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Friday, 7 September 2007

SPECIAL REPORT...

The permaculture papers

A PERMACULTURE MEDIA

Steve Ward (left) wth the author. In the 1980s the two worked with a team to produce a periodical of press clippings entitled Evidently/ Sustainability. The A2 size publication featured 'bad news' in the Evidently segment and, the publication flipped over, 'good' news in the Sustainability segment. The two were associated with a bioregional organisation of the time, the Association for Sustainable Communities.

Steve attended the early 1980s Permaculture convergence in New Zealand and later published VillageVoice, a local newspaper for residents of Bundeena.

Photo: Fiona Campbell

"There are too many publications", someone said.

Strange, I thought. There is only one Permaculture magazine - the PIJ - and a bunch of community association newsletters. Green Connections had not yet been launched as a national competitor to PIJ, yet it seemed to be the modest community newsletters that worried the commentator. The surprising thing was that others agreed with the sentiment.

Clearly, no room for media diversity here. Just how one national magazine and a number of newsletters could be "too many publications" still eludes me and raises the question of why permaculturists were so adverse to reading, especially as regionalism was such a strong component of the design system and would, presumably, involve regional media.

The mainstream media - criticism and dependence

Permaculture's relationship with the mainstream media has been one of criticism mixed with dependence. The relationship with its own media, the PIJ, was one of unrelenting support.

Those who work in the media know that you cannot please all of the readers even some of the time, and permaculturists have not been an exception. Their relationship with mainstream media has been as schizophrenic as that of any other group with criticism of the media's ingoring their interests and praise when they receive positive coverage.

The PIJ and the triumph of persistence

Readers awaited its arrival with eagerness. Every quarter, the PIJ would appear in their mailbox or on the magazine racks of newsagents. It was one of those magazines that was read cover to cover and over its long life the journal maintained a determinedly loyal readership.

Permaculture International Journal was the longest lasting of all Permaculture enterprises. It played a crucial role in the development of the design system and it is arguable that Permaculture as it has developed might not have been possible without PIJ. Permaculture might have remained the practice of small, isolated groups unknown to each other.

The PIJ had an uncertain if triumphal existence. Starting as a modest subscription magazine, it persisted through the start-up years when Permaculture was an unknown then, in the late-1980s, launched itself onto the vagaries of the mass market as a magazine available through newsagents. This brought it before greater numbers and introduced many newcomers to Permaculture. PIJ was the greatest recruitment instrument that Permaculture ever had.

PIJ struggled financially; its existence was in jeopardy more than once. The publication's continuity was testament to the dedication of editor Steve Payne and the staff and volunteers that produced it.

The role of the PIJ included:

• networking - reporting news of Permaculture projects and community organisations throughout Australia and overseas
• the reporting of news of relevance to Permaculture practitioners
• education - the publishing of how-to and other articles of educational value
• support for Permaculture livelihoods through the advertising of Permaculture design and other courses offered by practitioners
• validation of the Permaculture design system through reaffirming its positive role in the world
• motivation of permaculturists to continue their activities in the knowledge that they might be isolated but they were part of a larger body of practitioners.

Such are the roles of any publication catering to a special interest. The evidence that PIJ fulfilled them more than adequately was the loyal readership that supported it through more than 20 years of publication. Its positive spin made readers feel good. Perhaps its continuity over so many years led to readers taking it for granted - it had been around so long that few questioned what would happen to Permaculture if it was no longer there. That reality had to be confronted in June 2000.

Modest beginnings lead to growth

Permaculture was a modest publication with a feel of quality and an air of scholarly content. It first appeared in 1978, remarkably soon after the publication of Permaculture One and was the product of Melbourne man, Terry White, who would later go on to the Landcare movement. Terry established the International Permaculture Association to publish the journal, the direct forerunner of Permaculture International Limited set up by Robyn Francis when she assumed editorship of the publication in 1987.

Permaculture was predominately rural in content although urban initiatives were covered. Traditional farming system, too, got their share of coverage. Content was often derived from other publications.

The magazine underwent two significant relocations:

• the move from Terrry White in Melbourne to the editorship of Robyn Francis in Sydney was made in 1987, in time for edition 27; by this time the magazine had become known as the International Permaculture Journal; it was produced at the EpiCentre in Enmore (113 Enmore Road, the premises later occupied by Alfalfa House Food Coop) and was the main operation of renamed organisation, Permaculture International Limited
• by edition 34 (1989), 'the journal', as it was known, was based in northern NSW, Robyn having taken it north with her; once again there was a name change, this time to Permaculture International Journal (PIJ); Steve Payne, presently the editor of the ABC's Organic Gardener, took over as editor.

