Re: sustainable practice diagram
Samuel Mann
Hi All,
What do you think about this as a way to communicate Sustainable practice succinctly?
Steve Henry
Director
Centre for a Sustainable Otago
Cromwell
p 03 443 1430 c 021 705 873 e ste...@tekotago.ac.nz
--
Samuel Mann
http://computingforsustainability.wordpress.com/
Leigh Blackall
Care for people
Care for Earth
Fair share
When using info graphics to communicate these ethics, a diagram of a tree is commonly used. These ethics are positioned in the root system, while the trunk of the tree is made up of the principles:
- Observe and interact
- Catch and store energy
- Obtain a yield
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
- Use and value renewable resources and services
- Produce no waste
- Design from patterns to details
- Integrate rather than segregate
- Use small and slow solutions
- Use and value diversity
- Use edges and value the marginal
- Creatively use and respond to change
Even though permaculture design is most commonly applied in horticulture and subsistence farming, it strikes me just how ready made these ethics and principles are for other forms of design, including policy and practice.
More information including another info graphic that uses a flower at http://permacultureprinciples.com
In the Permaculture Design course we have slowly been authoring a wikibook at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Permaculture_design
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)21736539
skype - leigh_blackall
SL - Leroy Goalpost
http://learnonline.wordpress.com
Samuel Mann
Leigh Blackall
Yes, the ethics and principles are easy to interpret in the form I sent them, and as with anything that is simpliflied, they often could mean anything. But was the initial idea behind this thread. The value of these principles is in their detail and application obviously - hence the importance of their actual relationship to methods and outcomes.
Personally I find it very difficult fault the design process proposed in permaculture, and would like to attempt bringing it into a more widely applicable scope. If they are reusable and understood by an established community - why reinvent a wheel? BTW, I have been amazed at how strong the permaculture network is both locally and internationally!
If in your paper you do go ahead and analyse a parallel, I'd be very interested in your critique of the detail behind the principles and methods of permaculture and if you think they scale, or if not - why.
Steve Henry
Hi Sam,Leigh and Phil thnx for comments.
This pic was drawn by Mark Jackson and imagined by me based on Edwin Dzaskefki’s design criteria for sustainable product and service. (See www.biothinking.com)
The pic has come from a need to be able to succinctly explain what Sustainable practice is in the 5 minutes you get in front of a decision maker. The term sustainability which seems too waffly for NZ business.
I find the four system conditions for sustainability from The Natural Step are too hard too communicate easily- diagrammatically shown as
and more formally described as
The System Conditions as Sustainability Objectives
“Our ultimate sustainability objectives are to:
1.…eliminate our contribution to systematic increases in concentrations of substances from the Earth’s crust.
2.…eliminate our contribution to systematic increases in concentrations of substances produced by society.
3. …eliminate our contribution to the physical degradation of nature through over harvesting and other forms of manipulation.
4.… contribute as far as we can to the meeting of human needs in our society and worldwide, in addition to the substitutions and dematerializations that will follow from meeting the first three objectives.”
Its fine to have this in the background as the science based definition, yet it is a big turn off when engaging NZ decision makers.
The purpose of the Sust prac pic is to have a conversation. It may not be wholly accurate, yet it’ll do. The tree you have pointed out Sam is useful in describing flows, and is more accurate, but as a start place seems complex to me
I see the 5 petals of cyclic, solar, safe, social and efficient as the principals. They all have economic, social, environmental and cultural expressions – how do ya put that on a pic easily?
Mark and I also created this as a part of a bid on some tourism consultancy work last week.
Here the 5 princpals provide the core and the blue bits become the actions such as;
Our idea is these blue petals can then be changed according to the sector and its priorities.
Steve Henry
Director
Centre for a Sustainable Otago
Cromwell
p 03 443 1430 c 021 705 873 e ste...@tekotago.ac.nz
-----Original Message-----
From:
otago-sust...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:otago-sust...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Samuel Mann
Sent: Tuesday, 15 April 2008 9:36
p.m.
