[Lapg] Interview with Owen Hablutzel on Permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Interview with Owen by Willi
http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1954

Is there a global permaculture revolution rising now?

The short answer is: Absolutely!

The wide variety of serious and increasingly complex issues confronting 
people and ecosystems worldwide are leading folks to seek solutions they 
can apply right now. Today. An increasing number of the public are 
recognizing the urgency of addressing these issues. At the same time the 
systemic inadequacy of present governance institutions to shift the 
current situation towards a sustainable trajectory becomes more and more 
obvious. People are simply past waiting for their ‘rulers’ to get their 
acts together. They want to be involved in meaningful and responsible 
actions which they can perform themselves, and in their communities, 
immediately. More and more folks, every day, in every culture on the 
planet, are pro-actively using their birthright of human agency, moving 
beyond merely ‘hoping’ that things work out, and passionately engaging… 
doing the actual necessary work to help create positive outcomes in 
their communities and world.

Permaculture has proven itself useful now, in many different 
environments globally, for over thirty years. By remaining active and 
growing as a body of practitioners for several decades Permaculture is 
achieving more and more of the kind of critical mass in the public eye 
that continues to enlarge these kinds of actions on the ground. Courses 
are filling up faster than ever before. There are waiting lists for 
many. More and more folks are hearing of, learning about, experimenting 
with Permaculture with each passing day. As more people and 
organizations become involved, more Permaculture thinking is being 
applied to more real-world contexts, and more learning and sharing of 
this new knowledge is happening at increasing spatial scales, and with 
increasing speed through time.

The fact that in just the past few years this ‘revolution’ has 
noticeably amplified its scope and reach is partially explained by what 
has been noted here; namely, increased ‘literacy’ in the public 
consciousness and discourse of complex environmental issues (leading to 
an intensified search for solutions even at the individual level), 
coupled with the historical fact that Permaculture has more recently 
achieved a level of ‘visibility’ as a result of its combined three 
decades of offering immediately applicable practical solutions and 
thinking . And so it continues to grow.

Taking a step back from this picture of Permaculture as ‘revolution’ 
(meaning really simply a movement in a direction of positive change that 
re-instates a better adapted relationship between humans and their 
‘ecological umbilical’ – as Joel Salatin might call it)...

There are many diverse threads and frameworks of action and pro-active 
organization aimed at addressing our global crisis. Most, if not about 
all of them, could be seen as actions with the intent to care for the 
earth, care for the life and people on earth, and to live responsibly 
within natural ecological limits. In essence, following the three ethics 
that Permaculture has so strongly asserted. So, whether or not we name 
all of this passionate activity by literally millions of people 
worldwide ‘Permaculture,’ the revolution and transformation underway is 
in many ways far wider, more diverse, and uncontainable than what is 
presently being performed by self-identified ‘permaculturists’ alone. 
Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest for example, makes a compelling case 
that the planet is in the midst of the largest social movement that has 
ever happened, and is centered around sustainability, social justice, 
and basically specifically addressing the ethical concerns foundational 
to Permaculture.

Another example, The Earth Charter (EarthCharter.org), is a document 
being increasingly promoted and taken seriously in international policy 
circles. It explicitly recommends all of the Permaculture ethics and 
goes well beyond these in the specifics of its declaration. So whether 
we refer to the whole enchilada as a ‘Permaculture revolution’ because 
it addresses Permacultures primary ethics, or call it ‘Blessed Unrest,’ 
‘regenerative this,’ or ‘sustainable development that,’ is not nearly as 
important as the fact that it is occurring and--appropriate to ‘the 
great acceleration’ in which we humans find ourselves--is happening at 
an exponential pace.

What will be crucial in the next decade or two is the question of 
whether that particular exponential curve (global social-ecological 
revolution) will be able transform all the other exponential curves 
(from population growth, to resource use, to waste generation, to 
atmospheric carbon, to increase in McDonald’s franchises opening…) 
before we take the earth system functioning beyond any more of the at 
least nine-identified global tipping points (see Rockstrom, Nature, 
2009). Tipping any of more of these over the long term will in all 
probability move humans out of the only climate domain we understand (if 
very imperfectly). The Holocene climate regime is what our entire 
civilizations, institutions, health and livelihoods are built upon. The 
dangerously close ‘Anthropocene’ changed climate regime would clearly be 
far less accommodating to our concerns and needs as a species.

