Something I’ve recently come across is the concept of establishing a ‘culture of sustainability’. To some, thought of as a foundation or ground layer towards building sustainability, this concept enables future intentions to continue to exist after implementation, ultimately leading to the success of the sustainability principles. The diagram below demonstrates this really well.
While we often get stuck in the environmental aspect of sustainability, the remaining two pillars, social and economic systems, tend to be overlooked. Although sustainability can not be defined in any single way, the three pillars are underlying principles of the term. As you can see, sustainability encompasses so many social, economic and environmental aspects and was something which drew my eye.
Similarly, permaculture is based on three ethical values: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share, but according to Looby Macnamara’s People & Permaculture, much of the discussion around the concept focusses solely on Earth Care. But what exactly is permaculture? An amalgamation of permanent and agriculture/culture, permaculture is a nature derived concept where the basis of operation of natural systems like rivers and forests are implemented to human systems and production to transfer the same stability and sustainability we get in the natural world to other operations. Permaculture is a set of regenerative design principles which ultimately feed into ensuring a sustainable culture.
The sustainable culture is a BIG concept and even just scraping the surface, there’s so much really cool information out there! I’m really looking forward to exploring the concept to a deeper level soon and linking this with the UN Sustainable Development Goals… More on that soon!
If sustainable culture is where we want to be, then permaculture will help get us there.