Edinburgh Napier University

  The challenge that climate change poses to humanity and the natural environment is critical and well documented. Faced with such an unprecedented challenge, three responses are needed: drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation), action to minimise the impacts of a changing climate on human and natural systems (adaptation), and supporting communities to respond creatively to these unprecedented challenges (increasing resilience).
The 3 million strong global permaculture community, operating in over 130 countries, has developed and adopted a wide range of locally appropriate solutions for climate change mitigation (both emissions reduction and sequestration), adaptation and resilience. Examples include: Mitigation - home insulation; passive heating; reduced consumption; ‘simple living’; reducing energy use; sustainable transport; and local production of food, fibre and energy; Adaptation - designing resilient agro-ecological farms, communities and resource sharing systems; diversifying crops; putting water management at the centre of landscape design; introducing erosion control; Sequestration - a wide range of ‘carbon farming’ techniques, such as multi-strata agroforestry, soil restoration and reforestation.
However the permaculture community faces three significant challenges. Firstly, there has been no substantial attempt to collate, organise and present its climate change solutions (facts, techniques and working examples). Secondly, solutions are often presented without reference to scientific evidence, making it hard to determine which are most effective. Thirdly, there is no platform for making these solutions accessible to permaculture practitioners and networks and the wider public. To address all three challenges, a sophisticated platform is needed that allows small scale solutions to be shared and accessed by a global audience, and to be rapidly adopted.


The project’s goals and a clear plan to achieve them.
“To date, the full range and impact of climate solutions have not been explained in a way that bridges the divide between urgency and agency. Thus the aspirations of people who want to enact meaningful solutions remain largely untapped.” Project Drawdown


The project’s goals are:
1) To help people understand their personal role and power in tackling climate change;
2) To collate permaculture based solutions to climate change in one online Knowledge Base (KB);
3) To promote these solutions to new audiences;
4) To inspire action through the adoption of these solutions and increased education; and
5) To contribute to climate change mitigation, adaptation and carbon sequestration.