From pgs 10-13 in Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture
Attitudinal Principles
| Work with nature, not against it |
Results in minimum negative impact and long term sustainability |
| Value edges and marginal and small |
Small and different can be vital |
| See solutions inherent in problems |
Overcomes blockages to design and implementation |
| Value people and their skills and their work |
Draws people in; enables and supports them |
| Produce no waste |
Move towards a closed ecosystem |
| Respect for all life |
The delights of all natural and cultural diversity are valued |
| Use public transport and renewable fuels |
Move towards people-scaled sustainable urban planning,
friendlier places, and less pollution. |
| Calculate “food miles” |
Supports local farmers, bioregional produce, lower food costs, truck-free roads |
| Reduce your ecological footprint |
Accept responsibility ,simplify,your life, become more self-reliant.
Remember the future and save your resources |
Strategic Principles
| Focus on long-term sustainability |
Careful thinking |
| Co-operate; don’t compete |
Share best knowledge and practice |
| Design from patterns to details |
See the whole picture first |
| Start small and learn from change |
Avoids expensive errors |
| Make the least change for the largest input results |
Efficient and economical detail |
| Make a priority of renewable resources and services |
Establishes a feedback loop to long-term sustainability |
| Bring food production back to cities |
Empowers food security and risk avoidance |
Characteristics and applications
| Small-scale landscape patterns |
– Most marginal land returned to natural ecosystems to collect and retain water, soil, and indigenous species
– Landscapes are varied and interesting |
| Intensive rather than extensive |
– Most work close to home
– Easy to manage humane plant and animal systems
– Perhaps bring sheep and goat to cities in home gardens |
| Diversity within habitats |
– Diversity of species cultivars
– Yields, functions, niches, social roles, work, and choices |
| Integration of many disciplines |
– Agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, animal husbandry, wilderness, and social behavior (economic, religious, etc) |
| Use of wild and domestic species |
– Possibility of innovative use of rabbits, kangaroos, guinea pigs, snakes, pigeons, and dogs |
| Long-term sustainability |
– Aim for perpetuation of system which can adjust to catastrophes such as thermal pollution and loss of ozone, without loss of species richness |
| Use of naturally inherent traits of land, plants, and animals |
– Energy, water, and soil resources are conserved
– Rebuilt self-regulated and self-repairing |
| A treed landscape |
– Cultivation in clearings protected by perennial planting and natural forests |
| Whole-site plan for water security |
– Drought and flood-protected by dams, tanks, vegetated creeks, streams, rivers and wetlands, recycling and reuse of water |
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