Chapter 1: Permaculture - the origins (EN)

This concept describes the conscious design of ecosystems that are resilient, stable, efficient and regenerative.

• Bill Mollison was born in 1928 in the small fishing village of Stanley, on the Bass Strait coast of cool-temperate Tasmania. His work experience in different jobs in Australia allowed him to perform long periods of observation in the wild forests and coasts of Tasmania, closely monitoring the life of those ecosystems. In 1968 Mollison became a tutor at the University of Tasmania, in Hobart, and, later, senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology. It was in that role that he connected with a student at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, David Holmgren, and the seeds of Permaculture were sown. In 1976 he published a 3-volume work on the Tasmanian Aboriginal genealogies.

• David Holmgren was born in 1955 and grew up on the other side of the Australian continent in Fremantle, Western Australia, with political activist parents. After graduating from John Curtin Senior High School in 1972 he spent a year hitchhiking around Australia before moving to Tasmania in 1974 to study environmental design with a special interest for landscape design, ecology and agriculture. It was during the brief but intense encounter between Mollison and Holmgren, that the backbone of the permaculture concept was formed. Not all that long after devising the original concept of the permaculture design system, David started the work of setting up his rural smallholding – Melliodora — at Hepburn, a small town in Victoria.

Origin of Permaculture: the birth of a concept

Both Bill Mollison and David Holmgren have an academic background. Bill as a sui generis professor and David as a student.

Their work has always been closely related to a scientific academic and researchers’ approach. While reading their published work, one can trace back the previous authors that they encountered and who inspired their work and future vision on permaculture design. Many of the ideas were already out there, in some ways scattered on a myriad of paths, well before the concept of permaculture design was defined by Mollison and Holmgren. However, the first time the word permaculture in its definition as an ecological design method is used can be traced back to an article published in 1976 in Tasmania’s Organic Farmer and Gardener newsletter published by the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society. It was titled A Permaculture System for Southern Australian Conditions – Part One and was written by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.

The crucial publication of a report commissioned by the Club of Rome and published in 1972 (The limits to growth) played a huge role in the birth of the concept of Permaculture, summing up data and information describing a computer simulation of the consequences of exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of natural resources. That report and the oil crisis of the 1970s opened the eyes of many concerned about human footprint on the planet about a harsh reality: change in our way of living and connecting to natural resources and ecosystems was radically needed.

The real explosion of interest towards the ‘Permaculture’ concept, came with the publication by Bill Mollison of Permaculture one: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements, in 1978.

The Aborigines and Torres strait islanders of Australia have to be evoked. They were already practicing a permanent culture. The importance of indigenous cultures and knowledge for permaculture is clear if we refer to the knowledge and know-how that have been accumulated across generations and which guide human societies in their innumerable interactions with their surrounding environment. Permaculture in some ways has been around for the past 10,000 years in many cultures as a way of living and connecting to nature. Well before Mollison and Holmgren defined the concept of designed permaculture, original permaculture was practised worldwide in regions where western innovation had not set foot.

Mollison and Holmgren’s ideas leading to the ‘birth of permaculture’  as a concept can therefore be described as designed permaculture compared to that original permaculture. 

Bill Mollison himself set sail to travel around the world. Teaching, researching and creating the basis for an international movement that has grown incredibly in the last forty years. Mollison first created a curriculum to teach permaculture design locally in Australia, forming the first permaculture teachers.

The first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) that Bill Mollison taught took place in Germany in 1982. It was followed by many others on different continents.

Mollison also refined its design system approach, publishing Permaculture two: Practical Design for Town and Country in Permanent Agriculture (1979), and worked on the systems thinking approach to design what is at the basis of the curriculum, later defined in the Permaculture, a designers’ manual (1988).

Bill Mollison travelled extensively and connected with many different ecological design projects and institutions. The great force and energy of Bill Mollison led to the birth of an international movement that organised international meetings from its first years on.

Nowadays, over 1,000,000 people are certified in permaculture in more than 140 countries, with more than 4,000 projects on the ground. Although the numbers are impossible to verify, it is clear that the global movement is continuously creating more projects in the most diverse fields.

The international permaculture movement has grown and crossed various phases. The underlying aspect we can trace throughout its history, is that it is a decentralised movement, even if there has been  a predominance of certain associations (globally, the Permaculture research institute of Australia, or the Permaculture Association in the UK). What keeps the movement together is the common acceptance of the first directive of permaculture: take personal responsibility for one’s actions, and the three ethics of Permaculture.

Permaculture design has grown exponentially, and today we can see it applied not only in rural settings, but also in urban areas with a social aspect.

Women and permaculture