been here supporting refugees. We are from Nakivale refugee settlement, which is in South-Western Uganda.
And then you look at Nakivale, it’s the eighth largest camp in the world. And currently, the estimated population is all about 280,000. And myself, I’m Marufji. I came from Rwanda when my parents crossed the border in 1994, headed Tanzania. Then Tanzania came to Uganda. So I’ve been in the camp for so many years. I can say I know the experience, I know the life of others.
That’s why also act as one of the activists trying to figure out to also bring solutions and it’s working out with also other people we are working with like Jessica and the Combine High School and also other like also Luce where we share also sometimes knowledge how best we can bring the change in our community. Specifically, we have a school that is ABCC High School that is having more than 250 children. These are the lefties and of different nationalities, can just say it’s a multicultural school whereby we meet and also interact and we provide them with education.
Another thing we also look at is permaculture because we look at the part of sustainability and you know how hunger is also a problem in a setting like this, one of the refugees. Food is a challenge, but how can we be sustainable through using the skills, also use the scale and also get food.
So we do it and then Jessica is the lead in to this because she’s our expert in these projects or in activities. She comes and capacitates building and also designs the projects, ensures that the project is successfully conducted. Another thing also which is also one of our innovations is livelihood. Here we would be served the upskillings.
So we do believe that through the upskillings, people will be living independent, whereby they can use their own hands to also achieve their goals. So we look at hairdressing skills. We come up also with the tailoring skills and other skills that also make someone to achieve something like also carpentry skills. So those skills, we do believe that these skills aren’t just skills.
It’s life changing because when you look at most affected people, they are women and children and the more time they be affected, that’s also the more time they also the community gets on risk. So what we can do is provide them skills so they can be able to provide at least something on their table each and every day and make their minds grow. I would like to say thank you so much and also this what we do, and I do appreciate for listening at me. Thank you.
Ruth Akinyi:
My name is Ruth Akinyi. I’m from Kenya, Kisumu County in a small village called Kanyawigi, Usari village. So I’ll start by sharing how I met Jessica Perini and how I came to meet Eric as well before I dive into the main topic. So I remember there was a time she wanted to do something on permaculture, teach women in permaculture, a certain topic on Facebook and she posted on her Facebook and it was an event and I was interested in that event so we came to that event and there were quite a few women that joined as well and hearing how she explained how she teach permaculture, hearing how other women talked.
That really drew me closer and really uplifted me and it really inspired me and from then we started talking and we started sharing and we started working together and ever since that has brought so many opportunities towards the initiative that I’m having down here and it’s just been so awesome ever since and about Eric.
I met Eric when he came to Kenya to learn about permaculture and syntropic growth forestry and I was his teacher because I also train in permaculture and syntropic growth forestry and he was just an awesome student and was so eager to learn this sustainable technique and it was really active and I believe he got a lot from it because ever since what he has done with it back in Naki Valley, it’s just been so awesome and so inspiring and it’s been quite uplifting to see him cruise and to see him rise above all the odds and I’m so glad for all the things that he has done to help address the climate change and food securities and everything that comes with it in Naki Valley.
So I’ll talk about myself a little bit. I got my first training in permaculture way back in 2021. And when I got it, it was a life changing moment for me. And ever since I’ve never looked back. So this knowledge, when I first got it, I just looked back at where I was coming from and pictured what it could possibly do to my community that could be positive and could be impactful to their lives. Being a young mum at a teen and had to drop out of school because I gave birth twice before finishing my high school and things were really tough way back at home as well and it felt like there was no hope going forward and then here it is. I get this opportunity and there is hope and there is something that could be done and there’s something that could make sense out of it all and through the knowledge that I got I went back home and just started doing my small garden, my kitchen garden, our kitchen garden that is my mom’s space so I decided to just do something small there with it. With that knowledge I started my small poultry farming with a few hens, it was around five hens.
And I started tending to them using that permaculture knowledge, giving them herbal medicine, implying the permaculture principles, produce no waste, feed them with the kitchen crops and use their refuse, their waste to fertilise my farm. With permaculture, know, we learn to use the resources that we have within, that we can find locally, that have been able to fend for ourselves and feed the hens and also empower the community. And we started a program of also helping create these small gardens with the girls for the elderly and the marginalised. And it’s been really awesome. It was really hard for the community to adapt this technique or to maybe to accept this.
