In 1992 Bill Mollison and Scott Pittman were invited to teach the first permaculture design course in Brazil. The course was sponsored by the city of Puerto Alegre as a protest to the United Nations Environmental Summit in Rio.  The founder of the first Community Supported Agriculture project in the country, Brazilian activist Newton Alano, sponsored the course along with others. This course was attended by many Brazilian and North American activists who are now at the vanguard of the sustainable movement in the region.

Brazil is a very progressive country, with a strong Permaculture Network. In 2000 and 2001 Scott was invited to teach two EcoVillage Training courses, to initiate an intentional community with a focus on permaculture. Ecovila Barus, located near the small colonial town of Pirenopolis, in the dry region of central Brazil, is a project of the Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas do Cerrado. That course included architects, city planners, regional planners, and other design professionals whose class project was to develop a design for Ecovila Barus. Now Ecovila Barus is a sustainability training center, perhaps the most influential in the whole country, with focus on permaculture, natural building, appropriate technology and ecovillage design.

In Manaus, northern Brazil, several sites are worth visiting. One, that evoked considerable admiration, was the home of former priest and present time beekeeper, located just outside of Manaus.

Built in the equatorial tropics of Amazon region, his small house is a combination of floating garden (chinampa), productive food forest and beehive. Local bees are very different from the ones we know in colder climates – for one, they don’t sting, and are considerably smaller. The native bee produces smaller quantities of pleasantly tasting honey. The beekeeper’s family shares their home with multiple hives of these sweet-natured, hard-working creatures. In fact, while visiting their home, one may observe that the beams of the house and the garden furniture were all occupied by the bees, which seemed to participate in any conversation.  There was also plenty of room for the European and African bees who foraged on different flora and that there is no competition for pollen and nectar.

IPA or Instituto Permacultura da Amazonas is a demonstration site on the Amazon river in Manaus that gives examples of sustainable solutions in humid tropics.  Their work has been ground breaking for the tropics since 1997.  Here at IPA one can experience examples of composting, vermiculture, alley cropping, aquaculture, small animal husbandry and plant propagation. Here they have proven that one can obtain livelihood in the tropical forests without destroying the ecosystem.