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Friday, 7 September 2007

SPECIAL REPORT...

The permaculture papers

A TIME OF CHANGE AND CHALLENGE - 2000-2004

The dynamics affecting the movement in the new century were identified during a participatory appraisal process at the 1997 Australasian Permaculture Convegence.

Blue Mountains Permaculture teacher and author, Rosemary Morrow. Rosemary has done aid work in Cambodia and Vietnam and is active in her own community.

Assessing the need for change

Maria McGuire of Unfolding Futures, her Sydney facilitation and people-skills business, stood in front of the more than one hundred gathered in the shade of the big tent. It was the start of a session that would paint a picture of Permaculture 21-years on.

First, the past

First, it was time to explore the past. What were the critical things that influenced the development of Permaculture in its early years, she asked. From the audience, the answers came quickly:

• Mollison's first talk on Permaculture at the Cotter Down To Earth Festival in the 1970s
• the ideas of Buckminister Fuller
• Mollison's Tagari Community in Tasmania
• the alternative movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• David Holmgren's thesis at the College of Advanced Education, Hobart
• books - Robert Hart's Forest Farming, Limits To Growth, Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution, King's Farmers of Forty Centuries, Schumacher's Small is Beautiful
• the formation of a national Permaculture network
• the first photographs of Earth from space
• the energy efficient Village Homes development in California
• the past decade of globalisation of Permaculture
• the teaching of Permaculture
• the ideas of Abraham Maslow (the hierarchy of human needs).

Not mentioned were:

• the development of ecology as a science that brought insights into the interrelationship of elements in the environment
• the science known as 'complexity theory' or 'systems theory' with its notion of 'emergent systems' arising spontaneously from complex, interrelating systems.

Next, the key developments

The gathering identified the key developments of Permaculture in the 1990s:

• ecovillages
• international Permaculture convergences
• the spread of the design system
• ethical investment
• urban agriculture
• Permaculture in schools
• Permaculture education.

It was a list of the main areas that had opened to Permaculture during the decade but conspicuously missing was the role of Permaculture as an approach to aid in developing countries.

The five gifts

The following session asked for five key gifts of Permaculture, however the crowd would not settle for so few:

• bringing food production back to the cities
• synergy
• self-empowerment
• holistic systems
• reconnecting with natural systems
• rediscovering and reaffirming traditional ways
• the interrelationship of all things
• models of food self-reliance
• influence on mainstream society
• diversity
• a focus on solutions rather than problems
• reconnecting
• community, commonality, common sense.

Challenges

So far so good - influences and achievements noted, the gathering moved on to the future. "What are the key challenges facing Permaculture?", Maria asked. The answers reflect the concerns of the key activists in the movement at the time:

• the fear of acknowledging mistakes
• social values
• the availability of information for non-literate people
• penetration of Permaculture into urban areas
• finding enough people to help
• nurturing the Permaculture community
• making Permaculture relevant to youth
• leading by example
• developing local solutions to globalisation
• 'walking our talk'
• the development of Permaculture projects, especially systems that last
• funding ourselves
• preserving and increasing biodiversity
• apathy
• affluence
• artificial and easy food
• developing networks to help ourselves
• making inroads into local government
• the social psychology of competition rather than cooperation
• making livings in Permaculture ('right livelihood').

The future from 1997

The final session asked: what are the most important things for Permaculture to deliver?

The responses:

• creation of vibrant communities
• trusting ourselves and trusting nature to provide
• developing projects and programmes to implement the analyses developed in this process (the process led by Maria)
• wisdom
• reforesting the earth
• practical hope
• joyful fertility
• harmony with life
• freedom
• empowering youth to act in deprived areas
• respect
• celebration of diversity
• cooperation with nature
• abundance
• creation of a planet reflecting a holistic state of being.

Idealism and realism

Traditionally, Permaculture convergences have been venues for idealism rather than realism. Permaculture has been characterised by the vision of the ideal on the one hand and the reality of what can be achieved on the other. Maria McGuire's session disclosed the coexistence of both tendencies.

Permaculture had never lacked people who thought big. The proposal to 'reforest the Earth', for instance, is an ideal well beyond the capacity of Permaculture itself but is something to which it could contribute. Other ideas for the future identified in Maria's session might have been a bit wooly in the sense that they were good ideas but were vague or open to interpretation. Achieving them would be a challenge. Some were motherhood statements - ideas that virtually no one could disagree with.

