Thinking about permaculture…
Permaculture: seeking solutions
Looking for the upside of down through the writing of some who have influenced the permaculture design system…
IT CAME as a shock and it underlined the Western world’s vulnerability to the politics of the Middle East. The Six Day War might have been a short conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours, however its influence would linger into the following years.
In retaliation for Western support for Israel, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries turned the oil taps down to a trickle and we in this country and the USA started to live with petrol rationing as we learned of the risks of relying on far-away places to keep our cars running. If there was an upside to the downside it was the first wave of serious interest in renewable energy technology that the crisis triggered.
For Australia and much of the West, the decade of the seventies was one of change. The free tertiary education introduced by the Whitlam Labor government supplied the skilled workers needed by the new technological industries and for the computerisation of the economy then getting underway. It also brought social mobility as young people who would never have previously considered a tertiary education enrolled at universities and TAFE and, in doing so, took the first step from working class to middle class. A technology-based society requires a healthy middle class.
Despite the political crisis brought by the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the consequent loss of trust in the political system, the 1970s was a time when innovative ideas flowed freely and changed the world around them. Late in the decade, along came another of those innovative ideas. It was called the permaculture design system and it was an outgrowth of the social progress and the churn of ideas that characterised the times.
The fringe becomes the mainstream
Years later, when I was working for an international publisher as editor of an environmental business journal, I saw how many of the ideas that emerged during the seventies were moving into the social and economic mainstream. Ideas such as conservation of the natural environment and the social movement that coalesced around that, and its rise to political influence; the focus on the future of the nation’s forests and the campaigns to preserve them; the development of waste management as an industry as the true cost of the throwaway society became increasingly evident; and the environmental and health impacts of industrial pollution.
I saw how industry leaders, here I mean the big corporate leaders, were grappling with the rising political influence of the environment movement. This was evident at the seminars and conferences the business I worked for held at the Sydney Intercontinental Hotel, which were attended by senior people from the mining, timber and other industries. Memorable was when a journalist who hosted a TV program that reported on the environment and science stood up and asked these corporate leaders when they were going to cease making hollow statements and say something substantial. For corporate Australia, what had been a sideline social movement was rising to become a challenge.
With the conceptual groundwork laid through the 1970s and the following decade, it was no accident that the nineties was the decade when the Australian environment movement reached its peak of political power. That was a collective response to the trends of the day and it came about by people collaborating to make things better as they moved from alarm about trends to acting in their circles of influence to change things. They realised that individuals could do only so much, that the big problems we faced were structural, that politics could not be avoided if we were to solve those problems.
We can see systems theory — systems dynamics — at work in the rise of Australia’s environment movement. With the conversations, the advocacy and the actions of the preceding years laying the basis for a public mindshift, the field was prepped for the emergence of a political expression of the social movement in the form, first, of a cohesive and politically influential environment movement and its leadership by the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society and Greenpeace, and soon after by the federal political party, the Australian Greens. The federal Australian Greens emerged from the groundbreaking work of the Tasmanian Greens which, itself, can trace its origin to the earlier United Tasmania Group, the first ‘green’ party in the world.
The development of the Australian environment movement demonstrated how emergent properties come from the interaction of the components of a system to produce something greater than any one of those components alone can create. In particular, how green electoral politics emerged from a diffuse diversity of community organisations, advocacies and ideas. Small groupings scattered here and there somehow created something bigger and more influential than any of them alone could have achieved.
Permaculture grew in parallel with the environment movement but not as a formal part of it. It formed an ideological parallel stream but differed in that it focused on building systems at the local level rather than using advocacy and the ballot box to influence the big systems underlying society. Permaculture advocates used to say that the environment movement focused on opposing those things it did not like, while permaculture focused on creating the things it wanted to see. This was a polarised and binary understanding that in recent times has given way to a more sophisticated view that sees the environment movement and permaculture occupying positions on a continuum of environmental thinking and action.
