[Scpg] The living culture whose time has come Permaculture

Tue Sep 2 23:27:35 PDT 2008

Permaculture's time has come according to Rachel Sullivan in the
current edition of Ecos magazine published by CSIRO.  The article
titled "Living culture whose time has come" is available as a .pdf
download at:
<http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=EC144p8.pdf>http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=EC144p8.pdf

or a shortened version for online viewing at:
<http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20080309-17897.html>http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20080309-17897.html

It's an excellent and very positive piece with some great photos
including an aerial view of Masdar the new car-free city under
construction in Abu Dhabi.  You will need to download the .pdf to see
all the photos and additional boxed content.

The living culture whose time has come
Wednesday, 03 September 2008

By Rachel Sullivan
Essentially a design toolkit aimed at teaching people how to feed
themselves and live as energy-efficiently as possible, permaculture
borrows techniques from organic agriculture, sustainable forestry,
horticulture, agroforestry and indigenous land management systems
from around the world. Its key design principles, modelled on
interactions seen in natural ecosystems, are as applicable to
suburban backyards and ecovillages as they are to rural properties.

The lives of Kalahari Bushmen, Zimbabwean schoolchildren, indigenous
Brazilians and tsunami-affected Acehnese have all changed for the
better thanks to permaculture. In Australia, where the concept was
first articulated, its principles have distantly influenced a range
of government and private ventures, from the movement to defend your
home during a bushfire, to Landcare, holistic farm design, award-
winning rangeland cattle properties and more directly, Gawler’s
inspirational Food Forest.

Yet the permaculture movement has experienced a patchy relationship
with mainstream environmentalism and the subsequent sustainability
movement.

Permaculture’s roots
Permaculture One was first published in 1978 by then University of
Tasmania Professor Bill Mollison and 20-year-old student David
Holmgren. The concept grew out of a deep concern about the widespread
use of destructive industrial and agricultural methods that poisoned
land and water, reduced biodiversity and removed billions of tons of
soil from previously fertile landscapes.

While the book attracted acclaim in some quarters, it was seen as
controversial, to say the least, in others. According to Mollison –
permaculture’s often-outspoken public face – the professional
community was outraged because the concept combined architecture with
biology, agriculture with forestry, and forestry with animal
husbandry, ‘so that almost everybody who considered themselves a
specialist felt a bit offended’.

Holmgren goes further, saying in his most recent book, Permaculture
Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, that ‘because the
concept was conceived in academia, those involved in large-scale
agriculture and land use saw it as theoretical, utopian and
impractical because it was difficult to apply within the prevailing
social, market and policy environment’.

‘It was frustrating because it has good science at its heart,’ says
the quietly spoken Holmgren who, with his partner Su Dennet, runs a
permaculture-based design business from their Central Victorian
property Melliodora – once a degraded wasteland, but today a highly
productive, resource-efficient property feeding up to 10 people each
year.

Even now, in the midst of unprecedented interest in sustainability,
Holmgren believes the movement still attracts criticism in Australia,
because of his – and Mollison’s – outspoken belief that
sustainability measures being enacted by government just don’t go far
enough, or are completely misguided.

‘Real sustainability requires a fundamental rethink about how we
design and manage the land and plan our towns and cities,’ says
Holmgren. ‘Greater emphasis needs to be placed on using resources
efficiently to create a productive and stable living environment.

‘Permaculture is in fact a design system for sustainability. Its
popularised spread as an alternative lifestyle choice or system of
organic gardening has been a notable phenomenon in the Australian
social landscape over the last 30 years, but this very success has
limited its acceptance as a design system for sustainability.

‘To view permaculture purely as a means of achieving household
selfsufficiency by sustainable means is to grossly understate its
scope and objectives,’ Holmgren emphasises.

He is the first to admit that permaculture designs have, in some
cases, turned out to be naïve, misguided or counterproductive, and
believes this was partly due to the concept being catapulted too
quickly into the public domain before the concept could be fully
developed – similar to the more recent sustainable development
movement which, Holmgren believes, was also ‘muddled and discredited
by its rapid projection into the world of intergovernmental policy
and corporate spin doctors’.

‘Whatever path they follow, ideas have to get dirty in the real world
outside academia if they are to have life and utility,’ he adds.

The weeds issue
Recently, there has been an upsurge of public interest in
permaculture, the third such in the past 30 years. This growing
interest – linked to concerns about oil, political and economic
uncertainty, longterm drought and climate change – is coming from an
increasingly mainstream audience.

‘These are people who see the folly of expending more energy to
produce something (from energy to food crops) than it is inherently
worth, and are seeking to cut energy consumption all round, in the
process becoming more self-sufficient,’ says internationally
recognised permaculture teacher and sustainability consultant, Geoff
Lawton, from the Permaculture Research Institute.

Permaculture’s detractors include those who argue that the central
food forest concept’s productivity (see accompanying box) varies
widely, depending on climate and the garden’s maturity. One of their
biggest concerns is permaculture’s advocacy of non-native species and
weeds such as Tagasaste (tree lucerne) – a highly productive
perennial grown for animal fodder and for its ability to fix soil
nitrogen.

‘From a permaculture point of view, these [species] are a source of
abundance that we should be using,’ said Holmgren during the ABC’s
Landline program in 2004.

‘Take carp, for example. We have shifted our attitude from how do you
destroy this to how do you use this as a resource (it’s now widely
used as a liquid fertiliser). Similarly with willow: a lot of the so-
called adverse effects of willows can be managed quite well by
treating them as a fodder tree.’

Mollison agrees, saying that weeds are simply vegetating damaged
country. ‘They actually stabilise the situation, then once you can
shut out the thing causing the damage, the forest can be re-
established and the weeds removed.’

Urban context
Intriguingly, permaculture principles suggest that the most efficient
way for most people to live in the modern world is in towns and
villages, where travel can be minimised and food production organised
cooperatively.

Geoff Lawton has been working as a consultant for the WWF and the
government of oil-producing Abu Dhabi to design ‘the world’s greenest
city’ – Masdar City, a new, six-square-kilometre urban development
that will eventually house 50 000 people and will be accredited as
zero-carbon, zero-waste and car-free.

The city’s electricity will be generated by photovoltaic panels,
while cooling will be provided via solar powered evaporative cooling.
Water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant.

Lawton’s involvement focuses on utilising waste streams, and advising
on urban design to ensure minimal energy demands from the buildings
and inhabitants. Design features include efficient positioning of
solar and wind power collectors, and directing waste streams for
recycling or reuse – to the point of ensuring that systems for
organic and vermiculture (worm-driven) compost are part of the
central plan. Landscaped areas in the city and crops in outer areas
will be irrigated with greywater and treated wastewater.

CEO of the Masdar Initiative, Dr Sultan al Jaber, says that Masdar
City ‘will question conventional patterns of urban development, and
set new benchmarks for sustainability and environmentally friendly
design.’

Holmgren believes that visionary developments like Masdar show that
permaculture’s influence is affecting every level of the global economy.

‘Whatever they’re called, I believe permaculture’s principles will
inevitably become mainstream as world oil supplies peak, there is a
reduction in the amount of energy available, and we are forced to
redesign our society to consume less energy.’

In the meantime, he says, people can make small-scale adaptive
changes that will help them focus on doing something positive.

‘In the midst of so much bad news, this is good for the psyche.’

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