by Bill Mollison
This piece was originally published in Home! A Bioregional Reader, edited by Van Andruss, Christopher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor Wright, New Society Publishers, copyright 1990.
We must learn to grow, build, and manage natural systems for human and earth needs, and then teach others to do so. In this way, we can build a global, interdependent and cooperative body of people involved in ethical land and resource use, whose teaching is founded on research but is also locally available everywhere, and locally demonstrable in many thousands of small enterprises covering the whole range of human endeavors. We know how to solve every food, clean energy, and sensible shelter problem in every climate; we have already invented and tested every necessary technique and technical device, and have access to all the biological material that we could ever use.
The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, for to let people arrange their own food, energy, and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.
The very first strategies we need are those that put our own house in order and at the same time do not give credibility to distant power-centered or unethical systems. In our present fiscal or money-run world, the primary responsibility that we need to take charge of is our wealth, which is the product of our sweat and our region, not representable by valueless currency.
What follows are some currently successful social strategies that enable a small group or a region to define problems and to solve them locally.
Bioregional Organization
A bioregional association is an association of the residents of a natural and identifiable region. This region is sometimes defined by a watershed, sometimes by remnant or existing tribal or language boundaries, at times by town boundaries, suburban streets, or districts, and at times by some combination of the above factors. Many people identify with their local region or neighborhood and know its boundaries.
The region is our home address, the place where we develop our culture and take part in bioregional networks. Through global associations and “families of common interest”, we cross not only the regional but also state and national borders to set up multicultural alliances.
Tribal maps often define bioregions very well, groups occupying ecologies of grasslands, stony deserts, swamps, or mountain ridges. Cities break up into different, often occupational or income districts, each with its own dialect and ecology, consumption spectrum, and morality. The acid test of a bioregion is that it is recognised as such by its inhabitants. Ideally, the region so defined can be limited to that occupied by from 7,000 to 40,000 people. Of these, perhaps only a hundred will be initially interested in any regional association, and even less will be active in it.
The work of the bioregional group is to assess the natural, technical, service and financial resources of the region, and to identify areas where resources (water, soil, money, talent) leak from the region. This quickly points the way to local self-reliance strategies. People can be called on to write accounts of their specialties as they apply to the region, and regional news sheets publish results as they come in. Once areas of action have been defined, regional groups can be formed into associations dealing with specific areas, for example:
- Food: Consumer-producer associations and gardening or soil societies;
- Shelter: Owner-builder associations;
- Energy: Appropriate technology associations;
- Finance: An “earthbank” association;
And so on…for crafts, music, markets, livestock, nature study, or any other interest.
The job of the bioregional office is complex, and it needs four to six people to act as consultants and coordinators, with others on call when needed. All other associations can use the office for any necessary registration, address, phone, and newsletter services, and pay a fee for usage.
Critical services and links can be built by any regional office; it can serve as a land access center, as leasehold and title register, or to service agreements for clubs and societies. More importantly, the regional office can offer and house community self-funding schemes, and collect monies for trusts and societies.
The regional office also serves as a contact center to other regions, and thus as a trade or coordination center. One regional office makes it very easy for any resident or visitor to contact all services and associations offered in the region, and also greatly reduces costs of communication for all groups. An accountant on call can handily contract to service many groups. The regional group can also invite craftspeople or lecturers to address interest groups locally, sharing income from this educational enterprise. A regional directory or resource index for the bioregion can then be compiled.
Note that if essential services are listed, deficiencies noted, and leaks of capital detected, then there is immediately obvious a category of “Jobs vacant.” If, in addition, there is a modest investment or funding organization set up (itself a job), then capital to train and equip people to fill these gaps is also available. When basic needs are supplied locally, research and skills will reveal work in producing excess for trade—this excess can be given as information and education to other regions.