All of this is why this particular moment in earth history is unique and 
unprecedented. Decisions this generation makes, actions we take today, 
individually and collectively, are what will determine the fate not only 
of our own species but of hundreds of thousands of others. The scope and 
scale of this is far beyond what our species has ever dealt with 
previously. Good choices we make today are the only possibility for 
laying a secure foundation for continued human civilization, through the 
thorough convivial and collective redesign and redevelopment of the 
earth system… starting where we are at.

How is the Worldwide Permaculture Network (WPN) site working for you? 
For the larger community? How can it be improved?

The WPN has emerged recently as a gift and tool for the global 
Permaculture community to enable increasing connections and interactions 
between individual permaculturists, as well as between Permaculture 
organizations and projects, and any who wish to collaborate with them 
anywhere in the world. Something akin to a ‘facebook’ for the global 
Permaculture community.

As this was only rolled out in early 2011 it seems to me that the 
effects of this addition will be difficult to predict with much 
accuracy, but we might expect it to facilitate further positive leaps of 
this ‘movement’ overall…. Possibly even a game-changing kind of 
re-organization of this community in the longer term. Not so different 
in dynamics from the many tough to forecast but real effects of the 
actual facebook and other social networking technologies have had even 
at the scale of global geo-politics, regime change in individual 
nations, and so on.

I am confident that this system has the potential, like most natural 
systems, to improve by self-organizing into whatever form is optimally 
efficient for the largest number of users over time. This is a 
pattern--self-organization to optimal efficiency for the most 
users--seen in Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, in current network theory, in 
eco-systems, even in actual traffic jams (believe it or not) as has been 
shown by Per Bak, and others, using the emerging fascinating science of 
self-organized criticality.

What is sacred about the practice of permaculture?

When we return to the etymological roots of the word “sacred,” we will 
find variations on the theme of “making holy” and “making whole.” 
Implicit in the word are wholeness and health, two words stemming from 
the same root in the Proto-Indo-European language. The Old Norse word 
for “health” specifically carried the meanings of “holy and sacred.” So 
we come full circle. If these notions comprise what it means for a 
phenomena to be regarded as sacred then there is little doubt that the 
aims of Permaculture are towards precisely this condition: a whole and 
healthy earth, harboring whole and healthy communities, of whole and 
healthy individual organisms; all levels interacting in a whole and 
healthy fashion within themselves, and between each other. What could be 
more sacred, and perhaps less mysterious, than this? This is quite 
simple as a description and one we might be hard pressed to find much 
individual human opposition to.

Of course not only whole and healthy (sacred) ends are desired by a 
Permacultural practice, but the means to get there, the tools, 
techniques, principles and practical actions taken to move ourselves and 
our communities towards wholeness are themselves necessarily based in a 
whole-systems perspective. This is the first tenet as well of the 
Holistic Management® framework (which aligns and integrates flawlessly 
with Permaculture aims and practice); that nature functions in wholes. 
Caring for earth, caring for life, and returning surpluses gained while 
living within our natural limits are not only ethics but actions. They 
become truly ethical when they are made operational and not merely 
repeated verbally. When performed through actions they have the 
propensity to generate increasing health and wholeness in our 
social-ecological systems. In that sense, the ethics are in fact sacred.

Wholeness is a real result of Permaculture practice… outcomes of simple, 
practical design and practice in real world contexts. There needn’t be 
anything too complex , abstract, or mysterious in describing practically 
how these results are achieved. Nothing more mysterious than the common 
alchemy of a compost pile turning ‘waste’ into food for soil and plants, 
or a seed interacting with water, soil, and sunlight to produce a 
healthy plant ready to feed the next participant in the food chain. And 
yet we might describe the result (and process) as “sacred,” in this 
sense of health and wholeness, or even the sense of its high value to 
all of life beyond autotrophs. “Let’s hear it for photosynthesis!” as 
Permaculture teacher Brock Dolman likes to say.