A significant number of participants called for attitudinal change. Only a few of the ideas could be acted on with a project-based approach - the creation of vibrant communities and analysing the outcomes of the programme that Maria led, for instance.

The segment of Permaculture's 'Five Gifts' showed that permaculturists were an optimistic bunch. Notions that the gifts include "holistic systems", "reconnecting with natural systems" and "the interrelationship of all things" disclosed the wholistic ideology that has permeated Permaculture ever since Mollison and Holmgren put their ideas on paper. In those days, viewing the world as an interacting whole rather than a collection of parts was a novel idea. Only in recent years has science given it respectability through disciplines such as ecology, systems dynamics, complexity theory and the science of networks.

Accepting the challenges

The segment on challenges was revealing because it brought to the surface the things that participants saw as potential, but not necessarily insurmountable, blockages to the dispersal of Permaculture into mainstream society.

A few, such as "penetration of Permaculture into urban areas", might not be such a great challenge because from the start of the design system there has been a substantial interest in Permaculture in the big cities. The findings of demographic researchers and the national 2002 Census disclosed that greater numbers are moving to metropolitan and regional cities and into coastal towns, a social change that makes the idea of penetrating urban areas one which is timely and perhaps the most important idea for Permaculture to act on.

"Finding enough people to help" and "making Permaculture relevant to youth" are related because satisfying the first will ultimately depend on addressing the second. It is here, perhaps, that the design system faces its greatest challenge. Young people are being attracted to Permaculture but the question is whether their numbers are great enough to perpetuate the system. This is about intergenerational hand-over and reinterpreting the design system in such a way that it is more meaningful to youth.

"Leading by example" and "walking our talk" are about much the same thing - translating ideals into action. Permaculturists, as they have demonstrated time after time, are not all that different to the rest of the populace, so it is no surprise that the major area in which there is a shortfall in leading by example is in implementing the second ethic of Permaulture - care of people. Implementing this ethic is primarily about how we treat others. Most of us have been derelict in this at some time and perhaps the most practical approach is to "seek first to understand, then to be understood", to quote Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.

"The development of Permaculture projects, especially systems that last" is a challenge that would best be met by including a sizeable segment on project management in Permaculture education. Sustainability, handing over and training, all components of 'systems that last', are first considered at the stage of project design. They are important because they influence the performance and even the continuity of the work. The conventional wisdom of project management has a place in Permaculture training.

Project sustainability is addressed by asking how clients can best manage their designs. The question is about training and management regimes that are easy to follow. Unfortunately, the lack of a journal or forum where such 'insider' questions can be discussed means that they remain largely unresolved.

"Developing networks to help ourselves" is a challenge because, unlike other fields, Permaculture has not developed a medium in which solutions can be discussed, issues within the practice talked over and resolved and social trends addressed. The attempt to shape Permaculture International's The Planet into such a journal failed because readers and Permaculture international management seemed to want a replacement for the defunct Permaculture International Journal rather than a journal that discussed the design system and the issues affecting it. Over the years, Permaculture designers have mentioned the need for a journal that would educate them and allow them to share their knowledge. Permaculture International Journal was a great magazine for newcomers to the design system and for the networking of participants, however it was not a 'learned' journal.

"Making inroads into local government" is an idea with potential. The model could be that pioneered by the bush regeneration movement that brings together local government staff and community-based volunteers. It attracts grant funding and creates local government positions such as the 'Bushland Officer', responsible for planning bushland rehabilitation projects and coordinating volunteers.

Progressive local government now employs university-educated staff to implement projects in areas that have been the province of Permaculture. Waste management (such as NSW's much reduced Earthworks programme that taught composting, worm farming and waste minimisation to the public), energy efficient building policy, water conservation, stormwater management, community development and community garden liaison are just some areas that Permaculture could have played a larger role within local government had it been targeted as a venue for action. In forming constructive alliances with local government, the Australian Community Gardens Network, which includes permaculturists, has demonstrated the possibilities in this area as has the community-based organisation, Cultivating Community, with the state government in Melbourne.

Informal poll confirms findings

When I conducted an informal poll at the 1997 Australasian Permaculture Convergence I found an awareness that change was needed. But as to the type of change, few respondents were specific.

