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SOLUTIONS: What Can I Do Now
Perception
There
is a perception that society as a whole needs to get over with and
throw out. That is the view that people who are "environmental types"
are just a bunch of tree-hugging, sandle-wearing, long-haired hippies,
who smell of patchouli incense.
OK, granted, there are some (on our staff)
who fit that description perfectly...but what was it about the 1960s
and '70s that also created an "earth-awareness" and ecological mind-set
that has not quit?
Some say it had to do with antiestablishmentarianism
(now, how often does one get to use THAT word?). Some say that in the
push to seek a "greater connection with one's self and 'God'" that a
realization occurred that there was also an undeniable connection
between all things: people, nature, and the universe itself.
Regardless of where the ideas came from, a tremendous amount of research and WORKABLE SOLUTIONS came from that era.
Workable Solutions...that
means: "things I can do that have a beneficial result across a wide
range of areas (self, family, groups, society, humankind, nature,
earth, etc.)."
The idea is that if an idea is WORKABLE then it is WORKABLE, regardless of where the idea originated. Understand?
One of the concepts that was born of the period was Sustainability.
What does that really mean?
On doing the research for this area, we found a better explanation than one we could have put together.
It was written by David Holmgren, who also co-developed another concept called Permaculture...a very workable solution indeed.
So sit back and read the following article.
In order to know "What Can I Do Now" one must first understand the playing field...
What Is Sustainability?
from Sustainability Network Update 31E, 9 Sep 2003, CSIRO Sustainability Network
http://www.bml.csiro.au/susnetnl/netwl31Eb.pdf
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David Holmgren, co-originator with Bill Mollison of the Permaculture concept, is an innovative environmental
design consultant based at Hepburn Springs in central Victoria, where
he maintains one of Australia's best-known permaculture demonstration
sites. David has written several books, conducted numerous workshops
and courses on sustainable living, and developed several properties
using permaculture principles. His latest book, Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability5,
is the distillation of a life lived by the principles of permaculture.
[I recently bought a personal copy. It's a great reference ñ relevant
to all aspects of the current sustainability debate ñ and an excellent
read. I thoroughly recommend it. E.G.H.] 5 David Holmgren (2002); published by Holmgren Design Services. ISBN 0 646 41844 0
The
following feature is adapted from David's presentation to the "Students
of Sustainability" conference at Flinders University, Adelaide, July
2003. You can check David's website at: www.holmgren.com.au and contact him at:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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It
seems that my role in discussions of sustainability is to be the
iconoclast ñ a kicker of sacred cows. This is a role I enjoy, but most
especially when it involves breaking icons that I myself have helped
create. The title of my new book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
deliberately implies a serious problem with mainstream concepts of
Sustainability. I hope the substance behind the title will now stir up
the sustainability debate in positive ways.
Third Wave Environmentalism
A
resurgence of environmentalism has occurred in recent years, despite
the diversionary politics of fear and hatred, which presently dominate
political discourse. This environmentalism has involved both
'oppositional' and 'developmental' activism.
By oppositional activism,
I mean activism that aims to stop, ameliorate or mitigate adverse
environmental impacts, especially those caused by the actions of
corporations and governments. The anti-(corporate)-globalisation
movement brings together the experience of oppositional activists on
both the environmental and social fronts.
By developmental activism,
I mean the process of constructing systems that produce positive
environmental outcomes. These most typically operate at the personal
and household levels, but also as community and entrepreneurial
processes. This side of environmental activism I characterise as the
'third wave of environmental solutions'.6
The
first wave of environmental solutions of the post World War II era
emerged in the late 1970's. The concept of permaculture and initiation
of the Permaculture Movement were milestones of this first wave, but
permaculture action increased dramatically both nationally and
internationally during a second wave in the late 1980's and early
1990's. What will happen to permaculture during the third wave is hard
to predict but, in continuing to call the ideas in my new book
"permaculture", I obviously want to build on, rather than break that
heritage. Although I am vigilant against the development of any
"Permaculture dogma", I still believe the concept itself and its very
positive influence over the last 25 years are a good foundation for
further influence and action.
Sustainability as 'virtue'
The
word "sustainability" is broadly used to mean the collection of ideas,
processes and elements in society that are currently seen as
progressive, enlightened or even simply good. Sustainability has become
a virtue by its perceived scarcity. But what is this virtue beyond a
set of socially progressive current ideas and fashions, and what is its
relationship to Permaculture?
