Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
I'm an international permaculture designer and teacher.
My teacher and mentor is Bill Mollison, the founder of permaculture.
Permaculture is a movement
that now works everywhere in the world, in every single country,
and it's connected on the Internet,
we have a worldwide permaculture network.
Permaculture's a system that was founded
because of the evidence
that there are so many problems in our world
that have been created because of the resources
that have been required to supply the needs of humanity,
and rather than defining the -
or protesting the problems,
permaculture defines the solutions
and directs positive action.
It's an ethical design system.
It's a system that takes the knowledge of nature,
the knowledge of natural systems,
and uses the connectivity of the elements
to create a system that provides the needs of humanity
in the way that endlessly enriches
the life on Earth and the living systems.
It uses ecosystem modeling,
where ecosystems and their connections between elements and principals
continuously stabilize, and enrich,
and develop systems that increase diversity
so biodiversity increases,
and biomass increases,
and beneficial microbiology in soils increase.
This is a priority as a foundation for productivity
because ecosystems have provided all the resources
that we presently use
for the production and consumption economy.
Regeneration usually starts with water harvesting systems,
and water is life.
In 2001,
we established the new Permaculture Research Institute in Australia,
and the first thing we did was put in water-harvesting swales and downs.
In that year, we had the largest drought in 100 years,
yet our system, earlier in that year,
had harvested enough water to recharge the landscape,
enough that we'd actually created one new spring.
People in the area were short on water.
Many springs had stopped flowing.
And our landscape started to stand out
in this dry
and difficult situation.
So people came to visit us to see how we -
as we were still irrigating, and our landscape was green -
they wanted to say, "Well, how is this possible?"
So we explained the design system,
and most people's response was,
"Gee, you're lucky."
Luck doesn't have anything to do with this.
It's the comprehension of design possibilities,
and starting with water, everything can then begin.
So, knowledge
is something that all people
should try and gather,
but particularly permaculture designers,
because it's from the knowledge that we gain
that we can feel secure
that we can have a sustainable future.
It's the knowledge that gives us that feeling
that, okay, there is a design solution that we can come up with,
there is a way to work with supplying our resources in a sustainable way.
So,
we can become the most positive element in the environment
rather than the most negative.
Humanity can be as positive in the environment,
creating more environmental richness than any other element.
We can be as positive as we are presently negative.
Permaculture starts with ethics, it's an ethical design science,
and it starts with Earth care,
people care,
and return the surplus to the first two ethics.
It's a holistic design science.
It's not just about farming and gardening.
It makes connections between water harvesting, soil creation,
the supply of useful living resources, energy systems, waste systems,
local economics, and people systems
to create a permanent culture.
It's a system that allows you to feel comfortable with infinity.
It's a system that allows you to feel comfortable
and understand how to act globally, how to think globally,
and how to take a position anywhere on this planet
and have a positive influence, a positive direction to act.
[Go into service for the greater good of the planet]
People come into permaculture, inquiring towards the permaculture system,
are increasing exponentially,
and many people want to go into service for the greater good of the planet.
They realize that we have to work with biology,
global biology, that builds resources
because it's the global biology that we can stimulate
and supply the resources that presently are depleted.
We've had an evolution but an evolution in technology.
We need to evolve a different way of thinking.
We need an evolution of humanity
that sees a design priority
to move towards a functional ecology economy.
The functional-ecology economy is larger
and always was larger
than the production-consumption ecology.
And once we turn around and orientate towards that as a solution,
we all go into an Earth repair mode.
It is a design priority direction.
If we don't look at the way we supply our resources,
if we don't use design,
then we cannot really call our present situation
civilized or developed.
If we move towards living resources,
if we move towards sensible energy auditing,
then we can say, we live in civilized world and a developed world
that has an abundance of clean air, an abundance of clean water,
an abundance of clean food,
sensible, energy-efficient housing,
warmth, and good community,
then we can say we are civilized and developed.
I've been privileged to work on design teams
for carbon-neutral cities,
but I think we really need to realize
that we can go way beyond carbon neutral,
we can go into carbon-positive design for cities.
Cities that are a beneficial element to the global environment.
There are many opportunities in cities, by design.
Cities have shade,
cities have sun-traps,
cities have thermal mass heat gain.
They create microclimates;
they run off an abundance of rainwater as stormwater;
they run off an abundance of grey water and nutrient-rich sewage water.
They're all design potential opportunities.
If we look at urban agriculture,
it's the highest production per square meter.
It is the most efficient and the most effective
because it can take an opportunity
of all the design elements that can be included in a city,
all the opportunities.
If we move to the outside of cities,
we have an opportunity to produce the largest amount of food per area
in perimeter urban agriculture,
with very little cost of transport,
very little cost of employment,
the most efficient,
and the opportunities of the waste streams
and surplus products of the city close at hand.
Outside of that are the larger landscapes of rangeland and forestry,
where the forests, mixed-forest systems,
complement rangeland grazing systems
where animals go through cycles of grazing and browsing,
and complement each other to stabilize the environment
as long-term elements.
Outside of that again, you have the major ecosystems of the world
which have been wholly damaged
to a point where we are threatening our own extinction.
Because the major resources that we use
come from the stability of the major ecosystems of the world.
It is possible to recover very large areas of ecosystems
and increase our productive area from the result.
These are the systems that stabilize our water,
our climate,
and give us the nutrient flows
that make our own system, our own productive system, more efficient
so that we can gain the same amount of production
out of 40 percent of our present area used
while stabilizing the climate.
Carbon is presently in the atmosphere
and a problem is then embedded into the soil
where it is the basis of soil fertility.
So by setting up these systems
to moderate our needs
and to give us a better efficiency in production,
we can moderate climate,
and we can mitigate a lot of the problems that we now have globally,
and major projects have been achieved already,
and whole countries are going into rehabilitation of their ecosystems,
using appropriate global biology
with present technology,
with the wisdom of ancient people,
the lessons of natural systems,
and the knowledge that the permaculture movement has been accumulating,
and is still accumulating and sharing with the world.
Education centers are key to this.
Education is an imperative
that we increase the knowledge
through education of permaculture design worldwide
with demonstration
on appropriate land that is typical of local area
so people can see the examples and learn design as a system.
Urban and rural education centers are both needed
where people can take a Design Certificate course over two weeks,
and then go on to take a ten-week practical internship
where they can fast-track their career to go into service
and help people extend these systems while we have time,
with the appropriate resources we have available to us,
and that are convenient to us now.
The Middle East is an absolute ideal location.
It's a well-known area of harsh dry climate
where the results are obvious and blatant,
and give people a real hope
that worldwide, this can be achieved.
It's an area where people
have lived in harsh adversity,
and where the people have a belief
that one day it will be green completely.
We can do this all now.
We have the technology,
we have the global biology
to give us those ...
carbon pathways of efficiency.
We should use the resources we have available to us
and that are convenient to us right now
to go in a completely different direction
with functioning ecosystem economy.
Thank you. (Arabic) Praise be to Allah.
(Applause)