That might be the simplest, most direct way in which Permaculture could 
be described as a sacred practice. But importantly, Permaculture was an 
early-adopter of integrating into practice and theory a wide variety of 
cultural perspectives and ways-of-knowing our adapted social-ecological 
interactions. Early on, Bill Mollison was keen to use many perspectives 
and non-western science modes of understanding and living within 
landscapes originated by indigenous cultures from Australia, the island 
cultures, native Americans, and so on. This approach, sharing 
perspectives on resource and land use practice and understanding between 
western science trained managers and indigenous traditions is beginning 
to gain a lot of traction and discourse in the cutting-edge of 
sustainability science (particularly in the Resilience Theory 
literature, Fikres Birket for one)… There is an entire emerging 
literature and body of research in these fields regarding “traditional 
ecological knowledge” or TEK. Basically it is western science finally 
coming around to understand that many traditional “sacred” practices and 
“taboos” in many cultures where people have inhabited particular 
landscapes, with given resources , cycles, and adaptations for very long 
periods of time have evolved presumably in a long-term form of adaptive 
management. The cultural memory of what practices are effective in their 
lived environment most often have been embedded within their system of 
sacred rules and cultural practices.

A classic example of this is the tradition of “sacred groves” in India, 
the forest being viewed as a holy place since very deep in their history 
and literature. These groves are set aside plots of woodland that 
operate essentially as a “zone 5” in Permaculture practice. They are not 
to be disturbed, harvested, or otherwise used up. As western science 
began to investigate they quantified the effects in the wider landscape 
of such “sacred groves” and determined greatly increased levels of 
biodiversity throughout the regions where this practice had not died 
out. This particular sacred practice gave more wholeness to these 
regions by serving as refuge for a wide diversity of plant and animal 
species, as well as a source for migrations of these into other areas 
where populations may be declining. There are likely as many examples 
like this, that are regarded as ‘sacred’ practices in the cultures where 
they emerged and are also good examples of Permaculture-minded 
practices. At the same time, if you just want to look at these practices 
as very sensible and practical (as opposed to sacred) as they provide 
benefits to the whole system they may work just as well!

Some permaculturists do not want the sacred to be a part of the 
movement. Why do you think this is?

There is a strain of thought and action within Permaculture of 
specifically not associating Permaculture with any particular religious 
practice, as well as dissociating from elements occasionally referred to 
by Mollison, and others, as “woo-woo.”

Ironically, Permaculture seems to attract a certain percentage of 
individuals who also happen to be drawn to some aspects of religions, 
occasional anti-science ‘hippi-isms,’ and even ‘new-age’ kinds of 
‘woo-woo.’ This fact likely has played into many Permaculture teachers 
explicitly drawing a bright line between Permaculture as a design 
science, a systems-thinking practice, and a practical tool box on the 
one hand, and any religious, mystical, or explicit connections with 
especially interior aspects of sacred traditions on the other. In some 
sense this is just good “hygiene,” and is partly passed-down the 
teaching lineage from Mollison’s practices, rail as he otherwise does, 
against the peculiar western pathology of “tidiness”…

So, certainly part of what is at play in this dynamic is a desire to 
maintain an identity in the Permaculture concept that does not align it 
specifically with any given religion, no matter how well the ethics or 
actions of that religion might happen to line up with Permaculture 
thought generally (Geoff Lawton, for example, makes no secret of his 
belief and practice of Islam—which does have a rich ecologically sound 
portion of its writings—yet does not bring this into his courses at 
all). If Permaculture were to align with any particular religion this 
could give at least a perception of an exclusionary stance in the public 
mind. If you don’t buy the religion portion then you don’t get to 
participate? Permaculture is far better served by remaining an open, 
accessible, and useful practice for any and all people, of any and all 
religions and cultures, willing to live the ethics (which tend to be 
quite compatible with the ethics of most religions).

There is nothing stopping any religion from becoming perhaps more 
relevant by using Permaculture to help re-interpret themselves and their 
role in today’s world. This could enable religions to re-engage more 
meaningfully and practically with the most pressing issues humanity 
currently faces. This is no less their challenge as well as ours. If 
traditional religions are able to revitalize their message in a way that 
generates mass action for earth care and the like, their powers to move 
and align with the masses may be significantly revived. As already 
existing (though currently declining in many cases) social networks, 
religions are in some ways uniquely suited to motivating large groups to 
action, which can definitely be positive (the civil rights movement in 
the US, for example, would never have happened when it did were it not 
for the active and consistent support by the large social networks of 
churches in the South and across the country).

