Posted on by Erkki

Design 9 is about designing myself into the Nordic Permaculture Academy. The design is a NPA internal document so I am not publishing the whole design here. I am including the content and indicating where parts of the design are missing. So it might be difficult to follow… Let me know if you would like to receive the whole design.

Diploma apprentice’s nameErkki Pöytäniemi
Date apprentice started DiplomaMay 2021
Project titleDesign 9 – Designing myself into NPA
Design Number9/10
Date design started25.10.2024
Date design commpleted14.1.2025 / 28.1.2025
Has the design been implemented?Yes
Online Link to Design (if available)–
Type of Designnot land-based
Design FrameworkVOEDIMET
Design CategoryEducation & Culture
Tools usedDesign tools: Ethics to state vision, Sociocracy, Causal Loops Diagrams, People zones, Tables & lists, Holmgren design principles, Meadows systems principles, Gantt chart, illustrations, needs analysis,
Other tools: Obsidian, Excalidraw, WordPress, DIVI theme, Discord, Monday,
Name of personal tutorAndreas Jonsson
Ready for presentationReady, approved 2025-02-01

Content

  • Brief
  • Framework: VOEDIMET
  • V: Vision based on permaculture ethical principles
    • My Mission regarding NPA
  • O: Observe, Survey & Analyse
    • Observation and analysis
      • Need and functions
      • Patterns and connections
      • Borders & resources (limitations, energy)
      • Increase (bio)diversity and production
      • Take into account risks
    • Developments in November 2024
    • Causal Loops Diagram
  • E: Evaluate & Goals
    • NPA as a whole
      • Internal and External Communication
    • NPA in Finland
    • The Goal
  • D: Design using Permaculture Design Principles and Tools
    • Scope
    • Principles and tools
      • Holmgren principles
      • Meadows principles
      • Design tools
    • My role in Communications in NPA
      • My proposal for the role description “Responsible for Communications”
      • Evaluate, improve and clarify the communication domain
    • The NPA website
    • Internal Communication
    • Improve involvement of apprentices in Discord
    • Create policies and plans
  • I: Implement
    • The website
    • Discord
    • NPA Communications guidelines
    • NPA Communications Plan 2025
    • GANTT Chart
  • M: Maintain
    • General
    • Website and Discord
  • E: Evaluate the Feedback
  • T: Tweak
  • Reflections on the Design

Brief:

After I have my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design accredited I plan to advance and advocate the Permaculture Diploma Path in Finland and Nordic area. This would be best done by developing the exisiting NPA Nordic Permaculture Academy|NPA structures. The purpose of this design is to propose how that could be done and how I can participate in that. 

 Framework: VOEDIMET 

  • V : Vision based on permaculture ethical principles
  • O : Observe, Survey & Analyse) including Borders and Resources)
  • E : Evaluate & Goals
  • D : Design using permaculture design principles and tools
  • I : Implement
  • M : Maintain
  • E : Evaluate the Palaute 
  • T : Tweak 

 V : Vision based on permaculture ethical principles

My Vision (created 2024-03-05) is based on the Permaculture Ethics: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.

v3: 2025-02-17
My Vision is a world where humankind has decreased its ecological footprint to a sustainable level and at the same time has learned to regenerate nature and natural resources. This enables both human kind and the rest of nature to thrive without depriving future generations of their opportunity to do the same. This was achieved in a socially just and fair way while developing societies based on the principles of equity. To achieve this humankind learned to use wisdom to understand its limits of what it should do and what it should not do.

My Mission v2

My Mission is to develop a permaculture lifestyle at Iso-orvokkiniitty and to become a Permaculture Teacher and Mentor and a Sociocracy Facilitator and Trainer in order to advocate, promote and develope permaculture and the permaculture movement primarily in Finland. I also want to be internationally networked in permaculture in order to learn and share from and with others.

