PC ethics and principles
PC principles
There are various interpretations of the principles of permaculture design. This is another.
Permaculture is a platform of ethics, design principles and characteristics on which practitioners develop useful applications.
Permaculture is not an ideologically-driven practice. It is pragmatic and adaptive. The design system is guided by three ethics that describe its overall, big picture mission. The ethics are enacted in myriad ways relevant to circumstances of place, people and available resources. They are also enacted through the sets of design principles developed by the design system’s founders, Bill mollison and David Holmgren.
The principles are guidelines, not prescriptions. They are selected according to the task at hand and can be modified and adapted as needed.
Permaculture is not a farming technique. It’s a design science that applies to everything. If we gut it and make it into just gardening techniques we will have failed in the mission of permaculture. It’s about an ethical relationship with the earth. The mission of permaculture is very clear: ‘The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for own existence and that of our children.’
Bill Mollison
The ethics
Permaculture is guided by three core ethics and applied through design principles.
The ethics are simple and broad
- care for people
- care for the Earth and the systems that support life
- share what’a spare, redistributing whatever knowledge, skills, or resources we have surplus to our needs so that others can provide their own basic needs.
However we begin, permaculture starts where we are, with what we have, and with small, practical actions that add up to big change. In doing this, permaculture’s approach is reminisence of the Japanese principle of ‘kaizen’, the practice of making small, incremental changes to improve what we do that build up to broader positive change.
Let’s look at the principles of permaculture design developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
Bill’s principles
Observational principles
Permaculture is information and imagination-intensive permaculture design is based on information collected through observation and through researching what credible sources have found imagination brings together data to produce information (information can be defined as data organised to achievesome end) and integrates it into a design that makes creative links between related components of design so that outputs from one element become inputs for another (eg. post-harvest crop residue in a vegetable garden is composted to produce plant nutrients).
Information rapidly diffuses through small groups, and then larger groups of people use it to help themselves. This is characteristic of all technological diffusion.
Cory Doctorow, authorThe more you know, the less you need.
Yvon Chouinard
Work with nature rather than against it the principle of primary and secondary benefit from elements in design using natural energies such as sunlight, wind and flowing water to produce energy directing overland flow of water to storage for irrigation and habitat.
The problem is the solution that which is an impediment to action is turned to advance the action
the obstacle on the path becomes the way (source: Marcus Aurelius)
Ancient Chinese philospoher Sun Tzu’s teachings in The Art of War say that obstacles can present opportunities for strategy and innovation, for leveraging challenges to achieve an end.
Everything gardens — everything — plants, animals, humans — modifies its environment to make conditions suitable for its growth and reproduction.
Everything works both ways — very resource is either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending the use made of it.
The yield of a system is only limited by the imagination and information held by the designer the principle of applying credible and verifiable information in design the yield of a system is directly proportional to the quality of the information used to design it.
Design principles
Obtain a yield get something back from what we do a return in different forms on energy and time invested.
Work where it counts work where we can be most effective.
Work with people who want to learn determine people’s readiness for change and work with those who have the greatest commitment to making positive change.
Cooperate rather than compete cooperation make better use of human and material resources develop partnerships and collaborations.
Make the least change for the greatest possible effect the principle of effectiveness with minimum disruption and resource use maximum benefit from minimal intervention achieving project goals with minimal effort.
Each important function is supported by many elements the principle of diversity in design leading to resilience making important functions secure through designing back-up elements to provide the function in case the primary means fails eg. the primary home water supply may be the town’s reticulated water system; a support element might be harvesting ranfall from roofs and storing it in water tanks; where there is space, digging ponds and directing rainfall runoff into them provides a reserve water supply for garden irrigation.
Each element performs many functions the principle of multifunction in design.
Relative location placing elements in design according to their relationship with other elements
placing elements the outpots of one that become inputs for another in close proximity locating elements in design according to site conditions and function.
Small-scale intensive systems small scale intensively managed systems are more compact that larger, less in intensively manages systems and make for easier-managed designs that are open to observation and intervention eg a small, well-maintained vegetable garden can be more productive than a large, neglected garden.
Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labour efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things.
Bill Mollison
Use biological resources make use of living resources such as vegetation to reduce maintanance and to benefit from secondary properties of the resource eg. trees planted primarily as a windbreak also produce shade for grazing animals and habitat for wildlife, and potentially produce resources such as fuelwood, seed to reproduce the plant and wild foods.
Apply diversity in design the principle of mutual support between elements in design
distinguish between wanted and unwanted diversity and reduce the unwanted eg. including diversity of edible species and flowering plants in the desing of a vegetable garden to increase pollination through attracting bees improving soil moisture content through composting and mulching as well as directing overland flow of rainwater to storage ponds for irrigation.
Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.
Bill Mollison. Introduction to Permaculture. 1991 Tagari Publishers
David’s principles
Catch and store energy make use of free energies such as solar, wind and water in design eg. technologies catch natural energies that can be stored in batteries; photovoltaic energy stored in household batteries or sold to the grid that acts as an on-demand battery; wind turbines; a barrage across a stream catches and detains moving water from where it flows through a microhydroelectric turbine to produce electrical energy trees planted for fuelwood catch solar energy converted into biological energy are harvested to produce heat energy.
Obtain a yield get something back from what we do a return in different forms on energy and time invested.
Apply self-regulation and accept feedback analyse the results of our designs and their components and modify what we do to improve them.
Use and value renewable resources and services biological resources providing services like environmental modification on a site, water harvesting and storage and soil improvement, such as vegetation, are freely remewable resources such as sunlight and water are valuable inputs to design.
