It would not be permaculture if we tried to design something without understanding some basic ecological processes. For me ecology includes several if not all sciences such as biology, hydrology, geology, geography, physics, and a lot more. Ecology helps us become aware of patterns existing in nature and borrows research done by all fields. Permaculture uses ecology and also adds economics and other social sciences and tries to design useful things with all this knowledge combined with experience and meditation. The following are the most important concepts to keep in mind while creating permaculture designs. Sun and Energy The sun is the nearest star to us and is at the center of our solar system. 99.8% of the mass of our entire solar system is the sun alone. All forms of energy on earth have been created through solar energy. It is the primary form and the mother of all kinds of energy. It is important to understand how solar energy has transformed our earth and continues to do so. Since solar energy is a renewable source of energy, it makes most sense to design systems that utilize this energy first. Unlike plants, humans transform energy into states where it can no longer be useful to us and also ends up causing negative impact on ecosystems and other species. Maybe instead of using fossil fuels to run our cars, industries, and agriculture, we could use it to create landscapes that do not require their use beyond creation. Designing energy efficient and self-sufficient landscapes is one of the key elements of permaculture. Solar energy has shaped the earth and we cannot change where the sun will be in the sky. But we can design to utilize its power to the fullest through passive system that have very little ecological impact and eventually high economical benefits. Water and Vegetation as Thermal Mass The sun continues to radiate its heat at us and were it not for water and vegetation, we would never be able to survive the extreme heating and cooling that used to take place as the earth rotated into day and night. Water as we all know has a lot of thermal mass that prevents it from extreme cooling and heating. Millions of years ago once there was water on earth, creatures could now survive in water which would mitigate the night and day temperature vacillations. Slowly as life spread to the land, vegetation functioned just like water on land. Thinking of vegetation as water on land helps us grasp the importance of having vegetation to prevent excessive cooling and heating. This easily explains the why dense urban areas get so hot in the summer. There is hardly any vegetation in cities and most of the structures are concrete and surrounded by polluted water, air, and soil. This is called the urban heat island effect. It takes much more energy to cool a building than to heat it up. Thus designing cities with ponds and lots of vegetation can be extremely helpful in creating cool microclimates. Biogeochemical Cycles We are now living in a society that is has focussed too much on linear thinking whether it is in economics or waste systems. This is completely opposite of what nature does. All matter in nature cycles. Biogeochemical cycles is the movement or cycling of matter through a system. Matter is elements and molecules such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, h2o etc. Examples are water cycles, carbon cycles, nitrogen cycles, phosphorus cycles etc. Here below is a diagram of a hyrological cycle. Here is a great link to diagrams of biogeochemical cycles. Ecosystems arise and persist because of cycles. Following the patterns of these cycles in our designs is possibly the best thing you can do to create a sustainable landscape. So many of our current systems do not base themselves on these cycles and therefore have created massive impact on earth and the climate. In India you often see that many rivers that have huge dams on them do not even reach the ocean. That is an incomplete system and the effects are going to be disastrous. The goal for any designer should be to create zero-waste systems where everything cycles and is utilized in one way or another. Succession and Disturbance Succession is an ecological concept that explains the structure and pattern of evolution or growth of a biological community over time. Every landscape goes through different stages of growth towards a something called as a 'climax' community. It is an extremely diverse, stable, and highly productive stage for any ecosystem to be in. You can call it where nature would like to have things ideally go towards. These patterns or stages of development can often be seen after 'disturbance' events. Disturbance is any event natural or human created that destroys almost everything that is living in that particular area or ecosystem. Fires, floods, clear-cutting forests, controlled forest fires etc. are examples of disturbances. These events lead to the resetting of the land and that is when you can see the different stages of succession as the land such as starting with grasses, followed by shrubs and fast growing small trees, followed by medium sized trees and finally large and slow growing trees that form the climax community. Succession can also be understood in terms of entire ecosystems such as moving from desert to grasslands to shrubland followed by deciduous forest to an evergreen forest. Here is a diagram of disturbance and succession. It is fascinating to understand these ecological processes because nothing we produce can ever compete with the production of a climax community. Integrated design will try to move or expedite the biology of a place towards a climax community with a healthy mix of beneficial elements for humans. Creating zones of use along with planting useful trees and food forests, and creating ponds amongst many things may be the best win-win situation we can achieve.
