Over the years that the permaculture movement has been growing, the ethics have been expressed in a variety of ways by numerous people. I find it helpful here to reflect on the different ways people have come to understand the ethics, so that I might take them into my heart and make them my own. That I shall hold them close in all my doing and being. That I shall seek to look at my actions through their lens, as a way to align my values in the direction of good work. 

The Ethical Basis of Permaculture:

Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and increase.

Care of the People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.

Self-imposed Limits to Population and Consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles. 

Third ethnic, interesting in terms of our contemporary context of energy price increases. How can we think about consuming and using less. Electric cars example of hyper consumption because we have a doubling of resource use. Energy, waste, insulation in our homes. 

https://worldpermacultureassociation.com/ethics/

My synthesis here leads me to my own defining of the ethics as:

‘Reconnecting to ourselves, each other and the Earth’

Caring for the Earth

Acting in ways which support and sustain all life

Sustainable and regenerative urban living

Caring for People

Compassion

Well-being

Meeting our needs

Sharing

From Sharing Cities Sweden: Governing Sharing Cities (Sulkakoski, 2019). Interesting that their approach supports new forms of consumption. How could we share our resources and challenge consumption at the same time? 

The solidarity economy meets human needs through economic activities (production and exchange of good and services) that reinforce values of justice, ecological sustainability, cooperation and democracy. The solidarity economy is a globally recognised framework that has grown out of North America and Europe. The framework, which seeks to unify the wide array of people-centred (and planet-centred) concepts and practices emerged in Quebec in 1995, aims to build a movement that is committed to building an economic alternative to neoliberal free market capitalism. From building positive futures – notes on the solidarity economy

Sharing cities

Communities built around commerce. How can we imagine some thing different now and what does that community look like. Can wenimagine building communities around sharing more?

How can sharing help us reimagine commerce and trade to create high street that meet peoples needs and take the focus off profit

Sharing a big ideas:

Idle capacity of objects, utilising it increases efficiency

Emerging sharing alternatives

Capitalism and it’s marketing have constructed a big story around ownership. But ownership doesn’t offer the choice you get when you share.

Jesse mcentee “non-capitalist, decommodified means that are affordable and accessible” (49)

Help rebuild social capital in consumerist cultures

Increasing encounters and engagement between groups who might not otherwise meet

Experience economy that values doing over having

The tide of individualism is receding

Benefits of sharing

Saving money

Doing good for the local community

Protect the environment

Potential environmental benefits include resource efficiency and energy savings, waste reduction

Sharing is understood as a simple positive action, like recycling, which can help tackle climate change and resource depletion

Botsman the “big shift” toward collaborative consumption and sharing (89)

. A lot of research suggests that, for instance, we can’t teach compassion but we can create the conditions for it to arise naturally. In that sense, we can’t manufacture such a world or a culture. It has to emerge. We simply till the soil, sow the seeds, water the plants, and then trust the interconnections of the ecosystem to build its trees as the time ripens. https://medium.com/@servicespace/from-sharing-economy-to-gift-ecology-8f7cc854d8d0

Sharing = equitable resource use

Sharing is…

Sharing is About getting involved in the places in which we live, our neighbourhoods, growing more resilient communities and rebuilding local economies

Sharing is About Overcoming our wicked problems, social isolation, climate change, inequality

It’s about, as John Thackara states in his book ‘surviving in the new economy’, a sense of belonging, and shared responsibility for the land, it is the social glue that binds diverse groups together.

The Diverse projects we are mapping are what A. Fernandez-Savater calls ‘message bearers of a new story of the world’

It’s about togetherness and cooperation

Living together, sharing space

Recognising our community assets and beginning conversations about who owns what and who for

It’s about equitable distribution of resources and meeting human needs in ways which do no harm.

Sharing is caring

And care is what we all need to do now, for ourselves, our kin, our neighbours

and we must now care, with the utmost importance and urgency, for our home, planet earth.

A year living locally Solidarity economy- community land trust, food coop, trade school, worker owned, barter club, community energy

Stacy Mitchell – institute for local self reliance

What does it mean to be rooted to our local communities?

Ways that living hyper-locally would change consumption habits and have meaningful impact in community

What Neal becoming what he calls a more “engaged citizen” — one who spends more time thinking and working to improve his community’s civic life and political atmosphere — that carries the power to enact real change

Stacy Mitchell – More than responsible consumers, we need more engaged citizens. Shopping local is great, but working to influence local, state, and federal policies is the solution to reining in corporate power and building strong local economies and vibrant, self-governing communities.