We start with introducing some new ways of thinking that incorporate ancient wisdom, natural patterns and our innate abilities.
Permaculture provides a framework for this and we begin our journey with how we can see things from a permacultural perspective, which in turn comes from observation of nature. This part provides the underpinning ways of thinking that can then be applied to any system and adapted to its unique use for every individual situation or person. The rest of the book sets out examples of how these permaculture tools can be used in action.
We start with mapping out permaculture, its history and its future and the ethics at its heart. The last section of this chapter relates permaculture to the big vision of a positive future.
This part is intended both for the beginner and those familiar with permaculture; it lays the groundwork for the rest of the book.
The goal of permaculture is to create harmony with ourselves, between people and with the planet. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren2 first coined the word in the 1970s in Australia. The sustainability they described wasn’t completely new: much of the thinking is wisdom that our ancestors would have been well versed in, but this knowledge has been buried beneath the drive for productive and profitable agriculture systems and the thirst for fossil fuel economies.
There are as many permaculture definitions as there are permaculturists. Each person has developed their own ways of using permaculture and their relationship to it. Different thoughts, images, ideas and feelings emerge.
Permaculture has limitless meanings, but here are some commonalities and key points to help us to understand it:
Permaculture:
Using innate wisdom, new technologies and observation of nature’s patterns our aim is to create holistic systems that enhance quality of life without causing harm or pollution. We can create beneficial connections through design to give more substance and stability, like joining random words to make meaningful sentences.
It will take time to reinstate truly self-sustaining systems globally though we can find joys and benefits on the journey. Permaculture has gained momentum and spread rapidly around the world with people hungry to nurture and heal degraded and polluted land. Hundreds of thousands of people have benefited and changed their thinking and lifestyles, also creating abundance around them.
There is not a single blueprint of how to get there. Each garden or person is unique and requires their own individual plan of action; there isn’t one design that fits all.
Permaculture provides a set of ethics at its core, principles to guide us, techniques that assist us, methodical steps in a design process to achieve our goals, and a call to action. For each of the following parts we use one of these as a way of providing a permaculture context for understanding. In the next part we focus on ourselves and start to build our tool kit of techniques for design, observation and creative thinking. We then think about how principles can help us to understand our relationships in part three. In part four we use design as a framework for creating a more harmonious society. We come back to the core of permaculture using the ethics to help us feel connected globally in part five. In the last part we open up to actions we can take in our own lives.
Permaculture originated from the observation of nature and, as it is easiest to replicate nature’s systems in the garden most of the attention has been on doing just that. Growing food is one of the most powerful and tangible ways in which we can connect with the Earth and its cycles, and make a step towards living a healthier life. The main body of knowledge and experience therefore currently resides in land-based systems.
However, there is a growing realisation that, while enough skills, resources and techniques for widespread planet care and repair currently exist, there are other stumbling blocks that we have yet to overcome. What has been noted time and again is the ability of people themselves to stand in the way of positive action, right through from a personal to a global level. We can observe with individual, community and larger scale projects that it is our dynamics as human beings that ultimately dictates success or stalling. Well-meaning projects can come to a stand still if people aren’t attended to.
Permaculture has evolved from being purely land based, to involving people in land based systems, to thinking about the invisible structures within community groups. The next evolution has begun to take permaculture into the heart of all our people based systems. There may come a time in the future where the word permaculture becomes obsolete as it becomes ingrained in our state of mind and behaviour to think in an integrated systems way. Similarly, perhaps we will no longer need to label food as organic because all of our food is grown in this way.
Since the 1970s hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have adapted and experimented with permaculture and integrated it into their lifestyles and thinking. The effects have gone beyond just learning to grow their own food sustainably. From this initial step of accepting responsibility and taking action further leaps of empowerment become possible. Permaculture gives us the ability to look for the positives in any situation and create solutions. By thinking holistically and seeking the most productive and least polluting options we can provide yields for ourselves and protect resources for future generations.
The same thinking can be applied as effectively to our own lives and how we interact with others as for gardens. A permaculture garden is productive, healthy, vibrant, dynamic and able to meet its own needs; these are the same characteristics we would find in a natural system. Likewise permaculture people and communities can be productive, healthy, vibrant, dynamic and able to meet their own needs.
Permaculture has been used to design lives, homes, gardens, businesses, smallholdings, farms and ecovillages. It has been used in peace initiatives in Palestine, earthquake relief work in Haiti, soil and community regeneration in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It has been used in the centre of concrete jungles and reforesting deserts and is on the school curriculum in Malawi. We will hear more stories throughout from people using permaculture in their own lives.
