The origins of permaculture in Tasmania 40 years ago were informed by the seminal 1972 Limits To Growth report, the sequential energy crises and the creative ideas in many fields that represented the first modern wave of environmental innovation.

Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir is Dean of Engineering and Natural Sciences at the University of Iceland. Her research pertains to sustainability in its widest context including nature protection, economics, society and wellbeing. Kristín is working on soil sustainability indicators, undertaking a fertility study of conventional versus organic farming and establishing a framework for a sustainable financial system.

Pandora Thomas is a passionate global citizen who works as a teacher, writer, designer and speaker. Her writing includes a children’s book, various curricula and “Shades of Green”, a manual for teaching green building to youth. She has lectured on topics ranging from diversity, social justice, youth and women’s leadership, social entrepreneurship and sustainability. She co-founded Earthseed Consulting LLC, a holistic consulting firm.

Today, nearly four billion years after life first appeared on Earth, the planet hosts an abundance of complex life. Very recently, a new development – intelligence – has arisen. The varied and complex life on the planet today both maintains, and is supported by, fertile land and oceans and an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Life and the global environment have co-evolved such that neither would exist in its present form without the other.

Described by David Holmgren as one of the "great achievers of permaculture activism" Rob Hopkins is a former permaculture teacher and co-founder of the Transition movement. In this talk, he will reflect on the relationship between permaculture and Transition, and what both can teach us about how to scale up our impact and influence at a time that desperately needs that.

UNICEF Generation 2030/Africa estimated that Africa will have a population of 2.4 billion people by 2050, the majority women and youth. This prediction summarises the scale of our agricultural and urbanisation challenges: to feed and shelter Africans, to create wealth for them, and to conserve resources for future generations.

Just 10 years ago renewable energy was the preserve of a handful of eco-enthusiasts, many of whom were living an alternative, off-grid life. Now you can pop out in your lunch break and buy your solar panels at Ikea.

The world is awash with experts, philanthropists and multinational companies talking enthusiastically about what needs to be done ‘to feed the world’ – with a weird mixture of technocratic bombast and scaremongering about needing to double levels of food production by 2030.

During this provocative talk, Geoff Lawton will describe how the applied design science of permaculture can and is being used to stabilise global challenges like climate change, biodiversity declines, water stress, soil depletion and poverty.

Drawing from several examples of ‘edge’ permaculture, we will look at the patterns and elements which have made permaculture so successful and enabled its infiltration into almost every country and profession in the world.