Permaculture and Sustainability
Permaculture
is a design system for sustainable land-use and living that emerged out
of a brief working relationship between Bill Mollison and myself in the
mid 1970's7. (We used the term 'permanent'
rather than 'sustainable'.) It predates most mainstream sustainability
literature, which came to the fore as part of the 'second wave'.
Permaculture was, in part, a response to
the evidence for, and the implications of, continuing extraction and
unsustainable use of non-renewable and biological resources. The Club
of Rome's seminal report, The Limits To Growth8,
and the first and second oil shocks of 1973 & 1975, were obvious
influences. Less well know to this day is the systems ecology language
and energy accounting work of Howard Odum first described in his
difficult but pivotal book, Environment Power and Society9. It was the first reference listed in our foundation work, Permaculture One, and his work since has continued to inform my development of the concept over the decades since 10.
Permaculture, like a number of other sustainability concepts, has
focused on positive, creative actions, which are practical and
appropriate without necessarily attempting to understand how it all
adds up in the long term. This is, in part, a reasonable response to
rapid change and uncertainty about the future. However, it is also a
response to the difficulty of discussing the future in terms other than
a 'good and evil' polarity between growth and development on the one
hand and decay and destruction on the other.
Energy descent
In
addressing the question: What is sustainability? I want to emphasise
how an understanding of the global energy peak and resultant energy
descent defines and reshapes both environmental concepts and
strategies. I use the term 'descent' as the least loaded word that
honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material
consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining
decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability. I
believe the third wave of environmental solutions will be seen as a
response to both the realisation of the limits to consumption (first
wave) and the limits to pollution and global warming (second wave).
Permaculture is the whole-hearted engagement with energy descent as the
opportunity for a better world where less is better.
Sustainability: A Systems View
Beginning
with "sustain" as provision of the necessities of life, sustainability
could be defined as the 'ability to continually provide the necessities
of life'. A systems perspective is useful for taking this definition
further. Self-organising systems (such as those found in nature and
society) all collect net energy from their surrounding environment. As
well as nourishing their constituent parts, sustainable systems
maintain and renew themselves over time without exponential growth,
major collapse, or massive internal restructuring.
Times scales for assessing sustainability
Time
scales for assessing sustainability are proportional to the physical
scale or territory of influence of the system in question. Thus the
sustainability of a household, business or community might be
considered over years or decades while that of a nation state or
culture might be considered over centuries or even millennia.
These
abstract systemic principles were once understood as common sense. For
example large powerful institutions such as the Catholic Church are
long-lived while small and local ones come and go more quickly.
Corporations have never been long lived, averaging less than a human
lifetime, but as they have become more global and powerful, their
average life expectancy has actually shrunk to a few decades. This
suggests that global capitalism is heading for radical change rather
than a long-lived golden age.
Maintenance of larger-scale support systems
As
well as nurturing its constituent parts and self-regulating growth, a
sustainable system also contributes to maintenance of larger-scale
environmental support systems. Thus, for households and businesses,
there must be contributions to the larger systems of community,
government and economy. In nature, local ecosystems contribute to
maintenance of climate and landscapes. In indigenous societies, use and
respect for resources helped maintain the whole surrounding natural
system; and throughout history, large-scale human empire systems have
declined when they failed to make that contribution or 'tithe' to back
to nature. Thus the concept of ecological sustainability is based on
this expectation that modern human systems must contribute rather than
simply take from nature.
Are biological support systems really necessary?
Despite
the evidence, and despite several decades of propaganda from scientists
and environmentalists about the importance of biological support
systems, the view persists that nature is an optional appendage to
modern industrial societies rather than the foundation. Why does such a
view persist? One of the reasons, is that there is not much direct
evidence that the health of biological systems has determined the
recent course of human affairs, especially in the richer nations. For
example, without wanting to underestimate the problems, the parlous
state of the Murray River has hardly brought the city of Adelaide to
its knees. There is much greater concern about Adelaide's "viability"
in relation to a decline in manufacturing and the ageing of its
population.
Two important factors have contributed to ameliorating the impact of environmental degradation:
1. Bypassing of local negative feedback controls; and
2. The fossil and non-renewable resource base.
1. Bypassing of local negative feedback controls
In
small, relatively autonomous economies and societies dependant on
surrounding nature, failure in local ecosystem function leads to
unavoidable economic, social and even cultural impacts, or even
societal collapse. Over the last 6,000 years, warfare, slavery, and the
resultant power of city-states and empires allowed the capture of
foreign resources mostly as capital assets to be mined. These densely
settled pre-industrial societies also staved off the impacts of local
ecological failure by migration of surplus population and, to some
extent, by export of pollution. For example, the great rivers on which
most ancient cities were located not only delivered fertility but took
away and purified pollution.
