New Designers Club

New Designers Club

B. Mollison

The total body of Permaculture graduates (“us”) is as large as a small country, but is thinly scattered over all continents and many islands. Our works, in total, have influenced the design of farmlands, nature reserves, landscapes, and townscapes.

We have accumulated hundreds of species lists for the purpose of planting drylands, cliff tops, marshes, ponds, and special forage systems. Even a small farm needs bee, chicken, wallaby, sheep, and perhaps horse or mule browse. Certainly, forage cut for a milk cow or buffalo; for mulch and compost.

We are faced today by a global deterioration of air quality, a lack of rain, deforestation for “packing” and “mulch”, and enormous waste piles of newsprint, cardboard, and sawdust which were once forests. Desertification, in the sense of falling yields, is everywhere common place. Peoples are forced to abandon flooded atolls, coasts, and drylands. All these troubles were foreseen, but do not form part of the expertise, or even the ignorance of politicians. They prefer not to face up to problems.

The safest route, politically, is to not act. No action, no blame. So we see the “non-response” to the disasters of hurricanes, floods, drought, and even food shortages. At the same time, widespread and active fund-raising for elections (to support new incompetents).

We see roads, rail lines, sea defences, and water storages all neglected or abandoned to rising sea level, although real estate sales are already heavily influenced by the effects of rising sea levels and creeping deserts. Problems that we face daily are, or seem to be, of little worry to our politicians, or to many city dwellers.

Despite my own distaste for politics (and all parties have failed to face up to reality, and take action) I am at last forced to realise that we may need (truly need) a Permaculture Party; for we are trained to foresee, to act, and to cope with disaster; we are not trained to avoid action! All graduates should assemble material for articles in publications, radio programmes, and documentaries for television. We must join forces with other like groups, and create new initiatives.

At this Institute (founded 1978/9) we are initiating a “New Designers Club”, around which we can all gather, contribute, and use our multiple expertise. We hope for, and expect, thousands of you to join this club, to talk about it, to contribute, and to support it. Our motto has always been “The field lies open to the intellect”. Not The field is for neglect or exploitation! Let us take a lead in facing and averting disaster; it seems nobody else will do it.

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