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What is permaculture?

Reprinted with permission from PermaculturePrinciples.Com

The permaculture journey begins with the Ethics and Design Principles and moves through the key domains required to create a sustainable culture. The spiral evolutionary path joins together these domains, initially at a personal and local level, and then proceeding to the collective and global level.  Some of the specific fields, design systems and solutions that have been associated with the wider view of permaculture are listed below.

Land & Nature Stewardship
  • Bio-intensive gardening

  • Forest gardening

  • Seed saving

  • Organic agriculture

  • Biodynamics

  • Natural Farming

  • Keyline water harvesting

  • Holistic Rangeland Management

  • Natural Sequence Farming

  • Agroforestry

  • Nature-based forestry

  • Integrated aquaculture

  • Wild harvesting & hunting

  • Gleaning

Building
  • Passive solar design

  • Natural construction materials

  • Water harvesting & Waste Reuse

  • Biotechture

  • Earth sheltered construction

  • Natural disaster resistant construction

  • Owner building

  • Pattern Language

Education & Culture
  • Home Schooling

  • Waldorf education

  • Participatory arts and music

  • Social ecology

  • Action Research

  • Transition culture

Finances & Economics
  • Local and regional currencies

  • Carpooling, Ride sharing & Car share

  • Ethical Investment & Fair Trade

  • Farmers markets & Community

  • Supported Agriculture (CSA)

  • WWOOFing & similar networks

  • Tradable Energy Quotas

  • Life Cycle Analysis & Emergy Accounting

Tools & Technology
  • Reuse & creative recycling

  • Hand Tools

  • Bicycles and electric bikes

  • Efficient & low pollution wood stoves

  • Fuels from organic wastes

  • Wood Gasification

  • Bio-char from forest wastes

  • Co-generation

  • Micro-hydro & small scale wind

  • Grid-tied renewable power generation

  • Energy storage

  • Transition engineering

Health & Spiritual Well-Being
  • Home birth and breast feeding

  • Complimentary and wholistic medicine

  • Yoga, Tai Chi, and other body/mind/spirit disciplines

  • Spirit of place, indigenous cultural revival

  • Dying with dignity

Land Tenure & Community Governance
  • Cooperatives & Body Corporates

  • Cohousing & Ecovillages

  • Native Title and traditional use rights

  • Open Space Technology & Consensus Decision Making

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