Financial Permaculture: Business Models

6 Comments

1. Wow… I love this idea. It fits into the work I’ve been independently thinktanking for a while now. I believe in revolutionary change, and that we are approaching the perfect time for it! This is right on track. Bill Mollison, Richard Register, and Jeffrey Sachs… the more minds to share ideas the better.

2. I always read your blog in high spirits. Thanks 🙂

3. Has anyone attempted this already or in process of doing so?

4. This might be a little off the topic–but its still related. Today I listened to a lecture series with Jeffrey Sachs on a local ” public” radio station here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was terrific ! Mr. Sachs is highly credentialed and has some fantastic philosophies, approaches and ideas for a sustainable and equitable society on a global level. I am coming to understand more and more that the U.S. needs new models for almost ALL systems of government, finance,consumer services, environmental concerns, energy, and more —- the whole lot of it. There are plenty of very intelligent people out there– especially in academia and business — who understand this, and are offering ideas for solutions. We need a ” makeover” from the top down ! I’m just an average person with average intelligence. If a person like me can comprehend a little of the mess we are mired in, how is it possible that those in ” high places” continue to perpetuate the many failing systems we now have? ( Don’t tell me, I already know–its called M-O-N-E-Y and P-O-W-E-R.) Is there not one of them who will stand for change and rally support for it? Thank you Catherine for the forum you have here which presents so much useful information to the general public. I support your efforts and I salute you from afar.

5. Here’s a business model for financial permaculture:

   Permaculture Community Investment Bank
   The following is an idea for setting up a local Investment Bank that would finance small business start-ups under a Brand such as “Permaculture Enterprise Network.” This Bank would provide training and mentoring for its borrowers, as well as an ethical basis for its businesses: “Earth care, people care, fair share,” from Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture, A Designer’s Manual”(1988). Permaculture is a way of designing place-based ecological economies. It is capable of providing sustainable water, soil, food, fuel, and shelter while generating community along the way. Permaculture is intelligence-dense and capital-light. It is a whole systems approach to designing environmentally regenerative support structures for human nurturance.
   Under the Bank’s auspices, business plans would be written by prospective owners for specialties such as rainwater harvesting, edible landscaping, firesafing, alternative energy, fertility and energy crops from marginal lands, water sequestration using earthworks for ponds, swales and keylining, aquaculture, natural building, sustainable forestry, constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, small scale dairies, food processing and preservation, among other things. These are basic capacities that make a place prosperous –capacities that add up to real productivity and local security.
   There are many proven techniques, not difficult to master, that young people willing to work, could pick up and get good at. The Bank would sponsor the basic permaculture design certification course, an established 72-hour curriculum with a hands-on design project pass-fail requirement, which would be a prerequisite for a basic business management course in which students would learn to write, with expert coaching, the well-thought-out, customized-to-place business plan most appropriate to their abilities. The Bank would retain majority ownership and provide ongoing mentoring for enterprises selected for support until the business passed a financial assessment proving viability, whereupon, with ample cash flow, the owner could realistically buy out and become fully independent. Maintenance contracts for installed systems, since many of the techniques are new, would be a common feature offered, providing ongoing employment and developing experience until systems maintenance for these new approaches has become as familiar and mainstream as maintenance of private autos, septic systems, lawns, homes, and major appliances are today.
   The Bank, in its function as small business incubator, would provide bookkeeping and marketing services for its start-ups. These are the tasks business-owners starting out have the hardest time with. The Bank would provide training, loans for equipment (each start-up not very capital-intensive), mentoring, legal services, accounting, as well as customers for each new business. The moral support supplied by such an arrangement would be a powerful insulator against the high failure rate common to small business starts in the mainstream economy.
   The Bank, in its function as promoter of permaculture solutions, would lobby local government to remove regulatory obstacles. It would set up specially permitted model projects to demonstrate quality standards. It would obtain economies of scale in purchasing materials and equipment. It would coordinate flows, one enterprise’s waste becoming fuel for another’s production. It would also help with allocating labor between enterprises seasonally as needed. The different specialties once launched, might form their own associations, interact with experts in their fields, sponsor research, and nurture ongoing innovation in their area of expertise. Competencies would be developed and best practices established.
   The Bank would be a conduit for philanthropy as well as a source of information about available subsidies and tax credits. In its function as an investment vehicle, The Bank would provide a secure home for local investors to place their money into shares of locally productive, visible hard assets generating income streams. In its function as holder of an ethical mission, The Bank would assure the customers of its protégés monitored, high quality services. As a part of its ethical mission, The Bank would demonstrate financial transparency, for the purpose of building trust.
   An apprenticeship program would develop ongoing expertise. It would provide a sense of belonging to a challenging and meaningful mission as well as a structure to stimulate inventiveness among the young. People care services could be integrated with these activities, such as child care, allowing adults in their most productive years maximum convenience and peace of mind as they work.
   In the current economy people are losing their jobs, just as a great deal of work needs to be done to get alternative support systems in place. The time for this is ripe. Due to the hole made in the mainstream economy by a falling house of cards, state and local governments, pension funds, financial institutions, even the federal government, are rapidly becoming insolvent and are already being forced to cut services. It looks like communities are going to be left on their own. Investment vehicles that only a year or two ago were fine, now seem uncertain: stocks and bonds, real estate, even bank accounts no longer seem as secure as they once were. Investment in real-world productivity, building local skills and basic self-reliance using the best knowledge available, would leverage investors’ assets into practical systems for maximum community-based long term security.
   The organization described here could start with where we are today, doing those projects which are legal, productive, and financially viable now, while remaining observant, adaptable, and open to evolutions as conditions change. It could safeguard an ethical basis for ecological human nurturance. Permaculture’s whole systems perspective is capable of revealing efficiencies which can then be designed in to highly effective systems for prosperity in a given place.
   The Bank would also be an appropriate venue for the creation of a LETS –Local Energy Trading System: an alternative currency. Once a community of small businesses got production for local needs up and running, a local currency could protect an area from inflation, deflation, supply disruptions, and failures in the existing financial system. In prosperous areas, the network of businesses would be integrated with the regular cash economy, and evolve as needed. In low income areas with high unemployment, it could operate under work-trade or other types of barter arrangements.
   This is an idea that is not very hard to do, not very expensive, can start small and grow, and can end up with local prosperity capably building up in a climate of trust and cooperation, with a fair and understandable moral foundation.

6. Impressed once again as to how valuable everything I read is to me especially at this time in my life and in our lives. I am so happy to see the “sustainability” with “Gaia” being a such a major piece of what you share Catherine, I am leaning more and to moving to Tennessee when my mother passes. I hope to be able to get something started here before I do move there or anywhere. So far I have two friends, one an x-accountant friend who I plan to pay to help me start organizing, and my R.E. Investor friend gone “green” because of me–or so he says. So I am feel really confident now that we are a good seeds to initiate our Solari here in Tampa.

   I have also gone back to eating more natural food and off of sugar…you are so right about eating healthy being so important.

   “In Cahoots” a co-conspirator==>
   Yvonne

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