Permaculture invites us to be a solution in the world.
There are three ethics at the heart of permaculture: earthcare, peoplecare and fair shares. On the surface they are straightforward and can be used to guide our decisions and lifestyles. Are we caring for the Earth, are we caring for people, is our action fair? Each ethic has a range of meanings and subtleties that enables us to see more deeply into our choices, assess impacts and find options with multiple benefits. They help us manifest an attitude and way of thinking that leads us to develop skills and tools within each ethic. We can embody the ethics in our everyday thinking and behaving. They are not unique to permaculture; many cultures, religions and groups worldwide share them. They can be seen as ‘life ethics’.
The earthcare ethic respects and preserves the biodiversity of the planet and creates new habitats.
The Earth is a living organism, able to self regulate, evolve and sustain the multitude of life upon it. The complexity of life it supports is staggering to comprehend. Permaculture is a way of valuing all life on earth. It asks of us to respect ALL life for its intrinsic value rather than just the plants and animals that we find useful or attractive. We must acknowledge that we do not own this planet.
Soil erosion, polluted water and air, extinction of species and melting ice caps are just some of the consequences of human actions. The quality of life of all species will further erode if positive action isn’t taken. Earthcare activities look to halt this damage and reverse the effects. Modern farming practices are responsible in part. We can shift to more appropriate technologies to increase productivity and fertility while reducing chemical inputs and pollution. These include agroforestry, seed saving, green manures, compost and integrated pest management. How we manage woodlands, treat sewage, build homes and grow food determines whether we are positively contributing or further stressing the life support systems of the planet.
Without caring for the Earth we as people cannot survive. We need to treasure wilderness, soil, forests, oceans and every creature. Everything on the planet is connected and all of our actions have ripple effects globally. We can care for the Earth by nurturing and valuing life so we can be proud of our contribution and the planet we leave behind.
The peoplecare ethic asks us to care for ourselves and other people and meet our needs in sustainable ways.
There are different levels of needs to meet: physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual. Currently many of people’s basic needs are met in unsustainable, unjust and polluting ways. Permaculture can help meet basic needs of food, water and shelter in a sustainable way.
In groups and communities we can value and support diversity, accept individuals’ needs and allow everyone a voice. We feel connected when working together for mutual benefit through authentic and effective communication. By doing this we are allowing people to be themselves and empowering them to realise their own potential. Reaching out and establishing links to create community infuses us with a sense of purpose and belonging.
Peoplecare can be like dusting and be more noticeable when it is not done. When we have our needs met and we feel secure and looked after we may take it for granted. When we aren’t cared for we might feel impatient, aggressive, lost, anxious, or disconnected. These effects are felt collectively as well as individually and lead to further social problems. Peoplecare extends into social systems including healthcare and education.
The current state of the planet has arisen from the thoughts and actions of humans past and present. The ethic of peoplecare includes changing the thinking behind our actions. Once our thinking changes our actions will follow suit.
We all have first hand experience of peoplecare, how we look after ourselves on a daily basis, how others treat us and how we respond to people. Everyone has innate abilities to help with our peoplecare, and they can further be practised and improved. Some of the skills and qualities we need for peoplecare are leadership, openness, kindness, acceptance, curiosity, patience, tolerance, vision, motivation and sharing. Learning to listen and communicate effectively shows compassion and empathy as well as enabling decision-making, negotiation and conflict resolution.
People are wonderful, creative, diverse, resourceful and loving. Peoplecare allows us to connect with these inherent qualities, to shine and encourage others to do so. Respect, appreciation, love and joy begin with ourselves and expand out to other people.
The fair shares ethic promotes equality, justice and abundance, now and for future generations. We can summarise it as: some for all, forever.
It has two aspects to it. The first is living within limits, limiting our consumption and not exceeding natural boundaries or exploiting people with our choices. The second aspect of giving away surplus can seem contradictory at first to living within limits. However when we rethink the term living within limits as living in balance with the natural world and sharing in the abundance of nature, the two ideas live hand in hand. We do not have to live without when we harvest renewable resources and tap into nature’s bounty, there is plenty to share around.
There are large gaps in society between the rich and the poor, and the opportunities available depending on your gender, race and nationality. These gaps breed resentment, lack of trust, complacency and exploitation.
