Permaculture : Designing for Sustainability

I found out about this project by accident when I was searching about WWOOF project around the world, I found this word "permaculture" and I was really attract by it, so I want to know what is it and want to share what I've found to you all.

Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments, was created in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist and David Holmgren, his students. The word "permaculture" is a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture."

Bill Mollison explains why freeing land for wilderness matters even for those who think only people matter

"Even anthropocentric people would be well-advised to pay close attention to, and to assist in, the conservation of existing forests and the rehabilitation of degraded lands. Our own survival demands that we preserve all existing species, and allow them a place to live.

We have abused the land and laid waste to systems we need never have disturbed had we attended to our home gardens and settlements. If we need to state a set of ethics on natural systems, then let it be thus:

1. Implacable and uncompromising opposition to further disturbance of any remaining natural forests, where most species are still in balance;


2. Vigorous rehabilitation of degraded and damaged natural systems to stable states;


3. Establishment of plant systems for our own use on the least amount of land we can use for our existence; and


4. Establishment of plant and animal refuges for rare or threatened species.

Permaculture as a design system deals primarily with the third statement above, but all people who act responsibly in fact subscribe to the first and second statements. That said, I believe we should use all the species we need or can find to use in our own settlement designs, providing they are not locally rampant and invasive.

Whether we approve of it or not, the world about us continually changes. Some would want to keep everything the same, but history, palaeontology, and common sense tells us that all has changed, is changing, will change. In a world where we are losing forests, species, and whole ecosystems, there are three concurrent and parallel responses to the environment:

1. CARE FOR SURVIVING NATURAL ASSEMBLIES, to leave the wilderness to heal itself;


2. REHABILITATE DEGRADED OR ERODED LAND using complex pioneer species and long-term plant assemblies (trees, shrubs, ground covers);


3. CREATE OUR OWN COMPLEX LIVING ENVIRONMENT with as many species as we can save, or have need for, from wherever on earth they come.
   We are fast approaching the point where we need refuges for all global life forms, as well as regional, national, or state parks for indigenous forms of plants and animals. While we see our local flora and fauna as "native", we may also logically see all life as "native to earth". While we try to preserve systems that are still local and diverse, we should also build new or recombinant ecologies from global resources, especially in order to stabilise degraded lands.'

Bill Mollision, Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future, p.6