Building Resilient Communities: What Social Permaculture Teaches Us About Working Together

A conversation with Alfred Decker, Christopher Nesbitt, and Eleonore Todini on the Permaculture Vine podcast reveals why the hardest part of permaculture isn’t the plants—it’s the people.

When I first heard the term “social permaculture,” I’ll admit I gave it a metaphorical eye roll. It sounded like one of those vague concepts that gets thrown around in permaculture circles without much substance. But after attending an in-person course with Alfred Decker and then hosting a roundtable discussion with three experienced practitioners—Alfred Decker, Christopher Nesbitt, and Eleonore Todini—I realized I’d been practicing social permaculture all along without knowing it.

The Colonial Roots and Urban Future

Alfred Decker, speaking from near Barcelona, opened my eyes to something I hadn’t considered: permaculture’s colonial heritage. Influenced by Australian educator Rosemary Morrow, Alfred explained how early permaculture often focused on the ideal of a family with five acres behind the house—a vision that doesn’t resonate with the vast majority of humanity.

The statistics are stark: only about 4% of our land mass is urbanized, yet more than half the human population lives in cities, consuming roughly 80% of resources and generating 80% of pollution. As Alfred put it: if we don’t find ways to apply permaculture in cities, the resource extraction from urban areas will continue to damage the countryside we love.

Christopher Nesbitt, managing the Maya Mountain Research Farm in southern Belize, acknowledged this reality even while doing what he humorously called “retro permaculture”—moving to the middle of nowhere and regenerating degraded land. He sees the real frontier for permaculture in urban environments, while his own work focuses on stemming rural-to-urban migration by making rural livelihoods more viable.

The Human Factor Problem

Perhaps the most honest moment in our conversation came when we acknowledged what everyone in permaculture knows but rarely says out loud: the hardest part of permaculture is the people.

As Christopher noted, plants are relatively straightforward—they have specific needs, you meet those needs, and you get predictable outcomes. But people? We’re complicated. Our agendas shift, our alliances mutate, and our needs evolve in ways that plants never do.

Alfred shared that over nearly three decades in permaculture, he’s observed that when projects fail or stagnate, it’s rarely because the greywater system didn’t work or the soil wasn’t fertile enough. It’s because we struggle with living, working, and collaborating together—especially those of us raised in individualistic Western cultures where competition was valued over cooperation.

Eleonore, working as a permaculture designer globally from southern France, brought this into focus with a simple observation: we are ego-centred. The practice of social permaculture, she suggested, is about stepping back, taking that eagle’s-eye view, and truly observing who we have around us and how we interact.

Practical Tools for Better Collaboration

So what does social permaculture actually look like in practice? Our conversation revealed several key elements:

1. Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)

Christopher was emphatic about this: when working with groups of more than four people, codifying roles, responsibilities, and expectations becomes essential. An MOU removes ambiguity and ego-clashing by providing a clear reference point when conflicts arise—and conflicts will arise.

Eleonore shared a painful example of when this didn’t happen. A client changed the project scope on the spot—from implementing a permaculture design to clearing forest to recover olive trees—leaving her and a colleague in a dangerous and uncomfortable situation. Clear frameworks prevent these kinds of conflicts.

2. Communication Skills

Alfred highlighted nonviolent communication (NVC) as crucial, though he cautioned against getting too hung up on the formula. The principles are what matter: taking responsibility for our emotions, making requests instead of demands, and learning to see conflict as an opportunity to strengthen relationships rather than something to avoid.

This last point struck me as particularly important. Most of us are raised to avoid conflict, but as Alfred noted, we’re humans—we’re going to have conflicts. The question is how we use that inevitable process to build rather than destroy.

3. Governance and Decision-Making

Tools like sociocracy offer ways to organize that balance efficiency with empowerment. The key is finding structures appropriate to your context—whether you’re a couple leading a project in Namibia or five people near Barcelona.

4. Taking Time for Vision and Team Building

Eleonore emphasized something that runs counter to our modern urgency: take a year or eighteen months to create your team, understand each other’s visions, and establish clear communication before diving into action. As she put it, people want to “do now,” but slowing down to understand who you’re co-creating with will make everything flow more naturally later.

The Decolonization Lens

Alfred added one more crucial skill: engaging with decolonization. After 500 years since the transatlantic slave trade began, the impacts continue to reverberate through all our societies. To the degree we can engage with this challenging, painful, and necessary process, we’ll be able to create more equitable structures and relationships with people in different circumstances.

Why This Matters Now

Christopher shared a sobering perspective from economist Milton Friedman (whose economic philosophy he strongly opposes). Friedman told his students to keep putting their ideas out there, so when crises come and people are frantically looking for solutions, those ideas would be waiting to be picked up and used.

The same applies to permaculture. As Christopher noted after experiencing devastating fires in Belize, we’re already seeing climate crisis unfold—unprecedented heat, repeated hurricanes, and extreme weather events. The work we do now in creating viable alternatives—both ecological and social—becomes increasingly critical.

Eleonore framed this beautifully: we’re creating bubbles of consciousness and practice everywhere. The humanity isn’t ready for a big shift yet, but these bubbles are forming, growing, and at some point will reach critical mass to become the new paradigm.

My Personal Takeaway

Reflecting on my own experience running Vine Permaculture as a cooperative, I realized I’d been doing social permaculture all along: volunteering at repair cafes, networking with other practitioners, working with partners toward common goals. But I also recognized that having formal knowledge of these practices earlier would have helped us avoid conflicts that unfortunately ended a friendship and working relationship.

Social permaculture isn’t mystical or theoretical. It’s about applying the same observation, design thinking, and systems understanding we use in gardens to our human interactions and organizations. It’s about recognizing that without getting the social side right, even the most brilliant ecological designs will fail.

As Alfred emphasized, you don’t need to give up your passion for gardening, agroforestry, or ecological restoration to embrace social permaculture. It’s something we incorporate into whatever we’re already doing, strengthening our practice and helping permaculture scale to meet the challenges we face.

---

Learn More: Social Permaculture Online Training

If this conversation resonates with you, Alfred Decker is hosting a certified Social Permaculture Online (SPO) training from October 22, 2025 to March 4, 2026, organized with the Permaculture Association of Britain.

The training explores permaculture as a tool for designing communities, organizations, and your own life, helping you understand connections between people, economies, and governing structures. Facilitated by 12 inspiring practitioners, it covers:

• Communication and conflict transformation skills

• Governance and decision-making tools

• Designing for resilience on community and personal levels

• Decolonization and creating equitable structures

• Rethinking existing social and economic systems

While permaculture originated as an ecological design method, applying these principles in social and group contexts helps us organize, communicate, and cooperate more effectively. The ethics and principles of permaculture offer a strong critique of current social organization while pointing toward more resilient, dynamic systems that support everyone’s flourishing.

As Christopher reminded us, we need to keep seeding these alternatives now, so when the inevitable disruptions come, viable models for cooperation and resilience are waiting to be adopted.

https://buytickets.at/12principlesdesign/1833599/r/cormac (Affiliate Link)

---

Listen to the full conversation on the Permaculture Vine podcast.

Connect with Alfred Decker through his website (12P Permaculture Design) or social media, Christopher Nesbitt at Maya Mountain Research Farm (permaculture.bz), and Eleonore Todini at architectsoflife.earth.