The difference between needs and wants is fundamental to our consumption habits. Changing attitudes and redefining consumption, limits and surplus is needed to achieve fair shares. We are invited to live with an abundance attitude rather than a scarcity mentality. Spending locally, sharing and lending all help to distribute surpluses. Our energy can flow and we can contribute to the good of the whole in whatever way we can. A fairer world would emerge if we all lived on a bit less and gave a bit more.
The current problems faced by the planet and people can be viewed as stemming from actions that have not been in line with one or more ethic. The loss of biodiversity comes from not protecting natural habitats and caring for the Earth. Mental illnesses from isolation arise when people are not cared for. Millions of starving children globally is due to unequal distribution of food, labour, surplus and control and contravenes the fair shares ethic. These problems are not the result of single actions and have complex cause and effect relationships.
The three ethics are drawn as overlapping circles without distinct edges as they interrelate and influence each other. The actions within one ethic affect the other two. When a problem occurs in one of the ethics, other problems arise in the others.
For instance our food choices affect our health and have repercussions for the places and people that grow the food. Large fields of monocrops, grown for a cash income, impact on the availability of land for growing local food and water for irrigation. Chemical inputs become a part of the soil or run off into water systems. These infringe on all of the three ethics.
To affect changes we need to change our thinking before we can sustainably change our behaviour. How can we create feelings of ‘enoughness’ so that we can share resources and wealth more equally? How can we enrich rather than poison the planet with our actions and choices? This requires us to shift patterns of thinking, both collectively and personally.
With the overlap and interplay of the ethics, practising our skills and being active in one area enhances our abilities in the others. For example improving our ability to listen to the land will help us to listen to people. Care is the answer, if we don’t have care then what’s to stop us trashing everything? True harmony is in the centre and cannot be achieved if one of the ethics is not met.
Get some paper and an envelope. Write down your answers to the following questions. Don’t worry about what you write or how you write it, just write what comes, whatever is present for you in this moment. Answer as fully as you can now, ensuring that you complete the task in one sitting, even if it might feel sparse, rather than leaving it half done to come back to.
Now seal it in the envelope and write the date on the outside. Put it somewhere safe, not so safe you’ll never find it again. At the end of the book you can go back and read it. We often forget the journey we have taken, accepting the new scenery as normal. With this activity you will have a chance to reflect on where you started and see what’s changed.
The prime directive of permaculture is to take self-responsibility. This is a groundbreaking concept in a global culture where we are constantly being bombarded with choices and products from around the world and governments making decisions on our behalf. Thoughts of ‘it’s all out of my hands’, or ‘nothing I do will make a difference’ and blaming other people, parents, husbands, wives, the state, politicians or other countries are disempowering. Self-responsibility asks us to recognise our interconnectedness and apply our own free will to find ethical options. Being reflective encourages us to see the consequences of our actions.
Responsibility is response – ability. We have the ability to choose how we respond to our circumstances and other people, how we look after ourselves, how we communicate and how we connect with our fellow citizens.
It can be an empowering, transformative shift when we take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, what we say and what we don’t say, how we learn and whether we change or not.
Permaculture is often described as designing for sustainability. However, sustainability has become a buzzword that is frequently used but not fully understood. Sustainability is defined by the Brundtland report8 as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”.
When we look at a natural system there is no work – all inputs are met by the system and there is no pollution – all outputs are used within the system, such as in a forest.
Economic sustainability focuses on achieving and maintaining economic growth. There is a big difference between sustaining our current lifestyles and living sustainably. Our current lifestyles require many inputs from fossil fuels and cheap labour from other countries. Land is stolen from ancient rainforests and pollution from our activities seeps into our rivers, is buried in the land and clouds the air that we breathe. On a personal level our bodies suffer from disease and stress; on a society level, crime and disillusionment are escalating and our local communities are eroding. Is this the lifestyle we want to sustain?
Living sustainably means non-polluting, non-harming and leaving resources for future generations and other species. Sustainable systems are ones that we can maintain. We can have different levels of sustainability that feed into one another: environmental, personal and social. These all overlap because we can find personal security in our social relationships, one leads to another and we can have none without a healthy planet.
Personal sustainability is the ability to sustain ourselves: our energy levels, health, and connections to our dreams and visions, other people and our higher self. People have responsibility to maintain their own physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and avoid burnout. We need to have an understanding of our own needs and have mechanisms in place to meet them.
A socially sustainable culture will have a common understanding of ethical behaviour. Social responsibility is woven into everyday actions; our lives filled with interactions that feed us, nourish our sense of self worth and encourage honesty. We are social creatures and it is not possible to do everything on our own, we need nurturing relationships for our mental well-being.
