People+and+buildings+as+a+sustainable+part+of+the+environment.

If we are to leave the environment in a better state than we found it, we want to build and maintain our place in it without depleting natural resources.

A sustainable community “has enough economic, natural, human and social resources to ensure it can be maintained and respond to period stresses”. Wall, E. (2002). Sustainable Rural Communities in an Era of Globalization. Guelph, ON: (University of Guelph, p.11)

We need to be constantly investing in [|natural capital] to shore against disastrous loss. This benefits us and the natural environment as we can respond intelligently to restore natural balance. We know that forest systems are the very efficient and effective producer and protector of natural assets. We should maintain and regenerate forest where human use is damaging or uneconomic to maintain. We can create forests to meet human needs through ecosystem services - food, building materials, privacy, storm protection and educational needs. Permaculture provides a design strategy that can fulfill these needs while building natural capital. If people are directly involved in the producing of the materials they use, they cannot avoid knowing the consequences of their actions and will make wiser decisions about resource use. By making forests a part of the community, people will be more connected with the natural environment and become better stewards. Previous generations have been using up natural capital; sustainable communities will enable restoration so future generations can benefit increasing returns.

We need to be investing in [|social capital]to reduce consumerist pursuits. If people are more interdependent and involved with each others' lives they are happier and less self-indulgent. Designing communities to be compact, resilient, self-reliant and self-determining increases social interaction, cooperation and interdependence. Co-housing provides a design strategy that builds the social connections of community and confidence in the positive benefits of living in a close community. Compact communities are more efficient users of resources - there is more sharing of resources and less wasted land between houses.

We need to be investing in [|knowledge capital] to become self-reliant in local, biological-based, small-scale production to replace oil-based, mass production. We need to localise service industries - to care and educate within our own communities, to be self'reliant in maintaining ourselves, our homes and environment. Self-reliant, rural communities which provide effective community services would be an attractive alternative to urban lifestyles. Migration to rural areas is very beneficial to the environment as it provides a workforce to support the maintenance of the environment for conservation purposes and it would disperse the population. Many negative effects of human settlement result when the carrying capacity of the local environment is exceeded - when food, water, fuel, building supplies need to be brought in and waste needs to be disposed of beyond the local area.

We need to value Nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place and non-violence.

A mosaic pattern of human habitation with clusters of human population, patches of agriculture and manmade forests within an endemic/natural ecosystem would have the least impact on the natural environment as it produces the greatest diversity of environments through dynamic interaction between humans and the endemic environment. Humans can actively sustain the natural environment, supporting the endemic diversity, to maximise ecosystem services.

Human habitation needs to be on a scale that supports social capital without exceeding the carrying capacity of the environment. We need to maximise solar energy harvesting, minimise the solar energy cost of human habitation while maintaining human populations to invest in natural capital. Lifelong learning and knowledge networks need to be central to a sustainable civilisation to provide investment in natural capital enabled by an informed, long term world view.

Four of David W. orr’s characteristics of ecological sustainability are worth summarizing here: First, people are finite and fallible. The human ability to comprehend and manage scale and complexity has limits. Thinking too big can make our human limitations a liability rather than an asset. Second, a sustainable world can be redesigned and rebuilt only from the bottom up. locally self-reliant and self-organized communities are the building blocks for change. Third, traditional knowledge that coevolves out of culture and place is a critical asset. It needs to be preserved, restored, and used. Fourth, the true harvest of evolution is encoded in nature’s design. Nature is more than a bank of resources to draw on: it is the best model we have for all the design problems we face.

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