Permaculture principles in the PhD process (online)

A Permaculture PhD

Mary Loveday outlines twelve points, based on David Holmgren’s Permaculture design principles, for a sustainable approach to the PhD process.

Permaculture is a holistic based design practice which aims to enhance quality of life without causing harm. Given what I think is permaculture’s potential for useful application to a range of activities, I am going to outline how one might approach doing a PhD through the twelve Permaculture design principles articulated by David Holmgren in his Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

 

Free Liveable Cities Little Books (books)

Liveable Cities: The Little Book Series

The following books comprise the Liveable Cities Little Book Series. All are free to download as pdfs.

The Little Book of Car Free Cities
The Little Book of Circular Economy in cities
The Little Book of City Principles and Practice
The Little Book of Ecosystem Services in the city
The Little Book of Energy and the city
The Little Book of Governing the city
The Little Book of Low Carbon Eating in the city
The Little Book of Mobilities in the city
The Little Book of Natural Capital Accounting and Finance
The Little Book of RezoningThe Little Book of Sharing in the city
The Little Book of Smart Cities
The Little Book of Wellbeing

How fast the carbon clock is ticking (online)

How fast the carbon clock is ticking

"In the Paris Agreement, all countries worldwide decided to limit global warming to well below 2°C (ideally as much as 1.5°C) compared to pre-industrial levels. This is extremely ambitious and essentially means that we are tightening our carbon budget. In concrete terms, it means that reaching the 2°C target with a medium probability would allow us to emit at maximum only about 720 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 between 2018 and 2100 into the atmosphere (stand 1.1.2018).¹ However, at present the world is still emitting 40 Gt of carbon dioxide.⁴ This equals 1,268 metric tonnes per second."

Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change have produced an online, interactive carbon clock. It allows you to explore different policy options and how much time different scientific thought would allow.

Permaculture national curriculum in Timor-Leste (online)

Permaculture/Agroecology system in Timor-Leste National School Curriculum for Basic Education

In 2013, the Ministry of Education of Timor-Leste decided to reform its national curriculum for Basic Education. Permaculture school gardens had been part of the discipline of Arts and Culture. The organization behind this movement is Permatil (Permaculture Timor-Leste), established in 2002. This school garden program now became part of formal education. 1415 schools have introduced school gardens, to help  students learn how to grow seasonal food crops that can contribute to the school feeding program, shifting from passive learning inside classrooms into activities outside the classroom, and providing beauty to the school landscaping. Students and communities learn how to copy the model into their home garden to improve health and nutrition of the wider family.

Africa can feed itself (video)

Africa can feed itself: its Potential for Agro-ecological Intensification

This video is posted in tribute to Sue Edwards, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Development, who died in February. From the seminar 100% Agroecology Will Feed the World! Held in Stockholm, Sweden, April 2012.

Evidence library on sustainable food (online)

Evidence-based resources on sustainable food systems 

Foodsource is an open and expanding resource for information on sustainable food systems, led by the Food Climate Resource Centre at the University of Oxford. Its open-sourced resources are developed in collaboration with its partners and supporters. Foodsource's purpose is to build the foundations for this understanding and for change towards more sustainable food systems, by increasing food systems literacy. Their vision is for Foodsource to become the most comprehensive and trusted source of information on sustainable food systems available on the internet.

Permaculture in resilience research (journal)

Designing for resilience: permaculture as a transdisciplinary methodology in applied resilience research
This paper examines the relationship between resilience research and permaculture. Applying permaculture as a tool in research design can enable research to contribute more directly, immediately, and effectively to building community resilience. The author considers three case studies that involve permaculture as both research topic and methodology. Each provides evidence that research activities contribute to community resilience, and that this can be attributed to the application of permaculture principles and methods in research design. In particular, permaculture embeds iterative processes of action learning to enhance adaptive capacity within communities. The author suggests that this may be an instance of a general situation whereby research both incorporates and enhances existing learning processes that contribute to community resilience.