Permaculture: Land Ethics

“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, water, plants and animals or collectively; the land.”
Aldo Leopold

Land Ethics

Land ethics is the first large component of permaculture and has an integral place in our relationship with nature in general. Land ethics refers to our responsibility in how we use our land, not only our personal living space but the land as it’s managed by the government and big businesses or large agricultural farms. Land ethics puts us in a place of being a steward of our land rather than selfishly squandering and wasting such a valuable resource. Through ethical thinking, we’re encouraged to question the status quo, to cultivate abundance rather than empty grasslands and share our space with other living organisms. Keeping land ethics in mind, the first steps in permaculture are going to be acquiring space or land, observing the land and its natural inhabitants and planning how to use your space ethically.

Acquiring Space and Land

This is somewhat self explanatory but naturally, we’re going to need land or space to bring our permaculture desires to fruition. Luckily for us, there is much that can be accomplished in even the smallest of spaces or acreage! If we don’t have land of our own, we can look to at minimum cultivating plants indoors in pots or even cultivate a space on a porch.

Observe the Land and its Natural Inhabitants

It’s incredibly useful to observe nature’s patterns and let them guide us. Observe your land in great detail, learn about what organisms and species we share our land with. Take some time to research your local wildlife, insects and organisms and how you can benefit them. There are countless plants and herbs that both serve to feed us as well as native species, particularly insects and birds but also reptiles, amphibians, mammals and everything in between. More on these plants later! Also, you want to become aware of local pests and what natural predators they may have. Then, research ways to draw in and maintain those natural predators. Meditate with the land as often as possible. Get an intuitive sense about what the land needs.

Using the Land Ethically

In regards to land ethics, there are three important things to consider.

Firstly, we need to care for the earth because it’s what sustains us. This looks differently for different people but in essence, we need to be doing all that we can in all the various ways we can to help keep our earth healthy, both on a large scale as well as a small scale in our personal yard space. We might decide to donate to organizations that plant trees in our honor or live as much of a green lifestyle as possible, reusing, reducing and recycling as well as installing solar or wind technology if we’re financially able.

Secondly, we need to care for people because not only are we people but also people that aren’t cared for tend to exploit the earth more out of sheer desperation and necessity. This is again, going to look differently for different people but in essence it means giving back to our communities. We can do this most readily by joining local garden groups, sharing our knowledge, giving away extra fruit or vegetables to our friends and family, trading and bartering with others, volunteering, cultivating and growing beneficial native plants to give away and just helping others in our communities in general, especially those that are poor or marginalized. In summary, we should use our land in some capacity to help those beyond ourselves and spread the wealth of knowledge so to speak. By doing this, we inspire countless others to think, to care, to hopefully take up gardening or permaculture or simply ask important questions about their own relationship with nature and thereby improve everyone’s world. When we share our knowledge and gifts with our communities, together, we rise.

Thirdly, we need to consider other living creatures beyond ourselves in our designs. For example, you’re definitely going to want to learn about what insects may feed off of your food supply. For each of those little creatures, you’re going to want to find another organism that eats them or utilizes them. A couple great examples are ladybugs feeding off of aphids, or fly catchers and robins feeding off of worms and caterpillars. Pesticides, herbicides or fungicides are definitely not included in permaculture design and all are incredibly harmful to our environments. Therefore, we have to become creative in how we deal with every challenge of our permaculture system and in every scenario the answer is the same which is to look to nature for the solution or look to as natural of a solution as possible. Planting things that our pollinators love in general even if not edible to ourselves has the double bonus of supplying them with the necessary nectar to survive while drawing them to our yard to pollinate our plants, bushes and trees.

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)

The Environmental Ethic:
1. Live in harmony with nature;
2. Preserve and learn from the natural places of the world;
3. Minimize the impact of man-made chemicals on natural systems;
4.Consider the implications of all human actions on the global web of life.

“Of course, chaos can lead to failure and extinction. But so can order. Far more nations, people, and ideas die of atrophy than die from revolution. Both order and chaos are necessary ingredients for long run success – for sustainability.”
John Ikerd, Small Farms Are Real Farms

Land ethic and principles continued, summarized from Permaculture: a Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison

The Prime Directive of Permaculture: the only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children’s.

