As we enter our second decade in service to the permaculture community in North America and Hawaii, we want to spotlight the developmental dynamic of this labor of love. As PINA continues to evolve, we need your support to grow. All ecosystems go through succession: PINA in its relationship to the larger community, is no exception.
Permaculture was created and has been carried on in the face of global biodiversity loss, cultural extinction, and climate change, the impacts of which are only beginning to be understood now. PINA began with educational standards and practice, but we recognize we need to do more. PINA has begun launching innovative projects that address critical needs in society, and is sharing more of these breakthroughs in film documentaries, webinars, conferences, and campaigns.
If permaculture is one of the great hopes of the world, then we can’t afford to lose it—and make no mistake—it doesn’t exist outside the minds and hearts of its practitioners, save in a precious few books, vulnerable films, and a plethora of unstable electrons, subject to disinformation and drift at every turn. It won’t be propagated by billionaires; it’s not yet embedded in government policy. We have to do it. We have to plant it, grow it, and talk about it. And that takes complex social capital and invisible structures. Each-one-teach-one was a great start, and we need new tools today.
Filming “The Global Gardener” for Australian Broadcasting, Mollison unearthed traces of the swales built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the US Southwest in the 1930s under Roosevelt—still functioning earthworks, but relegated to obscurity. Will the good works of Permaculture be visible and functional in a hundred years if there are no vetted docents to reveal them, no educators to train the eyes to see, no land trusts to steward them, no scholars or researchers to trace the movement of ideas, seeds, or the unfolding of new biology? Indeed, can ecosystems hope to adapt to rapid climate change without more sympathetic and informed human helpers? PINA is an expression of faith in a future where permaculture is as common, and as vital, as the air we breathe. We don’t want to leave this to chance.
Indispensable ideas, like the sanctity of living beings and conscience, embodied in many great spiritual traditions, do not survive for millennia without institutional foundations. What can we do now to ensure that the insights we have gained in Pc will survive the turmoil of coming decades? How can we empower the youth, the entrepreneurs, the collectives to grow healthy base communities, libraries, living cultural landscapes with a dynamic of inclusion that creates a wave of new practice? With your support, PINA can provide the mycelial support to advance all of these things.
We believe change takes place first in culture, then it enters economies, and from there it influences politics. Our perma-culture is one that honors individuals, small groups, and which empowers local communities everywhere to take back their sovereignty and destiny from totalizing and soulless forces hurting our precious blue planet. Working alongside indigenous communities who have been in this fight for centuries we can help provide the force to ensure that our contribution to the mission moves forward for the benefit of all creatures.
We plan to expand our efforts to put dollars, contracts, public approval, and other elements of success into the hands of our members which we have done so far through our contests and funded projects. This is a multi-decade campaign, and we have just begun.
PINA continues to reinvent itself to become ever more effective. We are currently expanding and improving the website, newsletter, member services, fundraising approaches, and outreach to allies and partners. These efforts better and better tell the story of our successes and our growing promise. You can accelerate our advance by helping us fund staff and recruit volunteers, to match energy and talent with mission and purpose.
A small number of us with a powerful commitment of time, passion, money, energy, and insight brought to bear have impacted thousands. From Diplomates, to conference attendees, to students of PINA-recognized courses and events, PINA improves the quality of permaculture practice.
PINA has raised about half-a-million US dollars in a decade. The website gives an ever more accurate picture of our accomplishments. More members are absolutely needed—join today or invite a friend—for their voices and their energy, but especially because among them, and among their circles—your circles, there are pools of funding that can advance our cause ten-, a hundred-, or a thousand-fold, to gain us the momentum we need to match the forces arrayed against life and regeneration. Your membership dollars and other gifts are matched many times over by the energies they draw into our work. We are a still-small but smart and nimble group, and we use those dollars wisely.
Our board members, staff, and diplomates are widespread and busily at work across the continent. Reach out to contact us, and at this holiday season, please give as generously as you can to PINA. Let’s move these noble purposes forward. Thank you.