Why “Sustainable” Solutions Almost Never Work

From an email conversation with a planner: “As a regenerative designer, I know that there is a hazard inherent in separating, for example, ‘rural’ from ‘urban’ and ‘conservation’ from ‘industrial’ or ‘residential’, as much as there is in separating ‘people’ from ‘nature’ … Part of the reason we can’t identify ‘the solution’, is that we’re not looking at ‘the problem’ through a whole systems lens. As soon as we can loosen our attachments to our concepts – concepts such as “rural” or “urban”, we might just be able to glimpse a comprehensive solution for once in the history of mankind. I know that this is possible because this is the framework I work in, but I also understand that it may be a new concept for some…

“The modern ‘sustainability’ movement has not been as transformative as it could be for one major reason: we are attached to the perception of elements in our systems (economic, cultural, or ecological) as ‘separate’, and ‘unrelated’, or ‘individual’. The big news is: nature does not work that way. We apply this framework, albeit unconsciously, to our ‘sustainable solutions’, which, by nature, need to be integrated and multidisciplinary, and all too often, we fall short of the mark…

“The nice thing about permaculture, when it is presented by knowledgeable and experienced practitioners, is that it gives us tools to access the patterns behind the systems that cause them to suddenly start to make sense from a whole systems design perspective. As regenerative designers and permaculturists, we like to say that we design ‘from the patterns to the details’. This seemingly innocuous statement actually holds great power.

“Designing from the patterns to the details has us starting from the point of view of connectedness in all of our sustainable design work, and only once that context is established to the fullest of our ability, breaking each system down into components, elements, and projects. We do not leave out the details, we merely make sure that they are worked out in context of the whole. In this way, city design, community design, business design, farm design all fit into a whole picture. This is where we need to start if we are going to generate truly sustainable culture, settlements, and economies on the planet…”

Check out our upcoming webinars on September 28th and 30th by clicking here, or enroll for our upcoming Permaculture Design Certification course here! You can take your place in redesigning our world for regeneration!

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