the ultimate test

Some things I've experienced and witnessed over the past year have got me thinking.

Whenever we talk about permaculture — what it is, what it does, what it's supposed to achieve — we always seem to come back to permanence. Designing permanent systems, self-sustaining systems, and so on. Even when we talk about successful projects, we tend to emphasize how they've managed to survive over the years. A 50-year-old food forest, for example. So naturally, we tend to think the ultimate test is whether a system can stand on its own, or whether it can be passed down from one generation to the next (or even from one family to another).

But is that really the ultimate test?

I'm not so sure.

Hear me out. :)

Last year, I visited the Greening the Desert project. I walked around and had a look at the place. Geoff was sharing his experience and perspective with his usual seemingly endless energy. Nothing wrong there. But what about the site itself? To be fair, if they hadn't taken us into the garden and pointed out the swales, I don't think we would have found them. Some of the trees weren't doing particularly well. You could tell that a tremendous amount of work had been done there over the years, but the biogas digester, for example, was sitting unused in a corner. And there were quite a few other things like that.

As far as I know, the project had already been handed over to the next management team. So that transition we talk so much about had already happened. Then what was the problem? But this post isn't really about Greening the Desert.

The same goes for my own work. For the past four years, I haven't been able to properly look after my garden. Life has thrown more than a few personal challenges my way. If you saw the garden today, you'd find a complete mess. Half the time, you can't even tell what's growing where. And that's what got me thinking.

What if the ultimate test of a permaculture design isn't whether we can pass it on to the next generation, but whether it can survive the hardest periods of our own lives?

What happens when we get old? When we get sick? When we can't take care of the garden for months, or even years?  How much of our system survives? More importantly, how much of it continues to function? We try to design systems that can withstand droughts, floods, frost, and all sorts of environmental challenges. But what about our absence? Our own limitations? Those periods in life when everything else takes priority? Maybe the greatest challenges we face in our own lives are also the greatest tests of the systems we design. After all, don't we have to finish the race before we can pass the baton?

Just thinking out loud.

What did you learn from the Greening the Desert Project?

Anne Miller wrote:What did you learn from the Greening the Desert Project?

So many things! I like taking notes, so I ended up with over 60 pages of them. :)

A few things relevant to this post might be:

War! We don't usually take that into consideration when designing new systems. I do account for economic conditions, high inflation, and similar issues since I live in Turkey, but war was definitely not on my list. One thing I learned about war is its lasting impact on people. It creates patterns that continue for generations. For example, when people are displaced from places where their families have lived for generations, animal husbandry can become a backbone of their lives rather than agriculture. It provides food security, a sense of home, and so on. These patterns aren't necessarily limited to war, or even caused by war. I've seen many people who moved to a different culture continue keeping goats, chickens, and other animals. There are many other patterns, too. For example, things that don't require immediate attention (for survival) tend to get neglected, such as garbage management.

For any lasting impact, a bottom-up approach is essential. You can go there, show people how things work, or even create a living, functioning example. But you always need to shape the development around the needs of the community. You can build the biggest swale, turn a desert green, but if that's not what people are asking for, they won't really see it. They'll know it's there, they'll know it works somehow, but they won't truly see its value. It'll just be a temporary green spot in the desert. Apparently love isn't enough. Being part of the community isn't enough. Most importantly, simply showing people what's possible isn't enough. You need to understand and address the burdens and problems they face, remove the barriers that prevent them from seeing the value of what you're doing, and respond to their actual needs if you want the project to last.

I did the towel test. I waited four days for my towel to dry inside the project area. Eventually, I had to take it out to the street, and it dried in less than half an hour! Geoff Lawton clearly demonstrated that permaculture works in one of the harshest environments imaginable.

And so on.