Most investments are judged on delivery. Their real value is set years later.
Greg Knibbs
Perth, Western Australia — working across Australia, Africa and Southeast Asia.
I have spent thirty years practising solutions-based ecological design and watching what happens to land and community systems after the funding ends and the team leaves. The failures are rarely delivery failures. They are design decisions that only become visible years later.
I spent 18 years working with Western Mining at the Kwinana Nickel Refinery, first on staff and later as the site's landscape and environmental maintenance contractor through my own company, New Earth Enterprises. That experience taught me how decisions are actually made inside a resource company — under budget pressure, across competing operational, environmental and community priorities.
In Rwanda, I developed the food security strategy behind ADRA's EMBRACE program, which ADRA reports established more than 13,000 household gardens. In Tanzania, I have worked with Communities Assist since 2014 on land and livelihood systems that are now managed locally. In Western Australia, I designed the water, poultry and food forest systems at Bangadang Farm. At Miranalla Farm in Bohol, I developed the farm plan in 2023 and continue to advise as each phase is implemented.
Different places. Different organisations. Different scales. The underlying question is the same.
Will the system still work when the people who designed, funded or introduced it are no longer there?
I sold New Earth Enterprises. It has held the Kwinana contract since 1985 and holds it still.
I founded EDGE5 to help organisations answer that question before critical decisions are locked in. I lead every engagement myself.
“I have worked closely with Greg since 2014, when Communities Assist first hired him to complete a site analysis, then a mainframe design, and to teach our staff permaculture design and its application. Throughout this ongoing work he has demonstrated a deep commitment to sustainable design, training and site development — including his design work for our current outreach project at Sinya school in Tanzania.”
John O’Reilly — General/Operations, Communities Assist
Four qualities every design is measured against
Every EDGE5 design is checked against four qualities — the standard a design must meet before it is built.
Real
Grounded in the site's actual water, soil and labour conditions — not a template applied from elsewhere.
Functional
Built to keep working after the contract ends and the team leaves the site.
Authentic
Fitted to this place and this community, not a generic response that could sit anywhere.
Aesthetic
Designed to be worth maintaining — the reason a system is still cared for years on.
The name comes from the ecological edge effect
Where two systems meet — forest and field, dry season and wet — is where diversity and resilience are greatest. It is also where things are most likely to fail.
EDGE5 works at those same edges: between land and people, technical design and community capability, investment and handover.
Today, the 5 also stands for the five conditions that decide whether what is built at those edges continues. Those conditions are the EDGE5 Survival Gates™.
Independent specialists, brought in by need
David Spicer
Landscape rehydration and water systems. Trained directly under Bill Mollison.
Dr Terence Love
Design Out Crime and CPTED — designing against social and safety failure.
Where a project needs additional expertise, EDGE5 brings these specialists into the same design process rather than referring clients elsewhere. One plan, one point of contact.