Principle of Cooperation: cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of future survival and of existing life systems.

The Ethical Basis of Permaculture:

CARE OF THE EARTH: Provision for all life systems to continue and increase.
CARE OF PEOPLE: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.
SETTING OUR OWN LIMITS TO POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.

Rules of Use of Natural Resources:

Reduce waste, hence pollution;
Thoroughly replace lost minerals;
Do a careful energy accounting; and
Make a biosocial impact assessment for long term effects on society, and act to buffer or eliminate any negative impacts.

Life Intervention Principle: In chaos lies unparalleled opportunity for imposing creative order.

Law of Return: Whatever we take, we must return, or Nature demands a return for every gift received, or The user must pay.

Directive of Return: Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement. Society must, as a conditions of use, replace an equal or greater resource than that used.

A Policy of Responsibility (to relinquish power):
The role of beneficial authority is to return function and responsibility to life and to people; if successful, no further authority is needed. The role of successful design is to create a self-managed system.

Categories of Resources:

Those which increase by modest use.
Those unaffected by use.
Those which disappear or degrade if not used.
Those reduced by use.
Those which pollute or destroy other resources if used.

Policy of Resource Management:
A responsible human society bans the use of resources which permanently reduce yields of sustainable resources, e.g. pollutants, persistent poisons, radioactives, large areas of concrete and highways, sewers from city to sea.

Principle of Disorder:
Order and harmony produce energy for other uses. Disorder consumes energy to no useful end. Neatness, tidiness, uniformity, and straightness signify an energy-maintained disorder in natural systems.

Law of Entropy (Asimov): The total energy of the universe is constant and the total entropy is increasing.

The Basic Law of Thermodynamics (Watt): Energy can be transferred from one form to another, but it cannot disappear, or be destroyed, or created. No energy conversion system is ever completely efficient.

Principle of Cyclic Opportunity: Every cyclic event increases the opportunity for yield. To increase cycling is to increase yield. Cycles in nature are diversion routes away from entropic ends-life itself cycles nutrients-giving opportunities for yield, and thus opportunities for species to occupy time niches.

Types of Niches:

Niche in space, or “territory” (nest and forage sites).
Niche in time (cycles of opportunity).
Niche in space-time (schedules)

Principle of Stress and Harmony: Stress may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function; and (conversely) harmony as the permission of chosen and natural functions and the supply of essential needs.

Principle of Stability: It is not the number of diverse things in a design that leads to stability, it is the number of beneficial connections between these components.

Set of Ethics on Natural Systems:

Implacable and uncompromising opposition to further disturbance of any remaining natural forests;
Vigorous rehabilitation of degraded and damaged natural systems to a stable state;
Establishment of plant systems for our own use on the least amount of land we can use for our existence; and
Establishment of plant and animal refuges for rare or threatened species.

Information as a Resource: Information is the critical potential resource. It becomes a resource only when obtained and acted upon.

Practical Design Considerations:

The systems we construct should last as long as possible, and take least maintenance.
These systems, fuelled by the sun, should produce not only their own needs, but the needs of the people creating or controlling them. Thus, they are sustainable, as they sustain both themselves and those who construct them.
We can use energy to construct these systems, providing that in their lifetime, they store or conserve more energy than we use to construct them or to maintain them.

Definition of System Yield:
System yield is the sum total of surplus energy produced by, stored, conserved, reused, or converted by the design. Energy is in surplus once the system itself has available all its needs for growth, reproduction, and maintenance.

The Role of Life in Yield:
Living things, including people, are the only effective intervening systems to capture resources on this planet, and to produce a yield. Thus, it is the sum and capacity of life forms which decide total system yield and surplus.

Limits to Yield:
Yield is not a fixed sum in any design system. It is the measure of the comprehension, understanding, and ability of the designers and managers of that design.

Undistributed Surplus is Pollution:
Any system or organism can accept only that quantity of a resource which can be used productively. Any resource input beyond that point throws the system or organism into disorder; oversupply of a resource is a form of chronic pollution.