Some had been in the movement for years and even they mentioned the need to mainstream Permaculture. Mainstreaming has been a continuing call through the 1990s. The point is that, like much coming out of Maria McGuire's session, the concept means different things to different people. Some already work within mainstream institutions. Others seek a more general acceptance of Permaculture by the public. The call is linked to another oft-heard allegation that Permaculture retains a 'hippy' image that has worked against its move into the mainstream. This is seldom heard today but it was a long time in disappearing.

As mentioned earlier in this report, it could, at the time of the 1997 convergence, be argued that Permaculture has not made the leap from the stage of the early adoptor into early mass adoption, and it is this that lay behind the call for mainstreaming. People were tired of believing that they lived on the social fringe.

The trademark controversies

For a short time they raged as controversies on the international and Australian Permaculture listservers, the proposal by the Permaculture Institute to trademark its logo and common terms used in Permaculture. These were major challenges from within.

The first incident occurred when the Permaculture Institute, again established in Tasmania, announced that its logo was no longer available for the general use of the Permaculture community. It had been trademarked, the Institute announced. What was known as the logo, said the Institute, was really an illustration made for the cover of Permaculture - A Designer's Manual. The announcement took the movement by surprise. There had been no consultation, no discussion, no forewarning - just the sudden demand that use of the logo cease immediately.

What the Institute said about the logo's use on Mollison's designer's manual was true, however the illustration, was viewed by many as a generic Permaculture logo and was used freely by Permaculture organisations and teachers. Never before had the Institute attempted to prevent its use. The new arrangement was that, for the payment of AU$200, the logo could be licensed for a period of two years for use in publications, on T-shirts and for similar purposes. Unauthorised use was illegal and was to cease.

The news flowed fast through the online networks and condemnation followed quickly. People were angered at the Institute's unilateral approach but could do little as trademarking gave the Institute legal control over the logo. The incident drove a small wedge between many of Permaculture's practitioners and the Institute. It was a little gap that would soon be widened.

The Institute strikes again

The second challenge from within Permaculture's own ranks came after the business of the logo had just died down. Now, the Institute had applied to trademark the terms 'permaculture course' and 'permaculture design'.

In comparison, the logo incident was minor. If the Institute was successful it would obtain effective control over Permaculture as it would legally own the terms by which Permaculture training and professional design services were offered. Trademarking would give the Institute the commercial advantage of being able to licence use of the terms.

In a letter to PIL's journal, The Planet, the Institute explained that they were seeking the trademarks because they had been mistaken in their belief that the terms were protected by copyright legislation. This belief had endured for years, Mollison occasionally making public statements about copyright protecting Permaculture and how it could be used. The endurance of the belief can be put down to the lack of any challenge to Permaculture's ownership.

Copyright protects only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself, the Institute confirmed. Copyright protects Mollison's books as an expression of the idea of Permaculture, but the idea of Permaculture itself and the elements that make it up remain unprotected. Anyone can write about Permaculture and it followed that anyone could teach Permaculture courses with their own content so long as they did not copy the teaching materials and detailed course structure formulated by Mollison.

The response to the Institute was, predictably, hostile and angry. There were a few statements in support of the Institute but the majority were critical. Speculation about the reason for the Institute's action generated much discussion on the listservers, some putting it down to Mollison being influenced by some close to him that it was time to make money from the design system. None of these speculations have been substantiated.

The controversy drew strong comments from Australia, the USA and Europe, exhibiting a hostility to what some saw as the privatisation of what had been believed to be the common goods of the logo and the terms. Online commentary could be interpreted to suggest that there existed within Permaculture an unstated and de facto 'open source' attitude towards its key concepts and content. For some Americans, the incident gave vent to dissatisfaction with Bill Mollison in regard to his then-recent and controversial visit to that country to teach, during which a number of American permaculturists had fallen into disagreement.

Opinion was that the trademark application would be unsuccessful as the terms were in common use. In 2003, the applications were allowed to lapse.

The outcome of the logo and trademarking issues was a loss of prestige by the Permaculture Institute. Afterwards, the Institute seemed to diminish in its role in the movement, though this might have been merely a continuation of the declining role that the Institute had played since the mid-90s. The Institute had been formed early in Permaculture's history and played the key guiding role when the discipline was in its earlier years. Permaculture International, with its PIJ pubishing role, and the emergence of strong regional Permaculture groupings had reduced the need for the services the Institute had earlier provided.

Conspiracy of silence

With the exception of a single communication outlining its motives, the Institute remained silent all through the trademark controversy. Neither Mollison or anyone else representing the Institute participated in the online discussions.