Bioregionalism is an excellent concept, given the irrational land use systems and land divisions developed by the present power structures. However, it is rarely an achievable reality unless enough people gather in one area and manage to attract a sufficient number of like people to achieve a viable internal economy and trade infrastructure, together with the community common funds that make such enterprises possible.
And that is the secret of success: assembling sufficient commonsense people in one area. As land titles in a region are bought out and occupied by any group which shares an ethical philosophy, so the shops, markets, processing centers, equipment, and support services for the new economy become worthwhile and available.
An increasing biological resource indicates health in the community. Every bioregion should monitor tree cover, wildlife, seaweed beds, bird colonies, species counts, and productive cultivated land at regular intervals. If these have increased in yield and maintained in species, the area maintains health. If no increase, or a decrease, is evident, something is wrong and should be immediately assessed for correction. Every region needs to act as a curator and refuge for some critical life elements of allied regions, so that absolute loss of species is unlikely short of global catastrophe.
Extended Families
The concepts of village and bioregion refer to a base or home area, but today many people travel about. Many societies extend as close affinity groups across many nations, thus forming a non-national network. Such groups develop a familial, rather than a competitive or conflicting, inter-relationship. With a common interest and ethical base, cooperative interdependence supplants competition. A “family” of this type, with 1,000 or less members, can ally with like groups to create a tribe, and 20-40 such tribes form a nation. Families, unlike many societies, have child care and the welfare of their members at heart.
Such families already exist in Europe, with small groups living in a scattering of households and locations across many existing national boundaries; some have existed for 18 or more years, and members report individual satisfaction with a larger support group. Families of this kind need to define each adult as an individual, with a right to the essentials of their own space (bed and work space), garden, and occupation. As nuclear family households are a minor part of modern societies (13-18% of all households), households based on friendship, or work affinity, or designed for students, singles, or elderly people, are needed.
In particular, children need a wider alliance and support group than just one or two parents. People can find “aunts and uncles” to take part of the responsibility for children in any such extended family, and if the children have a common fund (like their own credit union) for basic needs, then their care at a basic level is assured. They also have more than one household to relate to, or to visit or dwell in when educational needs change.
As an ideal, groups of 30 or so people could gather in core regions (with some outlying households) and so make travel locally an easier affair. Meta-networking (tribe to tribe) enables such higher-level organizations as travel and accommodation nets to be set up on a global basis, cash to be transferred to areas of need, and larger joint enterprises developed.
Given an extended family, a bioregional network locally, and some form of common work opportunity, any individual is assured of access to resources, capital, cultural exchanges, and good work. We need not only fixed villages and bioregions, but open corridors to other regions, other people, and across nations.
Trusts & Legal Strategies
Trusts in the public interest are the legal basis on which churches, universities and many schools, research establishments, some hospitals, many public services, aid programs, and charities rest. About 18-20% of businesses may also be non-profit trusts owned or operated by the charitable trusts that benefit from (are beneficiaries of) them.
It is quite possible, even sensible, to completely replace the bureaucracy of public services with a series of locally administered trusts, as in Holland. In the case of any small country, such trusts can run all public operations, and the “government” becomes simply a way of conveying tax capital back to the regions via local trusts. However, trusts can also self-run via non-profit businesses to become foundations, fully equipped with their own income sources. Trusts are formed just to conduct businesses and trade, giving away their profits annually to named beneficiaries. If the beneficiaries are individuals, such gifts are taxed as private income; if the beneficiaries are charitable trusts or churches, the gift is not only not taxable but can be tax deductible to any giver. Trading, or “unit discretionary,” trusts are also known as non-profit corporations (not to be confused with for-profit organizations).
Many large companies set up, and to some extent fund, non-profit organizations or even charitable trusts as a means to reduce taxable income, to carry out educational services, or to obtain public goodwill; some businesses tithe to worthy trusts that they believe in (a tithe is usually a tenth of income, but in practice ranges from 5-15%).
