A while ago I wrote on the 3 foundational Permaculture Ethics – care of earth, care of people, and fair share. On this foundation of ethics, 12 universal design principles provide further guidance to creatively design our environment and behavior. Although these principles have been used primarily in consideration of environmental issues, they are applicable to  personal, social, economic, and political reorganization.

The Wiki summary of Permaculture includes the 12 principles from the book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, written by David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture.

1. Observe and interact – By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
2. Catch and store energy – By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
3. Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback – We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services – Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.
6. Produce no waste – By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
7. Design from patterns to details – By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
8. Integrate rather than segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
9. Use small and slow solutions – Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
10. Use and value diversity – Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
11. Use edges and value the marginal – The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively use and respond to change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

As you can see these Permaculture principles build on the ethics and provide a complete conceptual foundation for the design and redesign of our environment with sustainability in mind. Taken together and holistically, the ethics and principles of Permaculture can also provide the guiding considerations for restructuring our personal life choices, relationships, and economics.

It is only when we consider all aspects of life that we are adequately addressing sustainability and the spirit of Permaculture. Take a look at how Rob Hopkins, the founder of Transition Initiatives, applies these principles to business in his article on PermaculturePrinciples.com.

For many people, sustainability is still a new or misunderstood concept. For many others, like “green”, sustainability it is quickly becoming a buzzword with little meaning. It has become a marketing term to peddle products to a hip and progressive population.

At it’s core, sustainability means the ability to sustain or endure – and this has deep implications. Far from choosing new products in our consumer culture, sustainability has to do with a quality of life that has the potential to endure generation to generation. It has to do with a reverence and nurturing of life. At it’s best, it is a holistic concept that includes our social interactions, our economic structures, and the physical environment that we share.

Foundational to a holistic perspective on sustainability is an understanding of Permaculture Design. While sustainability has become popularized over the past decade, Permaculture Design, established in the late 1970’s, provides support and clarity for the issues at hand. With very clear ethics and principles, Permaculture Design provides a system that a holistic understanding of sustainability can be built on.

The Permaculture Ethics provide a grounding and sense of place in the larger scheme of things, and serve as a guidepost to right livelihood in relationship to the global community and the environment. It acknowledges a basic life ethic, which recognizes the intrinsic worth of every living thing.

1. Care of Earth
   …includes all living and non-living things – plants, animals, land, water and air
2. Care of People
   …promotes self-reliance and community responsibility – access to resources necessary for existence
3. Fair Share
   …sets voluntary limits to population and consumption – distributes surplus to achieve the aims of earth and people care.

Here are a couple of great Permaculture resources:

• Permaculture Principles

• Introduction to Permaculture

The term permaculture was first coined by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, in 1978 as “a design system for creating sustainable human environments”. A contraction of “permanent agriculture”, the concept of permaculture started with a focus on ecological landscape design and food production systems, but also included focus on energy-efficient buildings, waste water treatment, recycling, land stewardship and other issues of environmental sustainability.

With  much of my focus on the green building end of things, I have watched permaculture and green building follow a similar evolutionary path over the past 30 years. As green building began with a focus on energy efficiency and evolved to more fully integrate resource conservation and healthy materials, permaculture has evolved to more fully integrate its environmental focus with the social and economic aspects of sustainability. Now often referred to as a contraction of “permanent culture”, permaculture more fully reflects its original foundational ethics of “care of the earth, care of people, and fair share”.

My own interest in permaculture has evolved as well. Although I have always appreciated permaculture landscape principles and integrate them in my work whenever possible, it is the holistic aspect that takes sustainability to its logical conclusion that excites me the most. Inherent in its full application, permaculture addresses the importance of a new paradigm for how we live together in cooperation and collaboration, and how we restructure our failing economy with a foundation of sustainability and justice.