How did the big-picture trends in society affect the then-still-in-formulation permaculture design system? Directly, they didn’t. Indirectly, they formed the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, in which permaculture was immersed. The question became this: how does permaculture work in a world of big institutions, big ideas and big conflicts? We tried party politics. It was called the Permaculture Peoples’ Party and despite having the blessing of Bill Mollison (who had consistently criticised party politics) it was too much for too many permaculture practitioners. Party politics is not our scene, was the message. The party idea never gained traction within the movement.
Permaculture people might agree on the ethics of the design system and on the principles which are the means of enacting them, however permaculture has never been an ideological or politically unified social movement. This has never been a bid deal. Until it was. That happened with the reaction of permaculture people to government edicts introduced to deal with the Covid pandemic. The fallout from that was the decay of trust evident among permaculture practitioners as they argued over alternative treatments and, for some, engaged with conspiracy theories. Much of the ill-will has gone now. Permaculture people wanted to get over it and move on, and most have. Still, events like this have a long tail from which future internal conflict can arise.
If permaculture people find mainstream party politics not to their liking, what avenues for permaculture activism remain viable? To answer that we have to glance back over our collective permaculture shoulder and look to the past. What do we see? We see people engaged in small-scale works where they live. Doing this is something that many of us can do irrespective of our political, ideological and spiritual beliefs.
What I find disappointing is that the social conversation over these big, important issues around the environment and society leads to polarised attitudes. People take up positions for or against. The middle ground, where exploration and negotiation can take place, shrinks. The argument goes into tactical stasis with opposing groups bunkered in their ideological and attitudinal silos, much as we now see with global warming. In these circumstances there can be little forward movement towards realistic solutions and the result can be the emergence of a stubborn dogmatism. We end up with a polarisation into left/right, either/or, black/white, yes/no camps.
Towards solutions
Some years ago I came across two books that illustrate this polarisation. One was James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (Grove/Atlantic, 2005).
I was not the only one to find Kunstler’s book an interesting but somewhat despairing read. He postulates a long-term emergency characterised by energy scarcity, environmental degradation, economic instability and social upheaval at a time when increasing scarcity sets in and social and economic collapse begin as we deplete many of our most important resources, such as oil. He says that the emergency will likely last for hundreds of years, hence the ‘long’ emergency. The crisis would result from the convergence of multiple global challenges.
His book is not all doom and gloom. Kunstler proposes a route through the impending crisis…
- Localisation of supply chains: increasing the self-reliance of our towns, cities and communities has the potential to make them less dependent on long-distance transit through the vulnerable transportation corridors of global and national supply chains. Reducing the length of our supply chains could include developing regional agriculture, small-scale renewable energy sources and the development of local economic systems that prioritise regional production.
- Reforming food and farming: Kunstler highlights a shift towards a regionalised, sustainable agriculture through expanding low-external-input organic farming practices, supporting small-scale farmers and encouraging urban agriculture initiatives such as community gardens. In this scenario, community gardens would move from being the hobby projects of people who can afford to buy food, to intensively farmed urban agricultural systems focused more on the growing of staple foods. Increasing local food production could improve food security and reduce reliance on fossil fuel-intensive industrial agriculture and long food supply chains.
- Increase renewable energy production: Transitioning to renewable energy sources would reduce dependency on fossil fuels. He proposes investment in solar, wind and other renewable energy technologies at both individual and community levels. Around the world as well as in Australia we see this happening, especially with domestic photovoltaic systems, and wind energy feeding into the grid in parts of the country such as Tasmania. Kunstler highlights the need to reduce overall energy consumption through energy-efficient design and lifestyle choices.
- Changing society: A cultural and economic shift away from consumerism and the pursuit of endless economic growth would come from our reevaluating societal values and priorities.
- Rethinking towns, cities and communities: In rethinking the design and layout of cities and towns to reduce dependency on automobiles and promote walkable suburbs as well as public transportation, Kunstler advocates compact, mixed-use communities that integrate residential, commercial and recreational spaces, reducing the need for long-distance commuting. We see places like this in the older inner-urban enclaves of our big cities. It is akin to the ideas of journalist, urban planning activist and author, Jane Jacobs, who wrote the influential The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The idea of walkable cities faces challenges today from the disinformation spread by opponents of the 15 Minute City, an urban planning model with many of the characteristics proposed by Kunstler and Jacobs. Wikipedia comments on this:
These claims are often part of or linked to other conspiracy theories such as QAnon, anti-vaccine theories or anti-5G misinformation that assert that Western governments seek to oppress their populations. Proponents of the 15-minute concept, including Carlos Moreno, have received death threats.