It is very wise for any charitable trust to establish a non-profit trading (business) trust to help finance its activities, and this trading trust can refund costs to volunteers, pay wages, and gift profits to the charity or to any other charity. Thus, if the charitable trust is TRUST A, and the trading trust is TRUST B, the system as a whole works as in Figure 2.
Trusts are durable, efficient, easy to administer, and a great public service; everybody should be associated with one! There are several small independent but cooperative Permaculture Institutes and allied groups in existence which have associated non-profit trusts operating businesses to fund them; in this way, many trusts are independent of gifts or grants, and become self-reliant for funds.
The essentials of Trust A are that it holds assets for the public good, does not take risks, and leases or rents to Trust B, which does trade and take risks, and has Trust A as one of its beneficiaries. Trust B can duplicate or triplicate itself to accommodate new enterprises and to insulate from risk those successful operations which may later develop. It can also handle financial systems such as leasing and lending units.
Village Development
We need well-designed villages today more than any other enterprise: villages to relocate those soon-to-be-refugees from sea-level rise, villages to house people from urban slums, and villages where people of like mind can find someone else to talk to and to work with.
An intentional village should have a group ethic acceptable to all who come there. Ethics, if shared, discussed and acknowledged, give unity to groups, villages, and nations, indicate a way to go, and control our use of earth resources. They can be reflected in our legal, financial, domestic, and public lives.
The aims of a sensible village group might be to:
- REDUCE THE NEED TO EARN, by developing food, energy, and shelter self-reliance;
- EARN WITHIN THE VILLAGE IF POSSIBLE, reducing transport and travel needs; thus to recruit people who could fill most essential village occupations, or who are self-employed;
- PRODUCE A SURPLUS from services to others, thus maintaining a strong economy and outreach potential;
- PROVIDE MANY OF THE NON-MATERIAL NEEDS of people, perhaps of children in particular, by devising meaningful work, relevant education, and a rich natural environment; and
- COOPERATE in various enterprises and small associations.
A village can provide PRIVACY in homes and gardens; ACCESS TO TOOLS as leased, rented, or easily accessed equipment from computers to tractors; ENTERTAINMENT from local folk groups to video cassettes; CONSERVATION as a village wildlife, water and forest reserve, and RECREATION in the near environment. It can also provide the BASIC LIFE ESSENTIALS of shelter, food, and energy.
No isolated or scattered group of people can self-provide for the above, but it is probable that about 30 to 200 houses can support these services and basic facilities, especially if there is planning for cooperative funding. What is easy for a group may be impossibly stressful for a nuclear family. It is possible for a group to provide many services, and for many people to earn a living in so doing.
Human settlements vary in their ability to provide resources, to develop a high degree of self-reliance, and in their alienating or (conversely) neighborly behavior according to population size and function. At about 100 income-producing people, a significant financial institution can be village-based; at about 500, all people can know each other if social affairs are organized from time to time.
At 2,000 people, theft and competitiveness are more common, and sects set up in opposition—the “ecumenical alliances” are lost. Perhaps we should start small, at about 30 or so adults, build to 200-300 people, and proceed slowly and by choice to 500, then “calve” into new neighborhoods or new villages.
However, alliances of 200-500 household-size hamlets can make a very viable manufacturing or trading alliance and maintain a safe genetic base. Many tribes of 200 or so confederate to alliances of 4,000-7,000 in this way, share special products by trade, or arrange out-marriages. Thus, pioneer villages can seek alliances with others for the common good.
(From Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. Tagari Publications, 1988.)
Bill Mollison (1928-2016) was a scientist, author, and teacher from Tasmania, Australia, known as the “father of permaculture.” In 1981, he received the Right Livelihood Award for his work developing and promoting the theory and practice of permaculture. He developed the Environmental Psychology program at the University of Tasmania, his alma mater. He also founded the Permaculture Institute, offering a Permaculture Design Course and Certification that is now offered via programs all over the world.
