(PC) Nodes of Permanence: Applying Patterns in Nature to Build Diverse Communities (Beg)
Andrew Philips, Hancock Permaculture Center; Laurie Shoeman, Program Director of Green & Resilient for Enterprise Community Partners
Australian Andrew Leslie Phillips studied Permaculture with Bill Mollison, the father of Permaculture and Geoff Lawton. Phillips will discuss his experiences learning to recognize patterns in nature to create diverse, resilient communities using permaculture principles. Laurie Schoeman, Program Director of Green & Resilient for Enterprise Community Partners, will discuss innovative applications of permaculture principles to develop climate-change, resilient low-income housing in New York City. Both Andrew and Laurie have spent decades nationally and internationally working on projects in agriculture, off-grid infrastructure and building resilient communities from New Guinea to New York. Planners, architects and anyone concerned with the effects of climate change will not want to miss this presentation.
Part One: Andrew Leslie Phillips.
This paper is more observational than instructional and includes the roots of permaculture, a synopsis of principles, pattern recognition, mimicking, fractals and scale. Permaculture is more than gardening. There are constants amid chaos in nature. Universal, applicable principles and directives. Systems thinking. I discuss the idea of nodes of permanence and the patterns.
When Bill Mollison came up with the idea of permanency in culture back in the early seventies, he was dissatisfied with academia, the raging Vietnam War and the momentum of society. He and others were already warning of climate change, food and population pressures and he retreated to the forest. Bill Mollison observed the forest as a self-sustaining system, a closed self-sustaining system. He observed constants, patterns and general principles that might apply in wider contexts. A system of thinking.
I think many here will be familiar with permaculture. There are many definitions for what permaculture is but I like to call it systems thinking. It’s a system of thinking that follows patterns we find in nature. And it’s not just about gardening. The principles of permaculture can be applied much more widely. So let me introduce you to the central principles of permaculture.
1: PROTRACTED AND CAREFUL OBSERVATION
The first thing to do is understand evidence and context - to understand where we are today - a base line to work from to design the future - careful and protracted observation is a principle. Good design depends on thoughtful and protracted observation of nature and people. It is not generated in isolation, but through continuous and reciprocal interaction with the subject.
2: CATCH AND STORE ENERGY
The second principle is to catch and store energy. Conservation creates energy. It is based on the Laws of Thermodynamics:
First Law of Thermodynamics: The law of conservation of energy. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. The energy entering a system must be accounted for as either stored or leaking (entropy - as energy moves cycles through a system it loses force.)
Second Law of Thermodynamics: The law of degradation of energy. In all processes energy loses its ability to do work and is degraded in quality over time. The tendency of potential energy to be consumed and degraded is described as entropy, which is a measure of disorder, which always increases. (But in chaos is opportunity). When we conserve energy we are “creating” it for use in the future. We are slowing it down.
We design systems to provide self-reliance at all levels (including ourselves). Mollison writes that the prime directive of permaculture is the ethical decision to take responsibility for your own existence and that of your children - and by extension your community - to the seventh generation.
Captured and stored energy maintains the system and has potential to capture more energy. A sustainable system is one that produces more energy than it consumes over its lifetime - including energy used to create the system. In a sense we are manipulating entropy - slowing energy dissipation, an aikido move - rubbing water against more edges - more curves and dimension in design.
3: OBTAIN A YIELD
There is no point planting a forest for the grandchildren if we don’t have enough food today. Without immediate and useful yields designs will tend to wither.
4: APPLY SELF-REGULATION AND ACCEPT FEEDBACK
Creatively use and respond to change. This principle deals with self-regulatory aspects of permaculture that limit inappropriate growth, scale or behavior. Understanding how positive and negative feedback works in nature, we design systems that are self-regulating, thus reducing the work involved in repeated, harsh corrective management. The objective is self-managed systems. Permaculture is about the durability of natural living systems and human culture. Durability depends on flexibility and change.
5: USE AND VALUE RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND SERVICES
When we use a tree for wood we use a renewable resource. When we use a tree for shade food and shelter we gain non-consuming benefits from the living tree that require no harvesting of energy. Water and wind are renewables, sunlight and wind and perennial plants are renewables. Soil as compost build soil and disposes waste. This simple understanding is obvious and powerful in redesigning systems. Understanding cycles and pulses in time and space as renewables. Where many simple functions are dependent on non-renewable and unsustainable, “cheap” energy”, it is unsustainable.
6: PRODUCE NO WASTE
Permaculture views waste as a resource and an opportunity. Apply traditional values of frugality and care to material goods. The earthworm lives by consuming plant litter (wastes) converting it to humus improving the soil for itself, soil microorganisms and plants. Thus the earthworm, like all living things, is a part of a web where the outputs of one are the inputs for another. This principle harkens back to energy, entropy and feedback - to slow entropy and cycle energy back into the system on its journey through inevitable dissipation.
7: DESIGN FROM PATTERN TO DETAILS
In some ways this principle is the core of permaculture reveaed in the forest. The model of the forest provides opportunites to apply universal ecosystemic solutions for human land use. We mimic nature. It includes stacking functions, vertical zones, polyculture, forest garden, edge-thinking and niches, water sheds and rivers, diversity, constants, resilience, redundancy, cycles, pulses and yields. It remains a powerful example of patterns which inform permaculture.
For instance, there are constants and repeating patterns in nature like the branching pattern common to many systems; a tree has nine, seven or five branches and so do river systems (ie: a rill, a runnel, a crik, stream, river, delta, ocean), mountain ranges and sand dunes, waves and leaves and even our capillaries, our human skeletons follow similar scales, cycles, pulses and patterns. It helps us understand, repetition, scale and ratios in nature. Fibonacci, fractals and Mandelbrot inform pattern understand.