The conspiracy theory around walkable suburbs goes against the traditional advocacy of localism in permaculture thinking, but presents no alternative other than the continuation of the existing urban sprawl with its car dependency. It also illustrates how disinformation has become one of the major threats facing the cohesion and future of the democratic world. The challenge to compact and localised cities and to the attendant localisation of resources, however, is as minor as is the distorted and politically aligned disinformation it spreads.
All new technology is built with the old. Thus, renewable energy technologies are built with energy from coal and oil, and this would be no different in Kunstler’s scenario. It presupposes the continuity of research and development of renewables and the industries that produce them.
Kunstler writes that people will have to move out of big cities into smaller communities with arable land and a reliable water supply in a favourable climate for agriculture. He sees little prospect of otherwise adapting to change. What millions of people flooding into the countryside — environmental refugees, in effect — would likely do is trigger conflict with those already living in rural areas and boost rural rents and the price of rural land. We saw this in Australia when urban people moved from the cities during the Covid pandemic. There is also the question of livelihoods and of meeting their basic needs of food, shelter, water, personal security and healthcare — just how would these urban refugees live in the countryside? And would local and state government have the resources to provide urban infrastructure like sanitation, water, schools, hospitals and roads to accommodate this influx of people at the same time that the economy was in decline? Kunstler’s is not a good solution.
Kunstler’s ideas were gaining traction when his book was published in 2005. Now, almost 20 years later, they are shared by those seeking a route to a better future and to reducing the impacts of a warming climate.
David Holmgren’s future scenarios
I found parallels in Kunstler’s thinking about the possibility of collapse with those of David Holmgren, the co-originator, with Bill Mollison, of the permaculture design system. David set his ideas down in a book published in 2009, Future scenarios: how communities can adapt to peak oil and climate change (2009, David Holmgren; Chelsea Green UK. ISBN-10: 1900322501). Among the scenarios were some rather dismal ones about the decline of technological civilisation.
Let’s summarise David’s four scenarios for the future of a world beset by a shortfall in oil-based liquid fuels compounded by climate change:
Scenario — Brown Tech: Available energy declines over time, the shortfalls triggering centralised political control and the continuation of polluting industry that worsens its present-day impacts. Riffing on David’s brown tech future I see a real possibility for the emergence of authoritarian capitalism as the situation goes into steep decline. This is a scenario for social conflict, fragmentation and poverty.
Scenario — Green Tech: This is a strong reformist response to climate change and catabolic rather than apocalyptic collapse. It is built on renewable energy and sustainable practices. We see elements of this within our present economy, especially in the adoption at the domestic and industrial scales of renewable energy systems and accompanying trends such as the uptake of electrical vehicles and regenerative agriculture. The scenario encompasses individual and community-level initiatives as well as industrial and government-led, and includes both low and hi-tech solutions. Green tech is the favoured scenario among many environmental thinkers and advocates, such as those proposing the electrification of just about everything that can be converted to electrical power.
Scenario — Lifeboat future: This is a devolution scenario that comes from a rapid decline in energy availability, climate instability and economies, and that is accompanied by social upheaval, potential geopolitical conflict and flows of environmental refugees. Societies face the collapse of their institutions and structure, a process that occurs over time rather than catastrophically. Economically constrained and faced with increasing demands, and unable to sustain high-maintenance social and physical infrastructure, services decline in quality and some disappear altogether. We see a winding-down of societies, a simplification.
People take to small-scale, perhaps partly-isolated communities to survive. We already see vestiges of this among preppers and survivalists who move to isolated rural enclaves that sometimes become communities of the like-minded who are suspicious of or hostile to outside ideas. David unintentionally draws a permaculture analogy to this when he talks of permaculture becoming a subculture of shared ideology and practice, were we not to experience a fuel or other crisis that sees the adoption of permaculture ideas.
In this scenario, expect conflict between nation-states and within them, as well as substantial refugee flows internal and external.
