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    Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainabilty

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    Mindy101Smith
    This document outlines 12 principles of permaculture design: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, use and value renewable resources and services, produce no waste, design from patterns to details, integrate rather than segregate, use small and slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, and creatively use and respond to change. The principles emphasize designing sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled after relationships found in nature.

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    Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainabilty

    Uploaded by

    Mindy101Smith
    340 views25 pages
    This document outlines 12 principles of permaculture design: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, use and value renewable resources and services, produce no waste, design from patterns to details, integrate rather than segregate, use small and slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, and creatively use and respond to change. The principles emphasize designing sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled after relationships found in nature.

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    Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainabilty

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    This document outlines 12 principles of permaculture design: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, use and value renewable resources and services, produce no waste, design from patterns to details, integrate rather than segregate, use small and slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, and creatively use and respond to change. The principles emphasize designing sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled after relationships found in nature.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    340 views25 pages

    Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainabilty

    Uploaded by

    Mindy101Smith
    This document outlines 12 principles of permaculture design: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, use and value renewable resources and services, produce no waste, design from patterns to details, integrate rather than segregate, use small and slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, and creatively use and respond to change. The principles emphasize designing sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled after relationships found in nature.

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    Permaculture

    Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability

    1. Observe & Interact


    The landscape is the textbook Failure is useful so long as we learn Elegant solutions are simple, even invisible Make the smallest intervention necessary Avoid too much of a good thing The problem is the solution Recognize and break out of design cul-de-sacs

    It is as if we are wandering about a landscape littered with the pieces of many different jigsaw puzzles. Our task is to pick up as many pieces as seem possibly useful, limited in the end by how many we can recognize, and carry them to a place we dont yet know, where we must construct a new jigsaw puzzle from what we have. unless we get out there, and open our eyes and use our hands and our hearts, all the ideas in the world will not save us.

    2. Catch & Store Energy


    Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Poorly used sources of energy include:
    Solar: drying, water heating, passive solar Wind: pumping water Biomass: sustainable management of trees and forests for fuel and building materials Runoff Water: irrigation, aquaculture

    Maintenance of a seed line by regularly growing and saving seed is one of the most important examples of catching and storing energy. Increasing the humus content of agricultural soil has always been a principal of organic agriculture. Changing the management of farmland to use organic and permaculture strategies and techniques can rebuild this storage of soil carbon fertility and water close to those of natural grasslands and forests. It is arguably the greatest single contribution we could make to ensure the future survival of humanity.

    3. Obtain a Yield
    Yields from vegetables can vary as much as two orders of magnitude depending on fertility If we expose very young children to the delight of foraging food in a garden, they are more likely to grow up with a deep and intuitive understanding of our dependence on nature and its abundance. Many permaculture strategies and techniques generalist in nature with more flexibility and less emphasis on efficiency

    Numeracy and accounting give measures of yield Money may not be an adequate measure of value in accounting, but this should not detract from the value of accounting itself. An accountant friend once suggested that accountants were not really enemies of sustainability, they just needed to be given appropriate numbers to add up.

    4. Apply Self Regulation & Accept Feedback


    Self maintaining and regulating systems Holy Grail of permaculture Traditional social and ethical constraints Market and law are main mechanisms for providing negative feedback Personal responsibility

    self controlling aspects of human culture, rather than the expansion of technology for resource exploitation and growth, represent the highest evolutionary development achieved by Homo sapiens. The ways in which we apply these abilities to controlling the excesses of growth and expansion over the next century will the greatest test of our evolutionary sophistication.

    5. Use & Value Renewable Resources & Services


    Environmental technology Chook tractor Trees as renewable energy source:
    Provide wood for wood gas or methanol Structural timber products Forests produce honey and other products and services Can grow sustainably on poor land

    The image of clean green technology where we do not need to mess with nature or kill anything to provide for our needs is, in the final analysis, an illusion. That illusion appears to have substance only because generations of the worlds more affluent urbanites have been disconnected from nature.

    6. Produce no Waste
    Refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle Recycling most generally overemphasized Maintenance Pest plants and animals as wasted resources

    Governments do not generally support major social changes away from addictive consumption, even though the social and environmental benefits would be great, because the growth economy is inextricably tied to dysfunctional overconsumption. The prevailing response of land managers, environmentalists and society is to regard proliferating species as new forms of biological pollution when they are in reality, unused resources. Working out more creative and effective ways to use wild resources is a constant theme in permaculture design.

    7. Design from Patterns to Details


    Permaculture zones Forests as models for agriculture:
    Dominated by large trees Include understory species Have diverse habitats for small and large animals Are effective at holding soil

    Complex systems that work tend to evolve from simple ones that work, so finding the appropriate pattern for that design is more important than understanding all the details of the elements in the system. The permaculture strategy of tree crops and food forests is not about creating massive biomass forests; instead, it focuses on trees that have the maximum potential to feed people and livestock.

    8. Integrate Rather than Segregate


    Each element performs many functions; each important function is supported by many elements Rebuilding community

    Permaculture can be seen as part of a long tradition of concepts that emphasize mutualistic and symbiotic relationships over competitive and predatory ones. Declining energy availability will shift the general perception of these concepts from romantic idealism to practical necessity.

    9. Use Small & Slow Solutions


    Small scale, minimal movement alternatives:
    Stacking of plants to make use of soil, water, and light in small areas Multipurpose buildings/integrated land uses Production of perishable foods from household gardens Local economic systems Bicycle transportation

    In simple energetic terms, a given energy supply can support a large mass moving slowly, or a small mass moving fast, but not both. If energy availability rises, systems can grow in size and increase in speed of movement. If energy availability diminishes, systems must shrink, or slow down, or do both.

    10. Use & Value Diversity


    Number of functional connections, not species We proceed without knowledge when designing more self-reliant systems:
    No or few local examples Inherent complexity and individuality Novel factors (new species, knowledge, technology) Natural co-evolutionary forces

    Nature is equally concerned with diversity and with power and productivity. Teaching of environmental science and popular environmental culture tends to ignore this aspect of nature in an effort to counter the obsession with the prevailing economic measures of productivity and power.

    11. Use Edges & Value the Marginal


    Edge in cultivated landscapes Wild foods as marginal systems Rundown neighborhoods City and hinterland (center and margin)

    Within every terrestrial ecosystem the living soil which may only be a few centimeters deep is an edge or interface between non-living material earth and the atmosphere. For all terrestrial life, including humanity, this is the most important edge of all. Deep, well-drained and aerated soil is like a sponge, a great interface that supports productive and healthy plant life.

    12. Creatively Use & Respond to Change


    Ecological models of succession:
    Pulsing models:
    Agricultural: Cell grazing, rotational cropping, slash and burn

    Four-phase model of change:


    Conservation Release Reorganization Exploitation

    Ecosynthesis:
    Evolution of new ecosystems of native and exotic species responding to novel conditions

    In developing a post-affluent society it is not necessary to denigrate what our parents, grandparents or ancestors did as ignorant, shortsighted, or anti-nature. Instead, we recognize that the ground on which we stand has been prepared for us by those who have gone before.

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