I have my Diploma of
Permaculture in Education amd Community Services and been teaching the
PDC since 1993, and have always used the
Permaculture Designers' Manual (Mollison 1988) as the base for my curriculum. When teaching the ethics and principles as any
permaculture teacher knows it is a matter of dragging them out of the manual and also from Introduction to
Permaculture (Mollison & Slay 1992). The majority of he principles are on pages 34-35 of the manual but are not in any special order. A few years ago
David Holmgren published his version of the permaculture principles, and condensed them down to 12 simple principles. He also shortened the third ethic to 'fair share', which while being snappy and rhyming with the first two principles it could lead people to assume it means don't over consume rather than devoting excess time,
energy and money towards earth care and people care. Getting back to the principles, as there has never been an ordered and clear arrangement of the original permaculture principles this has
led to a plethora of arrangements and interpretations. Many permaculture teachers use Holmgren's set, which come with
cards and adownloadable e-booklet, but I found these don't include some of the important attitudinal principles. I saw a need for a set of Mollison Permaculture Ethics and Permaculture Principles that was comprehensive, well ordered, and as true to Bill's original vision as possible. I knew I had to limit the number of principles so it wasn't too difficult for people to remember easily, and that it is best to chunk information in groups of 7 or less as that is about most peoples's memory limit. I also looked at other principle card sets 'on the market' and realised many covered techniques and strategies as well as some of the principles, with
cards on alley cropping and banana circles, but none gave a comprehensive set of the principles. After months of trying different orders and even names for some of the principles I finally came up with a 21 card set. The first three are ethics cards with the first card covering the three main ethics, ethics of natural systems on the second card, and ethics of resource use on the third. I then ordered the principles into energy principles, functional design principles, principles from nature, and attitudinal principles. To assist in memory retention the cards can be organised into a pyramid with the first ethics card at the top followed by ethics on natural areas and on resource use, then the three energy cards, then the four functional design principles, then the five principles from nature, then the six attitudinal principles at the base. I also noticed that some existing principle cards are difficult to use in a design situation and dont clearly spell out the principle but tries to condense it into a short snappy saying. I designed these cards to be 'information dense' and have included practical examples whenever I could. I have taught a number of short courses using these cards as well as using them when teaching the full
PDC, and have recieved great feedback from my students. Most find that it is all they need to revise the whole course and can do a design by going through the principle cards. I also realised that if I wanted people to use them I would have to make them freely available and easy to print. I chose a 6x4 photo size as you can get this size photo printed very cheaply in many areas. You can also get very cheap 6x4 24 page photo album
books for putting the photos in, turning it into a photobook rather than a loose pack of cards. To make them available I also purchased a domain name and am slowly getting the web page together. To recoup some costs I will be selling an accompanying e-book of A3 mindmaps that go with the card set, though the cards on their own are fairly self-explanatory and they are posted as full sized images for people to freely save and download. I have given a copy of the cards to Bill, over a year ago now, and he loved them and gave his blessing for them to be called 'Mollison's Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles'. His daughter Frances Mollison has done a few of the illustrations and is working on the rest, so while the names and order are set some of the pictures will be upgraded as they are completed. In the mean time the current draft of the cards can be downloaded from <www.permaculturefundamentals.com>
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