In the pathway: Getting started in permaculture
Permaculture ethics
The three values that guide every design: caring for the Earth, caring for people, sharing fairly.
Explanation
Before any technique, permaculture sets out three ethics: care for the Earth, care for people and fair share, that is, setting limits and redistributing surplus. Bill Mollison stated them in 1988 in Permaculture: A Designers' Manual. David Holmgren sums them up in three words, “earth care, people care, fair share”, and presents them as the foundation of permaculture design. They are values: they say what we are aiming for, not how to get there.
Refined definition
The third ethic has changed its wording. In Mollison (1988), it is headed “setting limits to population and consumption”: by governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the first two. Holmgren calls it “fair share” and sums it up in two moves, limits and a redistribution of surplus, recognising that there are limits to how much we can give and how much we can take. “Sharing the surplus” therefore keeps only the second half; the first, setting limits, is the one Mollison had written.
Key points
Care for the Earth
In Mollison (1988), making sure all living systems can continue and thrive. Holmgren reads it first as caring for the living soil, whose state, he writes, is often the best measure of the health and well-being of society (Permaculture Principles website). In the garden: a covered soil, hedges, a pond, room left for the wild.
Care for people
In Mollison, giving everyone access to the resources necessary to their existence. Holmgren starts with oneself, then kin and community: “look after self, kin and community”. In the garden: a place that feeds without exhausting the person who tends it, tools and knowledge that are shared.
Fair share
Set limits, then redistribute what is left over (Holmgren). In the garden: harvest what you need, give away or swap the surplus, return to the soil what came from it through compost, exchange seeds.
Mollison's “prime directive”
Mollison places before the ethics a sentence he calls his prime directive: “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children's” (Mollison, 1988, cited by Ferguson & Lovell, 2014). Ferguson & Lovell see in it a model of social change based on personal responsibility and voluntary action.
Values, not proof
The ethics guide choices; they do not guarantee that a technique works. In a review published in Agronomy for Sustainable Development, Ferguson & Lovell (2014) note that permaculture has remained relatively isolated from scientific research, and that oversimplifying claims limit its contribution. This is why Permagora separates the value, what we are aiming for, from the proof, what has been measured.
Watch out for
- • The third ethic is not just “sharing the surplus”: for Mollison as for Holmgren, it begins with the limit you set yourself.
- • These ethics are not unique to permaculture: Holmgren stresses that they are found in most traditional societies.
Examples
- • A soil never left bare: care for the Earth
- • A work party where people learn by doing: care for people
- • Baskets of surplus given to neighbours, a seed library: fair share
- • A vegetable garden sized to the time you have: setting limits
Sources
- Mollison, B. (1988). Permaculture: A Designers' Manual. Tyalgum : Tagari Publications.
- Holmgren, D. (2002). Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Hepburn : Holmgren Design Services.
- Ferguson, R.S. & Lovell, S.T. (2014). Permaculture for agroecology: design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 34(2), 251-274.