Scenario — Earth Steward: The slow decline in energy availability is accompanied by a strong response to climate change that evolves into a shift towards regional self-reliance, ecological restoration, social equity and the relocalisation of economies. In terms of polity, Earth Steward is decentralist and grassroots democratic. This is David’s preferred outcome for any deep crisis and is the scenario in which permaculture ideas are most at home.
David’s critics
Critics of the book have raised several points that have yet to be seriously addressed by bloggers and educators in the permaculture design system:
- the scenarios are overly simplistic and do not adequately account for the complexity and interconnection of social, economic and environmental systems
- the book’s focus on peak oil as a driving force for change is outdated, considering the advancements in renewable energy technologies; this takes note of how new technologies can replace older technologies even though the older still work and have not become scarce
- the book promotes a doomsday/survivalist narrative that could lead to a sense of helplessness and inaction; a more constructive approach would be to focus on collaborative efforts, policy changes and technological innovations to address the challenges of peak oil and climate change
- the book does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the potential economic, social and political obstacles relevant to the various scenarios; the power dynamics of economic and ideological interests could hinder the transition to a resilient future—we see this in the USA as President Trump actively works against and limits renewable energy systems and climate change adaptation.
The book stimulated an interest in global energy trends within permaculture circles when it was published. That was no bad thing. Ideas for adapting communities and societies to what was widely conceived to be the inevitability of peak oil took permaculture thinking beyond farming, gardening and landuse into wider global issues and solutions. This was partly the influence of the Transition Towns movement that was attracting attention at the time. The movement extended permaculture ideas to people outside the boundary of the permaculture design system, to those who were ready for its messages but had not engaged with permaculture or who were not attracted to it. It brought in people who otherwise would never have been interested in permaculture (I base this on my observations of people coming into Transition Towns at the time).
For a lot of the world’s problems the solution may be to turn around and take a forward step. You can’t just keep trying to make a flawed system work… Yvon Chouinard.
There had been an element of catastrophic thinking evident in the social movement around permaculture for some time before the appearance of David’s book. What Future Scenarios did was to catalyse such thinking in the movement. One difference was that whereas much of the pre-existing catastrophic thinking imagined a sudden collapse of societies, David’s postulated a drawdown, what we call catabolic collapse, over an indeterminate length of time. During this time, remedial action might be able to turn things around or to dampen the impact. The founder of the Patagonia adventure equipment company, climber and surfer Yvon Chouinard, put it like this: “For a lot of the world’s problems the solution may be to turn around and take a forward step. You can’t just keep trying to make a flawed system work.”
I put it down to this book as well as the associated speaking tour that followed its publication, and David’s later writing in his blog, that the idea of civilisational collapse gained a substantial foothold among his permaculture following. In the years following publication, permaculture social media channels focused on sudden, apocalyptic collapse. Some commentators welcomed the prospect without seriously thinking about its implications.
Permaculture is premised on reacting to a slow rather than an apocalyptic decline. The notion that adopting permaculture practices would somehow carry us through what would likely be a period of deprivation, poverty and danger suggests that those adopting permaculture practices would somehow be exempt from the surrounding turmoil. That is an unlikely scenario.
Collapse will not be catastrophic… probably
I share the belief with David that, if collapse does occur it will take place over time rather than suddenly. Unless there is some globally catastrophic trigger that presages rapid apocalyptic collapse it is more likely to take the form of catabolic collapse: the breakdown and simplification of complex societies as the result of a self-reinforcing cycle of decline. In systems thinking terms we are looking at a positive or reinforcing feedback loop that continues to feed on itself as it grows, until it reaches some tipping point at which it collapses.
Complex societies? Our societies are systems and when you change one element of a system it can trigger changes elsewhere within the system at some time. Think back to the Covid pandemic of 2020–21. Absenteeism in industries triggered delays in global supply chains that triggered delays in delivery of local food supplies as well as of industrial components, and saw the rationing of some foods in the supermarkets. Had the pandemic been ongoing at the rate of increase evident through its first year we might have seen the start of that cascading, self-reinforcing cycle of decline resulting from a reinforcing feedback loop. Complexity brings us positive things but it also brings vulnerability. What we saw instead was the system defending itself through government mandating masks and lockdowns, social distancing and the development of vaccines. Viewed in medical terms, society developed legislative and social antibodies to the infection, and these constituted its immune system. Disruption triggers systems to regain equilibrium.
