by David Holmgren
Contents
ii. The NetworkThe Permaculture Design Course
Impediments to the Spread of Permaculture
iii. Focus on opportunities rather than obstacles
The value and use of principles
Ethical Principles of Permaculture
Design Principles
vi. The 12 Permaculture Principles
(This document is also available in downloadable PDF format )
The word permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison and myself in the mid-1970's to describe an integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to man[i].
A more current definition of permaculture, which reflects the expansion of focus implicit in Permaculture One, is 'Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fibre and energy for provision of local needs. People, their buildings and the ways in which they organise themselves are central to permaculture. Thus the permaculture vision of permanent or sustainable agriculture has evolved to one of permanent or sustainable culture.The design system
For many people, myself included, the above conception of permaculture is so global in its scope that its usefulness is reduced. More precisely, I see permaculture as the use of systems thinking and design principles that provide the organising framework for implementing the above vision. It draws together the diverse ideas, skills and ways of living which need to be rediscovered and developed in order to empower us to provide for our needs, while increasing the natural capital for future generations.In this more limited but important sense, permaculture is not the landscape, or even the skills of organic gardening, sustainable farming, energy efficient building or eco-village development as such, but it can be used to design, establish, manage and improve these and all other efforts made by individuals, households and communities towards a sustainable future. The Permaculture Design System Flower shows the key domains that require transformation to create a sustainable culture. Historically, permaculture has focused on Land and Nature Stewardship as both a source for, and an application of, ethical and design principles. Those principles are now being applied to other domains dealing with physical and energetic resources, as well as human organization (often called invisible structures in permaculture teaching). Some of the specific fields, design systems and solutions that have been associated with this wider view of permaculture (at least in Australia) are shown around the periphery of the flower. The spiral evolutionary path beginning with ethics and principles suggests knitting together of these domains, initially at the personal and the local level, and then proceeding to the collective and global level. The spidery nature of that spiral suggests the uncertain and variable nature of that process of integration.
The network
Permaculture is also a network of individuals and groups spreading permaculture design solutions in both rich and poor countries on all continents. Largely unrecognised in academia, and unsupported by government or business, permaculture activists are contributing to a more sustainable future by reorganising their lives and work around permaculture design principles. In this way they are creating small local changes, but ones that are directly and indirectly influencing action in the fields of sustainable development, organic agriculture, appropriate technology and intentional community design.The Permaculture Design Course
Most of the people involved in this network have completed a Permaculture Design Course (PDC), which for over 20 years has been the prime vehicle for permaculture inspiration and training worldwide. The inspiration aspect of the PDC has acted as a social glue bonding participants to an extent that the world-wide network could be described as a social movement. A curriculum was codified in 1984, but divergent evolution of both the form and content of these courses, as presented by different permaculture teachers, has produced very varied and localised experiences and understandings of permaculture.Impediments to the Spread of Permaculture
There are many reasons why ecological development solutions that reflect permaculture design principles have not had a greater impact over the last few decades. Some of those reasons are:Prevailing scientific culture of reductionism that is cautious, if not hostile, to holistic methods of inquiry.
The dominant culture of consumerism, driven by dysfunctional economic measures of well-being and progress.
Political, economic and social elites (both global and local) which stand to lose influence and power through the adoption of local autonomy and self-reliance.
These and related impediments express themselves differently in different societies and contexts.
For the five billion or so majority for whom the cost of basic needs is high relative to real income, the opportunities to maintain or redevelop more self-reliant means of providing for needs are extremely limited. The depletion of local natural resources by population pressure, innovation in resource extraction technology, ethnic and migratory conflict, as well as government and corporate exploitation, have all reduced the productivity and viability of old co-evolved sustainable systems. At the same time, growth in the monetary economy has provided more opportunities for farm and factory labour, thereby increasing measured income, but failing to take account of declining well-being. The lure of opportunities in the rapidly growing cities has been like the dangled carrot , enticing country folk to move to the city. This process follows a model as old as Charles Dickens' character Dick Wittington, who believed the streets of early 19th century London were paved with gold. At the same time, government provision of health, education, and other services have all been slashed by IMF and World Bank imposed structural adjustment. This failed system of economic and social development is extraordinary in its ubiquity and repetition.
The same system of power that extracts and exploits the less powerful, soothes the billion or so middle-class people, mostly in the North, into complacency with low, and even falling costs relative to average incomes, of food, water, energy and other essential derived goods. This failure of global markets to transmit signals about resource depletion and environmental degradation has insulated consumers against the need for developing more self-reliant lifestyles, and disabled the drive for public policies which might assist these necessary adaptations. The flood of new and cheap consumer goods has stimulated consumption to a point of super-saturation, while at the same time measures of social capital and wellbeing continue to fall from peaks in the 1970's.