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The following are 4 videos by Bill Mollison who is considered to be the 'father of permaculture'. He goes through 4 different ecologies of the tropics, dry lands, cool climates, and urban landscape and demonstrates the relevance of permaculture to each one. The tropics is most informative for those interested in knowing about India. These are great introductory 30 min videos. Earth seems to have reached its current state in random bursts of evolution rather than in a linear, unified manner as we might think. Evolution is how the earth designs itself and before trying to design any human landscape it is extremely important to understand the patterns within earth's design in the largest scales possible. From the creation of earth, the in-flux of oxygen followed by aerobic life, living in the sea for millions of years, adaptation to terrestrial life, the ecology of a mature forest, to the micro-ecology of a pond in your backyard, all need to understood through the broadest and complex lens of nature as a self-regulating design comprising of biogeochemical processes. Understanding patterns and replicating nature's patterns with highest functional use for humans is key to permaculture design.
Permaculture designing principles are most often capable of being scaled up from a specific site or plot of land up to an entire geographic region. Here are some of these principles to keep in mind while designing your site, village, town, city, district, or region; 1. Only introduce those things into your space or system that have multiple functions. Recommended is at least 3. For example on a piece of land it could be a live fence which plays the role of being a fence demarcating and safeguarding property, made up of edible fruits or vegetables for humans, a habitat for birds or burrowing animals, a wind barrier for smaller plants growing along its edge, and a natural filter of pollution coming in from the road. On a larger scale one might question if there does exist a multiple functionality to certain human structures such as dams. Do dams provide any other function other than capturing and channelling water? The truth might be rarely if at all do large dams play any other 'beneficial' function. They damage the surrounding eco-system and livelihoods of people living on those eco-systems, they change the river system ecology, and do not add any vitality to the water amongst many other issues. 2. Maximize mutually beneficial relationships This has multiple levels of designing attached to it. It refers to creating a system where things are interconnected and benefit each other. It can be about planting beans, corn, and squash together which all help each other out while using less energy and space. Or it can be about linking a huge garbage collection system to a biogas industry which is connected to a composting and gardening organization. All help each other and at the same time create circular patterns where material and energy is recycled and brought back into the system in a useful way rather than being discarded and abandoned. Ecosystems are made up of multiple levels of mutually beneficial relationships, we can only hope to imitate some of them in our designs. As long as we get our basics right, ecology will take care of the rest. 3. Designs need to be bioregional or in tune with natural patterns and ecology of the region as much as possible. In this case dams are a good example of giving no consideration to this point. The creation of sustainable and self-regulating designs depends on this principle. This principle is capable of being scaled up to how cities, countries, and civilizations are built. Our cities made with cement and glass are replicated the world over and are completely alienated from the regional eco-system. If one has the time, perhaps this is to also do with us culturally and as individuals. I find Taoism most relevant here. Understanding the way and following that path. Civilizations after civilizations have been far from this teaching. 4. Create a thoughtful diversity of elements Diversity in ecology is key to a sustainable ecosystem due to its ability to have multiple functions and adaptability in situations of disturbance. While designing creating multiple elements or methods to perform the same function can be very helpful. For example there are multiple types of energy for multiple types of use. While solar energy may be excellent for heating water and your house, biogas is better for cooking. Why should a city receive all its energy only from fossil fuel electric plants when it could be using the city waste to create biogas for cooking, solar energy for heating houses, and gravity for creating water supply? The key words here are 'thoughtful diversity'. Diversity that is random, not in tune with the natural ecology, or decontextualized can be stupid if not damaging. 5. Always ask the question, 'what happens to this once its life is over?' Using hybrids and mixes of different materials even if they are 'eco-friendly' may be disastrous when it comes to disposing these off. Its unbelievable how much trash we have created and they way we dispose it off after we have created it. The poisonous chemicals from our own 'shit' is killing us right now from nuclear plants reaching their radiation capacities to chemicals leaching into our water systems from our own backyard. It is so important to think of not just the functionality of a material be it wood, fossil fuel, or plastic, but also how does it return to earth and what does it do along the way. Asking about how far you got the material from is also very important. Staying regional is most important for great functionality as well as impact. 