(water babbles)
- Hi, Geoff Lawton here,
and I'm back with another video.
Today, I'm going to answer some of the most common questions
regarding the ethics of permaculture.
Ecological principles rest on the understanding of life
where cycles, flows, systems, and functions work ceaselessly
through sound, natural laws.
Adherence to a set of foundational ethics
helps guide behavior,
and builds cooperation and trust within communities.
The following a set of ethics calls
for nature-centered practices
that allow for regeneration of land
and those who live on it.
The three permaculture ethics are Earth care
which includes all living and non-living things,
land, water, animals, and air.
People care.
To promote self-reliance
and make things better for people.
Community responsibility.
And then the third ethic, return of surplus.
This happens as a result of adherence
to the above ethics.
The first two ethics which together, caring for the Earth,
caring for people, and allowing the surplus
to support Earth care and people care.
The three ethics collaborate together,
and are interwoven with one another.
(bird chirping)
Okay, our first question is,
"In regards to permaculture ethics,
what is your stance on food forests
being open to the general public?
In other words, what is your experience
with unregulated food forest areas?
And what systems, e.g. volunteers,
have you set up for day-to-day functioning?"
When it comes to food forests,
this is one of the best systems
that can be designed to provide food
with minimal maintenance, once established,
for maximum yield over time.
'Cause they're incredibly long-term.
They function exactly as a forest.
Now over the long-term, the knowledge is just about
something you inherit from generation to generation
because it gets more and more refined.
Initially, it's a system that's quite controversial.
It looks quite unusual,
and can look quite untidy as it establishes
in the middle age point, or the adolescent point
of a food forest.
So as long as there's some good education,
once people understand that you get through
that sort of rampant stage,
you get through that adolescent, untidy stage,
and then it starts to look refined.
It starts to look like an actual forest.
And now it takes less and less maintenance,
and more and more sort of tuning
to get the production really happening.
So food forests can provide a community,
it can provide a service and opportunities,
both for volunteers and paid staff.
So you'll always have a lot of volunteers,
but you need the paid staff to develop the skill base
and make sure it keeps evolving to that long-term plan
where it can be totally admired as a stable system.
It's just that initial stage.
So you need a shift in how we manage public lands
for this to happen.
It's not going to just happen straightaway,
but it's already happening in many parts of the world.
And even in major cities now.
Also, private lands can be established
as kind of a land trust or similar.
That's actually covered in chapter 14
in the "Permaculture Designers' Manual".
So private lands can be examples
that then public lands can copy.
And private lands can be converted into land trusts,
where there's kind of a condition
that it stays in a trust,
as long as the food forest keeps being maintained
through its long-term stability.
With proper design, these systems can build soil,
provide ecosystem services,
and maintain themselves.
So that's definitely Earth care
while providing resources for the local community.
That's people care.
With local systems to return food waste via compost,
to return surplus manures,
to actually return surplus food
to the community for people in need,
or people who are homeless,
or people who just need an education
'cause there's a surplus of information in there.
That's a return of surplus.
In every way, these systems follow
the ethics of permaculture.
Okay, second question.
"Hey, Geoff, I'm wondering if you could give some practical
examples of how you factor in the ethics
when going through a design?
Is it something that you explicitly design around,
or do they happen to be integrated
as a result of good design?
A couple of real-world examples would be great, thanks."
All right, it is definitely something we work around ethics.
Ethics is central to permaculture.
There's no question about that.
All our designs are centered on the ethics.
But also, good design expresses the ethics.
So one of our classic sites we've been working on lately
is Dave Rastovich's garden at Broken Head
near Byron Bay, Australia which is near here.
Now Dave lives on a community where eight people,
eight families, so moldable people,
live down his private road.
We worked to design a garden that handles
the wet climate of our coast here, on a very clay soil.
And worked with Dave to build a garden
that will produce enough food for the eight families
of the community.
The project was founded to provide for the local community,
so that's definitely people care.
Specific design choices are made based on the profile
of land to maximize water infiltration,
while allowing excess water to flow through the system
with the heavy soils in a way that stops any erosion.
So again, it's Earth care.
With the community returning its surplus,
the third ethic, they are returning surplus,
organic matter, prunings, food waste,
and any surplus manures anybody's got on their property,
like horse manure, to garden for worm farms
and for composting,
and some surplus work when heavy jobs need to be done.
In return, Dave's intention is to produce
everybody's food for those eight families,
and particularly the children,
all get to learn about the experience.
There's a big learning experience in this particular site.
To recover the clay soils in the production,
bring 'em alive, and also to handle
the constant, heavy rains.
So it's surplus in information
as it builds this sort of framework of application.
So ethics keep coming out of one particularly site,
just because the intention was ethical in the first place
with the design.
If this interests you, I have some exciting news for you.
We're launching our 2021 online
Permaculture Design Certificate
for anybody looking to learn more
and dive deeper into permaculture design thinking
using the three ethics as a foundation.
We'll help you move towards food security and water security
for you and your community by teaching you efficient
and meaningful design.
Learn how to maximize production potential
on any site around the globe.
Learn a variety of soil building techniques
that create living soils.
And support nutrient-dense food production.
How to work with patterning,
to make the most efficient use of any landscape.
Permaculture design is all about patterning.
Not only landscape patterns,
but human activity patterns,
livestock management patterns,
time patterns and more.
Learn climate-specific techniques
to infiltrate and store water in the landscape,
or pacify large flows in wet climates
to minimize erosion.
Weekly Q&As with me to clarify any question
you have throughout the course.
And helpful team of teaching assistants,
ready to support your learning experience.
Learn how to design your world of abundance
with us and sign up using the link below.
(ethereal music)