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Permaculture

The word permaculture is a contraction of permanent agriculture or, more broadly, permanent culture. The simplest definition of permaculture is an ecological design science -- a way of understanding and using the many ways that parts of living systems interact or work together to generate harmony or dissonance among them. Bill Mollison, the Australian founder of permaculture, calls it

a philosophy of working with rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems and people in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.

A basic question that can be asked in two ways is: "What can I get from this land, or person?" or "What does this person, or land, have to give if I cooperate with them?"
Of these two approaches, the former leads to war and waste, the latter to peace and plenty.

Two of permaculture's most important principles are:

• the Rule of Necessitous Use -- that we leave any natural system alone until we are, of strict necessity, forced to use it.
• the Rule of Conservative Use -- having found it necessary to use a natural resource, we may insist on every attempt to:
  • reduce waste, hence pollution;
  • thoroughly replace lost minerals;
  • do a careful energy accounting; and
  • make an assessment of the long-term, negative, biosocial effects on society, and act to buffer or eliminate these.

Mollison advocates protecting wilderness areas from further encroachment, rehabilitating degraded or eroded land with forests and ground covers, and designing human living environments to sustainably satisfy people's real needs so they don't have to degrade their environment to survive.

Other permaculture principles with a strong ring of co-intelligence include:

• Order is found in things working beneficially together. The fact that neatness, tidiness, and straightness require extensive investments of energy, etc., yet produce little yield, tells us that these illusory forms of order are, in fact, nature in wild disarray. True order often lies in apparent confusion, like a meadow, with its hundreds of hidden synergies.
• Design is a beneficial assembly of components in their proper relationships to serve a purpose.
• The role of beneficial authority is to return functions and responsibility to life and to people. If successful, no further authority is needed. The role of successful design is, therefore, to create a self-managed system. It is only by returning self-regulating function and responsibility to living things that a stable life system can evolve.
• Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively.

The permaculture movement is widespread. Thousands of people around the world practice it. There are textbooks, classes and journals on the subject.

By arranging things so they assist each other, permaculture home and landscape design reduces work, walking distances and waste products. For an excellent example, check out "Making a Habitat where Everything Fits."

Resources:

Books:

Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture (Tagari, 1991).

Patrick Whitefield, Permaculture in a Nutshell (Permanent Publications,
Clanfield, Hapshire, England, 1993)