Perhaps one of the main reasons for resistance to explicitly addressing 
‘the Sacred’ within Permaculture has to do most with the desire for 
Permaculture to be accepted more widely as a ‘design SCIENCE.’ As 
Permaculture sprung in the first place from an academic arena (famously 
as the student Holmgren’s collaboration with his advisor, Mollison) 
there has been an awareness of this issue.

This fits more broadly within a long history in the biological sciences 
of ‘physics envy,’ if you will. A misplaced envy in my estimation, but a 
prevalent one. The fact remains that Permaculture has yet to gain a 
large amount of specific mainstream scientific acceptance, or even 
notice! Even when all of its principles, and even ethics, find 
justification and increasing proofs and re-statements in many research 
programs from many disciplines in the broader science of sustainability 
globally.

There are many reasons for this including its low profile, lack of 
sustained or well-funded research programs for Permaculture, 
scatteredness of practice and disconnectedness of practitioners (which 
perhaps the WPN is beginning to address), even an older perception that 
it is ‘just-a-bunch-of-hippies.’ Whatever the case, the sensitiveness to 
being perceived and accepted on scientific terms (which, after all, is 
the current reigning western cultural religion, complete with historical 
contingencies, metaphysical assumptions, beliefs, and other 
trappings---best left for another discussion), is motivated in part by a 
desire for Permaculture to expand and become increasingly relevant. So, 
in the context of our particular current cultural pathology that 
venerates science at the level of a religion (though even this is 
changing, slowly), this perceived need for more ‘scientific’ validation 
also drives some of the dynamic that wants to disassociate Permaculture 
and ‘the sacred,’ where the latter is conceived as having religious 
(‘unscientific’) entanglements.

That being said, even the most up to date fully accepted science makes 
it clear that at the heart of our universe, fundamental to all that is 
known, is an intransigent mystery… an irreducible uncertainty, 
indeterminacy, and unknowability! Something about that sounds almost sacred.

Can Mollison's pattern language be applied to a Nature-based symbolic 
language?

By design, Holmgren and Mollison’s exposition of patterns in nature and 
pattern recognition in practice, facilitates good Permaculture designs 
through a conceptual framework that enables the ‘whole’ movement of a 
process, the entire cycle of a nutrient, or whole set of relationships 
between a network of variables to be observed, mimicked, and otherwise 
worked with by skilled designers. That is, Permaculture pattern language 
and recognition is really about recognizing whole systems as operational 
domains distinct from the elements or parts that may make up these 
systems (just as you are operationally distinct from the objects of 
which you are composed--replacing all of your cells in a matter of seven 
years or so). This leads to thinking systemically about these patterns 
and how they fit into an overall design, as opposed to the cultural 
habit we have of thinking linearly about specific parts and often 
confusing or failing entirely to even recognize their relationships to 
the big picture.

Can this be applied to a “nature-based symbolic language”? Perhaps it 
already is? Patterns are often a ‘shorthand’ or ‘symbol’ for complex 
processes, or specific configurations of processes, that create the 
pattern form. If Whitehead is correct that “the object of symbolism is 
the enhancement of the importance of what is symbolized,” then 
Permaculture’s emphasis on use of patterns succeeds at this aim. These 
in fact enhance the importance of the processes and elements that they 
integrate and symbolize. They do this partly by allowing observers to 
more quickly make sense of their observations through the ‘shorthand’ of 
picking up on the patterns involved, with a learned sense of what those 
particular patterns will mean for how a system functions, and for how we 
can work with those dynamics.

Perhaps most fundamentally, though only implied in Permaculture 
literature and practice, is the ontological inversion that occurs 
through the emphasis on these patterns (symbols). By focusing attention 
on pattern and prioritizing this over the elements that make up the 
pattern Permaculture suggests that process is in fact more fundamental 
than matter. A complete denial, in this sense, of the Galilean/Newtonian 
picture of a billiard-ball world (which, post-quantum science, etc, was 
already well in tatters). Emphasis moves to relationships and process 
and away from simple, linear designs that repeatedly have failed in the 
ecological and social realm historically. I believe this is a little 
recognized but highly prescient perceptual shift ingrained in 
Permaculture that has pre-figured what will come to be a scientific 
consensus, and toward which some of the more radical interpretations of 
ecological science are currently leading (H.Odum, R. Rosen, Ulanowicz, etc).