There are two ways to think about this silence.

The first is that an organisation in the position of the Institute gains little and risks alienating people by participating in a controversial discourse around Permaculture, especially if it assumes a partisan rather than a mediator stance on issues. Silence, in this situation, is understandable.

The other way to think about the Institute's silence is to see it as regrettable and aloof, even elitist. Refusal to participate in discourse among practitioners, to place itself above it, denies participants the benefits of the Institute's knowledge and wisdom. It is also a failure to shed light, to clarify facts and intentions around controversial issues such as the trademark attempts. In this respect, the policy of silence contributes to ignorance and misapprehension.

The policy of silence contributed to the increasing irrelevance of the Institute to the main body of Permaculture practitioners. The critic might say that to deliberately absent oneself from the dialogue around the design system is to treat the Permaculture milieu with contempt. In a world in which online communication plays so important a role, to be silent is to become invisible. To become invisible is to become irrelevant.

Controlling education

Behind the trademark application was the move by the Permaculture Institute to exert greater control over Permaculture education.

The practice among Permaculture teachers had been to offer PDC's that included the same general content, much of which was covered in Mollison's Designer's Manual and his Introduction to Permaculture. Instead of Mollison's books, some made use of Blue Mountain Permaculture teacher, Rosemary Morrow's Earth Users Guide to Permaculture (1993, Kangaroo Press, Sydney).

Teachers would add their own content or, on occasion, omit parts of Mollison's material they considered inappropriate. There was no legal imperative to include Mollison's material, it had simply become a default practice because of his formative work in the development of the design system.

When the Institute set up a register of 'approved' teachers, Permaculture educators were unexpectedly faced with change. The Institute in earlier years had maintained a register but it appears to have lapsed. Teachers would at the conclusion to a Permaculture Design Course forward to the Institute the names of those graduating, the idea being that those seeking Permaculture training could be put in touch with local teachers and could verify that the teacher was qualified as a trainer. The catch now was that the teachers would have to cover the content of the Designer's Manual in full. To ensure they complied, the Institute vetted teaching curricula using a checklist to tick off the subjects, one by one.

This threatened teachers who had adapted the PDC to their needs - they would not be approved if they did not include all the subjects in the Designer's Manual. The move prevented the development of PDCs adapted to specific circumstances such as urban environments and developing countries. For the Institute, it seemed that Permaculture curricula was to be a case of one-size-fits-all.

The tradition had been that Permaculture teachers purchased copies of the Permaculture certificate from the Institute to issue to graduating students. Now, faced with the Institute's substantially revised charges and the issuing of certificates only to approved teachers, more educators decided to do what many already did and print their own certificates.

A number of permaculturists supported the Institute, however the outcome of issues over the Permaculture logo, the trademark applications and the previously unannounced arrangement for teachers was to force a schism in the movement, a further divide between teachers, designers and the Permaculture Institute. Just as the Institute had isolated itself geographically in the hilly backblocks of Jacky's Marsh, so it had isolated itself ideologically from many of Permaculture's practitioners.

The Institute continues to exist, occasionally offering design courses. But what was once the international leadership of a diverse and far-flung movement now has little to say to the larger body of permaculturists. Respect for Mollison remains high - as it had through the controversies - and longer-serving Permaculture teachers and activists regard him with affection. But at the time the effect of the Institute's actions alienated many.

Perhaps some reconciliation has been reached. Promoters of the accredited training have stated that the Certificate Four level of the courses will cover the content of the Designer's Manual.

The year 2000 - Permaculture without a voice

It was in June 2000 that the movement was hit with the shocking news that the Permaculture International Journal - the PIJ that had sewn together the web of a geographically scattered network - had gone out of business.

The news was as surprising as it was hard to take. Through its more than 20 years of publication, PIJ had never been more than financially marginal and, in the 1990s, had faced financial crises that resulted in restructuring and job losses. Now, increases in cost brought by the federal government's new GST (Goods and Services Tax) added to the financial squeeze brought by rising paper, printing and distribution costs to finally push PIJ over the line into financial unviability.

Falling sales contributed to the demise and various other specualtions were offered to explain it:

• there were many readers but fewer buyers - the PIJ was passed around from reader to reader rather than people buying their own copy; this reduced sales and income to PIL
• the content of the journal had become less relevant to readers
• the material was geared too far towards people new to Permaculture and was less relevant to trained or practising permaculturists, an outcome of distributing it through news agencies.