If we look around us today, do we see early signs of catabolic collapse? We can only speculate because collapse is something visible only in retrospect. Does the decline of the UK provide an example with its government’s austerity policies inflicted on the population, the reduction in pension payments, unemployment, urban decay, shuttered shops, communal conflict, Brexit and its consequent economic impacts, opposition to immigration and other developments? Or, is that nothing more than the imposition of neoliberal economics on the economy and the people? Or, is there a close connection between the state of the nation and catabolic collapse?
Catabolic collapse is not an apocalyptic scenario. It would manifest as more like a severe and ongoing economic depression accompanied by political and social conflict as people tried to meet their needs and looked for causes, scapegoats and solutions. Some politicians would promote far-right agendas and deflect blame to particular segments of society, situating them as ‘folk devils’, as we call them in media circles. Groups on the far-left would attribute it all to the excesses of neoliberal and authoritarian capitalism. Xenophobia, racism, active measures by hostile nations to sow discord and distrust to weaken their opponents, and governmental as well as direct grassroots actions to block refugee flows would likely accompany the onset of a worsening crisis. Their own greed and selfishness would make the rich a target group.
Conspiracy theorists would spread disinformation to further their political ends. Nation states would join in, just as they are now behind much of the disinformation being spread around a range of issues. The goal is to weaken societies by sowing distrust of politicians, social institutions (medicine, science, education, government etc) and to weaken nation-states. It is no secret that Russia would like to see large-scale collapse of USA and the UK, and that it is engaged in active measures in the infosphere to do that.
Catabolic collapse would bring lifestyle changes, especially in Western nations and among the affluent populations of non-Western economies. A generalised scenario sees it starting with a recession the result of price increases due to the rising cost of energy and, perhaps, due to scarcities stemming from supply chain disruption. Recession brings a reduction in spending which translates into job losses as people focus their spending on essentials. With joblessness comes homelessness. Householders reduce their energy expenditure and are late in paying, or stop paying utility bills, sending utility companies into an economic decline as they fail to meet production, distribution and maintenance costs. Rolling blackouts ensure. People look for political solutions, hoping that the governments of different political parties, including the more extreme, will somehow remedy what is happening. As they fail to do this a sense of political instability develops and further erodes public confidence in government and social institutions.
The situation might come and go, but conditions might not come back to what they were because the overall trend is towards decline. It becomes clear that collapse is about peoples’ survival: food, water, shelter, personal security, healthcare.
The question is this: how do people react?
A positive note among the gloom
A book that inspires me is Thomas Homer Dixon’s The Upside of Down (Knopf, Canada ISBN 9780676977226). Why it comes across as positive in tone although it doesn’t shy away from the problems we face is that Homer Dixon examines the seriousness of our challenges head-on but, instead of wanting to run away to the countryside, he sees the problems brought by the big challenges of energy supply, global warming and all the others as the trigger to creatively adapting our cities and our lives to the changing trends.
Like Kunstler, Homer Dixon says that the great danger comes from simultaneous crises because it is difficult to deal with more than one crisis at a time. He argues that converging energy, environmental, economic and political stresses could cause a breakdown of global order, however there are things we can do now to keep this from becoming catastrophic. Some kinds of breakdown could open opportunities for creative and bold reform of our societies if we choose to exploit them.
What I found intriguing about Homer Dixon’s book when I first picked it up was the subtitle — ‘catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilization’. It was a hopeful title that opens a path to civilisational reinvention.
Homer Dixon proposes a range of initiatives to set us on that ‘renewal of civilisation’:
- Innovation and creativity: These are requirements for developing solutions to complex problems. He writes that societies need to foster an environment that encourages experimentation, learning and the generation of new ideas.
- Resilience and adaptation: Build resilience that encompasses individuals, communities and nations. He argues that societies should focus on enhancing their adaptive capacity to effectively respond to and recover from disruptions and crises.
