Permaculture

Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Permaculture has been criticised as being poorly defined and unscientific.^[4] Critics have pushed for less reliance on anecdote and extrapolation from ecological first principles, in favor of peer-reviewed research to substantiate productivity claims and to clarify methodology. Peter Harper from the Centre for Alternative Technology suggests that most of what passes for permaculture has no relevance to real problems.^[5] Defenders of permaculture reply that it lacks the resources of industrial agriculture, but that there is reliable evidence for each of Holmgren's principles.

^ Birnbaum Fox, Juliana (9 June 2010). "Indigenous Science". Cultural Survival Quarterly. 33 (1) – via Indiana University. Bill Mollison, often called the 'father of permaculture,' worked with indigenous people in his native Tasmania and worldwide, and credits them with inspiring his work. "I believe that unless we adopt sophisticated aboriginal belief systems and learn respect for all life, then we lose our own," he wrote in the seminal Permaculture: A Designers' Manual.
^ Holmgren, David (2007). "Essence of Permaculture" (PDF). Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability: 7. This focus in permaculture on learning from indigenous, tribal and cultures of place is based on the evidence that these cultures have existed in relative balance with their environment, and survived for longer than any of our more recent experiments in civilisation.
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[:3-1] Birnbaum Fox, Juliana (9 June 2010). "Indigenous Science". Cultural Survival Quarterly. 33 (1) – via Indiana University. Bill Mollison, often called the 'father of permaculture,' worked with indigenous people in his native Tasmania and worldwide, and credits them with inspiring his work. "I believe that unless we adopt sophisticated aboriginal belief systems and learn respect for all life, then we lose our own," he wrote in the seminal Permaculture: A Designers' Manual.

[:7-2] Holmgren, David (2007). "Essence of Permaculture" (PDF). Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability: 7. This focus in permaculture on learning from indigenous, tribal and cultures of place is based on the evidence that these cultures have existed in relative balance with their environment, and survived for longer than any of our more recent experiments in civilisation.

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