Vision, Mission and Aims of NPA 2024

from NPA website. (Reviewed and decided 2023-12-12)

  • Vision – (The future we see) 
    • We live in a regenerative world where everyone can live by Permaculture Ethics.
  • Mission – (Our part in achieving this vision)
    • To develop and maintain a Nordic Diploma System
    • To develop and maintain Nordic teaching materials
    • To support our apprentices work
    • To support a network of Nordic Diploma Apprentices and Diploma holders
  • Aims and Goals
    • Mentoring of apprentices
      • Diploma intro sessions
      • Individual mentoring sessions
      • Sociocracy course during 2024
      • Assessing designs
    • Setting up apprentice structure on web
      • Collecting info and publishing apprentices profiles
    • Internal communication
      • Evaluate and improve communications channels, Discord, WhatsApp, E-mail list
    • Training of mentors
      • Mentors assess designs together
      • Designing our mentoring pathways
      • Mentor training in November 2024
    • Publish the Design Toolbox in 2024
    • Develop a Teachers training in the Nordic languages
      • We start the process in creating curriculum in Swedish and Danish in 2024
    • Host two Diploma Gatherings yearly
      • Denmark autumn
      • Sweden spring
    • Host monthly meetings
      • 7th @ 7 pm

Are the Visions and Missions (mine and NPA’s) aligned? — Yes, I think so. I will formulate a Vision for this design in Evaluate and Goals.  

The Permaculture Ethics|permaculture ethics are embedded in NPA’s Vision as well as in my Vision. 

 My Mission regarding NPA: 

My Mission is to actively participate in NPA in order to effectively make true it’s Vision, Mission and Goals especially in Finland but also in general. 

see Content for missing chapters

 The Goal

The main Goal of this design is therefore designing my role in Communications in NPA and reaching the goals defined in Internal and External Communications above.  

From the above discussion I have collected goals (functions) for developing the  NPA website: 

  • 1. Improve the SEO of the NPA website
  • 2. Develop a blog and collect subscriptions 
  • 3. Present the Diploma Pathway in an effective way on the website
  • 4. Build credibility and trust in NPA
  • 5. Support NPA mentors and apprentices
  • 6. Develop storytelling 
  • 7. Get coverage in Nordic permaculture channels 

Discord:

  • 8. working members need to increase use of Discord open channels (increase internal communication)..  

These goals are transferred to “My role in Communications in NPA”. 

 D : Design using permaculture design principles and tools 

 Scope

Communications is a very wide topic. The scope of the this design includes

  • My Role in Communications in NPA
  • Evaluate, improve and clarify the communication domain
  • The NPA Website
  • NPA Internal Communications
  • NPA Communications Guidelines (or policy) 
  • NPA Communications Plan 2025

 Vision

We already discussed Vision in the beginning (in Vision). However I didn’t formulate a Vision specifically for this design as the scope of the design was not yet clear. The starting point was NPA’s Vision and My Vision from Design 00. Below is the Vision for this design:

The Vision for Communications in NPA: 

We live in a regenerative world where everyone can live by Permaculture Ethics. This is achieved in a socially just and fair way while developing societies based on the principles of equity. This includes honouring, respecting and sharing information. 

The Vision addresses Earth care in advocating for a regenerative world, People care in how we get there and Fair share in how we share information. 

 Principles and tools

In this design I want to use an approach where I first choose a few design principles and tools that I presume fit this design. I will choose 3 Holmgren principles, 3 Meadows principles (Donella H. Meadows. 2008. Thinking in Systems) (1) and 3 Permaculture Design Tools. 

 3 Holmgren Principles

1. Obtain a yield – “You can’t work on an empty stomach”

  • “Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the working you are doing.””

Obtaining a yield is a fundamental need for any system to function on the long run. In NPA this is true on many levels: 

  • the provided services must add value for the apprentices in a way that they can eventually harvest a yield. Becoming a Diploma holder – including the whole learning pathway – should benefit apprentices in terms of having a better permaculture life quality but also in terms of making a living as a permaculture teacher, mentor and/or consultant. 
  • acting as a working member in NPA should enhance the overall learning experience and be part of the mentoring pathway and integration into NPA. 
  • acting as a mentor should be economically rewarded on a reasonable level
  • NPA itself should be profitable in order to build capacity and develop the organisation. 

Conclusions regarding communications: 

  • communicate the benefits of being on the Diploma Learning Pathway and becoming a Diploma Holder. 
  • externally on the website; target people considering the Diploma path
  • internally in gatherings to help apprentices keep momentum 
  • communicate what a NPA working member is and how to become one 
  • clarify policy for working members and communicate it

2. Integrate Rather Than Segregate – “Many hands make light work”

  •  “By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.”