- Distributed decision-making: Centralised decision-making structures are sluggish, unresponsive and bureaucratic, especially in times of crisis when demands are many and different sectors of society are pushing their own agendas. Homer-Dixon advocates decentralised decision-making processes that empower local communities to take action and make decisions that are relevant to their specific circumstances. He does not mention it, but a polity for making that happen was described by Murray Bookchin in the 1990s, which he called ‘civic libertarianism’.
- Effective resource management: Effective, equitable and sustainable resource management is a means to mitigate risks and build resilience. Homer-Dixon emphasises the need to avoid unsustainable practices that deplete natural resources and contribute to environmental degradation.
- Social cohesion and cooperation: Homer-Dixon highlights the significance of social cohesion and cooperation in times of crisis. He argues that building strong social networks, fostering trust and promoting cooperation among individuals and communities is essential for effective crisis response and recovery. With today’s social and political polarisation—which is the outcome of the plague of disinformation about matters political, social, scientific and technological—gaining broad cooperation is going to be difficult.
- Reducing inequality in society: The book discusses the relationship between social inequality and vulnerability to crises. Homer-Dixon says that reducing inequality can contribute to greater social stability and resilience.
Homer Dixon doesn’t itemise specific ways by which we can creatively respond to change but I imagine that those ways are what some of us are already engaged in within our social groups and communities. What Homer Dixon does offer, however, is a useful summary of the challenges we face and the motivation that comes with knowing that we can adapt.
We can see a convergence of direction and strategy between Kunstler and Homer Dixon that could be better-incorporated in the permaculture design system. This leaves us with the stepping stones of what we need to do to address contemporary challenges and the possibility of social, economic and environmental collapse. What is needed is a way to place those stepping stones into an order that will allow us to walk along them towards effective solutions.
Taking action
This brings us to the question of how we take action in our lives. A key to taking creative action and making it achievable is to understand where in life we can act.
Act in circles
Imagine each of us as an individual in society. Where do we act?
The first place is within our circle of control. This includes our values, beliefs and actions and it focuses on our personal lives and that of our families. It might be the food choices we make and the people we surround ourselves with. It is our attitudes and behaviours such as how we treat others.
Immediately around us are people and circumstances in our circle of influence—our workplace, our neighbourhoods and the community groups we participate in—areas where we have even some small measure of influence.
But we are more than individuals surrounded by a limited circle of the relationships that we can influence. We are immersed in the the big systems in society, things we as individuals cannot influence by ourselves. This circle of concern wraps around our circle of influence. Imagine yourself as a dot in your circle of control with a circle of influence around you that is wrapped in a broader circle of concern. This larger circle becomes our circle of action when we choose to take that.
The philosophy of Stoicism teaches us that the only things we have true control over are our thoughts, beliefs, behaviour and actions. But how do we exert influence in our circle of concern, those bigger trends and things beyond our immediate, personal influence?
The answer to this is called collaboration. It is the joining together, it is the cooperating with others to move positive change from good idea to reality. It is one reason that Bill Mollison listed cooperation as a key permaculture principle.
Where are we now?
Where are we today in all of this? We continue to see local initiatives:
- the number of community gardens in our towns and cities where people come together to grow some of their food has multiplied
- we see innovation in the food supply chain with organisations creating farmer-direct-to-eater markets
- we see a strong social movement around adaptation to climate change and the winding down fossil fuel industries
- at the same time the use of renewable energy systems is rapidly growing, evident in the massive uptake of domestic photovoltaic systems with (in Australia) a 2022 rooftop generating capacity of 18,200MW from around 3.3 million installed systems — roughly one in three suitable households now has solar PV panels, the highest coverage of solar in the world according to the Clean Energy Regulator.
There are many examples of people acting and collaborating within their circle of concern to create something new and innovative that brings positive gains for themselves and their families. Isn’t this what permaculture is all about?
That is how we develop those creative solutions that Thomas Homer Dixon speaks of when he says there can be an upside to down, that what could be catastrophe could be renewal. The problems of global warming, environmental degradation and social disintegration become the solutions triggering the building of an adaptive and resilient economy and society. The problem becomes its own solution.
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way… Marcus Aurelius
