permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Many superb thoughts from people on this thread; thanks. On my worse 
days, I totally agree with Gene's eloquent tirade. But in better 
moments, I differ in many places. The alternative to LEED buildings, for 
example, is not sustainable strawbale, but instead, more concrete and 
glass horrors.

Gene wrote:
> I know one municipal owner who says, hell, let's design
> to LEED criteria but forget about the $15,000 plaque on the wall.
And that's wonderful. LEED has raised the bar, and architects who never 
considered embedded energy or carbon footprint are now aware of them. 
LEED doesn't equal sustainable by a long shot, but it's a step in the 
right direction by a profession that controls a mammoth chunk of energy 
and materials consumption. People build to LEED or better largely 
because the standards are there to see. Without them, they wouldn't.

I can't agree that a PDC certificate is one step short of worthless. 
Many of my students specifically ask if a course offers the certificate; 
try selling a PDC that doesn't offer one and see how many people sign 
up. Particularly in the developing world, it is the certificate that 
persuades a grantor, school, or government agency to fund a student. If 
a certificate isn't perceived as valuable, that's mostly because there 
is no organization or standards to back it. And sure, I prefer to choose 
a professional because of word-of-mouth recommendations, but I'd 
hesitate to go to any healer, whether surgeon, acupuncturist, or 
naturopath, who had no certificate on the wall.  Word-of-mouth plus 
accredited training is far more powerful, synergistically, than either 
alone. A set of shared standards is important, and formal training and 
licensing assures that.

Wes's recommendations about regional organizations are very wise. A 
national Pc organization has no business taking over functions that can 
be performed by local guilds or regional Pc associations. So what would 
those functions be? Referring specific teachers and advertising courses 
can best be done on the local and regional level, as can getting Pc 
ideas into local government, and perhaps schools. I wonder, though, if 
the near complete absence of Pc classes in schools and universities 
isn't in part due to a lack of standardized curriculum, certifying body, 
and all those other seemingly tedious encumbrances that accredited 
schools often insist on. I don't much like the school system, but it is 
the primary vehicle in our culture for knowledge transmission and 
pre-job training. So when people speak of promoting Pc or making it more 
widely known, getting it taught in schools would be an enormous step. 
Many of the individual concepts are being taught in Environmental Ed and 
similar classes, but rarely is whole-systems design taught in schools 
outside of a Pc class. So I see one function of a national body as 
promoting wider adoption of Pc by establishing a curriculum that will 
help teachers get it into schools, and by certifying teachers who can 
then present their credentials to deans and school boards.

But most ways of "promoting permaculture" are best done locally or 
regionally. Getting articles into print, setting up courses and 
publicizing them, creating speaking tours (as the indefatigable and 
wonderful Wes so often does) are some of the most effective ways of 
promoting Pc, all done regionally.

Another function of a national body would be to direct general queries, 
like "how do I learn more" or "what's going on in my area" to the 
regional or local groups. Even with the Web, people seem to find it hard 
to hook up with fellow enthusiasts. In turn, regional groups can 
recommend teachers for certification to the national body. I see 
certifying teachers and standardizing curricula as best done nationally, 
with regional input.

So I envision a two-way flow, most of it bottom-up, with courses, 
promotion, and experience being generated locally and regionally, 
informing a national body of the needs it can provide. In return, a 
national body can offer the oft-derided but in fact valuable credibility 
that schools, grantors, and governments demand through accreditation, 
standards, and teacher certification. And as many have pointed out, the 
whole certification issue is really a means to an end, and that end is 
implementing Pc in more places.

in the US, Scott has much of the framework for a national body in place, 
so I'd like to explore how we here can make it more functional, and how 
others elsewhere have done so.

There's nothing to stop anyone who doesn't like certification, etc, from 
learning, teaching, and practicing Pc, and I'd hate to see a police 
force emerge that threatened that. But the benefits of a formal path of 
advancement and accreditation look to me to be immense, with few and 
easily identified risks. It's a pattern that is well known and highly 
effective. I'm sure we could develop our own variant.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com