Wildcrafting and Mentorship: Succession through the Forest by Michael Pilarski, Friends of the Trees Botanicals Anna harvesting hawthorn flowers. Photo: Corey Chin. THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO VIEW wildcrafting through a permaculture lens. Virtually all sites have wild plants in them, though in many cases, they are what we call “weeds.” But oftentimes, the edible weeds in a garden are nutritionally superior to the crop plants. Over time, a permaculture site should increase the amount of self-reliant perennial plants (and volunteer annuals). That way, the gardener/land steward becomes more of a wil ..read more

Imagine a New Way Rob Hopkins FROM WHAT IS TO WHAT IF by Rob Hopkins, founder of the international Transition Movement, is an inspirational guide on how to be bold, brilliant, and decisive for the times ahead. This book is a passionate exploration of our imagination: why it matters, what stifles it, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Hopkins argues that we have the capability to effect dramatic change, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and ..read more

From the Personal to the Publicly Global: Permaculture and Food Security By Rowe Morrow Food insecurity is a reflection of our cultural approaches to the land. Image CC0 via Pixabay. THE UNITED NATIONS’ COMMITTEE on World Food Security has defined food security as follows: Food security, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The definition, in turn requires definitions—what does it mean to have ‘sufficient’ food or ‘safe’ food ..read more

CULINARY FERMENTATION is the transformation of food by microbes. Historically, this practice was linked integrally to place. For the original vegetable ferments, people grew or gathered plants only from the place where they lived, and always fermented them in conjunction with the seasons, always in collaboration with native microbes, always in vessels made from local earth, stone, organs or bones, woven baskets, or local wood. Microbial reproduction is regulated in large part by climate, which was additionally moderated by local fermentation techniques and vessel construction. This interaction ..read more

A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy: Deep Adaptation - Part 1 Jem Bendell, BA (Hons), PhD (From LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES, II , Issue #112 • MAY/SUMMER 2019 Subscribe) Can professionals in sustainability management, policy and research—myself included—continue to work with the assumption or hope that we can slow down climate change, or respond to it sufficiently to sustain our civilization? As disturbing information on climate change passed across my screen, this was the question I could no longer ignore, and therefore decided to take a couple of months to analyze the latest climate science ..read more

David Holmgren at his home in Hepburn Springs, Australia, where he grows 200 types of crops.Credit Ying Ang for The New York Times May 13, 2018 DAYLESFORD, Australia — David Holmgren grows almost everything he eats. He doesn’t own a mobile phone or a television, and most of his clothing is secondhand. He never flies, won’t go to a supermarket and can’t remember his credit card PIN. Such is life for one of Australia’s leading environmentalists, who decades ago encouraged homeowners to turn their forgotten backyards into sustainable gardens and is now calling for suburbanites to go further off ..read more

Make: to form (something) by putting parts together or combining substances; to construct or create. Shift: from Old English sciftan ‘arrange, divide, apportion,’ related to German schichten ‘to layer, stratify.’ To makeshift is to build—from what is readily available—something temporary; to build by layers, combining existing materials in planned obsolescence. The elements, briefly constructing a whole, are designed to return to the essence of their parts. To the casual passerby, our week of Convergence would appear makeshift. For five days, on a rural plot of land edging a shallow lake in ce ..read more

We are asked to take a moment. Lower your hand to the ground. Run your fingers through the dry grass or press them into the loose clay. Pick out small fragments of wood, stone, and chaff, and roll them across your palm. Wherever you are from, and whether you hold an intimate knowledge of your ancestors or not, turn your mind to those who came before you—who are responsible in a literal way for your being here today. On what land did they live? How did they interact, inform, and impact that place? If none of this is accessible to you, then imagine what it might have been. Keep your hand to the ..read more

Twenty-five year old Wycliffe Otieno of Kenya, Africa runs a youth center in his community where he trains youth to incorporate permaculture-inspired principles on their family farms. Using theater and dancing as storytelling and teaching techniques, Wycliffe emphasizes a "youth agenda" to ensure that the younger generation leaves their land better than they inherited it. You can reach Wycliffe at sharepermaculture@gmail.com http://www.sharepeacepermaculture.blogspot.in/ #ipcindia2017 #permacultureconvergence ..read more

by Richard Heinberg THIS ESSAY IS DEDICATED to the memory of Herman Daly, the father of ecological economics, who began writing about the absurdity of perpetual economic growth in the 1970s; Herman died on October 28 at age 84. Politicians and economists talk glowingly about growth. They want our cities and GDP to grow. Jobs, profits, companies, and industries all should grow; if they don’t, there’s something wrong, and we must identify the problem and fix it. Yet few discuss doubling time, even though it’s an essential concept for understanding growth. Global materials extraction and usage ..read more