In
modern, migratory, large-scale and globally connected human systems,
local degradation of nature may not lead to collapse or even dramatic
impacts. Without this negative feedback at the economic, social and
personal levels, ecological impacts tend to accumulate up the
geographic hierarchy to global scale, where they are remote from any
direct cause. Acid rain, global warming, and biodiversity loss, for
example, are all processes with large-scale impacts often remote from
the place and time of their cause.
Thus,
our global industrial systems are still underpinned by global
ecological processes but the connection between the ecological
sustainability of households, communities, businesses or nations and
the condition of global nature is abstract, complex and remote.
2. The fossil and mineral resource base
Renewable
biological resources, responsive to direct feedback, have not, however,
been the primary driving force behind modern societies, at least since
the depression of the 1930's. Mineral resources, most notably oil and
increasingly gas have become the prevalent forms of energy sustaining
humanity. The extent of this dependence is consistently underestimated,
by economists and decision makers, and even by scientists and
environmentalists. The greatest mistake is to consider these resources
as simply 'commodities', rather than looking at their net contribution
of energy to supporting all other human systems and processes. In
pre-industrial settled societies, agriculture was the primary process
for obtaining net energy from the environment. Now, at the end of the
industrial era, even agriculture has become a major net energy
consumer, highlighting the degree to which we live from the oil well.
During
a visit to Israel in the mid 1990's, after seeing the feeding of
broad-acre irrigated crops to shed-housed dairy cows, I remarked that
the Israeli glass of milk must be 80% oil. For comparison I suggested
Australian milk from cows grazing rain-fed (albeit fertilised pastures)
might be 20% oil, and European milk from shed-housed cows eating
rain-fed crops might be 50% oil. This use of technology and innovation
based on resource depletion to expand agricultural productivity (at
least temporarily), reinforces the idea that agriculture is an
appendage, rather than the foundation of the economy. Although these
facts have been understood for thirty years, the situation has got far
worse over that time.
More
shocking is the realisation that most environmental policies,
strategies and actions for protecting and maintaining local biological
systems, both the in countryside and in the city, are generally at a
cost of depleting non renewable resources elsewhere. For example, the
financial savings from living in an energy efficient, passive solar
house are quite likely to be spent on a more resource expensive and
greenhouse gas intensive overseas trip. Such use of technology and
innovation to reduce local environmental degradation simply moves
problems elsewhere and, in so doing, reinforces the idea that nature is
an appendage of society. This rebound effect has been noted by both
systems theorists and permaculture practitioners.
Global Energy Peak and Cultures of Change
These
and other factors reduce the usefulness of many mainstream
sustainability concepts in explaining and addressing real-world
processes. Without a serious attempt to understand the energy basis of
nature and society, and the key issue of society's global energy peak,
sustainability concepts and the actions they inform may well be
counterproductive.
Although
the oil crisis of the 1970's triggered the first wave of modern
environmental solutions (including Permaculture), the response and
adjustments by global elites have had the effect of inoculating
affluent society against the Limits to Growth argument. That is, a
small dose made us resistant to the influence of more powerful doses.
In similar vein, I have long argued11 that
over-promotion of permaculture in the early 1980's "inoculated" people
against a more serious consideration of the concept because of a
perceived failure to catalyse powerful changes in land-use and society
in the short term.
With
a global oil peak now unfolding all around us, the failure to recognise
and understand its signs and symptoms pervades not only the
anti-environmental reactionaries, but also much of the vanguard of
sustainability. Discussions, workshops and other learning activities
are needed to enable environmentalists to get up to speed on the
evidence for the global energy peak, and to debate the implications.
Sustainability of Change Cultures
One
of the consequences of our growing understanding of the larger-scale
dynamics of the energy peak is that, within a single human lifetime, we
are witnessing simultaneous transformative change in systems at many
scales. In these conditions, steady-state models of sustainability are
of limited use, other than to acknowledge that the bulk of human
history is well described by such models.
Unless the pathway back to a low energy future is particularly
catastrophic and abrupt, the future will deliver continuous change and
novelty for hundreds of years.
