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Friday, 7 September 2007

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The permaculture papers

PERMACULTURE'S VARIED PRINCIPLES

Permaculture's principles

In 1994, Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd formulated a set of precepts for the design of human habitation that complement the principles of Permaculture.

Principles and practices of Permaculture organisation and application

There are additional principles we can apply. The following list is derived from experience in Permaculture and overseas aid projects...

Principles of approach and organisation

Principle 1: Be effective and efficient

Efficiency is doing things with minimal use of resources such as materials and time. Effectiveness is about doing the right thing. Being effective is more important than being efficient, but being both effective and efficient produces the best results.

It is no use being efficient at doing the wrong thing. Performance of the task might appear impressive but it will not accomplish the real task and the project will fail in its intended outcome.

It is careful planning involving thinking, analysis and communication that identifies the right thing to accomplish.

Reference: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People; 1994; Covey S; 1990/1994; Information Australia, Melbourne.

Principle 2: Be a biomimic

In his set of principles, Bill Mollison proposed that design should copy patterns and processes found in natural systems. Since he put this principle in writing, a field of design known as 'biomimicry' has developed independently around the idea. Biomimicry is the copying of nature in the development of design, technology and tools.

Examples of biomimicry include:

• the reedbed filtration of wastewater that copies processes found in natural wetlands
• the structuring of orchards for food production based on the vertical arrangement of trees and shrubs found in the bush; such designs make use of tall emergent trees with an understorey of lower-growing trees and a ground layer of shade tolerant shrubs, creepers and ground covers
• the use of mulch on gardens in mimicry of the leaf litter found in the bush
• the use of principles of complex organisation found in nature in computer programmes and the concept of configuring computers so that they work on a common project - 'swarming'; the new science of networks provides clues for designing human communication and other networks.

Reference:

Benyus JM; 1997; Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired by Nature: Quill Books (HardperCollins), USA. ISBN 0-688-16099-9.

Principle 3: Think in terms of systems

Systems thinking looks at the total system. In design, it takes into account:

INPUTS > PROCESSES > OUTPUTS > OUTCOMES

Inputs: Resources such as materials, money, time, knowledge, information that are to be used in a project. These can be assessed as to safety, embodied energy, lifecycle analysis - what happens after they have served their life and are removed - and what impacts their manufacture has brought.

Processes: The methodologies, techniques, decision-making and problem-solving approaches used. Are these safe, participatory, democratic, inclusive, affordable and manageable?

Outputs: The end product. Is it maintainable with available resources, funds, skills? Does it achieve its intended purpose?

Outcomes: The longer term impacts not necessarily visible when the design was produced. Will they be beneficial or restricting? Will they enhance the system or serve vested interests? Will they offer replicable solutions?

Feedback: In any systems approach to design, feedback loops are set up to feed information back from the output phase into the inputs and processes phases. Fed back is information about appropriateness of design and materials and system performance so adjustments can be made to inputs and, if necessary, to processes.

Principle 4: Adopt open, democratic management

Democracy is a type of governance in which a citizenry or, in its organisational form, the members of an organisation exert decision-making power either directly ('direct democracy') or by electing representatives ('representative democracy').

Democracy may not be the most efficient means of operating an organisation, country or other entity, but it is the most effective at involving its stakeholders.

At worse, democratic management is time consuming, clumsy and argumentative.

At best, it:

• is inclusive
• fair
• offers due (rightful) process
• takes into account the wishes of a majority (which does not imply ignoring the needs of a minority)
• participatory.

Open management provides what is known as organisational 'transparency' . This means that those outside an organisation's management structure can see the motivations and means by which decisions are taken. Transparency improves the accountability of an organisation and its leadership to its members and others affected by its decisions.

Principle 5: Communicate effectively

Communication is one of three key skills demanded in the management of non-profit and community-based non-government organisations and business:

1. Analysis
2. Decision making
3. Communication.

Effective communication clarifies and explains. It includes listening, so that others can be understood.