That some of the readership had become alienated became apparent when a long-time permaculturist told me she no longer subscribed to PIJ because it printed much the same content as it always had done. Another said he would have preferred to subscribe to the defunct Permaculture Edge, had it still existed, because the articles it published were longer and more detailed. He wanted a more scholarly journal.

It seemed that the Permaculture community lacked the numeric clout to make PIJ economically viable. Whether this had to do with content or with the financial reality of a comparatively small readership remain open questions.

Just before the PIJ ceased publication, an arrangement was made with Joy Finch, publisher of Green Connections magazine, to supply her journal to those with outstanding subscriptions to PIJ. That might have been some consolation, but in December Green Connections too was to fail, itself a victim of falling sales. The readership of such journals, it seems, was shrinking.

The Permaculture network took the news hard; surprise and anger were both expressed. Something that had accompanied the movement over its first 22 years had ceased to exist.

PIL reborn

The Permaculture gathering at Djanbung Gardens in September of 2000 was told that the board of directors of Permaculture International Limited (PIL), the body set up in the 1980s to publish PIJ after Robyn Francis took over editorship from Terry White, had decided to keep the organisation going, not least because shutting it down would have been expensive, it was explained.

The PIL member's meeting approved the closure while confirming that a major part of the PIL mission should continue to be networking. Consequently, a new website, a print newsletter - The Planet - and the setting up of an email listserver through which the movement could talk to itself was planned.

I had joined the PIL board of management at the meeting and made these things my goals for the coming year. On my return to Sydney, my partner Fiona and I set up the website which, in 2002, PIL decided to resume control over. We had talks with Cameron Little from the UNSW Ecoliving Centre about setting up a listserver discussion space, permaculture-oceania, which is now online. The first edition of The Planet was printed, though at the time it was called Off The Planet, a title pushed by a PIL board member and Nimbin resident. At the meeting I accepted the title unhappily - a small majority of the board voted for it - because it seemed to me a little too cosmic for the readership and not suitable for a 'serious' industry journal.

In late 2002 or early 2003, the Canadian organisation Permaworld offered PIL a financial lifeline. They would donate funds derived from their marketing operation. The first tranche, in excess of AU$20 000, was used to hire an office manager whose first task was to make sense of the dysfunctional membership database that had been set up to administer PIJ subscribers and to sort and package a large stock of remnant editions of PIJ.

PIL management later took over the PIL website without informing those who were maintaining it; PIL's assumption of control was only discovered when those maintaining it tried to upload content - PIL had changed the password. Not long after, The Planet newsletter, too, was taken from Sydney and centralised in Nimbin. This was explicable in the context of PIL's re-centralisation of its operations in that town but it was ironic because, in 2000, a senior PIL officer had suggested that PIL could be run by a group from another city, perhaps Sydney.

By late 2000, PIL was set on a new course although its destination remained somewhat vague.

Planning the new course

A gathering took place in Nimbin a year later at which the process of setting up a nationally-accredited course in permaculture design was started.

The course was to be offered in modules, would be much longer than the conventional PDC and offer a certificate that is recognised nationally as vocational training. The new course would not replace the PDC, PIL board members asserted, which would still be available for general interest students. The course was formally approved in 2003 and subjects in the existing PDC may count as recognised prior learning.

A future unformed

The first years of the new decade have been a troubled time for Permaculture in Australia. The trademark issues, a controversy over teaching and the curricula, the loss of PIJ and, late in 2003, Permaculture International's loss of Permaworld funding (reportedly because it was being spent on office staff and facilities rather than on applied work) have only been partially offset by the news that the accredited course has become reality.

Those closely involved in developing the new course structure and content are optimistic and teachers are now offering PDC's that will be counted as prior learning, however a few people with long standing in Permaculture have said privately that more than a new course will be needed to revive Permaculture.

Although the late-1990s had seen a slowing of the pace at which Permaculture developed compared to the first half of that decade, the opening years of the new century brought hope that PIL and the new, accredited course would bring a resurgence in Permaculture's fortunes. Whether this is to eventuate remains to be seen and may not be known for some years after the new course is first offered. Time will be needed to get past what may be an initial hump of interest in doing the course and to see whether numbers are sustained over a longer period. Several years will be needed to discern a trend.