March 28, 2020

Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness

42 minutes

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My guest today is Chris Gilmour. A permaculture practitioner and emergency manager, Chris works with individuals and organizations to map their community assets and help prepare for uncertain events

We recorded this conversation during the emerging COVID-19 pandemic to discuss practical solutions we can apply right now to make sense of the situation and prepare a response appropriate for our individual lives. We begin introducing the four pillars of emergency management and a six-question approach. Chris finds this method useful when creating our assessments. We then move into a conversation about personal actions for each of us to take in the moment and as part of our long-term planning, using examples from Chris’s life to show the theory in practice. Throughout, we repeatedly return to what we can do to lighten the emotional load through activities that ground us in the moment and plan for days ahead as we focus on our values and what is bigger than ourselves.

Find out more about Chris at ChangingWorldProject.com. He also put together a resource page at ChangingWorldProject.com/permaculturepodcast where you’ll find more information from this interview. You can also check out the ecovillage he is working with on disaster preparedness, Our Eco Village, at ourecovillage.org.

As we returned to the Our Purpose Beyond Self several times during the interview, I want to come back to this in my closing remarks with two books to recommend.

The first is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Of all the books I’ve read in my life, this one slim volume, something most of us can read in a few hours, has had the most impact on my inner life and understanding how meaning can protect us and help us through the hardest moments of life.

The second is Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True, which looks at the modern research that shows how we can see ourselves and the world more clearly through mindfulness practices that lead to greater truth and happiness. I find the insights of this book and the different ways to be mindful, beyond just meditation, relate well to the discussion today, and in the interviews with Robyn Mello and Natalie Bogwalker, about finding our grounding activities.

Finally, as I said at the end of the recent interview with Robyn Mello, I don’t know what the future holds or how hard it will be, but we will get through this.

If I can help in any way, get in touch:

Email: The Permaculture Podcast

Or Write:

The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, observe and interact, plan, and take small and slow solutions, while you care for Earth, yourself, and each other.

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