Restoring Global Ecology: The Great Green Wall and Large-Scale Permaculture in Action with Andrew Millison
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
It's no secret that massive change is needed to restore our planet's vital ecosystems. Permaculture offers practices to restore local environments by focusing on creating sustainable agricultural systems that mimic patterns found in nature. But how might permaculture initiatives go beyond agriculture to transform some of our largest-scale problems, such as social cohesion, climate stabilization, and even human migration?
In this conversation, Nate sits down with permaculture educator Andrew Millison to discuss the Great Green Wall project, a massive ecological initiative aimed at combating desertification in the Sahel region of Africa. They explore the causes of the Sahara Desert's expansion, the simple but impactful permaculture techniques being employed to restore land, and the significant ecological and nutritional benefits resulting from these efforts. This conversation highlights the collaboration between local communities and global organizations, emphasizing permaculture's potential to transform lives and ecosystems around the world.
How can innovative permaculture techniques aid in helping our most complex ecological challenges? In what ways have land restoration projects reduced conflict between people in resource scarce areas? Furthermore, what kinds of responses – both grassroots and top-down – are needed to implement these practices on a large scale?
About Andrew Millison:
Andrew Millison is an innovative educator, storyteller and designer. He founded the Permaculture Design education program at Oregon State University (OSU) in 2009. At OSU Andrew serves as an Education Director and Senior Instructor who offers over 25 years of experience, and a playful approach to regenerative design. Andrew is also a documentary videographer who travels the world documenting epic permaculture projects in places such as India, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, and throughout the US. You can view his videos and series on his YouTube channel.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The ripple effects of restoring land bridges all the way into the worldwide geopolitics |
| 0:09.7 | because people that are on land that is productive, they don't need to migrate. |
| 0:14.8 | A lot of the stresses of the world is about migration and all the pressures that that |
| 0:20.0 | puts on both the societies from |
| 0:21.8 | where people are leaving from and going to, when you actually have land that is abundant and |
| 0:27.4 | productive and people see a future there, then they don't leave. |
| 0:35.2 | You're listening to the Great Simplification. |
| 0:38.4 | I'm Nate Hagan's. |
| 0:39.3 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:48.7 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the |
| 0:56.1 | coming great simplification. |
| 1:02.6 | Joining me today for a second time is permaculturist and educator Andrew Millison for an |
| 1:09.1 | update on some recent projects that he's been documenting, |
| 1:13.6 | including the massive scale ongoing project in Africa called the Great Green Wall |
| 1:20.6 | that is aiming to hold back the expansion of the Sahara Desert. |
| 1:26.6 | Andrew Millison is an instructor in the horticulture department at Oregon State University for the last 15 years, where he founded the OSU permaculture design, which runs the first online university permaculture program. |
| 1:42.1 | Along with Andrew's teaching, he also creates short documentary videos of permaculture program. Along with Andrew's teaching, he also creates short documentary |
| 1:46.3 | videos of permaculture projects around the world in places like Mexico, Egypt, Cuba, |
| 1:53.4 | Senegal, and India, which he publishes on a very popular YouTube channel. You can find the link |
| 2:00.4 | to Andrew's work |
| 2:01.3 | in the description of this episode. |
| 2:03.8 | As my own podcast grows, |
... |
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