Permaculture Ethics, Corporate Sustainability & the Triple Bottom-Line
Before digging deep into the principles of permaculture and the opportunities it presents, it is important to first address the why. Why reconsider business as usual thinking? Why seek to find and utilize the value in alternative viewpoints such as permaculture? Whenever we ask the question why, we are, at root, talking about motivations, and those motivations are guided by ethics.
In his book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability David Holmgren establishes the founding ethics behind permaculture, from which later on 12 principles are derived. In this way ethics are axiomatic. Mathematically, axioms develop a set of foundational laws that provide the framework from which many other theorems can be derived. They are not, in fact, provable in and of themselves, but they are instead statements or assertions of fact from which many more complex principles and interrelationships can then be derived.
From the mathematical standpoint then, axioms need to be carefully chosen, so that they are (1) harmonious with one another, (2) independent from one another — such that one axiom can not be derived from the others, but instead they are mutually supportive, and (3) they establish the proper starting point for the direction in which one wants to go. An interesting discussion of axioms from the mathematical standpoint is provided here. https://mathigon.org/world/Axioms_and_Proof
If you choose to delve into it more you will find out that depending on your starting choice of axioms, you can end up into some very interesting places, and, it has been shown time and time again, that the various branches of mathematics you end up with always find some kind of analogy in the world of science, which is to say, the careful study of nature itself!
The founding ethics of Permaculture are:
- Care of the Earth
- Care of People
- Fair Share
The verbs here “care, care and share” emphasize the importance of the attention paid by permaculture practitioners to the investment of both an emotional as well as intellectual effort into the subjects of the ethical statements. Permaculture is rooted in the nurturing mindset- when we demonstrate care we are investing ourselves emotionally in the well-being of our subject, but also using our mind to ensure that we are being attentive to doing things in a way that is not sloppy and/or dangerous. Showing care means being intentional and observant as to the way our business is practiced and the way in which our subjects respond to that care. Likewise, sharing is an act motivated out of generosity, with intentionality and a desire for the community in which we are embedded to prosper in the collective sense. It means taking no more than what you need and finding ways to give back.
Now, let’s consider the subjects of these ethics.
Ethic #1: Care of the Earth.
Photographs of the earth taken from space are perhaps one of the most tangible reminders of the very special nature of our planet- it’s abundance of water, provision of ecosystems, the mutual humanity we all share, and the peculiarity of our temperate atmosphere to allow life to flourish. Not only that, but it is also a reminder of the amazing gift that the human race has received to be able to develop such technologies based on the raw materials the planet has provided in order for us to be able to ascend into space and take some images- to study and try to understand the natural laws that operate behind the scenes of the organic and inorganic worlds. Truly a humbling and awe-inspiring thing! Care of the earth is the first statement in the permaculture ethics, and I believe this is because it is just so critical to recognize that our livelihoods — whether we are homesteaders, technologists or service-providers — all rely ultimately on the sourcing of elements from the earth, and if a “permaculture” for humanity is to survive into the 22nd century and beyond, it will be critical to attend to, first of all, care of the earth. Returning to the verb, care in this context means to be intentional about how we access and utilize the resource-base of the planet, to observe what its response is to that utilization, and to then “re-act” in order to refine our behavior such that a permaculture solution can be obtained. What a permaculture solution means will be discussed in another post, but briefly, I believe it can be discovered in part by adopting the approach of Dieter Helm in Natural Capital, in which an intergenerational outlook must be taken.
Ethic #2: Care of people
This is the second axiom of the permaculture framework. Again, care implies an observant and responsive intentionality with regard for well-being of the subject, here, it is people. Permaculture is not abstract from the individuals who are performing the acts of interaction with the earth for the production of food, fiber and energy. Neither is it abstract from the communities in which those individuals live. Like the famous butterfly effect of chaos theory, our actions and even inactions ripple outwards and affect the livelihood and quality of life of those with whom we share space and time. Care for people is both local, global and intergenerational. Locally, permaculture practices must directly take care of the needs for the individuals and groups who are directly performing the work. It must also be global, in that relationships are developed between communities to help provide additional resilience and robustness through network effects. By intergenerational it means reaching out into the future (what resources we squander now, will be that much harder for future generations to access and utilize- in terms of both energy and time). It also means reaching into the past, to study the lessons and practices of the past, and to incorporate that learning into our interactions moving forward. Care of people also includes social justice and social responsibility. The “permanent culture” which is one interpretation of the word permaculture is a culture in which individuals are part of communities that have mutual respect, recognitions of one another’s strengths and weakness, and has principles in place for harmonious social interactions and conflict resolution.
Ethic #3: Fair Share
This ethic may seem like a recasting of care of people but more broadly it refers to judicious decision-making regarding how much one actually needs to extract and produce and how those resources, products and energy can be fairly made available to oneself and others. “Others” is not only in the context of human societies, but also in the ecological context consisting of the creatures (plants, animals, microorganisms) and other entities (rivers, geological features) within the biosphere. One instance of this broader notion of fair share is the concept of half-earth championed by the biologist E. O. Wilson. Considering the vast and consequential impacts human urbanization and development has on local and migratory flora and fauna, Dr. Wilson proposed that large tracts of land with corridors between them need to be designated for nature-only purposes, and that 50% of the earth seemed like a fair share compromise to make against the needs of human civilization. Obviously with a subjective adjective such as “fair” there will be a variety of opinions as to what that means- from the more extreme and probably misanthropic positions taken by deep green activitists who eschew a new primitivism, through to greenwashing commitments of questionable impact given by some corporations. Fair share also applies to the individual or group who are doing the work, they should be entitled to a fair amount of profit reflecting the creation of the value through their work. This is known in permaculture as “obtaining a yield.”
Obviously there is overlap between all three of these ethical foundations. To take care of the earth, people must work together. And to work together, we must care for each other, and to care for each other, we must be prepared to share fairly, etc. The presence of overlaps suggests the Venn diagram presentation, which is also a motif that was used by Holmgren when introducing the principles.
When looked at this way, the three ethical principles are seen to directly mirror the three overlapping circles of corporate sustainability, which is composed of social, environmental and economic sustainability.
Businesses can only be truly sustainable when they are attending to their social, environmental and economic impacts. Socially, a business must have the social capital to continue to attract employees, customers and license to operate. Environmentally, a business must operate in a way that mitigates destructive impacts on the biosphere and the local and global commons in which they operate. And, economically, a business has to operate in such a way as to generate a profit, because one can only lose money so long before the bottom drops out! Businesses that practice accounting in terms of all three of these elements are said to be evaluating for the “triple-bottom line.” The difference between a permaculture-inspired ethics, however, and a triple-bottom line accounting platform, however, is that ethics are used to design and plan sustainable and resilient systems in the permaculture paradigm, whereas triple-bottom line accounting is often applied only after the fact, and the social and environmental pieces more often than not seen as less important add-ons to the value which is of primary importance to shareholders, the economic profitability. Moving into the 22nd century, a longer-view approach will need to be taken in order to create companies that are successful, sustainable and resilient to resource constraints.
Connecting the three tiers of corporate sustainability with the permaculture ethics one sees the analogies:
Care of the Earth = Environmental Sustainability
Care of People = Social Sustainability
Fair Share = Economic Sustainability
Looked at this way, since permaculture principles are based on the fundamental axioms or ethics which are synonymous with corporate sustainability, they very well might be applicable to helping businesses improve their sustainability and resilience with regards to all these three factors. In future discussions, I will unpack the 12 principles of permaculture and show how advances in science, technology and business management could be used to enhance the resilience of the modern human infrastructure into the 22nd century and beyond.
