Care for the Earth
Care for the People
Limit needs and reinvest in the future
|
Permaculture is a design system that reconciles human communities with the
ecological imperatives of a living planet. Permaculture design may
be used to restore ecosystems, create sustainable farms and healthy towns
and promote economic systems that support Earth care.
Permaculture
provides an ethical and holistic foundation for the sustainable culture.
Permaculture principles are derived from three basic ethics:
Care for the Earth
Care for the People
Limit needs and reinvest in the future
The
core emphasis of permaculture is that landscapes are complex and
integrated wholes. Ecosystems are healthy and relatively stable when
their parts are connected into a diverse web of relationships. In a
permaculture design, decisions flow naturally from observations of
these relationships. Decisions that arise from connection are
inherently functional and frequently beautiful.
Permaculture uses the energies of wind, sun water, soil, and the
myriad biological processes of the world's organisms. These powerful
energies, appropriately used, can reverse desertification. Soils are
reclaimed. Forests, prairies, and river systems regenerate.
Waste products are minimized and reused. Human communities provide
for their own needs in small, efficient farms and gardens, allowing the
broad landscape to return to health.
Permaculture is a body of knowledge, susceptible to learning and
teaching. But permaculture is also a way of organizing
knowledge, a connecting system that integrates science, art, politics,
anthropology, sociology, and psychology, the diverse experiences and
resources available in any community.
(Excerted from Ben Haggard,
Living Community: A Permaculture Case Study at Soly Sombra, 1993)
|
What is Permaculture?
Why not Permaculture?
Why not have a sustainable future?
Why not have a rich, full life in a beautiful, safe, and supportive
environment?
Why not have a meaningful work that leaves time for a variety of
activities?
Why not have a rich social life with lots of fun?
Why not make our cities into a collection of villages, decent places to
live?
Why not grow healthy food?
Why not have gardens, parks and public places designed as Gardens of Eden?
Why not have industrial plants that can recycle everything we use in our
lives?
Why not share with the people around you?
Why not ...in the end it is up to us.
It is not enough to beat our breasts and cry....."What can I do?".....
It is totally clear what we can do.
In the first place, we must put our own house in order. From this
point we can extend our influence outward into the larger community by our
example, by our society, by our values, and transform the Earth into a
better place.
DO IT!
By Ali Sharif - Project Director of
Permaculture America Latina |
