David Holmgren

“Ever since the publication of Permaculture One in 1978, the documentation of the results of my own practice in permaculture design and implementation has been a personal and strategic commitment to validating permaculture innovation and communicating the results. Through that process I have been painfully aware of how a lack of independent and supported research has held back the potential of permaculture locally and globally. In more recent times there has been increasing interest by researchers and academics from many disciplines in studying the outcomes of permaculture education, design and practice.

Eunice Neves and her work in studying long established permaculture systems in Australia and around the world stands out as the most significant for a number of reasons.

Her background as a design professional in Landscape Architecture is central to evaluating long established rural, periurban and suburban permaculture systems. Her person commitment and passion for permaculture and its ethical foundations and design principles is essential in truly understanding and evaluating projects that have beeninfluenced by those concepts. I consider her cultural background outside the Anglo/American/Australian cultural locus of permaculture’s early development, an asset in providing an independent perspective on the socio-economic context in which the studied systems developed and their relevance outside of those contexts. By focusing on properties of some of the pioneers and prominent practitioners of permaculture, Eunice was able to gain greater longitudinal understanding of system evolution over time and how that related to the life trajectory of the designers, practitioners and residents (…)”