Permaculture Overview
Permaculture, which is simultaneously used to mean permanent agriculture and permanent culture, is a methodology intended to help humans design lifestyles and settlements that are integrated with the world's natural systems and work with them instead of simply using them up and spitting them out. Bill Mollison, the co-founder of Permaculture says that \"the only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children\", which is the essence of our drive for a self-sufficient and indefinitely sustainable lifestyle.
In some sense permaculture encapsulates all of environmentally friendly techniques we will be using at Maya Creek. It takes a holistic view of renewable energy, natural construction, food production, water conservation, economics, culture, and how these can be put together to complement each other in order to provide a sustainable and healthy way of life for humans and the planet.
There are courses available around the world that train people to in the art of permaculture design. The essence being that there is no such thing as waste only outputs that are not being used for something. Just as there is no garbage in the natural world, one creature's waste is another's food. Much of permaculture is analysis and how to create more efficient systems that fulfill more of our desired needs with less require input.
Much of the basis of Permaculture is close observation of the natural world and extracting useful information from those observations. It also seems that just as there are positive feedback loops for negative things such as melting glaciers absorbing more sunlight and melting faster there are also positive feedback loops, many of which are only noticeable when we begin working with the living systems to give them what they naturally crave.
The sites listed below have far more information on Permaculture and where to take design certification courses.