permaculture

[toby@patternliteracy.com]

Kevin et al,

I do think it's time for a national Pc organization in the US, and more 
broadly, an upgrading of what holding a PDC certificate means. Jedd made some 
excellent points, and as he suggests, there have been a number of attempts to 
form national or large regional membership organizations in the US. They have 
all failed. There were a couple of attempts before I was doing Pc that others 
can speak about, there was PINA (Pc Inst of North America) in the eighties, 
there is the dormant Eastern Permaculture Teachers Association, and there is 
the stillborn Western Permaculture Teachers Association. Principle 
difficulties have been burnout, lack of funding, lack of support, too little 
time to take on the enormous task of organizing, and difficulty in agreeing 
(or even determining) what the organization's function is. There is also a 
knee-jerk reaction: "Who are those people to create an organization?" which 
gets to the top-down issue. Thing is, those who are organizing would be 
delighted if someone else wanted to do it, but no one does.

Questions need to be answered before the process can begin: 

1. What is the function of the organization? To police teachers and enforce 
how the curriculum is taught, to get accreditation or other clout behind the 
certificate, to offer a clearing house for course resources, to raise money 
for Pc projects, or something else?

2. How will people find the time and money to begin the organizing process? 
We're all busy, so how do we make time to meet? And setting up a non-profit 
takes lawyers, a website, and other things that cost money. Do the original 
organizers just dig into their pockets and pay, and take time away from other 
projects that may be more promising than one more try at organizing? (I 
shelled out a couple hundred bucks of my own money for WPTA and it's simply 
gone.)

3. Who gets to organize it? Even the creation of an interim board causes a 
certain amount of resentment among those not on the board. And how do you 
draw committed and talented people to the organizing committee who will stick 
with it? All it took to kill WPTA was for a couple of the organizers to get 
too busy to reply to a couple of critical emails, and the project stalled. 
You need those one or two people who will spearhead and drive something to 
its end no matter what. That really means giving up all your other projects. 
You must find someone willing to make that level of commitment.

4. How are decisions made? As Jedd said, majority rule can mean 49% or more 
may disagree with a decision, and consensus done as a national 
(non-face-to-face) organization would be pretty time consuming.

I can think of lots of other questions. Of course, all of these have been 
answered by the many groups that have formed national organzations, so it 
makes you wonder why permaculturists have been unable or unwilling to do so. 
I think Pc has made a huge amount of progress without one, but I also suspect 
we'd have university-level courses, accreditation, better-funded projects, 
and a better reputation and track record if we did. I agree that some of the 
inertia has come from a lack of trust in organizations, as well as a lack of 
perceived need. Perhaps Pc doesn't attract good organizers, although I don't 
see how that can be the case. Another challenge may be a lack of 
understanding how (and why) to structure a grass-roots, fairly anarchic 
movement into a national organization. But I would support, and even aid, an 
effort to do so.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com