For me permaculture is the ultimate collaboration and when I discovered it in 1991 it was the biggest aha of my life. In that moment I realized that there is something that we can call the way that I think. The first step for me was understanding the collaboration that we can have (if we choose) with nature. And really if we look at it in depth it is a collaboration that nature has that we can either pick up on or not. Mother nature’s collaborations are always there IF we choose to pick up on them.
I have said for decades that competition is killing the planet. All the ways we as humans compete with each other and with nature is making a devastating impact on our ecosystem and ultimately our humanness. Collaboration is what in many ways nature does with itself every day – what could we learn from that? The next step of my collaboration journey was to look to see how effectively we could collaborate with each other. What can we do as a community – big and small to work together to build positive happy relationships that cause change?
Enter the Permaculture Institute of North America. Which I first heard about a few years ago when Toby Hemenway was on the board and more recently last year when PINA hosted their North American Leadership Summit. With both, I really felt as though PINA was working collaboratively to bring change and up level the permaculture conversation. I love that PINA is working to grant diplomas in several areas of study – including media, and offering the design contest to help bring together our collective ideas and show them off.
If we are going to make it moving into the future as a human race we need to learn from this. I am excited that PINA is here, working on the infrastructure to bring us together to move the permaculture conversation forward.
Greg Peterson
2021