The craven acceptance of economic growth at all costs, and the powerful established corporate and government interests, which stand to lose power from such a transition, makes clear the radical political nature of the permaculture agenda.
Focus on opportunities rather than obstacles
While permaculture activists are acutely aware of these impediments to what they do, permaculture strategies focus on the opportunities rather than the obstacles. In the context of helping the transition from ignorant consumption to responsible production, permaculture builds on the persistence of both a culture of self-reliance, community values, and the retention of a range of skills, both conceptual and practical, despite the ravages of affluence. The identification of these invisible resources is as important in any permaculture project as the evaluation of biophysical and material resources.While sustainable "production" (of food and other resources) remains the prime objective of permaculture strategies, it can be argued that permaculture has been more effective at pioneering what has come to be called "sustainable consumption". Rather than weak strategies to encourage green consumer purchasing, permaculture addresses the issues by reintegrating and contracting the production/consumption cycle around the focal point of the active individual nested within a household and a local community.
Although permaculture is a conceptual framework for sustainable development that has its roots in ecological science and systems thinking, its grassroots spread within many different cultures and contexts show its potential to contribute to the evolution of a popular culture of sustainability, through adoption of very practical and empowering solutions.
Fundamental Assumptions
Permaculture is founded on some fundamental assumptions that are critical to both understanding and evaluating it. The assumptions on which permaculture was originally based were implied in Permaculture One, and are worth repeating:Humans, although unusual within the natural world, are subject to the same scientific (energy) laws that govern the material universe, including the evolution of life.
" The tapping of fossil fuels during the industrial era was seen as the primary cause of the spectacular explosion in human numbers, technology and every other novel feature of modern society.The environmental crisis is real and of a magnitude that will certainly transform modern global industrial society beyond recognition. In the process, the well-being and even survival of the world's expanding population is directly threatened.
The ongoing and future impacts of global industrial society and human numbers on the world's wondrous biodiversity are assumed to be far greater than the massive changes of the last few hundred years.
Despite the inevitably unique nature of future realities, the depletion of fossil fuels within a few generations will see a gradual return of system design principles observable in nature and pre-industrial societies, and which are dependent on renewable energy and resources (even if the specific forms of those systems will reflect unique and local circumstances).
Thus permaculture is based on an assumption of progressively reducing energy and resource consumption, and an inevitable reduction in human numbers. I call this the "energy descent future" to emphasise the primacy of energy in human destiny, and the least negative but clear description of what some might call "decline", "contraction," "decay" or "dieoff". This energy descent future can be visualised as the gentle descent after an exhilarating balloon flight that returns us to the Earth, our home. Of course that earth has been transformed by humanity's "energy ascent", making the future as challenging and as novel as any period in history. In openly accepting such a future as inevitable we have a choice between fearful acquisitiveness, cavalier disregard or creative adaption.
The conceptual underpinning of these assumptions arises from many sources, but I recognise a clear and special debt to the published work of American ecologist Howard Odum[ii]. The ongoing influence of Odum's work on the evolution of my own ideas is made explicit in the dedication and extensive references to Odum in Permaculture, Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, as well as articles in David Holmgren: Collected Writings 1978-2000[iii].
Among the recently published works on fossil energy peak and consequent descent, Richard Heinberg's wonderfully titled book, The Party's Over[iv], probably provides the best overview of the evidence and issues, with appropriate acknowledgement to Campbell, Leherrere and other retired and independent petroleum geologists who, in the mid 1990's exposed the real facts about the world's fossil fuel reserves, and the critical nature of peak as opposed to ultimate production of oil and gas.
Permaculture Principles
The value and use of principles
The idea behind permaculture principles is that generalised principles can be derived from the study of both the natural world and pre-industrial sustainable societies, and that these will be universally applicable to fast-track the development of sustainable use of land and resources, whether that be in a context of ecological and material abundance or one of deprivation.The process of providing for people's needs within ecological limits requires a cultural revolution. Inevitably such a revolution is fraught with many confusions, false leads, risks and inefficiencies. We appear to have little time to achieve this revolution. In this historical context, the idea of a simple set of guiding principles that have wide, even universal application is attractive.
Permaculture principles are brief statements or slogans that can be remembered as a checklist when considering the inevitably complex options for design and evolution of ecological support systems. These principles are seen as universal, although the methods that express them will vary greatly according to place and situation. These principles are also applicable to our personal, economic, social and political reorganisation, as illustrated in the Permaculture Flower, although the range of strategies and techniques which reflect the principle in each domain is still evolving.
