Sign the Permaculture Solidarity Statement
PIMA, Permaculture Institute of North America, offers the following suggestions for building civic responses to the sociopolitical and environmental crises:
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grow resilience,
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strengthen alliances and
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choose regenerative vision:
Grow Resilience
We call on you who share these values to take action in your communities. Grow resilience in every form:
- Build and support resilient local food systems: Grow food everywhere, share surpluses, and teach others how to do so.
- Form or join local groups to create resources for food, shelter, energy, transport, communication, and trade tailored to your community’s needs.
- Develop and share practical “toolkits” that combine permaculture design methods, food security strategies, and emergency preparedness with social action.
- Support especially vulnerable groups, among whom are immigrants, displaced people, and historically marginalized communities.
- Consider offering farms, homes, and other spaces as places of refuge and nurturance—a practice modeled in crisis zones worldwide.
- Develop systems of mutual aid, and share skills, ensuring that knowledge and resources are not hoarded but collectively stewarded.
- Strengthen yourself and others by systems of peer counseling, stress management, and community healing for physical, emotional, and psychological injury. Acknowledge grief.
Survival is not a solitary act, nor is life a zero-sum game. Everyone is equally deserving of clean air and water, fresh food, and opportunities to flourish. There is enough for all. Sign the Permaculture Solidarity Statement here at PIMA.
Strengthen Alliances
We must strengthen local, regional, and global alliances to provide safety, sustainability, and resilience in the face of systemic collapse. Remember that we are not struggling alone, and that tens and hundreds of millions are allies.
- Participate in, or organize, direct actions to highlight and disrupt harmful policies and actions by the emerging regime.
- Form regional collaboration networks to help people find safe places, access resources, and rebuild community structures as crises escalate.
- Do not preemptively give in, or obey illegal orders. Know your rights. Resistance to oppression and malfeasance is growing hourly. If your job may be impacted by federal layoffs or funding freezes do not preemptively give in or quit. Push back and organize with your colleagues. Be a witness. Preserve vital knowledge for public use.
- In the U.S., call on your senators and representatives to block confirmations and harmful bills (https://5calls.org/).
- Work directly with those most affected by climate and political crises, ensuring they have the tools and training to lead the next generation of ecological stewards.
- Honor historical and ongoing struggles for justice—understanding that many communities have never experienced a “better past” in this country, and our work must build a radically different future.
Choose Regenerative Vision
It is not enough to reject harmful systems—we must build compelling alternatives and tell different stories. Please join us to:
- Organize for collective resilience: permaculture offers tools for social transformation, not just for personal security.
- Replace scarcity narratives with the knowledge that there is enough for everyone through fair-share of resources. Though industrial excess has damaged the natural world, it remains capable of regeneration. Moreover, our society is extraordinarily wealthy, though its wealth is mal-distributed. By our practice, we can create bountiful harvests to nourish everyone.
- Uphold meaningful diversity. In nature, diversity generates resilience. Limiting diversity undermines our ability to design resilient systems and to adapt them to change. We support diversity within the permaculture movement as well as projects and initiatives led by people of color, especially those from whom land and labor have been stolen or oppressively undervalued (as with most US farmworkers today).
- Sponsor refugees and asylum seekers to bring their talents and energy to your community, welcoming especially climate refugees, whose numbers are growing.
- Support direct and clear pathways to citizenship that dignify immigrants, keep families together, and provide people with the support they need to be successful.
- Create a permanent culture that reaches all people, recognizing that land access is the foundation of racial, economic, and environmental justice, and of community sovereignty. Even those without access to land have a right to the resources of society.
- Spread this message widely to ensure that all people can take up and benefit from these ideas.
This is a moment of both crisis and opportunity. What we do now will shape the future, not only of permaculture but of our collective survival and liberation.
We invite you to:
- Join local or regional permaculture action groups engaging in resilience-building projects.
- Teach and share knowledge—through workshops, skill-shares, and mentoring.
- Challenge exclusionary ideologies wherever you meet them—and actively create spaces in which diverse voices are heard and can lead.
- Reach out to build solidarity with other movements—we would all benefit from greater food sovereignty, clean land, air, and water, and more inclusive economic systems.
- Amplify this statement and the work behind it—ensuring it reaches those who need it most.
The U.S. stands at a crossroads. We choose the path of solidarity, resilience, and regeneration, and we invite you to be with us in community, growing a world where all people, all beings, and all ecosystems can thrive together.
Support human freedom and dignity. Let’s create the future we know is possible.