This principle integrates two Mollison principles: 

  •  Every element performs multiple functions  
  •  Every function is supported by multiple elements

The Causal Loops Diagram shows how the elements are integrated with causal links. I will consider doing a separate functions – elements – systems analysis in the Evaluate step. 

Conclusions regarding communications: 

  • the main elements for communication are the website and Discord. We should cover as many functions as possible with those while complementing them with other elements (email, social media, gatherings, direct connections) 

1. Creatively Use and Respond to Change – “Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be”

  •  “We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.”

NPA’s Vision is “We live in a regenerative world where everyone can live by Permaculture Ethics.” The Vision itself is a response to humans living increasingly unsustainably and un-regeneratively. On the other hand we need to find the best leverage points to be able to find the most effective ways to change that. That is why I am also looking at principles from Donella H. Meadows. 2008. Thinking in Systems.  

Conclusions regarding communications: 

  • People increasingly understand that fundamental change is needed in order to avoid collapse. On the other hand people increasingly see collapse as inevitable.
  • Permaculture offers solutions and hope in both cases but it is not a mantra that works without our effort. The Permaculture Diploma Pathway is our tool for positive impact on different levels. This should be communicated in a way that creates hope and builds capacity. 

 3 Meadows Principles  

Donella H. Meadows. 2008. Thinking in Systems might be the best summary of systems thinking. In page 170 she summarises the “most general systems wisdom”. Those could be thought of as systems principles although Meadows doesn’t call them that. I am picking 3 which seem relevant for a learning community for a closer look: 

  • Honor, respect and distribute information 
  • Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts. 
  • Stay humble – stay a learner 

Honor, respect and distribute information 

Meadows writes (p173): “… most of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of biased, late or missing information.” and “You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.” 

I suppose we are in the heart of a communication system here. 

Conclusions regarding communications: 

  • Internal communication to Zones 0-2 should be timely and transparent so that those who should feel belonging and ownership of NPA feel they are trusted with all relevant information about developments in NPA. 
  • Communicate clearly what is expected of apprentices in the Diploma pathway
  • External communication especially to Zone 3 should be timely and transparent to foster trust and credibility. 

Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts (p174)

  • “Our mental models are mainly verbal.” “We don’t talk about what we see, we see only what we can talk about.”
  • “The first step in respecting language is keeping it as concrete, meaningful and truthful as possible. The second step is to enlarge language to make it consistent with our enlarged understanding of systems.” 

Conclusions regarding communications: 

– What are the key concepts of permaculture we want society to understand and adapt? We need to use those words. 

– Be aware of fancy sentences that don’t have a clear meaning or don’t correspond with the world we want to see coming. 

Stay humble – stay a learner 

“The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze but to learn.” You learn by trial and error, error, error. “What’s appropriate when you are learning is small steps, constant monitoring and a willingness to change course as you find out more about where it’s leading.” 

Conclusions regarding communications: 

  • Make mistakes and admit them. 
  • Develop communication incrementally 

 3 Design Tools 

Causal Loops Diagrams were used mainly in the Evaluation and Goals step of this design. A Gantt chart will be used in the Design step and serves also Implementation. People zones were used for evaluating target groups for NPA’s internal and external communication. 

Ethics

How does this design improve Earth care, People care and Fair share? 

As the focus of the design became communication and that in today’s world is highly dependent on ICT it is relevant to reflect how Earth care is realised in such an environment. The implementations in this design were improving the NPA website and Discord channel. The choices to have a website built on WordPress and hosting a Discord server had already been made earlier and the focus of this design was to improve their use from a communications perspective.; i.e. increase their effectiveness. If resources are used, we should obtain a yield. 