Previously available only by subscription, Robyn launched PIJ as a nationally distributed journal available from newsagents. PIJ had accepted advertising before, but now it became even more important to finance a larger print run and the costs of national distribution.

An early flowering

Permaculture might have been the design system's first periodical, but by the early 1980s at least one regional newsletter had made its appearance. Illustrated by hand drawings and photocopied from a typewritten master, Permaculure - A newsletter on the sub-tropics was published by South East Queensland Permaculture, an organisation with a postal address at "Garden of Eden Road, Tomewin via Murwillumbah, NSW". It was an impressive publication for the time.

"What has been written in this newsletter is the direct experience of those involved so far in establishing a Permaculture in this area of Australia", an unknown writer states. "Everyone's experience would be clearly appreciated so we can compile a network of practical design in action. Many words are spoken but too few words are put into action", the writed concludes before inviting submissions.

Nothing more is heard of the publication or of the organisation that published it.

A chancy business

Australians are avid consumers of magazines but the small population makes magazine publishing a chancy business. It is a challenge to build a substantial subscriber base and to generate a high level of sales through newsagents.

Based in Lismore as of the late-1980s, PIJ would struggle as a financially-marginal publication for years. There was more than one financial crisis that saw the shedding of paid staff. Robert Rosen, who had been associated with Earthbank and the ethical investment industry, was called in to financially restructure the publication.

In the 90s PIJ underwent a facelift to modernise its presentation, something that was needed to move away from its previously crammed appearance. Curiously, many readers were happier with the earlier layout, indicating, perhaps, a conservative streak in the readership.

This conservative streak came to the fore when Steve published an article that many saw as having nothing to do with Permaculture. The story was about the fast food corporation Mc Donalds and their attempt to supress the activities of a group of critics in London. This resulted in a trial which enjoyed high profile at the time. The story was placed as a lead item in the magazine but condemnation followed quickly - this was not Permaculture, said the critics. Others disagreed, however the critics were the most vociferous.

The criticism sheds an interesting light on Permaculture people and their belief as to what their design system is made up of. Many would consider the trial of interest because it dealt with the food supply, something of a focus, even an obsession, in Permaculture, yet here was a part of the readership with a narrower view of what was and was not Permaculture. Their objection may have indicated how Permaculture was perceived or may have reflected the disdain permaculturists held towards politics.

A little anger, then offers of help

The meeting took place in the shade of the awning at the Djanbung Gardens teaching centre. The view might have been of distant Blue Knob but the attention of those seated in the circle at the year-2000 PIL annual meeting was on Robyn Francis as she explained the demise of PIJ.

What annoyed some was the lack of information from the PIL leadership about PIJ's deteriorating situation. It was clear that they thought the journal, having been in print for more than two decades, was financially sound and its future secure. They resented being kept in the dark in regard to the true situation. One woman became quite angry about this.

Others wondered what could be done to save PIJ, but by the time they learned of its fate, PIJ was history. A few offered to help revive the publication but it was too late. PIJ was gone, gone for good.

The story of PIJ is one of how a publication can develop a loyal readership, yet a readership too limited in number or otherwise unwilling to support it when production costs rise. Its market, anyway, had been targeted by Green Connections just a few years before PIJ went out of publication.

Preparing the ground for Permaculture

When Permaculture made a modest start in 1978, the ground had already been prepared by the 'alternative' culture that had emerged nearly a decade earlier.

That movement started first in the USA and news of it was carried to our shores in the pages of Mother Earth News (www.motherearthnews.com), first published in 1970. A constituency for such information was then developing in Australia. It would soon grow into a social movement.

Mother Earth News had limited availability in this country but it was influential among those who discovered it. Australian periodicals Earth Garden and Grass Roots would soon appear to meet the demand for information about living in new ways on the land and in the cities.

The publisher of Earth Garden (www.earthgarden.com.au) described their mission: "Established in 1972 and published continuously for over 30 years and 120 issues, it is a forum of practical ideas, shared knowledge, sources and a guide to alternatives to high-consumption lifestyles.