There was a lot of politics in it and it was not easy convincing them that they could easily plant vegetables even in sacks or in buckets or plastics and that could help them feed themselves and perhaps sell the saplings. It was really such a toll. It took a toll on me to get to where we are today.
Because today if I call for any community training, people would easily show up because they have started seeing the benefits and the fruits of it coming out. especially with the empowerment of the girls, now that we’ve had the first five head to the university, it really puts this whole thing into a place, in a certain place in the community and it’s really worthwhile for them right now and it’s been an awesome journey and I’ve been doing a lot of even in different communities, and it’s been part of me and part of my life and everything that I’m always trying to do to empower especially girls and equip them with skills so that other than just empowering them through education, we can also empower them to be able to take care of our ecosystem as well. it’s been an awesome journey, really, really inspiring.
And it’s something that we’d want to reach far wide, vast communities even across the globe. People should learn about this permaculture and this regenerative farming because it really helps. It really helps a lot. And especially with really harsh climate conditions that we are having, I think these are the only solutions that we have at the moment because I don’t see any other solutions that could really curb the risks and the negative impacts that climate has caused to the world and Africa which is really suffering the most despite that they are causing, are contributing less to the problem. So, yeah, thank you.
Jessica: (45:40)
Mushrooms are really nutritious and they taste beautiful. So the ones that we grow are oyster mushrooms and they’re way nicer than the ones you get in the shops. And the reason we choose those mushrooms is that they’re the easiest ones to grow for people who don’t have any experience growing mushrooms. So you can grow blue ones, pink ones, brown ones, all different colours and so nutritious and a great source of protein, which is really important in the camp.
So normally they would just get a grain that would be provided to them and even those only the most desperate. So my understanding is that some people don’t get provisions at all. So to have a sustainable form of protein is really, really important. The most established of the refugees have different sources of food. Of course they have to.
So Elijah also grows food with the community and all of my community groups are now growing food. So they’ve all got spaces, compounds, even the smallest of spaces in their home compounds, they all grow food. So I’ve said to them from the beginning, it doesn’t matter how small your space is, you need to be growing food. So people are getting chickens, they’re growing mushrooms, they’re staple things like beans, spinaches, chards, they’re getting eggs from the chickens of course. I believe they’re not allowed to own larger animals for fear of competition with locals but I know they do keep small animals. So they do in any way they can.
Although I have known people to just be surviving on things like soft drink. I’ve heard of people just trying to do projects online, spending all their money, you know, paying for internet just to try and, you know, keep things going. But that’s part of this whole process is trying to build resilience in these communities and trying to get them to understand that it doesn’t matter how small the space is. Because a lot come from communities where they don’t grow food. So they might think, well, we don’t have a farm. So we don’t, you know, we can’t grow stuff.
And what we really want to say to them is: Actually you can! Here is my backyard space. I live in Sydney. I have a tiny backyard. Your compound is actually bigger than my backyard. Let me show you how much I can grow. So therefore, this is how much you can grow. You have way more sun than I do because our buildings shade our spaces. So they kind of go, hang on a sec. And they have to shift their mindset. And refugees tend to be slightly conservative in these things so sometimes it’s taken me a little bit of time to get people to understand actually you can really can grow food it’s not just a farmer’s job to grow food you can do this so yeah when when when people initially get to the camp it can be a very disparate situation especially now that the US has cut funding so people can find themselves in very dire straits because the amount of food has been cut and the amount of money that was going out to most of the refugee population as far as I understand, which was something like $5 a month, which is nothing, went down to $3 a month and then a whole bunch of refugees were cut off completely when USAID was was cut off. So they got a letter basically saying next month there’s nothing. So they had to scramble.
That tiny amount of money was at least some level of hope that they had a little tiny bit of resilience but now that’s gone. So it really is up to the communities to come up with solutions and working with these leaders is what we’re trying to do to help them understand that these solutions are within their grasp.
Mik: (50:29)
We’re talking with Jessica Perini who is explaining how you can have an African adventure without even leaving Australia. It’s an amazing story Jessica. If people have been inspired by you and think either that they would like to maybe chip in or help or that they could do something similar somewhere else because it looks like it’s a kind of adventure that could be copied by others. What’s your advice to our listeners?
