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The Practical Wisdom of Permaculture: an Anthropoharmonic Phronesis

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The Practical Wisdom of Permaculture: an Anthropoharmonic Phronesis Forthcoming in Environmental Ethics 37(4), Winter 2015 The Practical Wisdom of Permaculture: An Anthropoharmonic Phronesis for Moving towards an Ecological Epoch Mark Hathaway* Earth may now be moving into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activities have become a significant geological force altering (and often undermining) the planet’s life-sustaining systems. In this context, Thomas Berry suggests that humanity’s key task is to create a viable niche for itself that simultaneously enables the Earth community as a whole to thrive, effectively inaugurating an ecological epoch. Stephen Scharper proposes that this transition entails a shift from anthropocentrism to anthropoharmonism. Anthropoharmonism recognizes the unique perspective (and power) of humans, but also recognizes that humans are wholly dependent on the wider Earth community and need to act in harmony with it. Moving from ethics to practice requires an ecological wisdom that enables humans to discern actions that are mutually enhancing for ourselves and Earth’s ecosystems. Building on Arne Naess’ idea that ecosophia must be “directly relevant for action” as well as Aristotle’s understanding of phronesis or “ethical know-how,” this kind of wisdom can be understood as an anthropoharmonic phronesis that focuses on healing the Earth community, using sustainable practices and technologies appropriate for specific contexts. Such a phronesis can be found in permaculture, a design system founded by Bill Mollison and David Holgrem which provides a concrete set of guidelines for discerning ecologically appropriate actions in specific contexts based on an ethic of care of Earth, care of people, and fair share. Key principles include using small and slow solutions, designing from patterns to details, and creatively responding to change. Like anthropoharmonism, permaculture envisions a role for humans as responsive participants in ecosystems who must first engage in protracted observation and only intervene with the minimal change necessary to achieve a goal. Permaculture can therefore be understood as a way to embody a practical, anthropoharmonic wisdom that could facilitate a shift towards an ecological epoch. INTRODUCTION There is a growing consensus that Earth may now be moving into a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activities have become a key force altering ecosystems, shifting climatic patterns, and driving hundreds of thousands of species to extinction. Human systems, “for better or for worse,… have emerged as new primary Earth systems, not only by dramatically altering preexisting natural processes but also, more important, by introducing a host of new Earth system processes entirely novel to the * Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, OISE and the School of the Environment, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. E-mail mark.hathaway[at]utoronto.ca. Hathaway is PhD candidate (ABD) teaching ecological worldviews and researching adult transformative learning processes that facilitate the cultivation of an embodied ecological wisdom. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the eleventh annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. A special thanks to Katie McShane and other participants in the meeting whose comments helped to improve this paper. 2 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS (prepublication) Vol. 37 Earth system.”1 Indeed, it seems that it is no longer the case that humans merely disturb Earth systems, but rather that human systems have become an “integral and defining… component of this planet’s processes.”2 Based on current evidence, it seems reasonable to assert that the global changes induced by human activities, particularly over the past two centuries, have pushed our planet into a new epoch3 and that the current changes are not temporary, but rather of long-duration consistent with geologic timescales.4 Paul Crutzen,5 the Dutch atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate who, along with biologist Eugene Stoermer, first coined the term “Anthropocene,” notes that this new epoch poses a challenge for all of humanity: Failing a major catastrophe (either natural or of our own making), humans will be a major environmental, and arguably geologic, force for the foreseeable future. With this power also comes a new responsibility to develop strategies “to ensure the sustainability of Earth’s life support system against human-induced stresses.” This “is one of the greatest research and policy” – and arguably, one might add, ethical – “challenges ever to confront humanity.”6 What is clear is that humanity cannot continue on the path of “business as usual” without courting disaster – not only for ourselves, but also for countless other species. “We are passing into a new phase of human experience and entering a new world that will be qualitatively and quantitatively different from the one we have known” and which some frame as a call for “planetary stewardship… built around scientifically developed boundaries for critical Earth System processes that must be observed for the Earth System to remain within a Holocene-like state.” Failure to assume this responsibility “threatens to become for humanity a one-way trip to an uncertain future in a new, but very different, state of the Earth System.”7 While “stewardship” may not be the ideal term to describe an ethic to guide humanity to consciously and wisely assume responsibility consonant with its power to fundamentally alter Earth systems, the essential point is still well taken. One danger, however, is that we may be tempted to adopt “solutions” – such as planetary-scale geo-engineering projects, which Paul Crutzen8 suggests may be necessary – that have the potential to compound 1 Erle C Ellis and Peter K Haff, “Earth Science in the Anthropocene: New Epoch, New Paradigm, New Responsibilities,” Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 90 (2009): 473, p. 473.. 2 Ibid. 3 Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Alan Haywood and Michael Ellis, “The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369 (2011): 835-41. 4 Will Steffen, Åsa Persson, Lisa Deutsch, Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Katherine Richardson, Carole Crumley, Paul Crutzen, Carl Folke and Line Gordon, “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship,” : A Journal of the Human Environment 40 (2011): 739-61. 5 Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415 (2002): 23. 6 Will Steffen, Paul J Crutzen and John R McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature,” Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment 36 (2007): 614-21, p. 618. 7 Steffen, Persson, et al, “The Anthropocene,” pp. 756-7. 8 Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind.” Winter 2015 THE PRACTICAL WISDOM OF PERMACULTURE (prepub.) 3 ecological problems rather than resolve them. How can humans assume an appropriate share of responsibility for the well-being of the Earth community while avoiding the kind of managerial ethos and obsession with control and “progress” that often characterize the worldviews of the modern technocratic societies9 that have caused so much ecological destruction? This paper will examine a number of ethical and practical frameworks that may serve to guide humanity in this emerging new epoch of the Anthropocene. In particular, it will explore Thomas Berry’s ideas concerning an emerging “Ecozoic” era, Stephen Scharper’s proposal for an anthropoharmonic ethic, and the pragmatic ethics and principles of permaculture which seem to elucidate the shape of a possible ecological phronesis (a practical wisdom or ethical know-how) that could guide humanity towards the creation of a viable, sustainable niche which simultaneously allows the wider Earth community to flourish and thrive. THOMAS BERRY AND THE ECOZOIC ERA While the noted Earth scholar Thomas Berry does not seem to have used the term “Anthropocene,” similar ideas are found in his writings. Indeed, Berry claims that humans now influence complex life systems on the planet “in a comprehensive manner” and that, “while the human cannot make a blade of grass, there is liable not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected, and fostered by the human.”10 For Berry, however, this change signals, not just a change of epoch from the Holocene (which began about 12,000 BCE with the end of the last ice age) to the Anthropocene, but the end of the Cenozoic Era that began following the extinction of the dinosaurs and much of Earth’s life: In evaluating our present situation I submit that we have already terminated the Cenozoic Era of the geo-biological systems of the planet. Sixty-five million years of life development are terminated. Extinction is taking place throughout the life systems on a scale unequaled since the terminal phase of the Mesozoic Era... 9 See, for example, Charlene Spretnak observes: “Modern, technocratic society [is] fuelled by the patriarchal obsessions of dominance and control. They… [sustain a] managerial ethos, which hold efficiency of production and short-term gains above all else…” (“Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering,” In: Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein eds. Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990, pp. 3- 14, p. 9.) Similarly, in an article Crutzen himself co-authored, it is affirmed that “the belief systems and assumptions that underpin neo-classical economic thinking, which in turn has been a major driver of the Great Acceleration, are directly challenged
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