permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Laurance,

As Thomas Kuhn says, articulating and solving the problems defined by a new 
paradigm is an enormous amount of work. I don't think I suggested this would 
be easy, any more than the chemical revolution or the heliocentric theory was 
easy to achieve. This one will almost certainly be harder. But it's also more 
urgent.

> 1.            Simply seeking to retain, restore and improve Ecosystem Health
> will not deliver healthy ecosystems. Without an accurate and feasible
> characterisation on what we understand a healthy ecosystem to be, we are 
> directionless.

I don't think we are directionless at all, and I don't agree that measuring 
health in many cases is difficult.  I think the article you cited showed a 
remarkable ignorance of the last 150 years of ecology. There are useless 
terms, like climax and naturalness, which have been rejected by ecologists, 
and easy to measure terms, like the forms of biodiversity. And 
permaculturists are the last people on earth who are trying to "lock in 
ecosystems to preferred states," unlike the natives-only folks. I think "stay 
out of the bush" is a pretty good ethic.

The point I was really trying to make was not that we need to get out there 
with our mass spectrometers and engage with philosophy and sociology 
departments, but that we need to understand as a culture that dumping 
megatons of pollutants into every system we encounter is no longer an option 
if we want to survive. I think we can agree that a clearcut is not a healthy 
ecosystem, nor is a river full of cancerous fish, so we must stop doing that. 
Those directions are very clear. It's not that deep. I'll leave the arguments 
on non-linear patch dynamics to the professors, and will plant trees on 
overgrazed land. It isn't so much about arguing whether ecosystems are in 
decline, but about stopping practices that we know causes their decline (and 
thank you for helping me realize that!)


> More recently such Agencies are replacing their objective of
> maintaining or improving ecosystem health with that of maintaining or
> improving the resilience of natural ecosystems.

Altho this seems reasonable at first glance--healthy ecosystems are often 
resilient--it does smack of a delaying tactic, to come up with yet more 
studies before doing anything. And increasing resilience is sometimes done 
just so we can take more trees out, or otherwise tax the new resilience, like 
giving someone on chemotherapy antibiotics so they can up the chemo dose. 
Resilience is one small part of health and to me is inadequate as a goal. 
Policymakers often drive scientists absolutely nuts in just this way. 

This is one of the beauties of permaculture. We don't have to wait for 
policymakers for us to start improving the health--or resilience--of our 
yards, farms, neighborhoods, parks, and forests. We can just start doing it. 
When I see long-missing species return to a site, and springs return, and 
soil start to build, I'm comfortable that I am on the right path. I've 
invited ecologists and others to sites I've worked on, and they are amazed by 
what's been achieved, and are in good agreement that we're increasing health.

 As Bill says, we learn what to do by proceeding with it. I think 150 years 
of ecology has given us enough of a handle to proceed. You bring up very good 
points, but I'm not waiting till they are all resolved before doing the work. 

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Dec 4, 2012, at 4:17 PM, <lgaffney@bigpond.com> <lgaffney@bigpond.com> 
wrote:

> Hello Toby
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you for this article. 
> 
> 
> 
> Some comments/questions:-
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2.            The following paper by E. J. S. Hearnshaw of Lincoln
> University addresses the concept of Ecosystem Health.
> http://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/dspace/handle/10182/3728  
> 
> The paper examines various models of Ecosystem Health, such as Naturalness,
> Genetic Fitness, Climax, Diversity, Stability and Keystone Species.  The
> paper indicates that if Ecosystem Health is to be used as a means to examine
> the performance of Ecosystems then coherent, clear and quantifiable
> definitions must be crafted so that the concept can be delineated
> operational.  
> 
> 
> 
> 3.            I am unaware that we currently have the "metrics to gauge
> ecosystem health".  Although much work that has been done in this area, I
> think science is still testing hypotheses with very little conclusion/s yet
> drawn.  Is there scientific consensus around an "index of ecosystem health
> indicators" that can be applied "fairly universally"?
> 
> 
> 4.            In Australia I have noticed Public agencies (Natural Resource
> Management) have been liberally using the term Ecosystem Health over the
> last few years. More recently such Agencies are replacing their objective of
> maintaining or improving ecosystem health with that of maintaining or
> improving the resilience of natural ecosystems. Is it possible that by
> having these allusive/nebulous objectives such agencies are able to avoid
> assessment & monitoring of properties of ecosystems better able to be
> measured currently, such as biodiversity, soil fertility etc.?      If that
> is so, the Permaculture Community should try & avoid that.
> 
> 
> 
> 5.            Can metrics of Ecosystem Health be used by the appropriator of
> the "permaculture tool kit" to evaluate the success of their onsite
> permaculture design?
> 
> 
> 
> 6.            Can the same set of metrics of Ecosystem Health be used by the
> urban permaculture designer as for the rural permaculture designer? 
> 
> 
> 
> 7.            Indeed can the term "Ecosystem" be realistically applied to
> the on ground product of permaculture design or are we just kidding
> ourselves?
> 
> 
> 
> 8.            Where/How does the permaculture designer draw the ecosystem
> boundaries upon which to apply the metrics of Ecosystem Health?
> Specifically whose human needs are being met whilst enhancing which
> ecosystem where?     
> 
> 
> 
> 9.            Perhaps the Permaculture Community should be devising their
> own set of metrics to assess whether or not the goals or objectives of
> Permaculture are being met. Watching a Lewins Honey Eater eating the
> caterpillars off our grapevine the other day, suggested to me that the
> number of bird species and their relative abundances within a "Permaculture
> Design" may be one appropriate line of enquiry to this end.  But the species
> and appropriate abundances would be situation specific and not universal. 
> 
> 
> 
> So it seems to me that whilst Permaculture is "notoriously hard to define",
> measuring the success of Permaculture Design in relation to its goals may be
> even harder. 
> 
> This is a conversation the Permaculture Community has to have. Thanks to you
> & Rafter Ferguson for commencing it.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Laurence Gaffney
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:53:09 -0800
> 
> From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> 
> Subject: [permaculture] New article on permaculture
> 
> To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> 
> Message-ID: <BAAD8073-04D2-4367-8AC2-7070DBC9741E@patternliteracy.com>
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> 
> 
> Some of what rafter had posted on his website recently made me do some more
> thinking about why permaculture is so hard to define. It resulted in a new
> article at my website,
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.patternliteracy.com/668-what-permaculture-isnt-and-is
> 
> 
> 
> To sum it up: For millennia humans just focused on meeting their needs,
> without needing to care about the consequences. Now we have to consider how
> to meet our needs while preserving ecosystem health (thanks, rafter!). That
> a huge paradigm shift. Permaculturists often mistake permaculture for that
> paradigm shift. But permaculture is better thought of as the design approach
> that's one the new tools needed for that paradigm shift. It's not the
> movement, the philosophy, or the paradigm itself. It's an approach to
> solving the problems that this new paradigm makes clear.
> 
> 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it.
> 
> 
> 
> Toby
> 
> http://patternliteracy.com
> 
> 
> 
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