Permaculture - Part 3 - Growing A Nation: Dispatch from Timor Leste
Timor Leste is the newest country in Asia, formally recognised as independent in 2002 after over 400 years of ___________, ___________, ___________ and worse. Shortly after, a man named Ego Lemos (who was later awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award) travelled around the country and observed that in rural areas, where 70% of the country lives, water scarcity was a ubiquitous issue leading to conflicts — something happening in many places around the world and a harbinger of the future. He sought to address this by seeking the guidance of village elders and uncovered that the answer lay in the strategic placement of debus, or retention ponds.
Sink. Slow. Spread.
That's how groundwater is recharged and, in sloped areas, re-emerges from new or existing springs. This concept is drawn from how the buffalo naturally knows how to dig up the earth at certain spots and creates such impressions in the soil.
And that is where Permaculture comes from. Deep i_______s or traditional knowledge of living with the rest of nature. Design, ecology and system lenses allow those unacquainted with such awareness, or acquainted with other pedagogies, to implement gardens, farms and other nature-based solutions.
Permatil
The organisation behind this work is Permatil — Permakultura Timor-Lorosa'e. Lemos was introduced to Permaculture in 1999 by an Australian trainer visiting the country to teach sustainable agriculture, and recognised that many of its principles — earth care, people care, fair share — were already present in traditional Timorese culture. He founded Permatil in 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the country's own rebuilding.
His own history gives the work its weight. As a child, he and his family fled into the mountains during the Indonesian invasion of the mid-1970s; his youngest sister died of starvation, and eventually only he and his mother survived. That experience, by his own account, is what pushed him toward food sovereignty and environmental restoration as a life's work — not an abstract commitment, but one forged in exactly the kind of scarcity permaculture exists to prevent.
The retention-pond approach described above has since scaled nationally. Since 2016, Permatil's "Planting Water, Growing Communities" programme has completed more than 500 water-restoration projects, replenishing springs and reducing erosion and flooding across the country. By 2023, that work had built over 1,000 water collection ponds and revived roughly 300 springs, benefiting an estimated 400,000 Timorese — close to a third of the country's population.
The youth movement Permatil built alongside this water work has grown just as far. The organisation ran its first PermaYouth camp in 2008, and the model has since trained over 6,500 young people through annual district and national camps. In 2015, Permatil introduced permaculture into the national school curriculum — the first country to do so — and the programme now runs in over 250 schools. In 2023, Lemos received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, becoming the third Timorese national honoured with the accolade widely described as Asia's Nobel Prize.
Last year, that youth movement went global for the first time.
IPYC 2025. Plant Water. Grow Community.
Water — which, as an ecologist from the Rural Development Trust in Andhra Pradesh, India once told me, is the genesis of all culture — brings communities together while still allowing them to maintain their individual identities and spaces.
The title of this section was the theme of the International PermaYouth Convergence, held in Ermera, Timor Leste.
Nearly a thousand Timorese from across the country and 50 other participants from 19 countries came together to learn and share.
For those that could crawl out of their tents in the campground and make a quick deposit at a compost toilet, days began with clearing the distributed premises of any debris.
After breakfast, which was prepared in bamboo & palm-leaf structures, participants (including those staying in guest houses nearby) split into groups to go on site visits to learn about water conservation, seed-saving etc.
One such trip involved a visit to Tilofe (Timor Leste Organic Fertiliser) where an impeccably-dressed, energetic man explained how the debus or "retention ponds" eventually allowed water to be collected on their property. Fish were introduced and their excrement nourishes the water which is mixed with manure to create fertilizer. Some of that is used to grow fruits and vegetables for the community and others are sold to coffee farmers.
It's noteworthy that these aren't plantations, but co-operative small holdings where in many cases integrated farming takes place — meaning that root vegetables like cassava grow in the shade of coffee plants, and other crops are planted when coffee is not in season.
Afternoon sessions at the IPYC meant taking shade in the naturally-built structures to learn about work being done by various international organisations, community mobilisation, marine conservation, climate change, school education etc.
Government
The IPYC was inaugurated by the Vice-Prime Minister of the country, and also in attendance were Ambassadors from India, Japan, etc.
While I generally maintain a low profile, Permaculture mentors and a passion for the planet have encouraged and emboldened me to approach such persons when given the opportunity, as I did with the Indian ambassador. The Indian Embassy in Timor Leste had only been open for a short time, having previously operated out of Indonesia, but the Ambassador recognised the country's difficult past while remaining extremely optimistic about its future.
Each day, we (although I was the only international participant attending every day) were given the opportunity to hear officials from different government organisations and foreign bodies speak in detail about the situation in the country. One could always look at such panels cynically, but it was particularly encouraging to witness lengthy question and answer sessions.
As a relatively "new" country, Timor Leste is learning from others. The Minister of Co-operatives, dressed in fatigues and donning a patrol or field cap, spoke to his compatriots on the importance of collective action. In the open session, I shared how co-operatives such as the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation in India have been remarkably successful — leading to the establishment of a brand ("Amul") recognisable by every person in the country.
The Minister was joined by an independent — head of a research consultancy, musician and farm custodian — who provided his perspective on starting initiatives and on money, which neatly leads us to the next section.
Money
The first thing people ask about after hearing about Permaculture is money. Either that one can't make any money from it, that it's something that "rich" people play around with to virtue signal their care for the environment, or the validity of funds channelled towards it.
It's strange that no one questions the hundreds of billions of dollars, human resources and simply time invested in research institutes, universities, companies like OpenAI, Amazon, Facebook, Uber etc. before they made a breakthrough, a profit or became a ubiquitous part of our lives. In any case, let's humour that argument.
Here's an example from the hilly area of Remexio in Timor Leste. Anees, a young man from the area, saw a post on Permatil's Facebook page about water conservation work they were doing and drew inspiration from it to go about digging his own debus. Construction had already begun on a road adjacent to his locality, and that meant water was being drained away. Water from the debus began to replenish the springs. Then, with some community members, they planted cash crops like corn on land that belonged to a community member. (Anees's uncle also had some land, but he wanted to use it to bring foreigners there for tourism purposes.) They used the proceeds from those crops to build a rudimentary house and set about cultivating a variety of vegetables for their own consumption using Permaculture techniques. They also began seed saving and made $300 from selling seeds — which can go a long way in many parts of the world. All this was done in less than a year, and they aim to continue in this vein, having already turned down other ways to make a livelihood.
Choices
In addition to all of his and Permatil’s achievements, Ego has also published a book on Tropical Permaculture, downloaded in 190 countries. Despite this, I entered into lively debates about their work in the age of Machine Intelligence - Timorese participants could be seen hunched over ChatGPT in the convergence.
This is where I stumbled upon the nub of Ego's mission: to root the young people of his country in the elements of soil, water and community — without which there would be no human life here or on Mars — so that they can make the right choices when faced with all the challenges the world brings to them. It's about growing the character of a country, not just building it.
In the next parts of the series - throwing shade and derived permaculture.