Bill Mollison
| Bill Mollison | |
|---|---|
Mollison in 2008
|
|
| Born |
4 May 1928 Stanley, Tasmania, Australia |
| Died |
24 September 2016 (aged 88) Hobart, Tasmania, Australia |
| Residence | Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Fields | Biologist and environmentalist |
| Institutions |
CSIRO Tasmania Museum Inland Fisheries Commission Permaculture Institute |
| Alma mater | University of Tasmania |
| Known for |
Environmental psychology Permaculture |
| Notable awards | Right Livelihood Award (1981) |
Bruce Charles "Bill" Mollison (4 May 1928 – 24 September 2016) was an Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist. He is referred to as the "father of permaculture." Permaculture (a portmanteau of "permanent agriculture") is an integrated system of ecological and environmental design which Mollison co-developed with David Holmgren, and which they together envisioned as a perennial and sustainable form of agriculture. In 1974, Mollison began his collaboration with Holmgren, and in 1978 they published their book Permaculture One, which introduced this design system to the general public. Mollison founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania, and created the education system to train others under the umbrella of permaculture. This education system of "train the trainer", utilized through a formal Permaculture Design Course and Certification (PDC), has taught thousands of people throughout the world how to grow food and be sustainable using permaculture design principles.
Bruce Charles "Bill" Mollison was born in 1928, in the Bass Strait fishing village of Stanley located on the north-west part of Tasmania, Australia. He left school at age 15 to help run the family bakery. But what followed was a decade working at numerous jobs to support himself. Some of these included work as a shark fisherman, seaman, forester, mill worker, trapper, snarer, tractor-driver and naturalist.
In 1954, at the age of 26, Mollison joined and worked for the 'Wildlife Survey Section' of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It was this experience, primarily spent in the rain forests of Tasmania, that laid the foundation for his life-long passion: Permaculture. In the 1960s, Mollison went on to work at the Tasmanian Museum where he was a curator. He also worked with the Inland Fisheries Commission, where he was able to resume his field work once again. In 1966, he entered the University of Tasmania. After he received his degree in Bio-geography, he stayed on at the university to lecture and teach, and where he developed the unit of Environmental Psychology.
By the late 1960s, Mollison started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island state of Tasmania. This resulted from his own personal observations of the growth and use of the industrial-agricultural methods that he believed had rapidly degraded the soil of his native state. In his view, these same methods posed a danger because they were highly dependent on non-renewable resources, and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. Writes Mollison:
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Wikipedia