When we recognise our need for interdependence we are willing to support each other. It doesn’t mean that we all have to be best friends; it means that we can respect, co-operate and co-exist with our differences rather than competing or trying to extinguish diversity.
Culture is the beliefs, customs, arts, institutions, practices and social behaviour of a particular nation or people. It is composed of internal thinking and external behaviours.
The systems we have for managing the Earth’s resources and for how we interact with each other depend greatly upon our culture – its traditions, values and ways in which people organise themselves.
There are different layers to our culture. Race, class, language, education, locality and work all contribute to the environment we live in. Our cultures are a composite of our homes, family, work, community and wider groups that we belong to. Every person is a part of many groups and will have a unique set of cultures that they identify with. We have a family culture and a work culture as well as being part of a bigger community and part of even bigger groups such as age groups like children, teenagers or elders.
We often act from these cultural perspectives without necessarily being aware that it is our cultural conditioning that is dictating our thinking. For instance the time in the morning or evening that we consider is fine to phone people is conditioned and not the same cross-culturally. Each culture has preferences and aversions, beliefs and actions.
Shifts in cultural beliefs and actions occur around us all the time and can come about quite quickly. The mobile phone culture has taken root and spread rapidly around the globe. There has been a dramatic increase in the availability of organic food over the last decade and it is now more usual to recycle and compost food. Over the next ten years it may become as normal to reuse our grey water and buy second hand clothes. The current economy relies on products having built-in obsolescence but it could become the norm for items to be manufactured for disassembly and reuse or replacement of component parts.
Sustainability is the centre point where all three ethics are being met. However, we are so far outside of meeting the ethics that we need to make more effort to get there, than if we were already there and just maintaining this position.
We could think of sustainability as leaving no negative impact on the planet. At the moment there is so much negative impact happening that ‘no impact’ isn’t enough, we need to have a positive impact. We could see sustainability as the mid point between degeneration and regeneration. We need to step up our regeneration of environmental and social systems to compensate for the damage.
Degeneration ----- Sustainable -------- Regeneration
Joanna Macy9 describes our present day culture of industry, technology and pollution as the ‘Industrial Growth Culture’. This is the contemporary manifestation of a longer history of domination and separation. From here we have three options. The first is for ‘business as usual’, to assume that we can carry on with industrial and economic growth indefinitely. Many efforts are made to sustain this culture despite the negative effects experienced on environmental, social and personal levels. When we focus on the impact this is having on the world’s resources, it is apparent that we can’t carry on doing this forever and the second option seems likely to be where we see the breakdown of global systems in the ‘Great Unravelling’. There would be great hardship during this process.
The third option is one of hope, responsibility and action. It is where we change the trajectory we are currently on, and shift our direction towards a ‘Life Sustaining Earth Culture’. This is the ‘Great Turning’, the opportunity to turn our efforts to creating a sustainable culture that enhances life in our communities and for all species.
There are three areas of work needed to make the Great Turning. Firstly there are holding actions, such as protests and campaigning against the many damaging activities. Then there is the creation of alternatives and regeneration activities. And thirdly is shifting the way we look at the world and our values. In this book I deal predominantly with the second two, but I recognise the importance of holding actions as well. All three interrelate and support each other.
When there is a sharing of beliefs, there is a sharing of culture. There are many disciplines and fields of activity whose aim is to create peace and harmony. Ian Lillington describes these as ‘fellow travellers’ on the journey towards a life sustaining Earth culture.
Permaculture is alive and demonstrates the same characteristics as an ecosystem: dynamic, growing and connecting. We could imagine a tree sending out new shoots as more people integrate their life experiences of earthcare, peoplecare and fair shares into existing permaculture knowledge. It is evolving and expanding as more information comes in and is assimilated through its permeable boundaries.
Permaculture shares edges with many other social groups; the more people that share the edge the bigger it is and the more exchanges there are. For example there is a big edge between permaculture and organic gardening. Some people think that permaculture and organic gardening are the same thing – they aren’t, but there is certainly a very big overlap, the main belief being that nature knows best. There are a significant number of people who share edges between permaculture and shiatsu, yoga, reflexology and other body work and therapies. Two of the shared beliefs here are that care of the self is important to enable us to nourish others and that personal well-being is linked to the well-being of the whole. Branches of personal development share the belief that there is inner wisdom and unused energy that can be tapped into and released.
