News

When we brought the EuPN back to life, we hoped we could leave some of the old problems behind and focus on building something useful for the wider permaculture community in Europe.

Unfortunately, it seems we are running into similar patterns again.

In recent calls and conversations outside the EuPN, a narrative has started to circulate that is both misleading and damaging. It appears in sentences like:

At the Permaculture Network, we are occasionally approached with initiatives that aim to strengthen the wider permaculture ecosystem. This is one of them.

A research team connected to Utah State University and the Permaculture Institute, Inc. is currently conducting a global study on professional pathways in permaculture. The focus is on a question that many of us have encountered in practice:

How can people actually make a living with permaculture?

At the European Permaculture Network, we’ve added a new feature to the platform: designs.

Members who choose to be listed in the designer directory can now upload a recent design. The idea is straightforward: show real work, grounded in real contexts.

Our digital lives depend heavily on a few proprietary platforms. This centralisation limits user autonomy, locks communities into closed ecosystems, and places crucial infrastructure in the hands of commercial actors whose interests do not always align with the common good. Open-source tools and federated networks offer a different path: transparent, democratic, community-owned and built for long-term resilience. I wrote about it extensively in my book “Digital Permaculture”.

Digital Independence Day (Di-Day) invites us to take one small step each month towards such alternatives.

PermaTalks (PermaPuheet), organized by the European Permaculture Network (EuPN), return with an exciting sixth season starting on 15 January 2026 – one lecture every week on Thursdays at 18:30 CET! This online lecture and discussion series features inspiring talks from leading voices in permaculture.

Here are the lectures: