Human Needs and Liberation Permaculture – Sustainable vs Regenerative Design for People Care

How can we use permaculture and the ethic of People Care to meet real human needs in these challenging times? This is an important aspect of the Permaculture Design Course, and is explored in this essay from Graham Burnett’s publication Towards An Ecology of the Self. This version originally appears in Growing Green International, the magazine of the Vegan Organic Network.

Permaculture is a design philosophy mimicking relationships and systems found in natural ecologies, emphasising the use of renewable resources, diversity and cooperation to create abundant food-growing systems, biodiverse landscapes and thriving communities which don’t destroy the resource base of future generations. At its heart are three ethics or ‘core precepts’ guiding our actions and design choices:

Earth Care: protecting and regenerating natural systems (soil, water, air, forests and habitats) and recognising the Earth as a living, interconnected system that sustains all life.

People Care: supporting the well-being and needs of individuals and communities by fostering cooperation, health and education, and ensuring access to food and resources for all human beings.

Fair Shares: distributing those resources equitably and setting limits to consumption; “There is enough for all our needs but not for all our greed.”

Perhaps the first of these precepts resonates the most with Growing Green’s vegan readership, especially when applied in the context of habitat restoration and animal rights. But for vegan permaculturists the other two ethics are equally important and indeed fully interconnected. After all, we are all a part of the Earth, not apart from her, however much we may try to delude ourselves that we are in some way separate or superior. The focus of this article is therefore on the People Care ethic and is intended as a brief exploration of how we can meet human needs while also protecting and rebuilding those precious ecosystems.

There has been much talk over the last few decades about the need to become more sustainable if we are to tackle problems like climate change, resource depletion, damage to ecosystems and social inequality. But what does this actually mean? The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘Sustainability’ as “The ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level”. In other words, to be ‘sustainable’ simply means having the capacity to endure, or to indefinitely carry on with things the way they are. But in a world where ecosystems are already collapsing and climate instability is causing chaos and injustice on an unprecedented scale, is it enough any more to simply not make things worse? Or should we instead be seeking to leave the world a better place than we found it?

To apply a more personal analogy, how would you respond if asked to describe the quality of your relationship with your partner, family or closest friend? Would you say “Well, I guess it’s sustainable”, or are your relationships more about creating deeper and loving connections that nurture, grow and build mutual strength, resilience and abundance over time?

Instead of continuing to focus our energies and efforts around the middle ground of ‘sustainability’, maybe it’s time to adopt practices and mindsets that are actively regenerative, in that they not only reduce or mitigate damage, but also build soils, restore watercourses, repair ecosystems and nurture biodiversity. At the same time such systems create social resilience, foster community connections and economic stability and provide opportunities for all to enjoy fulfilled and abundant lives by meeting human needs without degrading the resource base of future generations.

Human Needs and Satisfiers

So what ARE our needs as human beings? The well known ‘Hierarchy of Human Needs’ model was proposed in 1943 by American psychologist Abraham Maslow as a theory of human motivation, with five levels of human needs arranged in a pyramid structure, each building on and supported by the level below it. According to Maslow, these lower level needs must be met before an individual can move upwards to fulfil their higher-order needs. From the base of the pyramid upwards these are;

1. Physiological needs: those that are essential for survival, including access to food, water, air, warmth and shelter.
2. Safety needs: including security, physical and economic stability, protection from danger, health and personal well-being.
3. Social needs: belongingness, forming and maintaining social connections including relationships with family members, partners, friends, and acquaintances.
4. Esteem needs: recognition, appreciation, respect and feelings of accomplishment.
5. Self-actualisation: the ability and opportunity to fulfil one’s total potential as a human being; the imperative for personal growth, development and  creativity.

Whilst providing a useful starting point for thinking about universal human needs and motivations, Maslow’s pyramid model has been for criticised for being overly simplistic, emphasising a Capitalist-derived individualistic perspective of the person in isolation rather than considering how people interact with each other in terms of group dynamics and complex human systems within social or collective contexts.

Max-Neef’s Nine Human Needs

In 1986 Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef proposed a more complex and nuanced taxonomy of fundamental human needs. This was based on the Human Scale Development work he was involved in with communities in Latin America; in his words “focused and based on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy and of civil society with the state.”

According to Max-Neef, the nine fundamental human needs are;

• Subsistence:  food, water, shelter.
• Protection: security and safety.
• Affection: relationships, love, friendships.
• Understanding: learning, reflection, critical thinking, consciousness raising, meditation.
• Participation: being actively involved in decisions that affect our lives.
• Leisure: relaxation, free time, opportunities for ‘idling’.
• Creation: making, designing, cooking, building, expression through art, music, etc.
• Identity: knowing oneself, a sense of belonging.
• Freedom: being able to choose how we live our lives.

Satisfiers of Human Needs

Max-Neef argues that human needs remain constant throughout all cultures and historical time periods; What changes with time and across cultures is the way that these needs are satisfied.  Unlike Maslow’s pyramid model, needs are not numbered or considered to exist within a hierarchy but are interrelated and interactive elements of dynamic and complex systems. The matrix below suggests a number of ‘Satisfiers’ of needs in terms of being, having, doing and interacting.

Categories of ‘Satisfiers’ include;

• Singular Satisfiers: Satisfy one particular need only (eg, government or charity provided welfare programs aimed at meeting the need of Subsistence).
• Synergistic Satisfiers: Satisfy a given need, while simultaneously contributing to the satisfaction of other needs (eg, breast feeding meets the need of a baby for Subsistence, whilst at the same time meeting her needs for Protection, Affection and Identity; practicing meditation meets the need for Understanding whilst at the same time meeting the needs of Leisure, Creation and Identity).

In addition we can identify categories of ‘false satisfiers’, including;

• Pseudo Satisfiers: Stimulate a false sensation of satisfying a given need, yet in fact have little or no effect on really meeting that need, and in the longer term undermine it (eg, the easy availability of cheap, low quality ‘fast food’ may appear to satisfy the need for Subsistence, whilst actually contributing to the poor health of individuals and communities, particularly in economically deprived areas).
• Destroyers: Claim to satisfy a given need, but actually violate that need as well as impairing the adequate satisfaction of other needs. The special attribute of these violators is that they are invariably externally imposed on people by those in a position of power. (eg, State censorship pretends to meet a need for Protection, but actually undermines that need as well as the needs of Understanding, Participation, Leisure, Creation, Identity and Freedom).

Towards a Liberation Permaculture

In a truly regenerative culture people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs. Designing for ‘synergistic satisfiers’ that truly meet multiple human needs, and having the ability to recognise and challenge the ‘false satisfiers’ that erode them enables us to ensure our designs are genuinely framed within a people care ethic. Liberation Permaculture therefore is permaculture that is being used for liberatory means, as a tool towards ecologically and socially just ways of living. In the words of community organiser and permaculture teacher Nicole Rose, “If permaculture is all about relationships, then we need to consciously design for relationships without domination”.

As a starting point, she suggests that Liberation Permaculture;

• Places permaculture in a wider context of social change.

• Observes power relationships and structures within systems.

• Recognises oppression as part of ‘Peoplecare’ and aims to consciously design oppressive practices and mindsets out of systems for the risk of otherwise perpetuating them.

• Works in solidarity with multitudinous social struggles, indigenous peoples and ecological resistance movements.

• Ensures yields are shared across genders, races, classes, ages and so forth and challenge privilege consciously reducing inequalities.

• Supports the regeneration of our landbases without exploitative relationships and rejects speciesm and the domination of nonhumans.

• Places re-skilling in a context of increasing autonomy and self-determination.

• Takes a ‘beyond our backyards’ approach working for ecosystem and community restoration on broader scales than beyond home gardens.

• Practitoners use observation and intelligent ecological design principles to inform decision making in all areas of life, not just farms but organisations and movements.

• Places permaculture in the context of rebuilding land based cultures rather than ‘fitting in’ or mainstreaming into capitalist and oppressive societies.• Uses the practical applications of permaculture (e.g. food growing, cleaning water) to genuinely improve people’s lives beyond that of a privileged few.

• Practitioners practice mutual aid for collective living and design systems that maximise power and relationship building within communities.

Ultimately Liberation Permaculture is about ‘obtaining a yield’, by addressing root causes of systematic dysfunction – “You cannot control a system. You can only design & re-design” – Donella Meadows.

This article is an edited and expanded extract from Towards An Ecology of the Self; ‘Zone Zero’ Permaculture Design Notes by Graham Burnett. This version appears in Growing Green International, the magazine of the Vegan Organic Network