ICT in general has a huge direct negative impact on Earth care both in terms of materials needed and energy consumption. The main driver at the moment is increased use of AI. Data centers are striving to cover their electricity needs with renewable and nuclear energy and find use for the extra heat that is generated in data centers. However renewable energy and nuclear are by no means without impact on the earth so the development is in any case negative from an Earth care perspective. What we call virtual is by no means virtual as it needs a material substrate where to live (data centers, data cables, etc) and energy for it to run. However it is challenging to find reliable data on the energy consumption of global ICT (46% in 2020 (https://post.parliament.uk/researchbriefings/postpn0677/)) but certainly it is increasing  by some accounts even up to 20%. ICT seems to eat up improvements in other sectors.  

It is virtually impossible to know the external energy use caused by our actions in the internet. So we can mainly look at decreasing our impact and being conscious of our ICT footprint. This could include:

  •  increase the lifespan of the hardware you use
  •  avoid overkill in hardware specs 
  •  favor responsible hardware providers 
  •  avoid using AI 
  •  avoid large video files and video streaming 
  •  avoid using ICT if there is no benefit (obtain a yield) or if it has negative effects on your life quality (produce no waste)
  •  use service providers who use renewables and consider social sustainability 

A more radical approach:

  •  buy only used hardware
  •  go for totally text based content (no AI, videos or photos) 
  •  run your own server on simple hardware (f.ex. used RaspberryPi) and offgrid with solar 

Or stop using ICT 

Of course there are many shades of gray in between and there are various questions of human rights and social justice involved. We should increase our consciousness of what is at stake and find our place on the continuum. Apart from Earth care we need to consider also People care and Fair share. Generally going for more radical approaches decreases the People care aspect from the users point of view (the user interface), and requires much more technical expertise from the user, which decreases Fair share as that expertise is not accessible to everyone. The internet has an important Fair share quality to it as it gives almost everyone access to free information of all sorts. 

A world where permaculture people would not be on the internet would see much less permaculture. Good communication in itself is a People care factor internally and externally in that it fosters trust and safe space in an organisation and in the organisation’s relations to other people and organisations. These are reflected in the NPA Communications Guidelines. 

Similarly Fair share can be seen as increasing with NPA growing and having an impact. Fair share is about equity and equal opportunity and equity demands having access to information. Information should be shared as much as possible.  

The questions of ICT and permaculture or sustainability in general is extremely complex. Maybe it would be beneficial to use systems thinking to try to solve the riddle. For now we should have an open discussion about the subject and the solutions we use in NPA involving the working members and apprentices in order to collect feedback, and increase our expertise on the subject. As permaculturalists we shouldn’t bury our head in the sand in this matter.   

In this and other tech based designs the challenge in evaluating the net effect of using ICT solutions is that both the impact on resource use (negative to Earth care) and the positive impact of promoting permaculture are indirect and ultimately unknowns. We are trying to compare an unknown number of onions to an unknown number of apples.  

To have an overall positive effect on earth care the design itself should regenerate resources elsewhere. This mainly happens through spreading and advocating permaculture and developing permaculture design skills of ourselves and of as many others as possible. In the end of the day people’ lifestyles need to change for the balance sheet to become positive. We can not measure that but I believe the balance is positive. Presuming NPA in general is a positive in terms of earth care, this design should also be positive as it will help NPA grow and have impact. 

 Table of ethics:

==Type of effect====evaluation====Net effect==
==Externilised====external effects of the tech choices we make==
– on earth carenegative impact of our tech choices should be considered. See ICT footprint above. resource use is overall negative.neg
– on people careconsider the ethics of the manufacturers and service providers whose products or services you choose and how they increase or decrease people care. There are many people care challenges in the value chain but also positives (employment etc)0
– on fair tradeconsider accessibility of the tech you use and how it increases or decreases fair share. Favor free open source and operators who are not part of “big tech”. F.ex WordPress.0+
==Indirect====effect of what other participants in the designed system do==
– on earth careeffectively guide and support people to and on their permaculture lifestyle journey in order to increase earth careposit
– on people careeffectively guide and support people to and on their permaculture lifestyle journey in order to increase people careposit
– on fair shareeffectively guide and support people to and on their permaculture lifestyle journey in order to increase fair shareposit
==Direct====direct effect of the designed system==
– on earth care(earth care effects are externalised or indirect)0
– on people carethe system is designed to increase people careposit
– on fair sharethe system is designed to increase fair shareposit

The above shows that potentially we are very much on the positive side in terms of effects on ethics (5 x positive / 1 x negative). But of course we need to understand that we are comparing things without numeric values and also onions to apples. All we can try to do is to decrease the number of onions and increase the number of apples and trust that we are net positive. There are many things to consider. Therefore we should

  • Create a Sustainability Report on NPA and publish it on the website.

