Melton Fellow co-creates permaculture solutions in Amazon

Chilean Melton Fellow Diego Nicolas was selected to participate at IDDS Amazon, a two-week permaculture-themed summit that brought together 40 participants from all over the world and with different backgrounds to co-create innovative solutions with local community members of fishing and farming communities along the river banks of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. Here's his report:

Today, we burnt a bonfire in the warm, 27-degree night. There was heavy rain, all was flooded, but we kept dancing to traditional Brazilian music and making rounds with Capoeira.

Chilean Melton Fellow Diego Nicolas

The group is amazing, from all over the world, and because the theme was permaculture and the idea is to co-create, here I could understand more about everything.

The main goal of the summit was to help an organic agriculture community to achieve some goals, and we as a group tried to figure out how to do it. This community sells all its Priprioca (an aromatic, potato-like root) to Natura, a large Brazilian cosmetic producer. During the first week, we had some talks about design in different topics, such as permaculture, empathy, ecology succession, restoration ecology, and many more.

I was chosen to talk about ecology and to participate in fruits, which means I helped identify the real needs of the people, trying to figure out what they can do with all the local (and delicious) fruits and to not depend 100% on Natura Cosmetics.