Landscape & Society

As the basis of permaculture is BENEFICIAL DESIGNS, it can be added to all other ethical trainings and skills, and has the potential of taking a place in all human endeavors. In the broad landscape, however, permaculture concentrates on already-settled areas and agricultural lands.

Almost all of these need drastic rehabilitation and re-thinking. One certain result of using our skills is to integrate food supply and settlement, to catch water from our roof areas, and to place nearby a zone of fuel forest which receives wastes and supplies energy, will be to free most of the area of the globe for the rehabilitation of natural systems. These need never be looked upon as "of use to people", except in the very broad sense of global health.

The real difference between a Cultivated Ecosystem (designed) and a Natural System is that the great majority of species (and biomass) in the cultivated ecology is intended for the use of humans or their livestock. We are only a small part of it and its yields are directly available to us. But in our own gardens, almost every plant is selected to provide or support some direct yield for people. Household Design relates principally to the needs of people; it is thus Human Centered.

This is a valid aim for settlement design, but we also need a Nature-Centered Ethic for wilderness conservation. We cannot, however, do much for nature if we do not govern our greed, and if we do not support our needs from our existing settlements. If we can achieve this aim, we can withdraw from much of the agricultural landscape, and allow natural systems to flourish.

Recycling of nutrients and energy in nature is a function of many species. In our gardens, it is our own responsibility to return wastes (via compost or mulch) to the soil and plants. We actively create soil in our gardens, whereas in nature many other species carry out that function. Around our homes we can catch water for garden use, but we rely on natural forested landscapes to provide the condenser - leaves and clouds to keep rivers running with clean water, to maintain the global atmosphere, and to lock up our gaseous pollutants. Thus, even anthropocentric people would be well advised to pay close attention to and to assist in the conservation of existing forests and the rehabilitation of degraded lands. Our own survival demands that we preserve all existing species, and allow them a place to live.

We have abused the land and made those systems waste which we need never have disturbed, had we attended to our home gardens and settlements. If we need to state a set of ethics on natural systems, then let it be thus:

Implacable and uncompromising opposition to further disturbance of any remaining natural forests where most species are still in balance.

Vigorous rehabilitation of degraded and damaged natural systems back to stable states.

Establishment of plant systems for our own use on the least amount of land we can use for our existence; and

Establishment of plant and animal refuges for rare or threatened species.

Permaculture as a design system deals primarily with the third statement above, but all people who act responsibly in fact subscribe to the first and second statements. Therefore, we should use all the species we need or can find, to use in our own settlement designs, providing they are not locally rampant and invastive.

Whether we approve of it or not, the world around us changes continuously. Some would want to keep everything the same but history, paleontology and common sense tells us that all has changed, is changing, will keep on changing, in a world where we are losing forests concurrent and parallel responses to the environment:

Care For Surviving Natural Assemblies (to leave the wilderness to heal itself.) Rehabilitate Degraded or Eroded Land using complex pioneer species and long - term plant assemblies (trees, Shrubs, Ground covers). Create Our Own Complex Living Environment with as many species as we can save or have need for, from wherever on earth they come.

Permaculture Ethics

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