2 What would nature do? Permaculture principles for a sustainable pedagogy

Introducing permaculture

Permaculture (originally Permanent Agriculture and Permanent Culture) is a design system and a social movement founded by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s. It is a way of designing regenerative systems at all scales using nature's principles as a model to create resilient, healthy, diverse and productive landscapes and communities.

Described as a ‘holistic, integrated practice that can build functioning sustainable alternatives that balance the needs of nature with the needs of humans’ (Pickerill, 2013, p. 180), ‘Its goals and priorities coincide with what many people see as the core requirements for sustainability’ (Chapman, n.d.). Permaculture seeks to co-create a society rooted in ethics of sustainability, social justice, and equity through nested and intersecting action learning processes (Henfrey, 2018).

In her book People and Permaculture, Looby Macnamara states that Permaculture has limitless meanings but some commonalities that help understand it. She defines Permaculture as a design system that:

These are all points that a sustainable pedagogy could be based on.