Both
our cultural inheritance, and any legacy we might leave for future
generations, can be thought of as cultures of continuous change. How
can we resolve the apparent contradictions inherent in stable,
permanent and sustainable cultures versus those involving continuous
change? Many sustainability thinkers have recognised the need to
encompass continuous change, but few have acknowledged the key issue of
directionality of change at the largest scales. While our cultural
inheritance and our legacy could both be characterised as change
cultures, the difference is in the directionality of the supporting
energy base (energy ascent versus energy descent), as graphically
illustrated in Figure 1.12
Although
only conceptual, the rough time scale shows continuity of the energy
ascent culture for hundreds if not thousands of years. Similarly, it
suggests continuity of the coming descent culture over many generations.
Most
sustainability concepts and advocates imply some type of plateau model
for transition beyond the fossil fuel peak. The ecological and
historical models for establishment of this steady-state energy base
are dubious, but generally little discussed as most arguments focus on
the potential of this or that technology in isolation from the systems
top down perspective.
Permaculture
could be seen, somewhat cynically, as just my (and now many other
people's) version of the enlightened ideas and actions that others
gather under the 'sustainability' rubric. While there is some truth in
this view, I would characterise those enlightened ideas and actions as
all informed by ethical values and reflecting a set of system design
principles that will be of enduring value over the long run of energy
descent. This does not mean that those ideas and actions (strategies
and techniques) which are useful in one context or at one point in time
will necessarily have enduring value, but that the underlying
principles will.
Further,
Permaculture is the wholehearted and positive acceptance of energy
descent, as not only inevitable but as a desirable reality. Energy
descent delivered by a continuous global 'recession' has the potential
to bring to fruition many environmental solutions and processes that
have languished during the delusional decades since the evidence about
global resource depletion became available. These positive aspects will
exist side-by-side with negative expressions of energy descent, such as
a 'techno-fascism' which is evolving through largerscale economic and
political processes.
Permaculture
can be thought of as a hopeful 'orienteering map' for the pathways down
from the energy mountain. Reflecting the multiple-function concept,
this map is designed to generate new pathways as we move down and even
to work as an emergency parachute for rapid energy descent.
The positive view of our cultural inheritance
The
European enlightenment, industrialisation and modernity are all aspects
of the culture of energy ascent that have persisted over the several
hundred years of net energy growth. Despite the novel technological,
economic and social conditions that have developed over this period,
the underlying concepts and design principles of our human culture have
actually changed little. That a consistent set of design principles can
generate such diverse phenomena, is normal to the systems thinker, even
if counter-intuitive to many. If we can see the underlying unity,
strength and continuity of our shared culture, despite the novel
outcomes in each generation, then we have part of the answer on which
to base a new model of cultural sustainability.
In
the same way that we might consider the culture of growth to have been
sustainable for hundreds of years, any designed and evolved culture
adapted to energy descent might similarly be "sustainable" if its
underlying values and design principles were to remain intact over a
similar period of human history.
Part
of the positive message about energy descent relates to how we can best
cope with a future where we have to map out and follow the pathways,
backtrack when needed, and continuously reshape our activity and
culture as we descend the energy mountain over not one or two, but a
dozen or more generations. While we will have to discard most of the
cultural baggage of our continuous energy ascent culture, the greatest
asset we can take with us is our intimate familiarity with continuous
change and our capacity for creative response.
Thus
the apparent contradiction between stability and change at the core of
sustainability concepts, including permaculture, can be understood and
used a tool in designing and creating a positive future.
A
summary of the basic principles on which Permaculture is based is shown
below. For more detail, I thoroughly recommend David Holmgren's book, Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability. (Footnote 5.)
5 David Holmgren (2002); published by Holmgren Design Services. ISBN 0 646 41844 0
6 See: Permaculture and the Third Wave of Environmental Solutions at: www.holmgren.com.au
7 Mollison, W & D Holmgren (1978) Permaculture One. Corgi.
8 See D. Meadows et al., (1972) The Limits to Growth.
9 Odum, HT (1971) Environment, Power & Society. John Wiley.
10 See various articles in David Holmgren Collected Writings 1978-2000, Holmgren Design Services 2000
11 See The Development of The Permaculture Concept (1991) in: David Holmgren Collected Writings 1978-2000, Holmgren Design Services 2001.
12 From: Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability 2002: Permaculture as design for energy descent.
[to be continued...]
| BOOKS WE RECOMMEND - Permaculture and Sustainable Living | |
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What Can I Do Now 
