Some of this part of the outline comes directly from Bill Mollison:
Ethics
Care of the Earth: this includes all living and non-living things, land, water, animals, air etc.
Care of People: to promote self-reliance and community responsibility.
Return of Surplus: to pass on anything surplus to our needs (labor, money, information etc) for the aims above.
Implicit in the above is the Life Ethic: all living organisms are not only means but ends. In addition to their instrumental value to humans and other living organisms, they have an intrinsic worth.
Permaculture is an ethical system, stressing positivism and cooperation.
Definition of Permaculture
Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.
Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.
The philosophy behind Permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.
The word “Permaculture” can be used by anybody adhering to the ethics and principles expressed herein. The only restriction on use is that of teaching; only graduates of a Permaculture Institute can teach “Permaculture”, and they adhere to agreed-on curricula developed by the College of Graduates of the Institutes of Permaculture.
Real World Design
The need for the establishment of sustainable systems globally is now obvious.
Sustainable systems:
• Produce more energy than they consume.
• Create, or at the very least do not destroy soils and forests.
• Produce most of the regional needs.
• Recycle or produce nutrients.
Agricultural systems that can satisfy these criteria of sustainability:-
• Forestry.
• Ponds, lakes and paddy.
• Permanent pasture.
• No-tillage cropping and mulched systems.
The natural hierarchy of production per unit area in natural systems:-
• Mangroves and estuaries.
• Shallow lake and swamp systems.
• Forests.
• Shallow marine systems.
• Prairies and crops.
Permaculture is primarily a design for a sustainable, human-controlled support system.
• Polycultures of mixed systems and ecotones out produce per unit area any simplistic monocultures. Mixed plant/animal systems are part of a total polyculture.
Permaculture concentrates on already settled areas and agricultural lands, and almost all of these need drastic re-design and re-patterning. The result of redesign of food supply systems integrated throughout our settlements with fiber and fuel forests placed in a nearby zone and the establishment of water catchments from our settlement run off surfaces, will be to free most of the area of the globe for the rehabilitation of natural systems. These large natural systems need only be of use to people in terms of a very broad sense of global health. The real difference between a cultivated designed ecosystem and a natural system is that the great majority of species and biomass in a cultivated ecology is intended for human use or the use of their livestock.
Whether we approve or not, the world continually changes, commonsense tells us that all has changed, is changing and will change. In a world where we are losing forests, species, and whole ecosystems, there are three concurrent and parallel responses to the environment:-
1. Care for surviving natural assemblies and to leave the wilderness to heal itself.
2. Rehabilitate degraded or eroded land using complex pioneer species and long-term plant assemblies (trees, shrubs, ground covers)
3. Create our own complex living environment with as many species as we can save, or have need for, from wherever on earth they come.
The Prime Directive of Permaculture
The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children:-
• We need to get our house and garden, our place of living, in order, so it supports us.
There is historical proof that within a region of environmental stability created by sustainable land use systems, stability in human population naturally occurs. If we do not get our cities, homes and gardens in order, so that they feed and shelter us, we must lay waste to all other natural systems and we become the final plague.
Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new. It arranges what was always there in a different way, so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total commonsense design for human communities is revolutionary.