Today, I am pleased to be joined by ‘permaculture’ author and educator David Holmgren to discuss his experience within the movement and what it might look like for more systems to be designed using permaculture in the future. While often thought to be an agricultural tool, permaculture thinking is meant for designing human systems to be embedded in nature - an important principle for a future where societies will need to re-synchronize with natural flows.
David Holmgren is best known as the co-originator of permaculture. In 1978, he and Bill Mollison published Permaculture One, starting the global permaculture movement. Since then, David has developed three properties, consulted and supervised on urban and rural projects, written eight more books, and presented lectures, workshops and courses in Australia and around the world. His writings over those three decades span a diversity of subjects and issues, whilst always illuminating aspects of permaculture thinking and living.
What does it mean for permaculture design to ‘scale up’, and how is it different from how we usually think about growing a system? How will permaculture design change as we move through different phases of resource availability? More importantly, how can the ‘small and slow’ foundation of permaculture help human societies adapt to a lower throughput future as we navigate The Great Simplification?
In case you missed it…
My 'Frankly' series on The Great Simplification is my personal sandbox to opine about topics relevant to our future. I keep imagining a new Frankly reflection on aspects of our global discourse, but then real time events change my timeline and the topic! Just to stay in touch with you all in this time of growing tumult, here I offer a raw take on events in Israel (and financial markets) and an incomplete list of upcoming topics (in my mind) relevant to the human predicament.
If you appreciate The Great Simplification podcast…
Be sure to leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Leaving reviews helps the podcast grow, which helps spread awareness of our systemic situation from experts in ecology, energy, policy, economics, technology, and community building so that we can better understand - and respond to - the challenges of the coming decade.
The Great Simplification podcast is produced by The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future (ISEOF), a 501(c)(3) organization. We want to keep all content completely free to view globally and without ads. If you’d like to support ISEOF and it’s content via donation, please use the link below.
I’d like to add a small contribution which is the difference between design and evolve and the interaction between the two. Design requires an intervention. You make something that was not there. When the environment is not supportive of that design, it requires a permanent intervention which costs a lot of energy. For example, you can have an ice rink in the dessert. It will require a permanent intervention to keep it there. Nature evolves, it is not designed or made. What evolves in nature can only evolve (emerge) because all influences present (seen and unseen) evolve into what is appearing. As long as the underlying influences are present, what has emerged, emerges continuously. Once underlying influences somehow disappear, what has evolved on top of that disappears. Because the supportive environment has disappeared. Underlying influences are stacked and are connected in patterns. The patterns can be more or less resilient. Our human designs intervene with what would naturally evolve and emerge. All human interventions have unintended side effects, because we do not know and cannot know all underlying patterns. When human designs destroy underlying patterns, what once emerged can no longer emerge.
Wonderful episode Nate! Enjoyed every word! Thanks, S