Jo Barker of Dynamic Equilibrium11 integrates kinesiology, permaculture and life coaching to create a holistic way of finding sustainable solutions for individuals, groups and places. Kinesiology (or any energy medicine system) offers easy-to-learn techniques to release stress and maintain balance. The belief that brings these together is that through observation and listening we can find solutions to bring people’s lives into balance. Jo says, “in any permaculture design we aim to help a system become more and more self sustaining and abundant. It is the same with a food garden and a person’s life. I use permaculture, kinesiology and coaching to encourage self-reliance.”
Some of the edges that are explored within this book are Nonviolent Communication (NVC), The Work That Reconnects, Transition movement and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
The mutual belief between NLP and permaculture is that we can change patterns of thinking to change outcomes. I like to think of NLP as ‘New Language Patterns creating Novel Life Possibilities’. NLP has provided useful information for part two in particular.
There are strong themes embedded in all of these shared beliefs of care, nourishment, appreciation, connection and allowing. The word allowing reoccurs many times. Through allowing ourselves to experiment, grow, experience, try, be, live and feel we connect to our authentic selves and make positive change in the world. Life sustaining culture could be summed up in one word – abundance.
In contrast, the thinking behind the industrial growth culture is linear, short term and based on fear and greed. Some of the main beliefs that stem from this are:
The last belief is paradoxical for the industrial growth culture: simultaneously acting like there is a scarcity (by being greedy and grabbing resources), yet also using resources as if they are infinite and we can use them up as we want.
The Transition Movement started in 2004 as a response to the issues of peak oil and climate change. the movement is composed of many different initiatives; transition towns, cities, villages and bioregions. they are a way of facilitating the Great Turning through community action and connections. the basic idea is of bringing people together in their communities to build local resilience. through this resilience we are able to avoid the hardships that might arise when we have to shift away from an economy dependent on oil. One of the key source inspirations is permaculture and hence there are many shared beliefs, including: local connections are beneficial; we need to reduce our ecological footprint; and together we can achieve more. We will go on to explore their potential role in society in Part Four.
The common beliefs are patterns that we can use in our designs. Our skills are valuable resources to help with our designs.
Central to an Earth culture and the fair shares ethic is the idea of abundance. The industrial growth culture has the opposing belief of scarcity. Scarcity versus abundance is fear versus trust. A scarcity mindset has an underlying fear that there isn’t enough. An abundance attitude trusts that our needs will be provided for. When we give of our time and services we are assisting the flow of energy, this allows the flow to return to us. When we are open to giving we are open to receiving. When we give we don’t need to be concerned about the consequences of our actions or be looking for gratitude or pay back. With a scarcity state of mind we hold tight to our time, energy and resources and they can stagnate and pollute.
We can get caught in the trap of hoarding resources when in fact there are some that stay the same with use, and others that actually increase with use. We can become protective of our possessions and not want them to be used like a child hoarding our toys when in fact they will remain the same even when played with over and over. There are other resources that increase with use; some plants that are harvested frequently can produce much more than when left, harvesting herbs promotes healthy and productive growth. Friendships also increase with use.
There is some confusion about abundance and opulence. The excesses of the ‘too muchness’ world are not based on true abundance. Many environmentally conscious people want to move away from the spendthrift, wasteful attitudes and swing towards the scarcity mindset, believing that we have to do without to be ‘green’. This is certainly the view the media presents, that being green means doing without, simplicity a regression to a primitive lifestyle. Luxury, beauty and quality can all sit beside simplicity and being sustainable. We can invest in quality products that are going to last like a well-built tool or a pair of boots that can be resoled. We can create beauty and luxury around us that doesn’t harm others.
It is within our power and abilities to create surpluses and abundance in our lives. Abundance is more than just material items; we can create abundances of self-esteem, confidence, practical skills, friends, local community, purpose, knowledge and time. This starts with observing what we have, seeing the surpluses and redefining what we have in terms of what we need. Appreciation and abundance go hand in hand. It is about making the choice to see the abundances; are we seeing the strawberries that we have in plenty or do we want imported bananas? Of course strawberries and bananas aren’t the same, but abundance is about valuing what we have rather than focusing on what we haven’t got.
This continues with active creation of surpluses; what can we make, what skills do we have to offer, what plants can we propagate, what can we harvest, what time do we have spare?
One of the ways to develop an abundance mentality is to practise giving things away.
Perhaps it is plants in the garden, items that you don’t need, skills, time or money. Find a way to give some of this surplus away, offering your help, giving items to a friend, putting loose change in a charity box or propagating plants to share. Try and give something away small or large every week to keep momentum.