CLD vs a Functional Analysis

I was inspired to use Causal Links Diagrams as a way to learn more about using Systems Thinking in practise. The idea to use specifically CLD came from my daughter’s Master’s thesis where she used it and introduced how it is used (4). 

Using CLD was an interesting exercise that sheds light on how various factors in a complicated system interact. Finding the most interesting and relevant feedback loops which could show where effective leverage points can be found takes practise and is by no means a purely objective exercise. The CLD easily gets very complicated and difficult to figure out. The assessment of this design showed that the CLD is not easy to communicate. 

Using CLD is challenging because the

  •  Number of causal links can be overwhelming.
  •  Interpretation is subjective and difficult to judge as the reason of the causality is not expressed. 
  •  Giving numerical values to the Causal Links is possible but difficult which also adds to the subjective interpretation of the links. Other systems mapping methods have been developed for more quantitative analysis 

The difference between a functions  elements   analysis and a CLD is that CLD is more specific in what the links are.: causal links between elements. My original plan was to do a functions  elements   analysis in this evaluation step. However I concluded that it would probably not add value to the design after the CLD’s  even though some more links could be found. 

 Holmgren’s and Meadow’s principles

Instead of taking all Holmgren and Meadows principles I chose the ones that seemed fitting for this design. That is a common approach in permaculture design but I am not sure if it is the right one. In my earlier designs I have also used an approach where I consider all Holmgren (or all Mollison) principles  or even both. I think considering the notsoobvious principles can add value in unexpected ways. Another approach could be to skip the obvious ones and think harder about the notobvious ones (read through the principles and if you can’t immediately think of how to apply it in the design, choose it for closer analysis). For example Holmgren’s principle

  • 11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – “Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a wellbeaten path”
  •      “The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.”

could be interesting to look more closely at. The wellbeaten path could be that an organisation has a website. Maybe we should be doing something totally different? 

Also Meadow’s principles include several interesting ones that I did not consider in this design. F.ex. 

  •  “Pay attention to what is important not just what is quantifiable” We can get statistics of how many visits we have on a website but more important is who are visiting. (Actually I did mention this principle earlier.)
  •  “Listen to the wisdom of the system” could imply that we should make more use of the wisdom our apprentices have. 
  •  “Expand time horizons”: communicate the good we can do as permaculturalists and diploma holders.
  •  “Don’t erode the goal of goodness ” is of course crucial. 

These were just some of the Meadow’s principles. 

Many or most of the Holmgren and Meadows principles guide us more in terms of the content of NPA communications than the structure of the organisation or the tech solutions. Therefore I have attempted to include some of them in the NPA Communications Guidelines so that the guidance is not lost. A Meadows principle is also “Make feedback policies for feedback systems”. Recognising the importance of feedback loops is an integral part of permaculture and sociocracy. All the created documents have a review period. NPA structures are guided by sociocracy. However I did not consider that to be in the scope of this design.  

Feedback mechanisms

Feedback is a crucial part of any systems thinking including permaculture and sociocracy. In this design feedback was mentioned in connection with what sociocracy is, in the Causal Loop Diagrams, as a necessity to have feedback channels even for external communications, feedback in NPA GC regarding the proposed website and Discord improvements, patterns how to follow feedback and review periods. 

Feedback should be collected both concerning internal and external communication. For the later the best solution is to have a feedback form on the website. The challenge is how to encourage people to give feedback. This could be enhanced by asking for feedback in a email to subscribers. Of course that can be done only after we have set up MailChimp for collecting subscribers. 

For internal feedback from zones 12 feedback should be collected in different channels that are available for us. The best possibilities to receive feedback is in f2f gatherings and MOG’s. Discord is also a good channel for feedback but requires that we overall get more activity there. f2f gatherings allow for more open feedback in a brainstorming fashion but in Discord it is best to have specific questions about specific topics. Questions should be asked in a way which doesn’t imply that we are making decisions in Discord. Involving more apprentices as working members is also an important way to collect feedback from those who are still in the Diploma pathway. 

