permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

"You could spend $50,000 and the rest of your life visiting all these 
amazing people and seeing their projects, or a few hundred dollars 
now to meet them all in the one place at the same time." Sarah-Jane, 
Star APC10 Volunteer, talking with Cairns locals at the Sustainable 
Living Expo last weekend.

Only One Month to go! We are not booked out. But you must register now!

This is our last APC10 Update before the event, which we have come to 
realise is likely to be the most important gathering of permaculture 
minds. The key themes in this convergence will be transition 
initiatives, engagement with the mainstream and renewing our networks 
and movement's structure. In our extensive correspondence with permi 
people world-wide, there is a call for permaculture to move away from 
the margin to become an effective and credible voice in the future of 
Australia's planning and preparations for the changes that will come 
as a result of climate change, peak oil, economic pertubations, 
migration shifts etc.

We have summarised our plenary presenters below but we have an 
impressive line-up of speakers from around the world, in all about 50 
people. Our programme is a conventional conference style programme, 
but interaction, discussion, round tables and time-out to network are 
vital to the convergence's success. We will be testing our capacity 
to skype in speakers from around Australia and the globe - doing so 
on a shoe-string budget with volunteers. The complete and final 
programme is on the website: <http://www.apc10.org/>www.apc10.org

This is not a big-league corporate event with money to burn, yet it 
has attracted the attention of some of the world's most influential 
environmental philanthropists including our own Dick Smith and Sir 
Richard Branson who was also unable to attend but who is interested 
in the potential of permaculture. A couple of the Branson's family 
members are coming to do the PDC and attending APC10. This is a 
statement about the credibility and reputability of permaculture and 
its transformational potential. This comes from the decades of very 
hard work put in by permaculture educators, business developers, 
community organisers who have been determined to make the principles 
and concepts of permacultue work in practice. We pay tribute to Bill 
and David, and the generations of people they trained, and feel 
honoured to be able to carry the mantle onwards.

APC10 would really not be possible if it wasn't for our sponsors. We 
have built genuine personal relationships with each, and we thank 
them for their involvement in helping APC10 - bringing speakers from 
overseas, supporting registrations from developing countries, 
providing IT sevices, catering and staging, advertising and 
promotions, and of course, the venue itself. And also our volunteers 
and members of Permaculture Cairns who have never doubted what our 
small group can achieve and have thrown their all into making this a 
world-class, memorable, celebratory and professional event. We love 
each and every one of them.

So if you have not yet registered please do so without delay. Your 
attendance, at APC10, is vital.

Plenary Guest Speakers:

Major General Michael Jeffery, CEO, Outcomes Australia. One of the 
challenges Australia faces in the 21st century is that of making the 
transformation from old technologies used in our current, 
predominantly industrial farming, to the new reality that we need to 
be more 'in tune' with nature. In so doing, we need to recognise the 
new realities of climate change, such as more erratic rainfall, 
desertification of the landscape, degradation of our soils, the 
impact of a burgeoning population, the shrinking of the farm sector 
and the explosion in costs of petroleum based inputs on sustainable 
food production.

The philosophy of Permaculture advocates the need to work with nature 
rather than against it, and this goal complements of Outcomes 
Australia. Both recognise that water should be seen as our primary 
national strategic asset and managed accordingly and that restoration 
of the health of our soils is fundamental to the sustained 
productivity of our agricultural landscape.

Sonya Wallace and Janet Millington, Transition Towns. As part of 
Australia's first Transition Initiative, Sonya and Janet delivered 
Australia's very first Energy Descent Action Plan. Since then they've 
been working on a peak oil and climate change policy group for their 
local government authority, and have presented at national government 
conferences on Transition Towns, Energy Descent Action Planning and 
how permaculture can be successfully applied to communities and 
regions.

Gunter Pauli, ZERI - Skype from Belgium. Gunter Pauli is a passionate 
proponent of green development and a clean economy. In 1994, Mr. 
Pauli founded the Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives ZERI 
<http://www.zeri.org/>www.zeri.org/ a network of 100 Universities 
around the world, developing pilot innovations that could change 
prevailing economical business models. A worldwide network of 
business systems and communities could create a hundred million jobs, 
establish social funds and guide economies and societies toward 
sustainable zero waste production.

Gunter Pauli's Blue Economy promotes a business model that speaks to 
permaculture principles. In nature the output from every natural 
process provides an input for another. There is no waste. A business 
model that supports less waste and emissions should be established as 
a global standard. Solutions to problems that are elegant in their 
simplicity and striking in their effectiveness, demonstrate that a 
new economic model is feasible and permits innovation and creativity 
to identify possible paths towards a better future.

Bill Mollison, Co-founder of Permaculture & Geoff Lawton. Inspiring, 
authoritive, thoughtful and often 'off the cuff', Bill, Geoff and 
their families are visiting APC for 2 days of our 4 day convergence 
and will provide the Saturday evening keynote presentations.

Russ Grayson, Permaculture V3.0. Russ kicks off the Official 
Convergence on Sunday 26th encouraging the movement to self-reflect. 
He will ask us to consider some key questions about the effectiveness 
of permaculture as advocates for change and asks how does 
permaculture need to change to more fully engage in public and 
enlarge its influence? How dow we about creating a new Permaculture 
3.0?

Daryl Hannah, Environmental Campaigner, actor and permaculturalist, 
Gala Dinner Keynote Speaker. Daryl will come to APC fresh from 
gaining her design certificate with Darren J.Doherty, but she is not 
a permaculture novice. Attracted to simple living, sustainable 
housing design and wholistic management principles in agriculture, 
Daryl is one of the most down-to-earth celebrities on the planet. For 
her environmental activism in North America, she's rated amongst the 
top three most influential American actors alongside George Clooney, 
Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt. Daryl believes in using media focus 
on promoting ethical and progressive causes and has used her fame to 
draw attention to renewable energy, indigenous people's rights, and 
food security issues. She's humble and honoured to take a place 
within the permaculture movement and wants to understand how she can 
help promote, educate and progress its goals.

Mark O'Connor, Can Permaculture survive Population Growth? Australia 
is set for a population of 140 million by 2100. High density cities, 
where most Australians live, will leave little space for gardens and 
making permaculture a pipe-dream for many. Mark, co-author of 
Overloading Australia, shows how this push works, and how we can beat 
it.

David Holmgren, Final Keynote Speaker, Permaculture for the future; 
understanding the lineage and preparing for surprise (via Skype). In 
the final plenary of APC10 David Holmgren co-originator of the 
permaculture concept, draws on lessons from over three decades of 
permaculture thinking and activism to distill pointers for using 
ethics and design principles to surf the energy descent future 
(without being dumped by king waves). This will be an upbeat 
presentation that encapsulates how the next generation of 
permaculture activists can confidently and creatively face the 
cascading crises that are unfolding all around the world. In keeping 
with the theme of creatively adapting to the energy descent future, 
David will be giving his presentation via Skype from his home, 
Melliodora in central Victoria.

We'll see YOU in September!


Warm Tropical Permi Blessings

The APC10 Organising team and volunteers
> From leeflier@comcast.net  Mon Aug 23 10:39:10 2010
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Paradigm thinking (was Designing a, Movement)
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 Yes, exactly!

I have no desire at all to look at permaculture as some sort of 
exclusive club that someone can't join because they don't see eye to eye 
with me politically, spiritually or any other way (in fact, I'm pretty 
sure that many on this list would have some major disagreements with me 
in those areas...LOL).  I think seeing it as a "paradigm" is a great way 
to look at it because that implies that it's a way of thinking that 
anyone can adopt in any walk of life, to whatever degree they are 
capable of.

I don't think a lot of you folks intend to sound exclusive, but as 
someone who works with "the mainstream" in teaching permaculture, as 
we've discussed here before I'm often a little disheartened by some in 
the permaculture community or movement because at this point it's very 
much a fringe movement, and destined to stay that way if there isn't 
some effort made to be more inclusive of people with whom you don't 
necessarily see eye to eye - some of whom are the very people who could 
most benefit the earth if they knew a thing or two about how to limit 
the damage they do.

Dan Hemenway once alluded to this when he was criticized for (if I 
remember rightly) teaching permaculture in a corporate environment.  He 
said that if you can convince a large corporation, with all the damage 
it does, to move even an inch in the right direction you will have 
prevented more damage than convincing a few people on the fringes to 
adopt permaculture principles whole hog.  I completely agree with that.  
I certainly don't consider myself to be in opposition to the folks who 
are really out there doing it whole hog; I just don't think they're 
"enough" and my own work is more focused on reaching people who today 
have either never heard of permaculture and/or act completely contrary 
to its principles - the people who do the most damage.  And there's no 
way I can alienate them by shoving anything down their throats.  I have 
to begin where they are.

So, all of you out there pushing the envelope of what is possible with 
permaculture... I salute you, but just remember there are people out 
here doing different types of work than you are, and salute them too.  
It takes all of us to do what we're doing.

On 8/20/2010 2:28 PM, Linda Ray wrote:
> IMO "trend" or "growth" or maybe better yet, "evolution" might be better
> descriptives and, guess what, if we make it "fashionable", we will entrain a
> large part of humanity just as a matter of course. Then once people experience
> the benefits all 'round of this way of thinking, they will see to it that it
> stays in motion.