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Earth care: being responsible stewards of the earthprotection of soilnot harm the planetPeople care: responding to the needs of ourselves and othersfood, water, and shelter from the elements (including electricity)create these systems on your property to sustain yourself better prepares you to care for your family or household. That means ensuring needs are met and done so as sustainably as possible.Care of people at a larger scale aims to ensure that every human's basic needs are met."People Care" is about ensuring that everyone has the same chance to feel safe and happy.Fair share: being sure our surplus doesn't go to waste by sharing it.moving our surplus resources back into earth care, and people care.build gates between our backyards instead of fences.Transitional value: small incremental improvements
Wholeness (Holistic thinking): All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is only possible to understand something if we understand how it is connected to everything else.Change: Everything is in a state of constant change. One season falls upon the other. People are born, live and die. All things change. There are two kinds of change: the coming together of things and the coming apart of things. Both kinds of change are necessary and are always connected to each other.Change occurs in cycles or patterns: They are not random or accidental. If we cannot see how a particular change is connected it usually means that our standpoint is affecting our perception.The physical world is real. The spiritual world is real: They are two aspects of one reality. There are separate laws which govern each. Breaking of a spiritual principle will affect the physical world and vice versa. A balanced life is one that honours both.People are physical and spiritual beings: When something hurts our spirit it will affect us physically and vice versa.People can acquire new gifts but they must struggle to do so: The process of developing new personal qualities may be called “true learning”.There are four dimensions of “true learning”: A person learns in a whole and balanced manner when the mental, spiritual, physical and emotional dimensions are involved in the process.The spiritual dimension of human development has four related capacities:The capacity to have and respond to dreams, visions, ideals, spiritual teaching, goals and theories;The capacity to accept these as a reflection of our unknown or unrealized potential;The capacity to express these using symbols in speech, art or mathematics;The capacity to use this symbolic expression towards action directed at making the possible a reality.People must actively participate in the development of their own potential.A person must decide to develop their own potential: The path will always be there for those who decide to travel it.Any person who sets out on a journey of self development will be aided: Guides, teachers and protectors will assist the traveler.The only source of failure is a person’s own failure to follow the teachings.
concentrations of substances from the Earth’s crust;concentrations of substances produced by society;degradation by physical means;people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
Research
Permaculture
Ethics
Design Principles
1. Observe and Interact
Being observant and responding to what we see is really important in moving towards a more ethical and sustainable way of life.
We can learn from nature,and from other people, observing how others have moved to a greener and more ethical approach, and working with the world around us to succeed in our goals.
2. Catch and Store Energy
Energy is abundant on our planet. Learning how to catch and store that energy – in plants, with infrastructure, or in other ways, is key to living a sustainable way of life.
at home is a great way to catch and store energy from our sun. also offers opportunities for architects, engineers and designers to make further use of this abundant energy source.
3. Obtain a Yield
Taking the three core ethics of permaculture into account, we can work with nature to get all the things we need. Obtaining a yield can be as simple as using organic gardening techniques to provide food for our families – but it can also be about obtaining a non-tangible yield: happiness, health… or mental well-being.
Living a sustainable lifestyle that sticks to permaculture principles can allow us to obtain all sorts of more intangible yields as well as the obvious tangible ones.
4. Apply Self-Regulation and Feedback
Understanding where we’ve succeeded and where we’ve gone wrong is vitally important to creating real and lasting change. For example, by analysing and evaluating all the things that we bring into our homes, we can make better purchasing decisions moving forwards: reducing, reusing, recycling and regulating our worst consumerist tendencies.
5. Use and Value Renewables
By using the power of the sun, the wind, or the water, we can power our homes, grow our food, and regenerate our environments.
Rather than relying on finite and polluting fossil fuels, we should make full use of renewable sources of energy: for example, switching to a green energy supplier – or even generating our own power with solar panels or other renewable infrastructure at home – is something many of us can do to move to a more sustainable way of life.
6. Produce No Waste
Moving towards a zero waste lifestyle means looking at all the trash we chuck out and trying to eliminate it. We can do this by reducing the amount we buy, by buying wisely, by reusing or recycling where possible, by composting, and by working with ethical companies who look at waste throughout the entire life-cycle of their products.
7. Design from Patterns to Details
Whether designing a new vegetable garden, or an entire new sustainable way of life, we have to look at the big picture before we get bogged down in the little things.
Thinking wholistically, about all areas of our lives, can help us move forwards in a positive direction.
8. Integrate Don’t Segregate
Plants work well in diverse systems – the same is true of people too. Planting polycultures (guilds of plants which work together) is just one example of how this principle works in the real world.
And as well as applying this in the garden, we can also apply it to communities, groups or organisations. Sustainability is something we achieve together – through collaboration and co-operation – it’s not something we do alone.
9. Use Small, Slow Solutions
Every journey begins with a single step. Whenever we try to do too much too soon, it’s easy to become overwhelmed – and though big changes can bring big benefits, they bring bigger risks too. Making small, incremental changes is the best way to move towards sustainable change.
For example – don’t start a farm, try a small windowsill garden. Don’t overhaul your entire shopping philosophy – change things one ethical purchase at a time.
10. Use and Value Diversity
Just as ecosystems work best when filled with a greater variety of different plants and animals, so human society functions best when an variety of different people are represented.
In your garden, home and your life in general, it’s a good idea to promote and value diversity in all its forms.
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
Sustainability is about making use of all the resources that we have at our disposal. Whether we’re talking about land use, work places, homes or society in general, making use of all we have involves valuing fringes and fringe elements.
This might be as simple as using a neglected corner of your outside space to grow more food, or something more abstract, like thinking outside the box.
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change
Finally, change is an inevitable part of life. It’s important to remember that permaculture isn’t just about now, but about the future. We design for change, understanding that things will alter over time. The changing seasons, changing attitudes, our changing climate… how we respond to these changes will shape sustainable progress in the years to come.
These principles are a starting point for an understanding of permaculture, and can begin to give us an idea of how we can translate thought to action, and transition to a more ethical – and truly sustainable – way of life.
Zones & Sector Mapping
12 Principles of Indigenous Philosophy
The Natural Step Principles
NaturalStepOverview.pdf
3.1 MB
In the field of sustainable development, a sustainable society means that nature is not subject to systematic increases in:
and, in that society,
The Jain Principles
Chief Seattle Speech 1854:
Chief Seattle speech.pdf
19.6 kB
Integral institute
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