Participating in networks of practice, whether that be online or face-to-face, extends communication so that all may learn.

Know what is going on > monitor trends and ideas > learn

Use communication to stay up-to-date, to adopt the best technologies and methods and to avoid falling behind in the development and application of ideas - becoming 'out-of-date'.

Become a 'learning organisation' by monitoring your own organisation and the experience of others and applying that learning to improve what you do.

Principle 6: Evaluate and monitor your work

Monitor and evaluate the projects you are involved in.

Monitoring makes possible timely adjustments. Evaluation enables learning and replicability.

Principle 7: Document your work

Undocumented experience is lost experience. Document your projects, including those that fail, using whatever technology is useful - written word, video, stills photography, multimedia, online.

Place documented work in a location, such as a website, CD, DVD, book or magazine where it can be retrieved so that others can learn and so that experience may be replicated. The accumulation of documented work over time develops a knowledge base.

Principle 8: Re-examine assumptions and beliefs

Knowledge and information become outdated. Stay up to date in your area of expertise so that your work and your projects use the best available approaches to design and implementation.

Participate in networks of practice where issues are discussed and solutions offered. Communicate with others in the field and read the literature.

Re-examine your beliefs. Consider contrary evidence. Change your beliefs and assumptions as new information suggests it is time to do so, especially if you teach Permaculture.

Principle 9: Adopt a network structure

In organising a community of practitioners or a work team whether in actuality or online, adopt a network structure in which information flows between the nodes (the participants) of the network rather than through a central node. Such networks are more resilient and can adapt to the loss of nodes. The Internet is such a structure and is correspondingly resilient to disruption.

The greatest threat to such decentralised networks is not so much the loss of nodes (nodes come and go) but disruption to the communications channels along which information and knowledge flow.

Networked structures avoid the centralisation and dominance of heirarchies and may be more appropriate for organisations professing an allegience to participatory process and self-reliance.

During Permaculture's early adoptor years - the 1980s - the nascent movement started to develop a network but the only means of distance communication - the information channel - was the quarterly Permaculture magazine. This was published too infrequently to knit together a cohesive, self-conscious movement that could cooperate over large distances although readers were aware of the existence of Permaculture practitioners elsewhere. Regular convegences supplemented the magazine and were critical to motivating individuals in their Permaculture practice.

A network of permaculturists did exist at that time but the network in its formative years did not have enough active nodes to facilitate the set-up of a true, interactive network. The means of substantially increasing cooperation and collaboration between geographically dispersed nodes only became available with the arrival of email and the Worldwide Web in the mid-1990s. The low bandwidth channels of the quarterly Permaculture International Journal was then supplemented by something more immediate and of broader bandwidth - bandwidth being a measure of the density of informatrion conveyed.

If information on an online Permaculture network is frequent enough and of a sufficient quality, the network can facilitate the development of a knowledge base that may emerge from it.

Principle 10: Adopt a federal structure

Rather than create organisations with a central office structure, national or global organisations may work better and participants remain better motivated when the central coordinating body farms out tasks to semi-autonomous regional organisations.

Such a federal structure operates with common intent and under commonly-agreed guidelines but distributes tasks to special groups or individuals far from where the coordinating administrative body is based. A decentralised structure ensues that even distant members can have a vital role.

Principles of operation

Principle 1: Design for sustainability

The Dictionary of Important Ideas and Thinkers (Rohmann C; 2000; Arrow Books, UK) defines 'sustainable development' as a:

"Concept in international development that seeks to balance the needs of the present with the future viability of natural resources and planetary ecology".

The notion of sustainable development was articulated by the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development - the Brundtland Commission - which published its report as Our Common Future.

The idea of sustainable development is debated and is variously defined, however the commonly-accepted definition of the term accords with that promulgated by the Brundtland Commission.

