Social permaculture applied in Barcelona …. an example to follow!
So, most of you readers are probably just getting your heads around what is permaculture, but now I am adding also social permaculture! What is it, you are probably asking yourself.
People often think of permaculture as another system of gardening or managing the land, but it goes far beyond that. Permaculture is a system of ecological design that looks to nature as our model. It originated in the 70’s with Australian ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who were looking to create a “permanent agriculture.” Now it has become a worldwide movement.
Patrick Whitefield, author of The Earthcare Manual, called permaculture “the art of designing beneficial relationships.” We look at plants in the garden not in isolation but in terms of how they affect one another, how they interact, how the pathways and beds determine the flow of our energy in caring for them, how they can provide fertility or protection for one another, how we can get multiple yields from each element.
But relationships between plants, insects, soil, water, and micro-organisms, complex as they may be, are relatively easy to deal with. Roses love garlic — or so says the title of a key book on companion planting. And pretty much they do. We don’t have to worry about whether this particular rose holds a grudge against that individual garlic for something insensitive it said to her.
People are much more challenging. We each have our own needs and goals and complicated life histories and styles of communication. Something I have been experiencing first hand in my workshops on getting people to change their plastic habits — it’s really challenging and our environments are not set up for easy changes either. Our understanding of soil biology or water harvesting techniques is often far more advanced than our skills at making decisions together. Our needs and goals often clash, and we don’t always have the tools we need to resolve conflicts.
A (social) permaculture view of the world begins with Zone 00 (the Self), ends with Zone 5 (the wild and natural world), and encompasses everything in between. What excites me most about this approach is that with incredibly simple tools it makes ideas accessible. Ideas which we can find difficult to grasp, in a society that teaches us to focus on individual ‘nodes’ (people, plants, animals, things), rather than the relationships between them.
In contrast, an ecological way of seeing the world, one which permaculture explicitly embraces, focuses on relationships that exist between these nodes, rather than viewing them in isolation.
According to Diana Leafe Christian, author of the key book on intentional communities, Creating a Life Together, 90 percent of intentional communities fail — largely because of conflict. That statistic represents an enormous amount of shattered dreams, personal pain, and wasted resources.
Why are human relationships so difficult? We each carry the imprints of our early experiences, and often respond to current situations with the negative patterns of the past. We hold onto painful memories and anticipate future hurts. When we come together in community, our own needs, goals, and communication patterns often clash.
Moreover, we are embedded in larger systems that do not encourage beneficial relationships. Our overarching economic system sacrifices the good of people and the earth to the goal of achieving short-term profits. It maintains itself by fostering systems of prejudice and exploitation — racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism — all those constructs that separate us and elevate some peoples’ good over others. Those systems affect us deeply, often unconsciously, no matter how much we might deplore them and struggle against them.
What can permaculture — which began as a way of looking at food growing and land management — bring to this effort?
The key insight of social permaculture is that, while changing individuals is indeed difficult, we can design social structures that favour beneficial patterns of human behavior. Just as, in a garden, we might mulch to discourage weeds and favour beneficial soil bacteria, in social systems we can attempt to create conditions that favour nurturing, empowering relationships.
Permaculture’s three core ethics are care for the earth, care for the people, and care for the future — that third ethic is also often framed as “fair share”: share surpluses and reduce consumption. These ethics can serve as a guideline for weighing our decisions and actions. Before we build a structure or engage in a new endeavour, we ask ourselves — how will this impact the environment around us? What resources will it use? Will it provide for people and community, and further empowerment and equality, or the reverse?
Permaculture rejects the notion that people are separate from nature and inevitably destructive, or that destruction of the environment is justified in order to provide jobs or profits for people. Instead, the good of the people and the good of the earth go together.
Portam l’Hort — Nou Barris, Barcelona
I joined this fantastic community garden at the end of July and truly found my tribe in Barcelona. We meet once a month to discuss different aspects of the community garden, such as what needs to be planted and when, meetings with the local town hall to obtain funding for the following year, hours of operation for the public, planting techniques, responsibilities, tasks, workshops, seed saving, etc. Those meetings tend to take between 2 ++ hours and might not end with having everything answered, but every decision is written in an official act and shared with all members at the end of the session. All decisions are discussed and agreed upon.
I have attended 3 meetings so far and I love how each and everyone has an opportunity to share their own thoughts and ideas. You take responsibility for doing research on your subject and share with the members the benefits, implications and its execution. For example, Erica and my task was to identify and share how many medicinal plants we were growing in the garden and shared with the group their benefits. We had found over 20 in the garden and learned from the older members, that we had missed about 20, which was fantastic. I have felt so much at peace being in this community, as we take care of how we communicate with one another. Especially during this time of growing fear and uncertainty, I have found that social permaculture can benefit us in so many ways if we work on it together.
