The Permaculture Tigers seek to be a sustainability organization that does more than harp on the problem. They hope to bring about change by training the community to implement green infrastructure projects.
Joe Nisbett, graduate student in landscape architecture and community planning and president of the Permaculture Tigers, kicked off his first meeting to a room filled with students with backgrounds ranging from elementary education to conservation biology. Prior to the meeting, few students were familiar with permaculture.
However, Nisbett brought an excitement to the organization. His interest in permaculture was sparked while working in a community garden prior to coming to Auburn.
There Nisbett learned about the permaculture ethics, including care of earth, care of people and return of surplus. He embraced the idea of creating sustainable systems while limiting the use of external inputs.
That experience spurred him to develop permaculture projects for his friends and family, but he then realized that he needed more resources to continue his practice. So, Nisbett set out to become certified in permaculture science.
Upon choosing to attend Auburn for his masters degree, he was disappointed with the lack of course offerings centered around permaculture, so he decided to form this new organization to share the science with the community. He hopes that it enriches their lives as much as it has enriched his, Nisbett said.
“Through the Permaculture Tigers, I hope to bring a diversity of perspectives together under a common umbrella,” Nisbett said.
In recent years, this has proven quite difficult, said Peter Bane, guest speaker and director of the Permaculture Institute of North America.
“Permaculture is a connecting science; however, it lacks a well-connected group,” Bane said.
There are currently 50,000 people trained in permaculture across North America. Despite the practice being developed in the 1970s, it has only recently started to see tremendous growth.
Together, Bane and Nisbett hope to turn Auburn’s Permaculture Tigers into an organization that may be replicated by universities across the country. Nisbett is already working locally on a project near Fort Rucker, Alabama, where he hopes to include the rest of the group.
“Sustainability is not well-understood because there are so many different definitions of it,” said Mike Kensler, director of the Office of Sustainability.
He emphasized the need for a viable and inclusive economy that helps meet people’s needs in a fair and equitable way, now and into the future.
Permaculture does exactly that by allowing for the creation of both large projects and small projects to better the environment. This science is not something that has to be done as a career or on a city-wide scale. Students can utilize this design philosophy for simple redesigns in their own homes, he said.
This very concept excited multiple international students in attendance at the meeting. One student was intrigued to find out what she could learn to better the environment when she went home to Haiti, a nation already ravaged by natural disaster. This level of interest has Bane and Nisbett already working to get students certified in permaculture.
Kensler believes this organization’s desire to be more than just sustainability activists will help ensure its success here on campus while also allowing the community to have a physical definition of sustainability.
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