Sustainable designs are those that persist. Sustainability can be of the environmental, social and economic kind or, preferably, a combination. As an approach to design that meets the criteria of sustainable development and that simultaneously utilises and preserves natural systems, Permaculture can be defined as a 'development' rather than a 'preservationist' methodology (as elements of the environment movement might describe themselves).

As a philosophy of development Permaculture proposes:

• interacting with natural systems to make use of principles and processes embedded in them
• making use of the products of natural systems
• using thoughtful design to satisfy human needs while conserving natural resources and planning for the continuance of natural systems.

This is summarised in Mollison's dictum of 'working with nature rather than against it'. In Permaculture design, nature exists both to provide services to humanity and in its own right. The methodology of achieving this is to utilise natural processes and structures in the design of human habitation and production systems - the principle of biomimicry.

Human habitation in Permaculture design can be viewed as an integration of structure and nature, with natural elements providing services to people wherever possible. For example:

• in the design of domestic dwellings, a deciduous tree to sunward that shades the building in summer and lets through warming light when the foliage falls in winter can help maintain a liveable internal climate rather than relying on air conditioning or heating that consumes non-renewable fuels

• domestic waste water can be purified to agricultural irrigation standard for reuse in the garden in household or municipal reedbed filtration systems that use processes found in natural wetlands.

In an environmental sense, sustainability is enhanced and long term operating costs reduced when renewable energy sources are deployed - assuming, of course, that those energy sources produce sufficient power to run the system and make their use relevant.

Wastes produced by a system - and virtually all systems produce waste - is managed through reuse to extract the maximun utility and energy from it - this enacts Mollison's principle of 'use everything to its highest capacity'.

Any single system, of course, might not be able to reuse its waste in the way that garden waste can be composed to produce fertiliser that feeds the same garden. Where possible, unusable waste might become an input into another, downstream process, such as reusing biofiltered (reedbed) wastewater for garden irrigation. The linking of processes or systems that use the outputs of one as the inputs of another is the basis of an industrial ecology.

Provide training and information for sustainability

There is another aspect to design for sustainability. It focuses on the human element in design by considering how the design will continue to function after the designer hands over the project to those that will operate it. Even something that is well-designed requires maintenance and a procedure to operate it. Interventions may need to be timely and it will be necessary for the operator of the design (farm, community garden, building etc) to make timely adjustments.

Just as the sustainability of an overseas aid project is enhanced by training local staff to manage it, so too does training and the production of instructional material improve the chances that other works will be sustained.

Reference:

• Permaculture: A Designer's Manual; 1988; Mollison B: Tagari Pubishers, NSW Australia.

• Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability; 2004; Holmgren D; self-published.

Principle 2: Take a project approach

A project, according to authors Snead and Wycoff, is "...a complex of non-routine tasks directed towards meeting a specific goal". A project structure is a framework for getting things done, for turning ideas into actuality.

Small, simple projects do not need detailed planning if the designer or person doing the work is familiar with the process. Where they are unfamiliar or when the project involves the coordination of a number of people or is sufficiently complex, a project management approach ensures sufficient thought is put into the work so its chances of success are improved.

Treating any substantial work as a project:

• systematises the work
• increases the chances of success
• maximises effectiveness and efficiency
• improves prospects of sustainablity.

Rather than rushing in without thinking, a project management approaches takes a work through a number of sequential stages:

VISUALISATION (identification of what the end result of the project should be so you begin with the end in mind) > PLANNING (breaking the project into manageable, sequential pieces, putting a timeline to it and working out objectives, materials, tools, budget, responsibilities, skills etc) > IMPLEMENTATION (bringing the plan into reality; requires effective: cooperation, communication, analysis, monitoring, problem solving, ideas generation) > CLOSING (handing over the project, providing instructional material and training, evaluating the experience)

Project planning need not be time consuming or involved. The important factors are identifying the real goals of the project - those that will meet the needs of the person/ group for which the project is to be designed and implemented - planning the steps to achieve that goal, coordinating the work needed to get there and being mindful of the need for effectiveness.

