Bustan
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Bustan, is an environmental justice organization in Israel and the Palestinian Territories fighting for the rights of desert residents. Established in 1999, Bustan uses hands-on environmental education as a tool to facilitate citizen investment in building sustainable relations amongst themselves and with the land and its resources.[citation needed]
The word bustan refers to a fruit-yielding orchard (in Hebrew and Arabic) and the name symbolizes what the NGO seeks to accomplish. A bustan is sustainable due to its diversity: one plant is a natural insecticide for another, another acts as a trellis for a vine, another preserves water in its roots and sustains neighbouring plants. Conversely, in a "monoculture", plants are weak and must be doused with harmful chemicals to protect themselves from parasites and weeds. Bustan believes that the peoples of the desert are intertwined and survive most productively in fellowship with one another.
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[edit] History
Bustan emerged in 1999 as a voluntary initiative of educators, farmers, workers, planners, and activists volunteering to purvey models for the sustainable sharing of water, energy and land. For the first seven years, the organization ran as a non-profit initiative paying subsistence salaries to a small core group of activists. From 2006-2007, this volunteer venture matured into a registered non-profit company for the benefit of the public, recognized by the registrar of companies in Israel. In 2007, directorship transitioned from Jewish founder Devorah Brous to Bedouin activist Ra'ed Al-Mekawi. [1] Today Bustan is driven by the conviction that genuine security for all inhabitants of this land relies intrinsically upon sustainable resource allocation.
Bustan is the only social justice organization promoting educational models for sustainable resource allocation and fostering sustainable relations between Jewish and Arab neighbours in Israel. Bustan develops projects to advance environmental justice and the rights of the marginalized communities of the Negev Desert in Israel. These marginalized communities include: new immigrants, the poor, and the Bedouin. In particular, Bustan has working relations with 12 of 45 unrecognized Bedouin villages and each of the 7 government townships.
To illustrate the nature of Bustan's accomplishments: Bustan brought the first solar panels into the Palestinian farming village of Dreijatt. Several years later, in 2006, the government invested in solar infrastructure for the village, and Dreijatt became the first Arab village in Israel to go solar-powered.
One of Bustan's most internationally recognized projects involved organizing hundreds of Bedouin and Jewish youth to build a sustainable medical clinic in the Bedouin village of Wadi el-Na'am, located just adjacent to the largest toxic waste facility in the region. Over Passover 2003, 500 local, regional and international youth were guided throughout process of constructing a solar-powered clinic surrounded by a medicinal desert herb garden. Bustan trainers introduced accessible techniques - in the fields of architecture, straw-bale construction, water conservation, horticulture, and solar applications.[2] The joint effort was an unprecedented success: A year after clinic completion, and after decades of failing in its obligations to provide services, the government finally built a clinic on the other side of the village. Furthermore, this year, the building these Bedouin and Jewish youth built together garnered nomination for the largest architecture prize in the world.
[edit] Vision
Bustan cultivates sustainable models to promote fair allocation of clean public resources. Bustan strives to present sustainable models for healthy development that serves both Jewish and Arab populations by promoting stewardship in the face of strident political wars over ownership of public resources.
As a Jewish-Arab movement for fair resource allocation, Bustan seeks to transform the excess of unsustainable consumption patterns into resource access for marginalized populations. Bustan connects citizens with cost-cutting green technologies in order to spark consciousness of the wider benefits of sustainable living. The experience of self-reliance in lieu of waiting for government assistance is often a first step towards catalyzing renewal and social change.
Bustan takes a two-tiered approach: Promoting Public Debate: Public outreach, education & advocacy, internationally & throughout Israel; Engaging the Field: Hands-on field work deep throughout the periphery.
[edit] Principles
Bustan exposes key environmental justice struggles and presses for government and corporate accountability by catalyzing strategic community action. Bustan facilitates innovative projects to build/plant community infrastructure. Bustan's projects merge traditional knowledge with modern green technology and are vital until systemic solutions are legitimated in the Israeli Courts and are fully-implemented on the ground.
Bustan examines issues of environmental degradation and disappearance of the rural landscape as a by-product of the continued territorial war. Bustan examines the social and environmental impact of development on the people and the land in the region. It involves placing the reciprocal questions of resource exploitation and resource allocation at center, particularly in the area referred to as "The Last Frontier."
Bustan sees sustainability in both political and environmental terms. Although environmental concerns are continually relegated to the bottom of the priority list in the face of the security issues , Bustan sees them as vital and integral to the future. Bustan promotes a vision based on looking at the implications of exploiting, over-developing, and over-settling this land.
Bustan challenges the forced displacement of rural culture. Bustan is fully aware of the cultural sensitivities around 'resuscitating traditional wisdom,' and 'preserving indigenous knowledge.' Jews and Arabs can both teach and learn from the ways the original inhabitants of Israel/Palestine answered food, energy, shelter and water needs using the most readily accessible materials. There is a need to garner the best of traditional wisdom and merge them with the indisputable benefits of renewable technologies.
All of Bustan's work reflects its emphasis on minimizing its organizational consumption and ecological footprint. On principle, to date, all of the materials Bustan uses in its office and field work are salvaged, recycled and re-used. Bustan's staff uses public transportation or car-pools.
Working beyond the limitations of the "Peace Industry" which in monopolizing funds and energy to promote Jewish-Arab encounters effectively assuages the guilt of those in power and tokenizes marginalized populations – Bustan is interested in efforts which promote genuine convergence around Jewish and Arab interests. Bustan seeks to identify and work towards common goals around the necessity of equitably sharing land, water, and energy.
Focusing on the most marginalized communities in the region, since 1999 Bustan's focus has been on the poorest communities in the largest yet most peripheral region of the country – the Negev/Naqab Desert. People residing in this triangle of land share some 2.5% of the Negev/Naqab with Israel's nuclear reactor, 22 agro- and petro-chemical factories, an oil terminal, closed military zones, a munitions plant, an oil terminal, multiple quarries, a toxic waste incinerator, cell phone antennae, a power plant, several airports, a prison, and two rivers of open sewage. This as an area where the poorest communities suffer the highest infant mortality rates, the highest unemployment and school drop-out rates, living in the most peripheral region of the country.
Bustan works in the Negev because it is not possible to pretend that one can simply dump the rotting remnants of affluent consumer culture, the waste and effluent left over at the end of the process of production and consumption, next to those living at the margins of society. Bustan's members and staff hail from all over the country. Bustan's aim is to create a network of people through the Negev, the region, and the world whose eyes are steered to the Negev, and who can support the efforts of Jews and Arabs who live and work together in the desert.
A sustainable Negev is a place where traditional building and planting practices in a strongly self-determined desert culture are merged with modern green appropriate technologies in order to minimize the impacts of urbanization, overpopulation, and over-consumption. A sustainable Negev is a place where workers have access to safe workplaces in sync with environmental justice principles. A sustainable Negev is a place where the economic and health needs of residents are regarded as reciprocal. A sustainable Negev is a place where the ties of all peoples to this international heritage site are respected.
[edit] References
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