Evaluating ecological well-being on permaculture sites: a case study across Australia NANNI, Arthur 1 Submitted in 11mar2023, Accepted in 14nov2023 Reviewed by Tatsuo Shubo and Roberto Goulart Abstract: In an urbanised world, people have been distanced from nature, generating a lot of environmental and social issues, leading to health and economic problems as a consequence. In the opposite way, some people are looking for other perspectives to live close to nature, looking for a better quality of life, and this new lifestyle has not been evaluated by common sense based on economic standards. Ecological well-being as a goal sits where people are part of nature and not something strange to our mother Earth. This paper presents the application of the Permaculture MESMIS methodology used to evaluate the ecological well- being to four groups of practitioners permaculturists across Australia, including the neorural experienced (1), the neorural less experienced (2), the suburban (3) and the urban (4). The results showed that the Permaculture MESMIS methodology works as a tool designed to specifically evaluate permaculture-designed lands. The obtained scores for all the profile groups reveal an increase in ecological well-being status through the permaculture ethics and design principles incorporation. Considering all data in hand, the behavior follows the same trends, confirming permaculture as a positive way to promote nature reconnection. Keywords: Permaculture; Well-being; MESMIS permaculture; Neorural INTRODUCTION After the second world war, the civilization started a developing model based on chemicals and mechanization of farms, known as industrial agriculture. As a consequence, people have migrated in a massive way to the cities around the world because they labour force was not necessary in the countryside, thus separating people from nature and increasing their food/life dependency condition in an urbanised world. In this scenario, permaculture appears as a conscious alternative to this nature apparted model (Lockyer & Veteto, 2013, p. 116), not only for small-scale but for medium-sized farmers who are now struggling to obtain a better quality of life through organic growing, protection of the environment and social engagement in a local scale. In this way, the global permaculture movement and network had been increased “quickly and largely decentralized, informal movement” (Ferguson and Lovell, 2015 in (Morel et al., 2019), being employed individuality by communities or in local and national governments as is the 1- Permaculture Study Group of Federal University of Santa Catarina, neperma.ufsc@gmail.com .