Reference:

• To do, Doing, Done; 1997; Snead GL, Wycoff J Simon & Schuster, USA.
• A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge; 1996; Project Management Institute Standards Committee; Project Management Institute, USA.

Principle 3: Be relavant

Being relevant means identifying and focusing on the real needs of beneficiaries. Addressing the right question ensures that resources and time are not wasted and that any solutions developed are likely to be used.

Identify the real issue using situation analysis. By way of example, before they set a new project in motion, development aid agencies might collect baseline information to gain insight into a situation. When verified, systematised and structured, such information becomes knowledge and forms the basis for the development of a project. It discloses the real issue to be addressed and in doing so makes the work relevant to the real needs of the beneficiaries.

By way of example, consider a large scale urban redevelopment where people live in apartments. A Permaculture activist or educator having found that food and resource use are of interest to the residents might focus more on:

• accessing community food systems, including the location of community food gardens, rather than on the design of rural smallholdings; the educator might provide a contextual critique of conventional agribusiness and the princples of sustainable agriculture but not delve deeply into rural property design which would be of no relevance to the actual needs of residents
• reducing the consumption of resources by educating residents about water and energy conserving technologies and behaviour.

In another case, the real need of communities in regions of conflict might be food security rather than the growing of export crops. That might become a focus after the communities move towards food security, especially the growing of staple root or grain crops, and after regional markets have been reestablished. The real need that makes any work relevant are those of increasing local and regional self-reliance in food.

In places like Africa and PNG, being relevant might mean a focus on the need to stop the spread of HIV/ AIDS which, because it reduces the capacity of families to farm subsistence gardens and produce cash crops, reduces their chance of improving food security and undertaking future development.

Principle 4: Adopt participatory processes

Participation is messier and more time consuming to implement but it creates a sense of joint 'ownership' of a project or organisation. It is a path to direct democracy in group process and management.

Permaculturists might look to the body of processes and approaches known in the development aid industry as:

• PRA - Participatory Rural Appraisal, sometimes called simply Participatory Appraisal
• PTD - Participatory Technology Development with Farmers
• Action Learning/ Action Research.

There, they will find ready-made methods of encouraging participation.

Principle 5: Plan for short term as well as long term results

Moving towards long term objective is necessary where projects are to be sustainable. Building into project design the achievement of a succession of short term goals:

• encourages persistence and motivation through achievement (celebrate their conclusion)
• moves towards long term goals when the short term are designed as part of them.

Principle 6: Start small > consolidate > expand in limited steps

The implementation of designs must be kept under control so that it remains manageable. This is best done by progressing in manageable increments from the edge of what has been completed.

The process is:

start small > consolidate the area under development > progress from the edge of the consolidated area in additional small, manageable steps.

In design, break the implementation of projects down into small, manageable chunks and plan these to be completed incrementally or, where appropriate and where resources allow, in parallel.

Managable project implementation motivates those involved when each segment is regarded as an accomplishment, a short term achievement.

Principle 7:Use enabling technologies

Humanity is a technology-making species. Throughout our long history we have devised tools that help us live by doing existing things more effectively or that make possible the doing of new things.

We need look no further than the mobile phone for an example of an enabling technology. It has become ubiquitous because it meets real needs and makes possible the doing of things that were not previously possible, such as the mobile Internet, portable database and document readers when of the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) type, camera with transmissable images and personal music player. Mobiles provide remote communication by voice or text (SMS) and access information remotely. They facilitate social interaction and their coordinating possibilities have helped bring down dysfunctional government, such as the Phillipines' Estrada government (Rheingold H, 2002; Smart Mobs; Perseus Book Group, USA. www.smartmobs.com).

