Dividing ourselves is daft

the fragmentation of the battle for the planet

Syntropic agriculture, agroecology, conservation farming, natural farming, natural sequence farming, silvo-pasturalism, forest farming, regenerative agriculture, urban agriculture,regenerative hydrology, sustainable architecture, regenerative design, ecological urbanism … and the list gets longer every year.

It’s all good stuff.

The 1990’s, so I’ve been around this stuff for a while and it also means I’ve worked in a lot of different countries, cultures and climates. I’m also an environmental scientist which is a pretty wide ranging discipline.

As I trundle around doing my thing I meet people, I also come across discussions on the different social media. These people describe their activities using one of the titles above,like : “I do syntropic agriculture”. In the same way as I describe myself as a Permaculture engineer. Some of these people then go on to explain what their ‘discipline’ is all about. Now I’ve heard about mansplaining, and try to avoid doing it, but maybe we need another term too? Like ecosplaining? Something anyway because as a Permaculture designer I’ve been using very similar approaches for decades. The worst ecosplaining comes from people who have a completely distorted idea about what Permaculture is, they often see it as being an old-fashioned approach to untidy gardening or some such nonsense.

It gets a bit frustrating and it is also very divisive which is something we seriously don’t need at the moment.

Permaculture ‘ecosplaining’ it!

Let’s split Permaculture into it’s different parts :

• Ethics, these help us decide if a technique or strategy will care for people, care for the Earth and be equitable. I won’t design a system that needs pesticides because they go against the ethics. Simple really.

• A whole bunch of principles aimed as helping us make rational choices ranging from what to put where through to how to connect the whole thing together into a web of interdependencies.

• Design, a whole process involving analysing all the elements of a system. Designing the thing (taking into account the vision held by the people involved), making a plan of the system with the elements in place and interconnected. Making an implementation schedule, what bits of the design to install first etc. And a maintenance schedule, how to keep the whole thing running when it’s installed.

• Techniques and systems. As a Permaculture design covers the whole system we use a wide range of techniques and strategies, for buildings, for energy production, for water management, for food production, for the business plan, for land management, for fire and flood risks, for road building and all the rest.

Take a glance at food production: apiculture, aquaculture, mariculture, fungiculture, fruit and nut farming, vegetable growing, cereal cultures, animal husbandry. The list goes on and on. Whatever the client/s want.

Then we’ll work out what techniques for achieving the above are appropriate to the place, climate, hydrology etc etc. These techniques will be assembled into systems, cereal cultures in an agroforestry system for example. Fruit and nut production in a forest farming system as another. Animal husbandry in a sivo-agro-pasturalist system. We’ll decide the best one and then connect all the bits together to form patterns of interconnected guilds.

The same thing goes for the buildings, the roads and paths, the business cash flows and all the rest. The elegance of a Permaculture design comes about when the principles of Permaculture engineering are respected. As an example, ‘each element has more than one function’. I’ve designed and built access roads for projects, these were often designed to facilitate easy access, to act as firebreaks, to carry rainfall runoff that was subsequently diverted to water storage units (micro dams, reservoirs, swales etc).

Anyway, enough about Permaculture and back to the main thrust of this article. We are faced with a lot of crises, climate, pollution, housing, food, health, poverty, inequity and so on. We can get on faster and better if people who are trying to do something about these things worked together. Disparaging each other doesn’t help, it divides. Imagining that ‘you’re thing’ is going to ‘save the world’ and all the others ‘things’ are just fiddling around and not serious is a sort of tribalism that doesn’t help either. Permaculture designers may have some personal flaws but in general we are always ready to have a look at a new approach. If it works well and conforms to the ethics we have no trouble whatsoever adopting it and using it where the contexts are appropriate.

One aspect of the ‘care for people’ ethic is recognising that ‘I’m people too’. This means that most competent Permaculture designers are also committed to developing their theory of mind and getting good at self-analysis.

I have long dreamed of a sort of union that brings together all the different people who are trying to ‘build back better’. A union which also includes all the different environmental organisations like XR, ELF, Earth first!. There are dozens in the UK alone, the list for the world is huge. Why are we not united in our strategies and actions? Would it be able to present a united front to move this stuff on?

Just stop oil co-founder Sarah Lunnon, stated: “We are the only people telling the truth, the only people calling out those who are harming us, the only people with a plan to change the system.”

This is simply not true and it’s divisive, these sort of statements not only disrespect the other environmental groups but also damage the possibility of creating a union of all these organisations, as do ones denigrating different ecological approaches. The climate criminals seem to have no trouble working together. Why can’t we?