Brainstorming Permaculture-related Research Topics for 2022

Food security, public health, biodiversity conservation, and climate change are crucial topics for research if you are interested in doing a study on permaculture for your thesis, dissertation, or for work. 

There aren't a lot of people doing research on permaculture yet, especially research related to the aforementioned topics. This is unfortunate because more attention should be given to permaculture, especially now that the effects of climate change is ravaging our country (i.e. typhoons, extreme heat, diseases). And yet, this is also a good thing because it means you have the opportunity to conduct ground-breaking and pioneering research on permaculture. 

We have a Google Sheets resource based on Ferguson's (2016) "permaculture research sectors" framework. There are four sectors: design, practice, movement, and worldview. In the third column of the spreadsheet, we listed down the published work done (journal, book chapter, news article, etc.) for each sector. In this way, we can fill in the research gaps for permaculture. So far, the 'design' sector has the most available literature while 'practice' and 'worldview' are still lacking content. 

For the 'practice' sector, these are the research questions:

1. How do we distinguish permaculture practice from other systems?

2. What evidence exists, in science and land use traditions, to support permaculture practice?

And for the 'worldview' sector:

1. What is our impact?

2. When and how are we successful in shifting paradigms?

3. When is it worthwhile to promote permaculture as 'permaculture,' and when is it best to let go of the term?

4. How can we best exert influence without evangelizing? 

Given these topics and research questions, some serious reflection is needed to ponder what kind of research will have the most immediate impact in our communities. 

Time is not on our side this time. As researchers and scientists, we need to act now and communicate the relevance of our work to the masses. 

To know more, you can watch this documentary on permaculture in the Philippines released in 2018.