Permaculture

The concept of permaculture has been defined as " the science and art of integrating and connecting indigenous resources with available appropriate technology to mimic natural processes." The term was coined in the 1970s by Australians David Holmgren and Bill Mollison.

Similar to biomimicry, it follows the precepts that we should first look at the patterns of the natural world and then try to blend our activities and development with them as seamlessly as possible.

Permaculture, of course, flies in the face of the biblical concept of subduing nature. It is more in line with the “philosophies” of pre-industrial traditional and tribal societies, who have largely had a less deleterious impact on the environment over the centuries than modern western cultures.

However, there is also now evidence that prehistoric migrants to North America may have decimated (or even driven into local extinction) certain animal populations, especially large mammals and fish. For example, excavations of Indian refuse disposal sites (so-called “shellmounds”) in California by Dr. Jack Broughton seem to indicate that there was over-hunting long before Europeans arrived, and that even the huge populations of birds noted by some European settlers in North America may have been present only due to the decimation of the Indians themselves by European diseases before many settlers arrived.

And the ecological destruction of Easter Island by its original settlers has also been well-documented.

Still, few would argue that, in general, modern industry has caused more damage to the natural world than any other human activity that came before it. So permaculture has been proposed as a way of reversing that trend. As succinctly defined by Bill Mollison, permaculture is a “design system for creating sustainable human environments.” Envisioned as a holistic, systems theory approach, it sees as absolutely integral the relationships of all of the components of the earth and biosphere. And like the belief systems of Native Americans, for example, it essentially avows respect for all things – animals, plants, rocks, water, human beings, everything.

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