To:
otago-sust...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {{Sustainable Otago}} Re:
sustainable practice diagram
Leigh,
(warning: post drifts as I'm busily trying to get coherent on this very topic!).
I'm halfway through a paper (due next week) that tries to come up with learnings for software engineering from sustainability principles.
Based in part on these posts:
The last third of the paper looks for parallels/learnings in exactly that permaculture list. Som of it obvious. Some of it not so obvious and difficult not to be trite. For example "value diversity". Yes, hard to argue with, but equally, simplified systems have enormous merit in system design (ie in terms of efficiency and an example we're familiar with - a single technician can manage a very large number of computers in a monoculture).
Equally edge effects (I used to have a job title Landscape Systems Ecologist). Is easy to pull out phrases and say, look, see permaculture can be used as a model. eg Value edges = design for the exceptions. But I could play that game for almost any such vaguely scientific concept: Occam's razor, succession, evolution etc etc.
SaM
(PS did you see this tree graphic from DoTT? http://computingforsustainability.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/dott-marks-the-tree/)
On 15/04/2008, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com> wrote:
Remarkable how similar it
is to the ethics of permaculture design, being:
Care for people
Care for Earth
Fair share
When using info graphics to communicate these ethics, a diagram of a tree is
commonly used. These ethics are positioned in the root system, while the trunk
of the tree is made up of the principles:
1. Observe and interact
2. Catch and store energy
3. Obtain a yield
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
5. Use and value renewable resources and services
6. Produce no waste
7. Design from patterns to details
8. Integrate rather than segregate
9. Use small and slow solutions
10. Use and value diversity
11. Use edges and value the marginal
12. Creatively use and respond to change
<br
Leigh Blackall
Samuel Mann
Before you read the rest of this I stress again, I like the concept of the flower, I just want to see some reworking.
I like the fact that the petals expand (to include sepals?) but I think that the core still needs to encompass the whole range of what we mean by sustainable practice.
At the moment it still looks to me like it is about choosing a washing machine rather than sustainable practice. What I'm struggling with is the balance of the petals.
We (initially me and Leigh, then me and some passing students), used the flower to explore what it might mean to be a sustainable practitioner in computing (we based it around the work that StevenT, Ange and co might do). The result is attached. We used the petals to examine sustainable practice, as prompted by each petal and its icon/words. Mixing with measurement approach of other graphics we guestimated a graph for sustainabilityness of each.
1. The concept is fantastic as a means to explore what it means to be a sustainable practitioner.
2. In computing we had to add a split down the petals to distinguish between own footprint and the footprint we influence.
3. The solar petal is not helpful. It is not something in most people's control and ignores other power sources. I would like to see it expanded to inputs.
4. The cyclic, and efficient petals are marginally helpful. They could probably be expanded.
5. The safe petal needs expansion. I haven't found anyone who saw this as any more than "non-toxic"/
6. The social petal needs to be about 3 petals. We ended up going for other documents to prompt us here.
I'll keep doodling. Hope it's helpful.
Cheers
SaM
Leigh Blackall
For example, Solar. It sits on a central petal - implying that it is core to everything we do = ethic.
But it seems to me that it is more in line with being a method. I mean, what will we do if/when another source of energy comes along that does not result is toxic waste batteries?
So, it might then look like:
Ethic (centre petals)
Ecologically/Socially/Economically Sustainable
Principle (next round of petals)
Use renewable energy
Method (Next round of petals)
Use solar energy
Outcome (pollen in the air?)
Consistant and reliable energy source
Clean emissions (apart from very toxic battery waste)
Silent energy
Improving production cycles
Leigh Blackall
Ecologically/Socially/Economically sustainable practice (primary round of petals)
Principle
Use renewable energy (one petal in the secondary round of petals)
Method
Use solar energy (one petal in the tertiary round of petals)
Outcome
Clean emissions (apart from very toxic battery waste)
Silent energy
Improving production cycles