by Elena Parmiggiani
The memory of the man who conceived new ecosystems linked to permaculture and changed the way of thinking of millions of people.
On 24 September last year Bill Mollison, co-founder of permaculture, passed away in Hobart, Tasmania (AU). I had the good fortune to meet him in 2010, when I participated in his Permaculture Design Course in Istanbul, Turkey, together with Geoff Lawton, I believe in one of his last courses taught in full. During this permaculture course, I learnt some important things I will always carry with me. I would like to share them with you, because Mollison would surely have wanted them to be everyone’s heritage. He, who participated in the life of so many projects, who taught at university, but always said it was sclerotic and harmful. He who contaminated so many people with his ecosystemic vision very closely linked to natural models and who brought to light for all of us a new way of thinking about the world and living in it.
Using anger to change things
In an interview in which they asked him what the motivation was that drove him to co-create permaculture, Mollison said that anger and fury drove him. He was very angry, about the state of destruction of the environment and the Earth, about people who live in poverty, who suffer from hunger, who are treated as slaves or objects to be subjected to exploitation. He had it in for the international monetary system, ignorance, arrogance, lack of humility, spirituality and religions, communities (also read ecovillages). He had it in for all those who pretended nothing was happening and who didn’t realise how much instead we can do, alone or together, to make this world a better place.
A tough guy, in short, also difficult to frequent: he was certainly a great character, brilliant, intelligent, capable, studious, researcher, but also pragmatic, aggressive, arrogant, strong-willed, irreverent and certainly provocative. Bill Mollison said: “The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or realised by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to allow people to organise their own food, energy and shelter one must lose economic and political control over them. We must stop waiting for power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us devise ways to help ourselves”.
Photo: Autosufficienza Farm
Designing ecosystems in solitude
During the course he took us by the hand into the complex universe of natural patterns that he understood intimately and which he used extensively in his lessons and projects. Mollison was certainly not just a theorist. Born in 1928, a fisherman and not only, at 28 years old, in 1956, he noticed how the world around him was falling to pieces and how it had now become impossible for him to sustain himself with fishing alone. In 1970, after years spent fighting the system, Mollison isolated himself from the world, he wanted to abandon humanity to its destiny, conscious of not being able to continue fighting alone. In that period someone had given him Mao’s Little Red Book, which for him had been quite incomprehensible. The thing however he learnt from that book was to circumvent obstacles, instead of fighting them directly.
From this isolation, in which Mollison tried to find a solution to the problems he had encountered previously, Permaculture was born, a design method for human and not only ecosystems: “the idea is that one can consciously design sustainable systems that allow human beings to live within the limits of the Earth system in coexistence with wildlife“¹. The first thing he did once he returned to civilisation was to resume teaching. And precisely at a course at the University of Tasmania he met David Holmgren, the other founder of Permaculture. In 1978, after publishing the book Permaculture, he founded the Permaculture Institute in which he trained many students. Mollison, being the fisherman he was, had learnt thanks to direct observation how ecosystemic links worked, how relationships between animals, plants, insects and environment were rich in energy and material exchanges.
By creating the Institute, which now no longer exists, Mollison wanted to give a headquarters to his teachings where theoretical, research, practical and experimental aspects of the proposed techniques were present. Holmgren, in remembering him, wrote: “Bill’s genius lay in gathering together ecological insights, principles, strategies and techniques that can be applied to create the world we want, rather than fighting against the world we reject”².
¹ G. Bell, https://www.permaculture.co.uk/news/14748871427497/bruce-charles-bill-mollison-1928-2016
² Fonte: https://holmgren.com.au/bill-mollison-passes/?v=3a1ed7090bfa
Suggested book:
Bill Mollison, Reny Mia Slay
Introduzione alla permacultura
Aam Terra Nuova Edizioni, 2007
