Permaculture for poor people
Rage
Back in the day when I got into being an environmental activist there were two main things that really pissed me off, pollution and injustice. To Permaculture designers the presence of things like poverty, pollution, environmental destruction, war etc are signs that shout out that something is wrong with the system. Again as a Permaculture designers we work with systems to change them and improve them, to eliminate that which destroys and damages the biosphere with systems that care for it, to replace all that damages, harms and kills people with systems that care for them.
This article is about ‘poverty’ and it will be followed by a series looking at how we can rid ourselves of all the different forms of poverty.
Poverty, what is it?
When we analyse a system or a dysfunctional aspect of a system a system it is essential that we are clear about what it is we are analysing. Poverty is more complicated than just not having enough money.
For a start the word ‘poverty’ is imprecise, pejorative and been used too long. In the social sciences we tend to talk more about socio-economic status (SES ) yet even this is generally presented in a somewhat simplistic way, let me explain.
Socioeconomic status ( SES ) is measure of a person's work experience, education and of an individual's or household economic access to resources and social position in relation to others. This metric takes more things into consideration than those which simple consider income/expenditure, it is best expressed on a sliding scale going from very modest income, low level of education, low status (as judged by the surrounding society) job and low access to resources to elevated access to resources, high level of education etc.
Many studies have shown that a low SES is strongly associated with a range of health problems for range of different reasons, ‘poor areas’ tend to be much more polluted for example. Having said that it is vital that we understand that many of the negative personal health and psychological impacts come from the proximity between ‘better off/rich’ people and ‘poorer’ people. Having well off neighbours who have access to resources denied to you, who are accorded a higher status by society/media etc is very very bad for your health. Some studies indicate that 2/3rd’s of the negative effects are down to this proximity, this is referred to as ‘relative poverty’
The other 1/3rd are all the difficulties faced by modest SES households in getting those things necessary to survive, food, clothing, housing etc, this is referred to as ‘absolute poverty’
Engel’s law which states that the percentage of income spent on food decreases as a household’s income rises. Low SES households not only spend a higher percentage on food but are buying cheaper food which is less nutritious and has negative health consequences. We eat ourselves ill.
Statistics for the UK
“22% of the population, or 14.5 million people, living in poverty even before the pandemic, and 2.4 million of these experiencing the most severe form of poverty, known as destitution”
“27% of children in the UK live in poverty”
The size of the UK economy in 2016 was $2,629 billion and ranked as the 5th biggest. When purchasing power parity is used as the metric the UK drops to 9th position.
It would seem utterly incredible that in the 21st century, within one of the world’s biggest economies, more than 1 in 5 people are in living in poverty. An even bigger indictment of the status quo is that there are so many children suffering this way.
Health shock
The negative consequences of being born into a modest SES household start in the womb and effect someone their whole life.
A study spanning 17 years has found children born and raised in poverty had smaller subcortical brain regions, the effects on health, language development, emotional well-being, and social behaviour associated with poverty can be seen in children as young as five years of age.
Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and whose mothers have lower levels of education, have weaker brain activity in areas of the brain associated with working memory and are more likely to experience attention problems. Infants born to mothers living in poverty have smaller volumes of gray and white matter across the entire brain. Additionally, babies born to mothers who live in high crime areas showed differences in brain activity to those whose mothers lived in safer areas.
Teenagers who come from less financially secure backgrounds than their friends are more likely to experience lower self-esteem and are at higher risk of being bullied. Additionally, both those who are poorer and those who are more affluent are more likely to perpetuate bullying behaviours.
Epigenetic traces of childhood trauma can be used as biomarkers to predict the risk of addiction, depression, and a range of other physical and mental health issues 17 years later.
People from England's most deprived areas are ten times more likely to be in prison.
Deprived areas have higher levels of all types of pollution, the schools are less well funded and the teachers in deprived schools 'more likely to be inexperienced'.
I could go on but that should be sufficient.
Perez and Co. discuss some aspects of this here
GDP
This measures the monetary value of final goods and services produced in a country in a given period of time. It includes things like defence and education. A general theory is that if there is economic growth, an increase in GDP, then poverty rates will fall. The current high rates of poverty in the UK are seen, by many economists, politicians and some people as being due to slow economic growth.
There are a number of major problems of using GDP as a metric. In the context of this article a number of negative externalities effecting modest SES households are not counted in the figures produced by governments. Pollution being an example, the economy may grow and in certain terms people may be financially slightly better off but economic growth is linked to increased pollution, which effects low SES neighbourhoods much more than the others. Poverty isn’t just about income/expenditure as I have noted, it is more global and negative impacts on health, well being, education success and longevity are part of life in a modest SES household.
The Permaculture designer and personal friend Chris Dixon is writing on this topic at the moment.
Having analysed ‘poverty’ in general the following article will explore why there is food poverty in the UK, a country that exported £21.4 billion worth of food and drink in 2020, a country that, according to it’s government, is nearly 80% self-sufficient in food production.
Thanks for reading, the next article will have some bad news but also lots of positive stuff! Please subscribe, for free, and leave comments and suggestions.
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