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The Prime Directive of Permaculture:
The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children’s.
Make it now.
Principle of Cooperation: Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of future survival and of existing life systems.
The Ethical Basis of Permaculture:
1.CARE OF THE EARTH: Provision for all life systems to continue and increase.
2.CARE OF PEOPLE: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.
3.SETTING LIMITS TO POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION: By governing our needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.
Rules of Use of Natural Resources:
- Reduce waste, hence pollution
- Thoroughly replace lost minerals
- Do a careful energy accounting; and
- Make a biosocial impact assessment for long term effects on society, and act to buffer or eliminate any negative impacts.
Life Intervention Principle:
In chaos lies unparalleled opportunity for imposing creative order.
Law of Return:
Whatever we take, we must return, or
Nature demands a return for every gift received, or
The user must pay.
Directive of Return: Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement. Society must, as a condition of use, replace an equal or greater resource than that used.
Set of Ethics on Natural Systems:
- Implacable and uncompromising opposition to further disturbance of any remaining natural forests;
- Vigorous rehabilitation of degraded and damaged natural systems to a stable state;
- 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.
The Basic Law of Thermodynamics (as restated by Watt):
„All energy entering an organism, population or ecosystem can be accounted for as energy which is stored or leaves. Energy can be transferred from one form to another, but it cannot disappear or be destroyed or be created. No energy conversion system is ever completely efficient.“
Principle of Disorder:
Order and harmony produce energy for other uses. Disorder consumes energy to no useful end.
Neatness, tidiness, uniformity, and straightness signify an energy-maintained disorder in natural systems.
Principle of Stress and Harmony:
Stress may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function; and (conversely) harmony as the permission of chosen and natural functions and the supply of essential needs.
Principle of Stability:
It is not the number of diverse things in a design that leads to stability, it is the number of beneficial connections between these components.
The Problem is the Solution:
Everything works both ways.
It is only how we see things that makes them advantageous or not. Information as a Resource:
Information is the critical potential resource. It becomes a resource only when obtained and acted upon. Excerpt from ‘Permaculture, A Designer’s Manual’ by Bill Mollison, Tagari Publications,1988 permaculture links
more texts & excerpts on permaculture
'essence of permaculture' / download it here
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