These principles can be divided into ethical principles and design principles.
Ethical Principles of Permaculture
Ethics act as constraints on survival instincts and the other personal and social constructs of self-interest that tend to drive human behaviour in any society. They are culturally evolved mechanisms for more enlightened self-interest, a more inclusive view of who and what constitutes "us", and a longer-term understanding of good and bad outcomes.The greater the power of human civilisation (due to energy availability), and the greater the concentration and scale of power within society, the more critical ethics become in ensuring long-term cultural and even biological survival. This ecologically functional view of ethics makes them central in the development of a culture for energy descent.
Like design principles, ethical principles were not explicitly listed in early permaculture literature. Since the development of the Permaculture Design Course, ethics have generally been covered by three broad maxims or principles:
Care for the earth (husband soil, forests and water)
Care for people (look after self, kin and community)
Fair share (set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus).
These principles were distilled from research into community ethics, as adopted by older religious cultures and modern cooperative groups. The third principle, and even the second, can be seen as derived from the first.
The ethical principles have been taught and used as simple and relatively unquestioned ethical foundations for permaculture design within the movement and within the wider "global nation" of like-minded people. More broadly, these principles can be seen as common to all traditional cultures of place, although their conception of "people" may have been more limited than the notion that has emerged in the last two millennia[v].
This focus in permaculture on learning from indigenous, tribal and cultures of place is based on the evidence that these cultures have existed in relative balance with their environment, and survived for longer than any of our more recent experiments in civilisation.
Of course, in our attempt to live an ethical life, we should not ignore the teachings of the great spiritual and philosophical traditions of literate civilisations, or the great thinkers of the scientific enlightenment and since. But in the long transition to a sustainable low-energy culture we need to consider, and attempt to understand, a broader canvas of values and concepts than those delivered to us by recent cultural history[vi].
Design principles
The scientific foundation for permaculture design principles lies generally within the modern science of ecology, and more particularly within the branch of ecology called 'systems ecology'. Other intellectual disciplines, most particularly landscape geography and ethno-biology, have contributed concepts that have been adapted to design principles.Fundamentally, permaculture design principles arise from a way of perceiving the world that is often described as 'systems thinking' and 'design thinking' (See Principle 1: Observe and interact).
Other examples of systems and design thinking include:
The Whole Earth Review, and its better-known offshoot the Whole Earth Catalogue, edited by Stewart Brand, did much to publicise systems and design thinking as a central tool in the cultural revolution to which permaculture is a contribution.
The widely known and applied ideas of Edward De Bono[vii] fall under the broad rubric of systems and design thinking.
As the academic discipline of cybernetics[viii], systems thinking has been an esoteric and difficult subject, closely associated with the emergence of computing and communication networks and many other technological applications.
Apart from the ecological energetics of Howard Odum, the influence of systems thinking in my development of permaculture and its design principles has not come through extensive study of the literature, but more through an osmotic absorption of ideas in the cultural ether which strike a chord with my own experience in permaculture design. Further, I believe many of the abstract insights of systems thinking have more easily understood parrallels in the stories and myths of indigenous cultures, and to a lesser extent in the knowledge of all people still connected to land and nature.
Permaculture principles, both ethical and design, may be observed operating all around us. I argue that their absence, or apparent contradiction by modern industrial culture, does not invalidate their universal relevance to the descent into a low-energy future.
While reference to a toolkit of strategies, techniques and examples is the way most people will relate to and make use of permaculture, these are specific to the scale of systems involved, the cultural and ecological context, and the repertoire of skills and experience of those involved. If principles are to provide guidance in choosing and developing the useful applications, then they need to embody more general systems design concepts, while being in language that is accessible to ordinary people and resonates with more traditional sources of wisdom and common sense.
I organise the diversity of permaculture thinking under 12 design principles. My set of design principles varies significantly from those used by most other permaculture teachers. Some of this is simply a matter of emphasis and organisation; in a few cases it may indicate difference of substance. This is not surprising, given the new and still emerging nature of permaculture.
The format of each design principle is a positive action statement with an associated icon, which acts as a graphical reminder and encoding some fundamental aspect or example of the principle. Associated with each principle is a traditional proverb that emphasises the negative or cautionary aspect of the principle.
Each principle can be thought of as a door into the labyrinth of systems thinking. Any example used to illustrate one principle will also embody others, so the principles are simply thinking tools to assist us in identifying, designing and evolving design solutions.
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New Permaculture Principles Website
A new website that provides easy access to the permaculture ethics and design principles with clean graphics and simple explanations by permaculture graphic design professional Richard Telford
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