Jess:
Absolutely. What I would say is don’t hesitate. Just reach out. You can reach out to me through my website. I can put you in touch with any number of refugees. It doesn’t take much time. So a few hours a week, if you don’t have that time, you could put in a few hours a month. And it doesn’t matter what skill set you have. So we have artists who are incredibly talented, who just need to get their work online. We have musicians, we have people who farm, we have people who are teachers. So no matter what it is and no matter what your skill set, if you could put a few hours in and just help out, that’s awesome. And you don’t have to be a permaculturist, you don’t have to be a an expert in anything, whatever your skill set is, you know, we have people who just help with internet stuff. So, who do little mini auctions for the artists in the camp. We have people who know about water. We have people who know about education. So teaching them best practice in education. So it really doesn’t matter what your skill set is. All you need to have is a little bit of enthusiasm and be able to reach out and talk to people. And yeah, don’t hesitate.
Mik:
And a computer with an internet connection, I’m sure.
Jess:
We have an internet connection and we’ve got computers to people, we’ve got phones to people in the refugee camps so they are now connected. So if you have that connection we can put people in touch.
Mik:
Excellent. And the website?
Jess:
JessicaPerini.com and go to just click on permaculture and yeah you can read about all our projects.
Jingle
Mik: (52:59)
These were the words we could squeeze into the last of The Sustainable Hour of 2025. We’re rounding the year off and we’re all going on a bit of a summer break to reflect and slow down and enjoy the company of your family and friends. Nature. To come back energised, re-energised, in February.
Colin:
Yeah. This is the time for reflection. It’s unfortunately, I mean, it seems that I’m still on the high horse. It’s become so commercialised. It’s a time for when everybody is driven to go and buy presents for people. When the truth of the matter is that Christmas is aimed at being a place for reflection and New Year certainly is a time for making resolutions about what you’re going to be doing differently in the next calendar year. I’m hoping to just get through them both. And I’m relishing the thought of catching up with family and friends over Christmas break up. And yes, I – with luck – will be revitalised when we come back again and ready to tilt to some more windmills, fellas.
Tony:
We’ll be back for year 14 of The Sustainable Hour. And yeah, the same, and committed to doing the same things, truth telling, myth busting, shining a light on people, the current situation, and work each day to make it better.
Colin:
Yep. We used to always end up a weekly podcast by saying, ‘Be the difference’. We’re closing a year off now. So let’s give it bit more strength and let’s ‘Be the difference in every direction that you move – and we’ll be with you!’
Mik:
And certainly I think, Colin, that the big word for me of 2025 was the word connected – ‘Be connected’.
Tony:
‘Be solution seekers’.
Colin:
And ‘Be innovative’ too. Don’t just go along with everybody else.
Mik:
And in that regard, also ‘Be creative‘. You know, there’s so much that we can do with our hands, play music, for instance, with our voice. Be creative in your life.
Colin: (55:37)
I have some great plans for 2026, which is something that’s not supposed to happen to an old senile gentleman of my vintage. But yes, I’ve got some great shows lined up for next year. All I’ve got to do now is write them over the course of the next two months. But I’ve signed up for them, so I’ve got to do it. Yep.
Mik:
Fantastic. Any other b’s in the room?
Colin:
Now, I’ll just carry on being a bit of a wasp. It used to be a fight between the proletariat and the aristocracy. Now it’s a fight between those huge amounts of money that are controlled by a tiny number of people and they’re really running the world and the rest of us.
Mik:
So we need to ‘Be critical’ just as well. Don’t believe in anything that you read in… certainly in Geelong Advertiser.
Colin:
Yeah, or any of the news international press and that includes The Australian.
Tony:
Well, it makes shows like this all the more important I think as a foil against that.
Colin:
It is refreshing to talk to you two blokes every week.
Mik: (56:50)
Yes, thank you very much. Likewise!
Colin:
I will wish you a wonderful time and I will look forward to catching up in February.
Mik:
Thank you very much and to our listeners as well, we wish you a really nice summer break. Whatever religion you’re from, enjoy this time and we’ll see you in the new year.
Tony:
Thank you.
Colin:
Cheers fellas! Bye now.
. . .
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