6. Use and enhance all passive systems before initiating an active system. Use biology before technology. Its amazing how much biology does for us passively. While vegetation is passively ensuring that the earth doesn't heat up or cool down too much, we are too busy heating up our cities through our air-conditioners that keep us cool inside a heat absorbing cement building. Growing a creeper along the wall of that building could reduce the cooling requirement inside by 30%. That is a passive and effective system. Just like using gravity to feed harvested rainwater to a building rather than an active electric pump. Or understanding the groundwater network of a city, recharging it, and enhancing easy access to this water so that there is no need for transportation of water from miles away. At this point it is important to understand just how much work micro-organisms do for us for free. They evolve much faster than any other animal or plant, they can clean up entire oil spills in a few months, entire ponds and streams in a few days, and are even used in buildings as zero-waste passive sewage treatment plants. 7. Use fossil fuels to create landscapes that do not require their continued use. We can no longer keep up the lifestyle that we live currently based on fossil fuel use. So why not use this last fossil fuel to create something that wont require them any more such as rooftop rain water harvesting systems, solar panels, trains rather than roads, and so much more. 8. Start small It is overwhelming to think of designing an entire city or country or even a civilization. It may not even be the right thing to do. Starting small is fine. And I would even add stay small. Let someone else try these things out for themselves at a small scale. It will always be different than what you did which is great! There are many more specific principles to designing while looking at energy or boundaries of a piece of land. But more of that will come later with practical examples. Check out some cool videos by Bill Mollison in the next post. Andrew Faust from Homebiome is my teacher and provides his own unique personal history to the lessons. I will try my best to bring out the most interesting and relevant parts of his lecture that struck me and will stay with me as I go along this path. So what is 'permaculture? It started off as being a combination of permanent + agriculture, and is also now often understood as permanent + culture. In the most basic way I understand the word as meaning, 'the most sustainable culture in all aspects whether it is ecological, economical, or social.' An easier way of understanding permaculture is through the different concepts and words associated with it. This diagram brings out some of them. A few catch phrases on what permaculture aims for or does;
Why permaculture design? Permaculture is a body of knowledge about how things are and mostly devotes itself to designing. Often when we look at nature and the way it functions we find ourselves making connections between its elements and seeing a pattern. In our eyes nature has numerous systems and patterns just like a design. Humans as biological beings have also based our lives on patterns and designed our world accordingly. The thing I am convinced about however is that our arrogance has led us to believe that we can design better than ecology and have ended up creating many highly destructive designs that have become alienated from nature. We have forgotten that we are essentially biological. Permaculture wishes to design spaces in a way that generate care rather than competition, simplicity rather than accumulation, meaningful lives rather than disenchanted existence. We have rearranged nature and it is rearranging itself at a pace that has extinguished the possibility of restoration. Permaculture is saying that let us deal with what is now in our hands and retrofit and redesign our culture in a way that is least harmful to ecology and most beneficial to humans. Permaculture design is about
As a permaculture designer, there are many principles to follow. But integral to being a good designer is contemplation, introspection, and meditation. To understand the way of the land being silent, observant, and present is essential.
Over the next few blog posts I will talk more about the principles of permaculture design. For now I will leave you with some facts we all should know.
Working at Grampari in Panchgani as a organic farm and grounds manager was a wonderfully fulfilling experience. I could learn so much in such a short time from my fellow farmers and the land. It fuelled within me the urge to learn more about living on the land and helping others find economical and ecological ways of doing the same. I also began to feel that farming or organic farming is not an adequate answer for long term solutions for farmers' issues, ecosystem degradation, and finally for everyone who is indirectly connected to the land. It is important to have holistic knowledge about nature and all its local elements than to be over specialized in only farming. This is what drew me towards permaculture - permanent agriculture and also permanent culture... a quest for sustainable culture.
I decided to pursue this dream and found a great permaculture design certification course in New York City. I managed to raise the money for this certification with the help of many friends and family members who bought my oil paintings. So this is to say thank you so much for your support! I started the first day of course on November 2, 2013. I am hoping to put up a blog article every week to share my learnings with you. I will write about my reflections and any new ideas that I come across during this time. Please feel free to share this blog with people who might be interested in learning permaculture. I am hoping for it to be a blog for people keen on gaining an introduction to permaculture. Lessons from the first week coming up! |
Lessons from my Permaculture Design Certification and experiments thereafter Archives
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