Collect and consolidate Palaute from the different channels and report to NPA General Circle.  

A Meadows principle is also “Make feedback policies for feedback systems”. Feedback policies should be included in the NPA Communications Guidelines. 

Design frameworks in nonland based designs 

Design 16 in my Diploma Portfolio were land based Isoorvokkinitty designs. After that I have done

  •  Design 7  Kannuksen valmistuminen  The Drum (nearly ready)
  •  Design 8  Isopotkästi (not ready)
  •  Design 00  My Permaculture Diploma Path (not submitted)

and this design. The design process itself is very similar  or even doesn’t depend on weather the design is landbased or not. Of course what tools make sense is affected. It might make sense to do landbased designs first as the subject matter is more concrete. Nonland based designs tend to be more abstract and therefore it is good to already have a good grip on the design process. If the process is more creative the Design Web can be recommended and therefore it is often used for nonland based designs. In this case I used my favourite linear framework VOEDIMET as I didn’t consider this design to be especially creative. Using VOEDIMET in this case was quite straight forward. I think VOEDIMET is functioning to a degree that I did not have any need to tweak it this time.    

 People Zones 

was especially helpful for identifying the different target groups from communications perspective and defining what is internal and external communication and what channels should be used in each case. 

 Monday  GANTT 

I used monday.com to develop the GANTT chart. I already added 41 items in the Main Table and most of the items have dependencies to other items. The GANTT chart helps visualise the tasks and dependencies in a timeline. Unfortunately the GANTT can only be created on the paid Standard plan. 

As monday.com offers a wide range of project management tools I think it is worth considering applying for the **Nonprofit Plan** which includes 10 first seats for free, and a 70% discount per seat from the 11th seat. In the case of NPA 10 seats would be plenty. 

 Integrations 

The main integration is towards NPA and that integration is already well on its way. 

The other integration is towards Design 00  My Permaculture Diploma Path which I will update right after finalising this design. 

The previous design Design 8  Isopotkästi was also about communication although using a different technology (podcast instead of website or Discord). At some point we can tell about the NPA Diploma Pathway in Finnish in Isopotkästi. Each episode also includes a section on topical matters where developments in NPA can be mentioned. So Isopotkästi could mainly serve communication needs in Finnish. 

There is not much integration to my other previous landbased designs. 

Regarding my other activities I have also built and maintain the Isoorvokkiniitty website and Finnish Permaculture Association website. Those offer synergies in that I use the same tools in all cases. I also maintain the Finnish Permaculture Association Discord server. 

 How to present 

Essentially this design is a NPA internal document so I will not publish it on my Diploma website. I have written it in Obsidian and this is the first design where the Obsidian version is the final presentable version of the design. It can be printed out as a pdf document for the design assessment. However that might not be the best way to present it to the NPA General Circle and other working members so I might need to prepare a Word document or a condensed slide presentation later as well. 

 My targets as a designer 

This is Design no 9 in my Diploma Portfolio and as no 10 will be an update of Design 00  My Permaculture Diploma Path this was the last totally new design I’m making for the portfolio. My feeling is that I manage the design process and tools already quite well. The challenge with this design is lack of time due to wanting to get the Diploma done. I feel it could take a few iterations of refining to make it more presentable. On the other hand it has already delivered the main Goals that were set (designing myself in NPA) and the Goals that evolved in the design (Develop internal/external communication: Evaluate, improve and clarify the communication domain and Functional and upgraded website including personal profiles) so I don’t think refining the design will add a lot of value anymore. It is always a question when something is good enough. Reviewing the outcomes will continue in any case so I think this is the right place to close the design as such. 

 Systems thinking

What has started to increasingly interest me as a designer is Systems Thinking. I already hinted at it in Design 6  Ducks but did not actually include it in the design. In Design 8  Isopotkästi systems thinking affected how I did the functionselementssystems analysis and I integrated one of Meadows principles. In this design I incorporated more Meadows principles and tested how the Causal Loops Diagram would work for this design. It was an interesting exercise and I was able to extract some interesting feedback loops and leverage points from the analysis. However I admit that it was a bit superfluous and would have benefitted of using CLD in a group setting. It might not be obvious to the reader how the CLD’s were used. 