8: INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE
In every aspect of nature, from internal workings of organisms to whole ecosystems, we find connections between things are as important as the things themselves. Functional and self-regulating design accepts and interacts with other elements - a web of connections and biofeedback, symbiosis - diversity and redundancy. Correct placement of structures and habitats, plants, animals, earthworks and other infrastructure encourages a higher degree of integration and regulation without need for constant human input and corrective management. Allowing gravity to work for you - free energy to permeate design - provides elegant and cost-free solutions.
9: USE SMALL AND SLOW SOLUTIONS
Systems should be designed to perform many functions at the smallest scale practical and energy-efficiency for that function. The principal of sustainability applies - that of creating more energy than the system uses over the lifetime of the system. Human scale and capacity should be the yardstick for a humane, democratic and sustainable society.
10: USE AND VALUE DIVERSITY
The great diversity of forms, functions and interactions in nature and humanity are the source of evolving systemic speciation and complexity. And diversity builds resiliency.
11: USE EDGES AND VALUE MARGINS
Tidal estuaries are complex interfaces between land and sea - a great ecological exchange between two great domains of life. One system meeting the other creates a third and different system comprising both. Edges are at minimum three dimensional. The shallow water allows penetration of sunlight for algae and plant growth providing forage areas for wading and other birds. Fresh water from catchment streams rides over the heavier saline water pulsing back and forth with the daily tides, redistributing nutrients and food for the teeming life. There are obvious societal implications to edges and margins - Spanish Harlem
David Holmgren,
CREATING NODES OF PERMANENCE.
Andrew Leslie Phillips.
I suggest society is in a constant state of annihilation anxiety and has been since the end of the Second World War. It is an undeniable part of our collective unconscious. In the same way, AIDS, the idea of terrorism, and the existential fear we are killing our planet are now part of the zeitgeist and the world in which we live.
In Bill Mollison’s encyclopedic Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual there are fourteen chapters. One deals with the problems and the remaining thirteen with what to do.
From Pattern to detail - mycelium as a model.
When one side of a forest is attacked by pestilence, the other side begins to move away and leaf-out in an act of resistance and survival. We believe trees communicate through the mycelium fungus web which stretches through thousands of acres and covers areas as large as states beneath the ground.
The mycelium network is a membrane of interweaving, continuously branching cell chains just one cell wall thick. We believe it to be the neurological network of nature. Mycelium stays in constant molecular communications with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges. The mycologist Paul Stamets was an early adopters of this idea.
The more we learn about these underground networks the more our ideas about plants have changed. They aren't just sitting there quietly growing. By linking to the fungal network they can help out their neighbors sharing nutrients and information – or sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the network.
Around 90% of land plants are in mutually-beneficial relationships with fungi. Fungi have been called 'Earth's natural internet'
In mycorrhizal associations, plants provide fungi with food in the form of carbohydrates. In exchange, the fungi help the plants suck up water, and provide nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, via their mycelia.
Fungal networks also boost their host plants' immune systems. That's because, when a fungus colonizes the roots of a plant, it triggers the production of defense-related chemicals. These make later immune system responses quicker and more efficient, a phenomenon called "priming". Simply plugging in to mycelial networks makes plants more resistant to disease.
But that's not all. We now know that mycorrhizae also connect plants that may be widely separated. Fungus expert Paul Stamets called them "Earth's natural internet" in a 2008 TED talk. He first had the idea in the 1970s when he was studying fungi using an electron microscope. Stamets noticed similarities between mycelia and ARPANET, the US Department of Defense's early version of the internet.
Film fans might be reminded of James Cameron's 2009 blockbuster Avatar. On the forest moon where the movie takes place, all the organisms are connected. They can communicate and collectively manage resources, thanks to "some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of trees". Back in the real world, it seems there is some truth to this.
And so as the forest responds, so should we. In permaculture we design by moving from pattern to detail. Nature teaches a survival tactic. By creating nodes of permanence, starting at home with our families, we create conditions for sharing, exchange and support, reliable and resilient connections on a softer and greener energy descent path.
We are part of nature and if we follow nature’s patterns we can regain harmony and recognize that our prime ethic and directive should be to our children, family and community and that nutritious food, clean air and water security are our birthright and the essential ingredients to organizing our lives.
If we are to survive and prosper we need ways to protect ourselves from the inevitable devolution of the current system. It is unlikely the solution will come from governments, quite the opposite, since most governments rely on a growth economic model. That model has proven disastrous to our long-term future. We are going to have to learn to live with less fossil fuel energy, adapt and change and permaculture provides a proven model to help move to a new and sustainable model.
But this need not be a return to agrarian oppression or the cave. In fact permaculture seeks to design systems of abundance not based on the conventional growth-depletion model but sustainable systems replicated many times, resilient and redundant fractals, self-repeating patterns described in the Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical theorem describing an infinitely repeating pattern that shows up in nature. The Mandelbrot set is a superb and wondrous example of patterning and can be used to “pattern” what I call “nodes of permanence”.
Creating systems that mimic nature’s examples, tuning them to use less energy than they consume, feeding the energy back into the system as many times as possible until we create a web of outputs and inputs – one system feeding another - is a design imperative. A diagram of such a system has the appearance of a spider’s web, a resilient and redundant system of nodes and connections still working even when most of the web is broken. It can still catch a fly to feed the spider.
Some see a crash and burn descent curve, others a softer, greener descent. I think we have a choice and that change begins at home. The possibility of permanent culture spread far and wide inspires me despite the bleakness of the big picture. In permaculture we talk about “edge thinking” – we understand there is more life on the edge – where the field meets the forest and the sea meets the land. Some say if you’re not on the edge, you’re taking too much room.
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