Permaculture and Transition


Permaculture and Transition 

-By Jordan Bober 



Permaculture - if you have been active in Village Vancouver or any other Transition initiative around the world, chances are you have come across this term more than once. Many students of permaculture find themselves naturally drawn to the Transition movement, and those who become active in Transition often find themselves sooner or later drawn to permaculture. Did you know, for example, that over half of Village Vancouver's board members either have/are currently studying for the internationally recognised Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) or have participated in other Permaculture courses?



But what is permaculture, and what links it so strongly to the Transition movement?

For many, the word "permaculture" evokes images of carefully planned vegetable gardens. Indeed, permaculture as it was originally conceived by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970's was coined to refer to "permanent agriculture", and had primarily to do with an agricultural design methodology that recognises the interconnectedness of all things, and the fact that all elements of an agricultural space interact as a system around energy flows. By analysing those energy flows, the permaculture designer can connect the various elements of the agricultural system in ways that create beneficial relationships between them. In an agricultural context, permaculture principles are reflected in such practices as companion planting (planting different plants that complement each other's needs in close proximity to one another), rainwater catchment systems as well as systems designed to conserve water in the soil, the recycling of organic wastes back into the soil, optimal use of sunlight, and much more. 

Agriculture continues to be the main application of permaculture design, which is increasingly applicable to urban agriculture where land, sunlight, soil and water can be scarce resources that permaculture principles help to make the best possible use of. However, permaculture has expanded definitively beyond the agricultural realm and its principles can be applied to any system: a garden, a household, a business, an economy or a society. Today, the word "permaculture" is usually interpreted as referring to "permanent culture".



Permaculture Principles

Permaculture is a broad and deep subject that some people go on to study for many years, but its essence can be summed up in three ethics and twelve principles.

The three guiding ethics of permaculture are:
  1. Care for the Earth
  2. Care for people
  3. The re-investment of all surplus in ways that support the first two ethics
The twelve principles of permaculture design are:


  1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
  2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
  3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
  4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
  5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.
  6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available   to us, nothing goes to waste.
  7. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
  8. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
  9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
  10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
  11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
  12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

For a more visual and musical presentation of the 12 permaculture principles, check out the video below by David Griswold and Oz J Thomas!



Permaculture and the Transition Movement

Permaculture has played an integral role in the Transition Movement from the very beginning. To start with, Rob Hopkins, the movement's founder, is a permaculture teacher. The beginnings of what would emerge into Transition took place in the town of Kinsale, Ireland in 2005, where Hopkins was teaching a two-year permaculture design diploma at the time. He asked his students to apply the permaculture principles they were learning to look at the town of Kinsale as a living system and then come up with a plan for how the town could continue to function using 90% less non-renewable energy. The result of this project was the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, the first document of its kind in the world and later even adopted by Kinsale Town Council. This document is also the inspiration for the current joint project by Village Vancouver, the Vancouver Food Policy Council, and the Museum of Vancouver to create a Food Energy Descent Action Plan (FED-AP).

The Transition approach to building a more positive, sustainable and resilient future is an inherently permacultural one. Even those of us who are not trained in permaculture are unwittingly practicing it in virtually any Transition-related activity we engage in, but a more careful study and application of its principles and practices can lend new insights into how those activities should be designed and integrated with other activities in order to make them sustainable. 

Creating a Permaculture Food Forest in Kits Transition Village


As mentioned above, those activities extend far beyond the agricultural, although the ability to feed ourselves without recourse to cheap fossil fuels is of paramount importance to an Energy Descent Action Plan. Village Vancouver's community-building activities, for example, are inspired by the principle of "integrate rather than segregate" and the belief that great things can happen when people get to know their neighbours and others who share their passions for a more positive, sustainable and resilient future. Many of our members engage in activities to encourage recycling and re-use and to discourage waste, in adherence to the permaculture principle "produce no waste". Our encouragement of community organising at the neighbourhood level, and our promotion of economic relocalisation via Transition Trades and local currencies are nods to the principle of "small and slow solutions". 

Some people believe that new technologies will be developed in the future to save humanity from our collision course with the biophysical limits of the Earth. We believe that that technology is already here - but it is not what many were expecting. There are no laser beams, or gigantic orbitting solar panels, or cold fusion involved. The cutting edge technology of the future is in fact permaculture - a technology that draws upon the same wisdom that has governed our Earth's natural ecosystems and allowed them to persist  and thrive for more than a billion years, and that seeks to apply this knowledge to our own place within the ecosystem. 

If humanity has any hope of persisting happily on this planet, one of our best opportunities lies with permaculture.




Want to learn more about permaculture? Transition Network has a page with links to good introductory resources here.


Hook up with others who love to learn about, teach and practice permaculture:


Purchase The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane from New Society Publishers