In any case my target is to clarify for myself the interconnection of permaculture and systems thinking. I have had the feeling that we talk a lot about systems thinking in permaculture without really defining what we mean with it. In Permaculture  Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability David Holmgren writes on page xxvi “Fundamentally permaculture design principles arise from a way of perceiving the world which is often described as ‘systems thinking’ or ‘design thinking’.” While he does refer to some inspirations (Whole Earth Review by Stewart Brand and ideas of Edward De Bono (see The six thinking hats)) and he refers to H.T. Odum’s ecological energetics, he writes: “the influence of systems thinking in my development of permaculture and its design principles has not come through extensive study of the literature, but more through an osmotic absorption of ideas in the ‘cultural ether’ which strike a chord with my own experience in permaculture design.” So maybe we should just consider David Holmgren as one of the leading systems thinkers and primary sources? This is supported in Systems Mapping  How to Build and Use Causal Models of Systems (2) where  BarbrookJohnson & Penn write (p14): 

“Permaculture/systems design: related to design thinking above are specific schools of thought which focus on the participatory design and management of whole complex systems, their components, and interactions between them for sustainability. Although these approaches are most often applied to the design of geographically located systems, in particular socioecological systems with an emphasis on agroecology, they include many useful generalisable tools. The design philosophy of working with systems and the design cycle and process and systems mapping methods used within are particularly useful and have inspired our thinking. See Holmgren (2002) and https://knowledgebase.permaculture.org.uk/design” (2),(5) 

Nevertheless this is something I want to study more. Meadows “Thinking in Systems” gave already a lot of new insight and systems mapping is certainly something I want to look more into later.  

 T : Tweak 

As such this design is a proposal that needs to be discussed in NPA and based on the feedback, modifications and tweaks need to be made. Some of that has already happened during writing this design but much of it needs to happen afterwards and will be ongoing. I have not delved deep into sociocracy in this design but sociocracy is how NPA is governed and listening to all voices and feedback loops are key aspects of sociocracy. That guarantees that the design process and tweaking will go on. The main targets of tweaking, i.e. reviews will be

  •  the NPA website
  •  Discord structure and policies 
  •  role description “Responsible for Communications” 
  •  NPA Communications Plan 2025 
  •  NPA Communications Guidelines 
  •  Starting a Communications Circle 
  •  NPA Communication Circle Domain 
  •  other roles in communication (f.ex. social media) 

I made some tweaks after the 1st assessment by Andreas, the most important being clarifying the Vision for the design and elaborating on Needs. I clarified thoughts about feedback and CLD’s. 

Reflection

The design started with very broad observation of NPA because at the outset I didn’t know what my role in NPA would be. On the other hand in October (2024) when I started I was not yet an “insider” in NPA so I had to do some guesswork in terms of how NPA internally functions. At that point I felt that it was difficult to proceed with the design without more information. On the other hand the fact that I had given the topic some thought already made me more prepared for what happened next. 

Vision and Mission

I used my own vision from my Design 00 and the NPA vision statement. First I didn’t see any reason to formulate a new vision for this design as mine and NPA’s visions are in my view aligned and both are critical for this design. The first part of my Vision “My Vision is a world where humankind has decreased its ecological footprint to a sustainable level that enables both human kind and the rest of nature to thrive without depriving future generations of their opportunity to do the same” will progress by advancing and advocating permaculture through NPA. 

The second part “This was achieved in a socially just and fair way while developing societies based on the principles of equity. To achieve this humankind learned to use wisdom

to understand its limits of what it should do and what it should not do” points to the need to develop NPA’s structures further into sociocratic dynamic governance and also develop how NPA interacts with the external world, especially zones 3 and 4. 

NPA’s Vision is more general “We live in a regenerative world where everyone can live by Permaculture Ethics” and points to permaculture and ethics. In any case these are all aligned.  

“My Mission is to develop a permaculture lifestyle at Iso-orvokkiniitty and to become a Permaculture Teacher and Mentor and a Sociocracy Facilitator and Trainer in order to advocate, promote and develop permaculture and the permaculture movement primarily in Finland. I also want to be internationally networked in permaculture in order to learn and share from and with others.” This is clearly advanced by working in NPA. 