"It’s about putting a roof over your head, growing your own food organically, aiming for appropriate, renewable home energy systems and surviving - and thriving - in the city or the bush, with the inner changes which follow when you’re in harmony with Nature. "

Earth Garden and Grass Roots mirrored and informed the alternative movement, particularly that segment of it developing new ways of living in rural areas - the so-called 'back-to-the-land' movement that drew tens of thousands of urban youth to the country. Both magazines successfully filled networking and educational functions and motivated their readerships through reporting the experience of people making a new life in the country or improving their lot in the cities.

Earth Garden appeared first, the product of Keith and Irene Smith, presently residents of northern Sydney and the authors of books on organic gardening. Within a short time it had been joined by Grass Roots. Both publications provided how-to articles, inspiring stories of people who had made the change to rural life, articles on building with mudbrick and other materials favoured by the back-to-the-landers, organic gardening, keeping livestock, craft skills and, importantly, classified ads for intentional communities seeking members and for people seeking land.

Both magazines remain in print and available through newsagencies. Grass Roots is folksy in its appeal while Earth Garden carries a broader selection of stories, however there is much overlap of content. Neither publication has become glossy or modern in design, again, like PIJ, indicating a conservative readership that likes them just as they have always been. The readerships of these magazines have displayed an uncommon loyalty that has kept the publications going to this day.

In one aspect the publications are artifacts of the period of their birth, serving as reminders of the social movements of the 1970s and how many of the ideas of those movements have entered the social and economic mainstream. At the same time they continue to fill a vital role to their readers.

In this sense the magazines are enigmatic because much has changed since they first appeared. Common sense would suggest that their original readerships would have moved on in life and not have been replaced by a younger readership, yet the publications persist. Whether that indicates a readership of loyal although ageing alternatives or a younger demographic attracted to the lifestyle is unknown. It may be that most of the readership are city people.

Earth Garden and Grass Roots pre-dated and succeeded Permaculture's own publication, PIJ. Both magazines reported Permaculture initiatives but did not attempt to pre-empt the readership of PIJ. Their aims and content did, however, overlap, and in this way they can be seen as inadvertant competitiors.

New publications - a modest proliferation

The journal was not the only publication put together at the EpiCentre. Permaculture Sydney had its own newsletter reporting news and events in the region.

What to call the newsletter presented a challenge. We solved that one evening by adopting a moveable title with each edition carrying a different 'vine' name: Passionfruit Vine, Choko Vine, Grape Vine and so on. Soon, we ran out of vines and settled on Winds of Change.

The 1980s and early 1990s were decades of community-based Permaculture associations. Permaculture Melbourne adopted a food theme and called its newsletter, Permaculture PIE - Permaculture Information Exchange. On the other side of the continent, Permaculture Western Australia produced a substantial and informative newsletter that has continued through the years and selected articles from which have been published in two books.

Permaculture Nambour, in south-east Queensland, was more ambitious and published an entirely new magazine. Called Permaculture Edge, it featured in-depth articles, many lifted from other publications. Over its limited life it would fill the gap in Permaculture literature for a more scholarly text for practitioners.

The Edge first appeared in the early-1980s but did not develop into a major competitor to PIJ. After a promising start Permaculture Edge became increasingly erratic in its publishing frequency. The amount of content taken from other publications suggests that the publishers had difficulty sourcing original copy despite what must have been a large supply of talent in their area. The Edge was semi-extinct by the end of the 1980s.

Later, well after the PIJ had made its move north, a group in Sydney discussed taking over the Edge and getting it back into regular publication as a practitioner's journal. There was a stated need for a Permaculture teacher's journal but the only attempt to start one had produced just a single edition.

The publishers would have been happy to hand over Permaculture Edge but the idea was not followed through at the time. The Edge eventually went to Permaculture Western Australia which published their first and final edition in time for the 1995 International Permaculture Convergence.

Permaculture has never developed an in-depth practitioners journal. PIJ had earlier filled that role but when it went national it necessarily became more a journal for people entering Permaculture, a move that broadened its market but alienated a few long-time permaculture practitioners. The author's hopes that The Planet would develop into a practitioner's journal collapsed with the resumtion of editorship by the PIL leadership in 2003.

Looking back, a revamped Edge could have complemented PIJ if it had focused on more technical material of interest to Permaculture teachers and designers. The readership would have remained comparatively small and it is questionable whether such a publication could have achieved more than simply paying its way.

