Permaculture:top down thinking and bottom up action for ecosystem health and
action on climate change
Presentation to the All Party Parliamentary l Climate Change Groupl 6th December 2016
l Andy Goldringl @andygoldring l CEO, Permaculture Associationl www.permaculture.org.uk
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
Gregory Bateson
l www.permaculture.org.uk
l www.permaculture.org.uk
Permaculture = learning to think and act like an ecosystem
Top down thinking = strategic systems thinking
Ethics - Principles – Design(then ACTION)
Ethics
Earth CarePeople CareFair Shares
= one planet living
Ecological principles
Design
The Permaculture Association supports people to learn about and use permaculture in the UK
and internationally.
Bottom up action
Inkpot, Lincolnshire Ragmans Lane Farm, Gloucestershire
Tap O'Noth, Scotland
Many hundreds of projects (farm, school, park, business, etc)in the UK and 10,000+ across 130+ countries globally.
= eco-jobs, sustainable produce,biodiversity and carbon sequestration
Meet Eric Toensmeir- he's done the maths...
l www.permaculture.org.uk
l www.permaculture.org.uk
Carbon Farming knowns
Sequestration rates and lifetime SOC rates for many techniques and practices
The polycultures can have much higher Land Equivalent Ratios than monocultures(and greater resilience to pests, disease and climate variability) = more crop per unit area
Tree based polycultures have the greatest sequestration rates
Heterogeneous landscapes (diverse & 'patchy') are best for wildlife
The French (and others) are investing heavily in agroforestry
Prince Charles, Baroness Scotland (Secretary general of the Commonwealth), and many others at Cop21 & 22 are putting Carbon Farming at the centre of their adaptation plans.
Lal estimates that agriculture, forestry, and ecosystem restoration can reduce atmospheric CO2 by 50ppm
Improved Annual Systems
conservation agriculture organic annual cropping organic no-till
Protective Systems
windbreaks living fence/ living fenceposts riparian buffer hedgerow
Contour Intercropping
Support Intercropping
FMNR evergreen agriculture alley cropping
Perennial Crop Intercropping
irregular intercropping strip intercropping pasture cropping
Silvopasture
Herbaceous Monocultures
herbaceous crops perennial grains biomass grasses
Woody Biomass Systems
bamboo coppice short rotation coppice
Woody Crop Monocultures
orchard
Multistrata Agroforestry
Biochar
Infrastructure & Design
terracing keyline
Practices for the UK include: Ready for Scaling Up Experimental or Early
Adopters
Conservation agriculture Organic no-till
Organic annual cropping Support agroforestry systems e.g. alley cropping
Crop rotation System of Rice Intensification
Cover crops Pasture cropping (cool-season)
Residue retention, minimum tillage, mulching
Contour hedgerows
Windbreaks
Perennial intercrops
Riparian buffers
Contour grass strips
l www.permaculture.org.uk
l www.permaculture.org.uk
there is a growing network of existing farmers and growers
keen to move this forward
and a network of new entrants keen to engage
We have many farmers ready for retirement
and soon we will need to develop a new (out of the EU) agricultural / land use strategy
We need to support a rapid transition to carbon farming
and ecological land use
Proposal 1 : Mitigation – reducing energy use
Introduce a carbon tax
Send market signals to reduce the use of fossil fuels(including farm chemical inputs)
l www.permaculture.org.uk
Proposal 2: Sequestration / Adaptation / Mitigation
Develop an Eco-Design support service(permaculture / agroecological)
Enable farmers & land managers to do 'top down thinking' (training & design support)
So they can deliver bottom up action.
l www.permaculture.org.uk
Plus...
* Greater support for agroforestry* More succession planning for farmers to hand on their businesses
* Greater integration of flood planning with agricultural practice & design* Increase research funds for agro-ecological practice
and carbon farming* Et cetera
l www.permaculture.org.uk
Q: What can policy makers, businesses, civil society and communities do to protect ecosystems and embed natural
capital into ways of working.
A: Change the way we think (and therefore how we act).
Supporting the development of eco-design training, research
and practice.
Thanks for listening
l Andy Goldringl @andygoldring l CEO, Permaculture Associationl www.permaculture.org.uk
And thanks to Eric Toensmeir for some of his slides