Beyond ‘ontology,’ in a more day-to-day design use for pattern 
understanding… the meander, the cross-section, and the longitudinal 
profile of a river are amazing patterns in a landscape. Such river 
patterns are the actual expression and integration of all of the 
processes, water, soils, vegetation, etc, occurring in the watershed. 
Ability to read what the patterns of a river are telling us about the 
multiple processes happening in the whole watershed is to effectively 
read the landscape through this ‘symbol’ or expression of its many 
processes. Ecology is full of such pattern examples.

But, perhaps by “nature-based symbolic language” you mean something like 
a new form of communication between humans and human cultures? If that’s 
the intention it becomes important to understand the purpose for 
creating this and what we hope to accomplish with it? Communication 
symbols are inherently tricky. Meanings of any symbol (including words 
in language) are flexible, fluid, and change frequently in nuance if not 
complete meaning. But nothing fosters communication like working 
together towards a better world. My sense of this would be that any 
symbol building is best left to the people who are doing this work 
together, to develop in a shared dialogue with each other and through 
the processes they perform together. Such symbols need to be developed 
from shared meaning, as well as represent a shared meaning. This can 
only be generated in the process of relating to each other as human 
beings sharing a common project of some kind, specific to real contexts 
in which work is being done. To attempt to create such a symbology 
absent of when and where it will have direct and specific applicability 
might be presumptuous or have the cart before the horse? At the same 
time, anyone who has a clear vision for how their unique talents can 
contribute to the larger project of keeping humans adapted to this 
planet and vice versa is to be encouraged to proceed with their passion. 
Passion is a feedback we should heed and respond to. Who knows where 
these things might lead.

Are there new myths rising from permaculture?

Yes. In the sense of stories that inspire a useful and relevant 
orientation to today’s world and its inhabitants… in the sense of 
speeches and thoughts that encourage actions that make a positive 
difference… and in the sense of living examples of stories that can help 
guide others to shaping visionary futures on their land, in their 
watersheds, with their communities… These new myths are not hard to find 
in Permaculture and elsewhere, and are rising more every day.

Are you an eco alchemist?

If an “eco-alchemist” is one who works with an ecological mindset, 
observes nature for understanding and action cues, and who works towards 
generating and fostering the transformation of our present materials and 
processes(be they social, financial, ecological) into greater emergent 
health and wholeness for all life, honoring in practice the deep 
connection between all things… then count me in.

In another sense though, the Mollisonian principle “everything gardens,” 
exemplifies the observation that no form of life exists that does not 
interact with its environment, and by interacting and existing, change 
its environment, most often in a way that tends to conserve its own 
niche and helps to structure its environmental niche in such a way as to 
make the provision of its own needs simpler to achieve. This observation 
suggests that all of life and every person simply by existing and living 
is already and automatically an “eco-alchemist,” interacting with their 
home ecology and changing the structure and function of that ecology in 
the process. The trick for humans at this stage in our evolution is to 
be very conscious of this interaction, of how we are living, and 
especially of what effect the interaction of our living has on the 
ability of the environment to provide us with what we need to continue 
our living! It isn’t about reducing our impact but increasing it! Only 
in a direction that is win-win-win for the system as a whole, and so for 
all of its elements as well.

So hopefully that is what your term implies, a conscious eco-alchemy. Or 
perhaps conscious socio-eco-alchemy, as social and ecological systems 
cannot be separated other than in the abstract thought and language of 
humans. Conscious eco-alchemy is interacting purposefully and with 
awareness with our environmental medium in order to support through our 
activity its structure and functions fully, as well as enable and 
support our own niche within it. This is simply sound Permaculture.

Please give us a few political challenges that you have encountered in 
your work outside of the USA.

While I’ve come across challenging situations ranging from Zimbabwean 
Defense Forces killing Rhinos under the protection of a ‘closed’ 
national park, working for the same government collecting moneys from 
the public to “save the rhinos…” to being unable to legally construct 
basic farm dams due to bureaucratic and inflexible policies, to working 
with folks whose lands had been confiscated by the Mexican government 
only after they had spent 7 years building up their off-the-grid home, 
water systems, and gardens… this is surely the ‘tip of the iceberg’ 
compared to what many Permaculturists have encountered , at home and abroad.

In the bigger picture the changes being brought around the world by the 
process of “globalization” are a true threat and danger to many 
sustainability initiatives happening everywhere in the third-world, 
‘global south,’ and poorer nations of the world who are particularly 
vulnerable, but even to folks in the ‘over-developed’ world of the G-8 
(now G-20). If the cross-scale interactions involved when a Wal-mart 
comes to mid-size town USA result in net cash-flow leaving the local 
area (back to Wal-mart headquarters) while devastating local mom-n-pop 
businesses and infrastructure, imagine the powerful cross scale effects 
of international commodities markets undercutting local grain production 
in a small African watershed, or destroying a small local fishery network…

The way forward here is multi-dimensional, but a lot of great research 
on adaptive governance structures that work best is being done within 
the Resilience science framework. Elinor Ostrom, who has won a nobel 
prize for some of her work, comes to mind. Adapted institutions, 
networks, overlapping jurisdictions, and cross-scale governance 
structures, are coming forward now through myriad case-studies and 
giving guidance on arrangements that offer us better chances to 
collectively manage our natural resources and commons in a sustainable 
and fair-use fashion together. The growing frontier for applying this in 
the real world is in participatory regional planning, management, and 
governance, and there are many frameworks evolving to take this 
challenge on. Most are forms of adaptive co-management and related 
approaches. Permaculture has value to offer here and needs to find more 
opportunities to get involved at this scale of activity and these kinds 
of community processes.

What is the alternative to a permaculture future, Owen?

If by a “permaculture future” you mean a future in which humans have 
self-organized their communities, organizations, institutions. That 
these human dynamics have emerged in a way that values, respects, and 
remains within an operational/behavioural domain adapted to and 
consistent with the larger whole. That, by living this way all of the 
landscapes, ecologies, the planet, and biosphere that we must operate 
within, that we need for life, are cared for and supported through our 
actions and dynamics. If that is the kind of future you mean when you 
name it a “Permaculture future” then there is little alternative to 
this, short of extinction for us and far too many other species, on the 
longer view.

In the shorter term there are many scenarios that could play out and the 
only certain thing is surprise and the fundamental, irreducible 
uncertainty that is a curious and endlessly fascinating condition of our 
cosmos. Holmgren has done well in articulating several possible futures 
in his short book Future Scenarios. I have not compared them 
specifically to the future scenarios developed in the 2005 Millenium 
Ecosystem Assessment, but it would be interesting to see how these might 
compare (both offer four scenarios, I believe). Among the reasons we 
live in such a terribly beautiful and extraordinary period of time is 
that it is this century, likely even the next decade or two, that will 
be decisive for which trajectory--transformation or thanatos (to use 
some ‘mythological’ language)—humans will choose to enact. Interesting 
times indeed! If Permaculture is anything, it’s a true adventure!

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss perspectives on Permaculture 
with you and your adventurous readers around the world!

* * * * * * *

About Owen Hablutzel

Owen Hablutzel is a consultant, educator, and facilitator performing 
international work with a range of clientele to radically amplify 
practical whole systems design, thinking, and management for increasing 
land health.

Having lived and worked in Africa, Australia, and much of the western 
United States, Owen brings a wide array of experiences and training to 
his work with broad-acre systems. This work continues to integrate 
Keyline, Permaculture, and Holistic Management applications with a wider 
spectrum of practical, leading-edge solutions capable of slowing and 
reversing the current global social-ecological crisis, at multiple 
scales. Whether with farms, ranches, classrooms, non-profits, or larger 
land managing entities, the core work remains empowering people and 
communities to create robust land health, adaptive capacity, and 
resilience through stewardship.

Owen is a Certified Educator with Holistic Management International, 
holds a Masters in Eastern Philosophy (the original systems thinking & 
‘science of the whole’) from St. John’s College in New Mexico, and 
serves passionately as a director of the Permaculture Research 
Institute, USA.

Connections -

Owen Hablutzel
www.permacultureusa.org
www.holisticmanagement.org
www.savoryinstitute.com
owen at permacultureusa.org
go2owen at gmail.com
skype: owen.e.hablutzel
cell: 310.567.6862