In June 2005 Margie Bushman and Wes Roe of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network attended the International Permaculture Convergence 7. The Convergence was a time for the Permaculture Community around the world to come together to celebrate the amazing projects and people, deal with conflicts and resolve ongoing problems. The maturity of any organization is to evolve beyond it’s creators as Peter Bane, Editor of the Permaculture Activist Magazine (www.permacultureactivist.net), states: “Organisms and communities emerged to serve higher functions. It’s time for us to get in step with evolution.”


Meeting for the first time in nine years, the International Permaculture Convergence drew over 100 designers, teachers, and graduates from 20 countries to the Istrian hill town of Motovun. Jointly coordinated by the Permaculture Institute of Europe and a network of Croatian permaculture activists, the 7th session of Permaculture’s governing body was marked by reports of inspiring accomplishment and exciting new initiatives.

Together at IPC for the first time since its inception in Australia in 1984, Permaculture’s co-authors David Holmgren and Bill Mollison brought the movement’s increasingly sophisticated understandings and its sobering future into sharp contrast with the turbulent but creative history of its rise to prominence. Recapitulating for newcomers the origins of permaculture in the urgent 1972 Club of Rome warnings about impending world resource limits, Bill Mollison opened the Convergence’s series of lectures by reminding the audience that the design system he helped codify would be judged by its practical outcomes. He went on to demonstrate an abiding faith in anger as the driving force behind earth repair, doing his best to provoke it in a group more disposed to shower him with praise and gratitude for a career of heroic achievement.

In a talk delivered the following day, David Holmgren, permaculture’s junior co-originator and a voice for its emerging intellectual as well as practical authority, stepped squarely out of the shadow of his outsized mentor to assume the maturing legacy of a phenomenon he helped launch more than 30 years ago at the tender age of 18. Consistent with his latest book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David asserted the primary importance of ecological understanding, design principles, and ethics as the touchstone for action underpinning permaculture. “Mulching,” he said, “has become nearly synonymous with permaculture. But techniques will inevitably vary by climate and culture. What distinguishes permaculture from organic gardening or a fascination with strawbale building is its conceptual system of design.”

Over five days, the mixed community of permaculturists from Britain, Denmark, Australia, the US, Croatia, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Austria, Czech, Nepal, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Norway, Holland, France, Slovakia, Canada, Ireland, Slovenia, and Mexico heard seven keynote presentations and attended some 30 workshops. Fueled by espresso and natural excitement, conversation ebbed and flowed across the tree-lined terrace at all hours of the day and night.

Following on permaculture’s illustrious co-founders, IPC-7 coordinator Tony Andersen of Denmark emphasized the importance of new forms of organization to permaculture’s future, setting the stage for the announcement by Andy Langford, a lead teacher in Britain and founder of the Permaculture Academy Worknet, of exciting developments around Gaia University, his latest and now global project. Extending the concept of action learning embodied in the Academy Worknet, Gaia-which has attained early accreditation through Revens University of Boulder, Colorado, and its parent UK organization, a school of international business training and a pioneer in action learning- is now able to grant degrees (bachelors, masters, and doctoral) for self-directed action learning programs originated by its associates.

Langford and co-promoter Liora Adler, a long-time bioregional organizer and a founder of Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in central Mexico, envision strategic development of Gaia U. to empower permaculture and ecovillage activists. By granting accredited degrees for proven field work and innovative projects on the ground, Gaia can embolden earned authority, accord social rank, and redirect financial resources to the very people who are making possible a regenerative future for the planet.

Reports from Prem Thapa of Nepal’s venerable Permaculture Group showed steady and comprehensive progress over 15 years. With 865 graduates and numerous publications, Permaculture has achieved important milestones in that mountainous country. The work of NPG is based on its demonstration centers at Jajarkot and Surkhet, with another soon to open near Pokhara.

Ali Sharif, representing Permacultura America Latina (PAL) (www.permacultura.org), described the meteoric rise of that aid organization to prominence in Brazil. From its beginnings in 1994, PAL has grown to encompass demonstration farms in Brazil’s three major ecozones. The group, which maintains a US office in Santa Fe, NM, works through Brazil’s national university system, and has launched sister institutes in Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Central and South America. Sharif, a political refugee from Iran in 1979, has marshaled Northern money (some $725,000 per year from US donors) along with matching local funds and Brazilian creativity to good advantage. Lengthy training programs for social change agents are incorporating increasingly sophisticated psychological and teaching skills, while funding allows PAL to recruit candidates from within its extensive network and bring them to its Brazilian center at Pirenopolis for up to four months. Their research and development of appropriate technology for extracting fuel from “weed” trees in the ravaged rainforest lands has attracted positive attention and cooperation from Brazil’s military, which, strapped for cash under the Lula government, is also being pushed to add social services and development assistance to its traditional mission.

Brilliant presentations by Trish and Joe Polaischer of their elegant but low-energy home system at Rainbow Valley Farm, New Zealand; innovative research into soil building with charcoal by Harald Wedig, now living in Holland; reports on the Permaculture Credit Union’s expansion from Wes Roe of Santa Barbara, CA; an eruption of queer insights from traveling activist Christian Hansen, and dozens of other workshops kept the Convergence popping with action.

That world filled with stories as the lore, learning, and legends of permaculture’s visionary activists leapt from every tongue throughout the week. In this glorious firmament, Declan Kennedy, Dean of the European Permaculture movement, but now freed of any formal roles, shone forth as the tireless and essential star. Whether leading us in circle dancing each morning, hovering like a bee at each moment of transition, presiding over dinner conversations, scolding thoughtless partyers, or shuttling between fractious camps like a diplomat, he demonstrated the prescience and vitality that enabled him to launch permaculture in 17 countries.

Boyish at 71, articulate in English, German, and Gaelic, the man was an irrepressible bundle of energy, whether telling stories of ‘who met whom’ in his Steyerberg living room, teasing a shy youngster new to Pc or leading (at a run) a workshop on healing people and landscapes (a dowser since the age of 17 he healed himself from a serious bout of cancer between 1998 and 2002). Himself a liberating model of creative retirement, Declan drew the entire group together during the final night’s celebration with a line dance through time. Pushing Bill, now 77, and pulling the rest of us, he wove a wild Celtic figure against the already lush tapestry of Croatian food, Istrian wine, riotous laughter, and world-around love.

Despite small numbers and a long lead time, the logistics of Convergence and Conference taxed the organizational capacities of the Danish and Croatian groups to their limits. Demands for greater participatory input and a basic respect for the enormous energy and time investment of an international meeting both require that we begin preparing much earlier for a collective agenda. The emergence of an educational network supporting excellent achievements holds promise of creating the kind of empowered organization that permaculture so clearly needs if it is to survive the turmoil of Energy Descent. But this will not be enough. There must be a shift within the curriculum itself to embrace and teach tools for building community. Over the next cycle, we must become as adept at building social (and financial capital) as we have been at regenerating natural capital during the past generation.

Permaculture’s genius has always been its cellular nature, but Nature the teacher didn’t stop working at the cellular level. Organisms and communities emerged to serve higher functions. It’s time for us to get in step with evolution.

Reprinted with permission of Permaculture Activist Magazine Issue # 57, 2005. Since it isnt online yet, please contact Wes Roe at lakinroe@silcom.com for the entire article. IPC 8 will be taking place in Brasil in May 2007 and Wes Roe and Margie Bushman are part of an International Organizing Committee, to assist Ali Sharif and Permacultura America Latina. The website will be up in a couple of months at www.IPC8.org.



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