Like mobile phones and computers, the Permaculture design system is a multipurpose technology, a technology of the knowledge or soft systems type rather than the hardware or hard systems type. In Permaculture design, we save time, materials and money by deploying technologies that help us move towards our objectives. Examples include:

• improving communications and making information more accessible through websites, email and listservers; online databases of plant species, accessible through the Worldwide Web, assist landscape and agricultural designers as does information about energy and water efficient building design; networking, news and coordination are facilitated by email
• computer aided design for productive landscapes
• geographic information systems (GIS) for accurate landuse design, the monitoring of crops and earthworks
• farm machinery where it makes more time available for property development and enhances the performance of a property (such as excavating farm dams and water catchments)
• the use of the A-frame or dumpy level to mark contours for the excavation of swales that harvest rainwater in a landscape.

English economist, Fritz Schumacher, popularised the notion of 'appropriate' or 'intermediate' technology in the 1960s in his book Small is Beautiful and through the work of the Intermediate Technology Development Group. He suggested that, rather than simply replacing traditional technologies with new, high-technology, it is often preferable to improve the traditional technologies to make them more efficient.

In improving the transport of goods, for instance, replacing a cart drawn by animal traction by a truck might not be the most affordable or sustainable approach. Supplying the cart with pneumatic vehicle wheels and tyres, however, reduces rolling resistance and may be more affordable than a truck to poorer farmers in developing countries.

The email links provided through the Melanesian Farmer First Network (www.terracircle.org.au) in the South Pacific is an example of how telecommunications and computer technology can be considered 'appropriate technology' in the sense defined by Schumacher. Using laptop computers linked to data modems integrated into the high-frequency radio network and the international telecommunications system, remote villagers in Melanesia can find solutions to their pest management problems by seeking advice from PestNet in Fiji. The scheme is supported by the intergovernmental Secretariat for the Pacific Community.

Before deployment, technologies are best assessed in terms of:

• suitability for purpose
• maintenance within locally available skills and financial resources
• financial affordability when both acquisition, running and maintenance costs are included.

Principle 8: Synthesise - adopt, adapt, reconfigure

Permaculture is a systhesis of ideas and practices, according to Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, a design system of recombinant technologies and recombinant ecologies as the US publication, Permaculture Activist, has pointed out.

Borrow ideas, practices, processes and technologies from other bodies of knowledge and adapt them to your purposes. Acknowledge the source of synthesised ideas.

Principle 9: Develop an open-access knowledge base

A knowledge base is an accessible repository of the collaborative learning and experience of practitioners participating in a Permaculture network.

Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual remains the major knowledge base for practitioners of the Permaculture design system. More recently, it has been supplemented by David Holmgren's Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

Other information sources will become increasingly inaccessible over time:

• the knowledge base embodied in the pages of Permaculture International Journal had become increasingly inaccessible since the journal ceased publication in 2000; all that remains is a stock of past editions (available from Permaculture International Limited: www.permacultureinternational.org)
• the information on Bill Mollison's Global Gardener and other videos has not been moved from videotape (VHS) to DVD format; the technology to play VHS is being phased out; the stock of videos in private hands will detoriorate over time and, when copied onto another tape, is progressively of lower quality; in the near future the information is likely to disappear.

The likely model for a future Permaculture knowledge base, however, may be seen in the US in the form of an online encyclopedia (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture_Wiki) which readers contribute to and which is based on the open-source software, Wiki.

There are four criteria necessary to the development of an easily accessed, online, Permaculture knowledge base:

• acknowledgement by practitioners that an accessible knowledge base is of value
• a location to house the participatory website
• the willingness of Permaculture practitioners to contribute to the knowledge base
• the availability of a computer or information maven to set up and maintain the facility.

Such a ongoing project would accumulate an increasing amount of knowledge over time. Techniques for design in different climates, cultures and geographies could offer more information than could be printed in a book and could be frequently updated.

The existence of such a knowledge base would make the Permaculture a true learning organisation.

Principle 10: Generate creative ideas

Creative ideas are the lifeblood of innovative organisations. Permaculture has never lacked for creative ideas. Training in the techniques of generating such ideas surely has a place in Permaculture training.

Wherever possible, encourage creativity in the search for solutions.