Produce no waste design the outputs of one compenent in design to become the inputs of a downstream process; eg. crop residue conversion into plant nutrients by composting minimise waste with selective buying convert waste materials into useful inputs through creative repurposing and recycling of materials.
Design from patterns to detail design detail integrates into the larger environmental conditions eg. seasonal patterns of prevailing winds, sunlight and shade suggest where best to build a home nutrition garden prevailing social, economic and political patterns suggest how to best proceed with permaculture community development projects.
Integrate rather than segregate consider the overall design and the climatic, weather and other site characteristics in design rather than viewing the components in a design as sepatate things link components in design so that they benefit from one another make creative connections between components in design.
Use small and slow solutions small and slow solutions keep projects manageable the principle is balanced by the principle of proportionality; sometimes external events and influences suggest the need for larger and more rapid solutions.
Use and value diversity the principle of mutual support from diverse sources
distinguish between wanted and unwanted diversity and design to minimise the unwanted.
Use edges and value the marginal edges, whether those where ecosystems meet or edges in societies where new ideas are born, are usually productive places Everett Rogers theory of ideas diffusion describes how marginal initiatives on the social edge can gain the support of early adopters that buildsinto mass adoption of an idea or a technology.
Only on the fringes of an ecosystem, those outer rings, do evolution and adaptation occur at a furious pace; the inner center of the system is where the entrenched, non-adapting species die off, doomed to failure by maintaining the status quo.
Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing
Creatively use and respond to change the principle of adaption that builds resiliency response to change require critical thinking and enacting the principle of proportionality in keeping the response aligned to the change.
Change can’t be prevented, only guided.
David Brin, scientist, science fiction author, in Earth
Additional principles
Conceptual principles
Permaculture is a platform of ethics, design principles and characteristics on which practitioners develop useful applications.
Permaculture is evidence-based design be skeptical; look for evidence to identify what works and what doesn’t, what is true and what is not.
Permaculture is not biodynamics, nor does it deal in fairies, devas, elves, after-life, apparitions or phenomena not verifiable by every person from their own experience, or making their own experiments. We permaculture teachers seek to empower any person by practical model-making and applied work, or data based on verifiable investigations.
Bill Mollison, Travels in Dreams
Permaculture is applied systems thinking systems thinking is a an approach to problem-solving that looks at how the parts of a system interact, influence one another and contribute to the behaviour of the whole system, rather than focusing on isolated elements alone.
Make your permaculture designs effective by using evidence derived from observation and measurement to multiply what works and fix what does not work we can be efficient at doing the wrong thing; effectiveness is doing what we set put to do effectiveness is not efficiency, however effective design can become efficient over time.
Adopt a network structure networks are a pattern in nature and permaculture is nature-inspired design networks have built in redundancy and are resilient decentralised, distributed networks networks enable peer-to-peer communication; group-to-group; peer-to-group; group-to-peer communication networks are a means of facilitating the third ethic of sharing in social design, create flat organisations based on the structure of networked activity nodes working within agreed parameters, including the ethics of thepermaculture design system, and consisting of self-initiating, self-organising, self-managing, semi-autonomous task teams linked by structured communication channels.
Anything that requires more than one person and lots of coordination has become easier because of networks, which take the coordination cost associated with these very complicated tasks and make them low. The change is profound, because any task that one person can’t do alone (becomes easier).
Cory Doctorow, author
Adopt the open source model open source implements the permaculture ethic of sharing resources by making things common property open source distributes enabling knowledge and builds the knowledge commons.
Principles of application
Apply design thinking design thinking is a user-centered, hands-on approach to solving problems that focuses on understanding peoples’ needs and developing practical solutions through an iterative process; design thinking involves distinct stages-define, ideate, prototype, test, adopt/reject/modify; permaculture is a design system and therefore applies design thinking.
Respond proportionally to the scale and speed of change the principle of proportionality match response with scale and speed of change to avoid being deluged by change; this may mean modifying David Holmgren’s principle of ‘small and slow solutions’.
Work in modules to make design implementation manageable:
- start small and complete the first module
- proceed from the edge and complete the next module
- repeat until design implemented
- link the beneficial functions and outputs of the modules to improve the effectiveness of the design.
Design for easy maintenance reduce time and costs spent in maintenance.
Adopt a placemaking approach in planning works in public places this is a place-based rather than design-based approach placemaking starts with participation of site users in choosing and locating elements of design, rather than applying the packaged design concepts of the design process leader placemaking precedes design, which is guided by and subsidiary to the participatory phase of placemaking.
Be effective in what you do effectiveness is doing what you set out to do; this implies an approach to project design that creates easily and economically maintained works, that is maintainable using skills and knowledge accessible to the users of your project, that makes best use of time, sets up collaborative and positive relationships, that prioritises tasks and activities and that uses the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) in choosing and prioritising design elements.
Effectiveness should not be confused with efficiency, which is about making best use of materials, equipment and time effectiveness is about doing the most important and timely thing you can be efficient at doing the wrong thing.
Address contemporary issues through a permaculture framework develop solutions to pressing problems to make permaculture relevant to contemporary life.
Adopt a logical process to test design ideas or answer questions in permaculture design and application
- clearly describe your idea or ask question about something you observe
- gather information to learn what is already known
- make a testable explanation about it
- test your idea or hypothesis by trying it out, by making an experiment
- assess the results of the experiment to see if your idea is workable or supports or disagrees with what you thought, your hypothesis
- make a conclusion based on your evidence and communicate it so others can learn from it and repeat, adapt and adopt the process.
observe
> form a hypotheses that describes your idea or that might explain your observation
> find out if it has been tried before and what was discovered
> conduct an experiment to test your idea or explanation
> analyse your results
> reach a conclusion supported by evidence.