As for a practitioner's journal, nothing has appeared although much expertise has been gained within the movement. This leads to questions as to why the movement has not generated the demand for scholarly articles and, consequent to this, about what sort of people make up Permaculture and what role they see for it in the world. The Internet would probably be the location of any such publication today, however there remains the possibility that a printed edition could at least break even. There are quite a number of websites devoted to Permaculture but few attempt to publish anything enquiring or substantially educational in the sense that a practitioner's journal would be.

The Green Connection years - competition increases

Green Connections grew from a local newsletter catering for readers who shared an interest in Permaculture and the environment around Castlemaine, Victoria. Publisher, Joy Finch, believed that a magazine catering for the progressive environmental and social milieu had potential and launched the magazine through newsagencies.

Green Connections was broader in content that PIJ. In design, it was modern and slick. Suddenly, PIJ was faced with competition just at a time that it was least wanted. The mid to late-1990s was a period when PIJ was struggling financially and although interest in Permaculture had grown through the decade the question was whether there was market share for two magazines that, although somewhat different, sought a substantially overlapping readership. At issue was whether Green Connections would pull readers away from PIJ. A few PIJ readers privately expressed concern that Green Connections had appeared as a competitor, a further indicator of the reader loyalty that PIJ engendered.

The role of competition in the fate of the magazines was never formally resolved, unless the cessation of both publications by the end of 2000 can be seen as resolution. The final edition of Green Connections appeared in December of that year, only six months after the last edition of PIJ.

The loss of PIJ especially has had a profound impact on the movement. Providers of Permaculture design courses were suddenly without their main means of advertising - the journal provided a direct link between training providers and potential customers. The permaculture-oceania listserv has replaced the magazines as the medium to advertise courses, however it is no real substitute because the magazines reached people who have no, or only a limited, acquaintance with Permaculture.

Support for Permaculture might have picked up a little in recent years, however there is a valid argument that the loss of PIJ brought with it a reduced awareness of the Permaculture design system. Such a statement is based on anecdotal evidence but with the PIJ went much of Permaculture's visibility in the soical marketplace for ideas.

The movement has lost its national networking tool, the link that created the sense of shared venture and community. The Planet, the newsletter produced for members of Permaculture International, has nothing like the distribution of PIJ, going out initially to perhaps a little over 100 readers, itself an indication of the slump in PIL membership after PIJ. It was never intended to be a PIJ replacement though a replacement was just what many Permaculture people wanted.

The vital role of mainstream media

The mainstream media of television, newspapers and magazines took Permaculture to an audience wider than the reach of PIJ or any other Permaculture publication. Frequently derided by permaculturists, mainstream media has been important to broadening the reach of the design system.

The importance of television

Permaculture first came to public attention through the mainstream media in a 1989 documentary about Bill Mollison entitled In Grave Danger of Falling Food. Around the time another video production was broadcast on the ABC, this one part of the Heartlands series that focused on ethical investment. The broadcasts stimulated interest, as did the broadcast on the ABC years later of the four-part production, The Global Gardener. Produced by Julian Russell and Tony Gailey and featuring Permaculture enterprise around the world, Global Gardener was broadcast by the ABC in 1989 and subsequently sold on videotape. It was re-broadcast twice in subsequent years.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of Global Gardener to the Permaculture movement. It took the design system into the living rooms of thousands and did much to boost interest by introducing Permaculture to audiences who otherwise would never have encountered it.

But future generations of permaculturists will never see Global Gardener. When it went on sale in ABC shops the programme was distributed on videotape, a medium now following the audio cassette into technological history. DVD is fast replacing videotape in Australia and fewer people have the technology to play the old tapes. When the present generation of videotape players finally malfunction and when the remaining tapes finally warp or become twisted around the player's tape heads, there will be nothing on DVD to replace them. Global Gardener will be history.

The role of gardening media

Permaculture occasionally received sympathetic treatment in newspapers, but its main exposure in mainstream media is in the gardening press and on television gardening programmes.

The effect of this has been contradictory. On the one hand it took Permaculture and organic gardening to a new audience. On the other it ghettoised Permaculture as a gardening system. The result is that it has been difficult to get across the fact that Permaculture is a system of design for human habitation. This was not the aspect that gardening programmes wanted to emphasise. No sense in confusing the viewers.

Don Burke's weekly lifestyle programme on a commercial network gave occasional coverage to Permaculture but the rumour spread that Burke developed a severe dislike of Permaculture and of Bill Mollison. At the same time, community gardening has received good coverage, especially on Peter Cundall's weekly Gardening Australia on ABC television (Cundall is a long-time organic gardener and member of Tasmania's Organic Gardening and Farming Society).

Generally, coverage in the garden media has been beneficial to Permaculture.

Coverage in other media

In the late-1980s Simply Living magazine offered Robyn Francis a page in which to write of things permacultural. This was a glossy magazine aimed at the 20 to 35 age group of environment and health aware consumers (the author of the Papers wrote occasional feature articles for the magazine). The magazine later changed focus when it found that its readership was mainly young women.

For awhile, Simply Living took word of Permaculture to a readership both green and affluent. Publication ceased in the early-1990s due to falling sales.

The book drought breaks

After Permaculture One and Permaculture Two appeared in the late-1970s there was a dearth of Permaculture books until Max Lindegger published The Best of Permaculture, a large format book of case studies, and Permaculture Western Australia published Western Permaculture Journal, the first of two books of reprinted articles articles from their newsletter.

In 1988 Mollison released his weighty and authoratative Permaculture - A Designer's Manual. This was what the permaculture movement had been waiting for. The Designer's Manual was a natural successor to Mollison and Holmgren's earlier books and represented a maturation of the Permaculture design system. Between its hard covers was information of direct value to the application of Permaculture design.

The manual becomes the issue

The book was well received, even praised, but some points were criticised by people outside of Permaculture. It was not quite a textbook (although the Permaculture Institute later claimed it was), rather a collection of techniques that borrowed heavily from farming practices then in use by development professionals and traditional agriculturists. Also released in the USA and over 15 years after its publication, the Designer's Manual continues to be revered as an articulation of the Permaculture design approach. It remains a respected volume and a scholarly work.

The claim that the designer's manual was a textbook arose when the Institute attempted to impose teacher registration on those offering the PDC. Some teachers treated it as a text but others pointed out that it was not written in what today is the accepted competency-based format for instructional material. Further, the manual has never been updated and reissued as a new edition in the decade or more between its publication and the Institute's assertion that it was the 'official' text for Permaculture courses.

Some of the material in the manual is dated and new ideas and techniques that have a place in Permaculture design are missing. New areas that opened for Permaculture design, such as Permaculture in schools, in community food gardens and overseas aid, received little or no mention. The volume also contains a dose of 'Mollisonian philosophy' including his ideas on the UN. These were accepted all-too-unquestioningly by some Permaculture practitioners and need updating - the world has changed a lot since the book was published.

Drought, then deluge

There had been no new Permaculture titles for some years when Robyn Clayfield published You Can have Your Permaculture and Eat It Too (now out of print), a combined gardening/ cookbook in 1996. Around the same time books from the UK became available in Australia. Then the publishing scene went quiet again and it remained that way until Jenny Allen's coffee table format case study of her garden in south east Queensland, Paradise in Your Garden - Smart permaculture Design, was released.

David Holmgren followed with an book proposing a new set of Permaculture principles - Permaculture - Pathways to Sustainability. This proved popular and has confirmed David to be the leading intellectual of the movement.

(A list of Permaculture books appears at the end of this page).

Importance underestimated

In any summing-up of Permaculture the importance of media - mainstream and permacultural - should not be underestimated.

Neither should the importance of the newsletters of community-based organisations that have come and gone over the movement's history. With a reach ranging from the local to metropolitan, they brought people together in a community of interest and provided the information that made it possible to take action in house and garden.

Thought they continue in different places, the prime time for the newsletters was the 1990s. At that time in Sydney, for example, there was Permaculture Sydney's The Web with its metropolitan reach, a newsletter from Permaulture North and, for a short period, a newsletter from an inner-west Permaculture group as well as Southern Network that linked permaculturists in Sydney's southern suburbs. With the exception of Permaculture North, all of the community-based organisations that published those newsletters have gone.

Permaculture's various media were the lifeblood, the channels along which information flowed to Permaculture's geographically distributed inhabitants. Now that the main channels have gone - PIJ and Green Connections - Permaculture is the poorer. The print channels along which information flowed between the nodes of the Permaculture network have been severed.

Online communications - new opportunities or simply affordable?

Communication is to the Permaculture network what money is to the economic system. It sustains it, informs it and creates meaning. The design system has always had two needs in communications:

• to communicate with participants to update them on developments and to learn from each other
• to communicate what the design system has to offer the wider world.

In doing this, Permaculture has mirrored the mainstream world in the evolution of its communications... from the first edition of the magazine 'Permaculture' in the late-1970s to the development of online websites and listservers. It has been an evolution that has offered new, affordable opportunities at the time that they were most needed.

Permaculture-oceania

In late-2001, following the first meeting of the Permaulture International Limited (PIL) board of management of the post-Permaculture International Journal period, I returned to Sydney with the job of seeing that an email based discussion space, a Permaculture listserver, came into being. Before I attended the meeting, Cameron Little from the UNSW Ecoliving Centre and I had discussed the possibility. Now it would become actuality.

After six years of existence, the permaculture-ocaenia listserv has proven its utility to the Permaculture milieu in Australia. Participants use it as planned - to notify of courses and events, to plan, to ask and answer questions and to discuss matters topical in the design system. It is now clear that the listserv has assumed the role of networking the movement that was once the responsibility of Permaculture International Journal. The near instantaneous nature of email communication - delayed only in the passage of messages past the listserv moderator who deletes spam and crank messages - makes possible timely communications not possible when the movement relied on print media.

Electronic communications binds the movement into a whole. No matter how isolated they are, participants feel part of a larger entity because they can communicate with the other nodes on it. Not only can you find information simply be sending an email to the listserv group, it is possible to locate various interpretations of Permaculture by accessing relevant websites. Clearly, participation in a computer-mediated information exchanged had strengthened the network.

Largely missing from listserv participation are Permaculture's main organisations (the exception is PIL) - the Permaculture Institute and the Permaculture Research Institute and its originators, Bill Mollison and David Holmgrem, though David posts to permaculture-oceania on occasion. There is an argument for standing aside from the online conversations for these influential figures. They avoid having to take sides and becoming associated with any particular body of though or opinion in Permaculture. Countering this is that non-participation denies access to their knowledge and insight. There are other intellectuals that bring online discussion, analysis and informed opinion to Permaculture, however. Newcastle University's Terry Leahy offers insightful comment on issues as does Ian Lillington from South Australia. There are others who add to the intellectual life of the movement, allowing us to cultivate the intellectual garden as well as the physical one. Permaculture-oceania contributes to the everyday needs of permaculturists as it adds to Permculture as a system of applied philosophy.

Future media

What of Permaculture's future media?

When PIJ ceased publication, PIL kept open the option of reviving it at some future time. But, with PIL's focus on the development of accredited Permaculture training, that is not going to be anytime soon. It may never happen. The moment may have gone.

The cost of publishing a print magazine in Australia is high and the potential readership small. With the loss of PIJ and the consequent decline in the public profile of Permaculture, the likelihood that a magazine would be viable is diminished. Unless the accredited training generates a large enough body of graduates who maintain their active interest in Permaculture, it is hard to see where a new readership would come from.

It may be possible to produce a revived or new Permaculture publication as a subscription journal, much as PIJ started out over 20 years ago, however even this requires money and time and the scramble for enough subscribers to make it viable. That nothing of the sort has appeared may indicate that the movement is not ready for it.

Permaculture's online future

There are plenty of Permaculture sites on the Worldwide Web, however there is no single site with a presence as influential as the PIJ provided in print. Not even PIL's website fills this role. This is why a proposal for a Permaculture Central' website came out of the 2005 permaculture convergence in Melbourne. That was for a content management system-based website to which individuals would be able to post their own material. There are technical people who have expressed interest ii setting up such a website, however as discussed in the section Reconfiguring Permaculture, the need for editorial policy is a consideration worthy of detailed attention.

It is the online world that offers the most viable venue for future Permaculture publishing. A website that appeared a few years ago could delineate its shape. Permaculture Wiki (Wiki is a type of software) is an open-source based website the content of which is provided by its users. Based in the US, the information on the site is covered by GPL - the General Public Licence (that covers the Linux computer operating system, for example) that allows anyone to use, modify and republish it. This sidesteps the roadblock of copyright and is the strength of open-source.

The open-source model now makes possible the production of a new, participatory designer's manual that is truly global in scale but that provides all the local variation of design principles that Permaculture needs for successful application.

Permaculture is now without a voice and is suffering for it. Apart from websites, it has no way to speak to the general public and attract support from that quarter. This could continue until the movement undergoes a substantial revival, however that should not be left too long. Ideas, no matter how good they might be, can go stale.

Permaculture books