My Mission regarding NPA is “My Mission is to actively participate in NPA in order to effectively make true it’s Vision, Mission and Goals especially in Finland but also in general.” 

The turning point

The turning point was the November NPA Gathering and the following [[NPA Gathering Holma – Backagården 2024]] where we had several meetings which were nominally General Circle meetings but involved several participants who were not GC members. The discussions relieved some of the internal dynamics in NPA and led to what I think are quite profound changes in NPA specifically as Mette – who had just got her diploma accredited – was taken in as secretary and member of GC and as a to-be mentor. In the discussions it was also obvious that there were concrete needs to develop the website and how apprentices’ profiles are shown there. I was critical of how it was presented so I was mandated to propose something better. This gave a new direction to this design. I still wanted to retain the earlier part of the observations but it is clear in the design where this change happened. I was invited to the next GC online meeting and there it was decided that I would be a GC member with a role in communications. In a sense the design was already done, but nevertheless I wanted to write it into a full design and develop the ideas about communications further. 

So against my expectations even this design was about designing and implementing in parallel and there was some emergence happening. However it worked well and made it more relevant than it would have been otherwise. 

The Goals where formulated in the “Evaluate and Goals” step. I concluded that there is no need for a separate design about NPA in Finland. The observation and evaluation was broad but I narrowed the Goals to concern my communications role in NPA and concretely the NPA website and the Discord server. 

I also developed The Vision for Communications in NPA: 

– We live in a regenerative world where everyone can live by Permaculture Ethics. This is achieved in a socially just and fair way while developing societies based on the principles of equity. This includes honouring, respecting and sharing information. 

The main Goal of this design is designing my role in Communications in NPA and reaching the goals defined in Internal and External Communications (above). So the primary goal has been reached but the secondary goals are mostly such that it will take more time and implementation of the design before they can be ticked as achieved. 

Obviously this design has a strong connection to my diploma pathway. In a sense it is the culmination of my diploma pathway where the missing part now is just the accreditation of my DIploma. So from here I will start working on finalising the [[Design 00 – My Permaculture Diploma Path]]. 

 Learning outcomes

Also this design demonstrates that defining the [[Vision, Mission, Aims, Goals and Activities]] (VMAGA) is key to a successful design. And again there was an emergent and incremental quality to the design which makes it even more important to track VMAGA. As emergence happens VMAGA must be visited each time. I describe the process above. 

The other learning is about the difficulty of creating a tech based design. I have reflected about the ethics above and difficulties in having reliable metrics for evaluating if the design is regenerating resources or doing good from an earth care perspective. I created a Table of ethics to give some structure to the evaluation.

On the other hand we know that virtually everyone in permaculture is using technology and specifically ICT. It would be very strange if we weren’t supposed to design those systems using permaculture design. I agree with the notion that a Permaculture Diploma Portfolio should not contain only or predominantly tech designs – that is not what permaculture is about – but we should definitely try to design those systems with permaculture design in order to decrease negative impact and increase effectiveness of those systems. For most of us not using tech is not an option. We can decrease the externalised harm done to earth care, people care and fair share and increase the indirect and direct positive effects.  

I experimented with the CLD for the first time. It illustrates logical sequences that helps in making justified conclusions. In simpler systems those conclusions could probably be reached anyway but as any tool it needs practise. It is a part of my Systems Thinking learning path which I plan to continue. 

 

References

(1) Donella H. Meadows. 2008. Thinking in Systems 

(2) Barbrook-Johnson & Penn. 2022. Systems Mapping: How to build and use causal models of systems. (Ref. (4)

(3) Jesús Delgado-Maciel et al. 2019. A comparison between the Functional Analysis and the Causal-Loop Diagram to model inventive problems(https://hal.science/hal-02063315/document) 

(4) Pöytäniemi, P. 2024. Leverage Points for Biodiversity Promotion in the Swiss Agricultural System identified with Participatory Causal Loop Diagrams. Master’s Thesis. Technische Universität München. (Pinjan gradu) 

(5) Holmgren, D. 2002. Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability