So how much can we handle?
As usual in permaculture it is a given that we should be able to manage our own dwelling. This is the center of our activities. Whether we lease or own privately or in
coops, we have the opportunity to influence the cirulation of resources related to the dwelling. This is where we can make coherent assessments/analyses of the circulation of water, earth/materials, energy and air – and this is where we can apply permaculture strategies such as delay of the flow, accumulation of nutrients and construction of plant systems.
The next level is the village or block. The organizational level here is the guild. It is a forum where people meet on equal terms to discuss issues of mutual interest – in guilds of the yard, block or street. Coherent ecological analyses are made on this level too, and sustainable systems or permaculture is laid down as the goal.
The area or neighbourhood is the next level, governed by an assembly of the people. Everyone has the right to participate – as an individual or as a member of a group. Groups secure a binding coherence in stead of unrestrictedœopinionating.
The ultimate level is the bioregion. This is the organizational level on which the basic questions about distribution of wealth must be clarified. This is where resources are allocated to each local community and shared between rich and poor, powerful and powerless. It is also within the natural limits of this area that all our basic needs must be met. So even in a globalized world, this is where the fundamental decisions pertaining to our existence are made. Considering the greed, cynicism and selfindulgence with which human beings so far have ruled the world, there is no cause for grand optimism when it comes to how we can build a responsible, sensible and fairly just system that allows us to make decisions on equal terms – in relation to natural resources as well as to a socially responsible distribution.
The UN report from 1998, Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies (the so-called CHE) inquires into the causes and effects of death, decease, hunger and the refugee problem. The human sufferings that follow are unbearably well-known to everyone through the mass media, but the causes often remain unexplained. This report points out several causes, all of them linked to human decisions: the wearing down or destruction of natural resources by governments or private people and companies, the majority rule of the parliamentary democracy, the power of people from outside the region in the exploitation of local resources.
In a future decisionmaking process those causes should be countered:
The intrusion of outside interests by securing regional selfmanagement of resources, regional ownership etc. (this clashes vehemently with the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the interests of the superpowers).
The majority principle of the parliamentary democracy, the fixed representation and the closed committee procedures must be changed to the ways of working and arriving at decisions sketched out above.
The wearing down and destruction of nature must be countered by setting up ecological standards
within the regional framework.
How such a system can be organized, I don’t think you can study anywhere in actual life today. But – on the regional level a partybased system with parliaments, principles for the protection of minorities, and a global set of rules for autonomy plus ecological standards could possibly be operable. Presumably it is a condition, however, that a local culture of selfmanagement exists to take care of the distribution of resources. Without that there will be nobody to implement the decisions, and none of those who actually implement and distribute the local resources, will be able to control decisions, promises and execution of programs of the political parties on a regional level.
In such a future structure, the existing municipalities and states will only serve as potential, possibly practical, administrative partners in cooperation and have no independent authority. So much more since a number of studies from the last 100 years still more explicitly points to the existing western model of society as a fundamentally nationalistically/militaristically based model – developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in the European center of powers to create a certain balance between the regional interests in natural resources. This pattern has been repeated on a global scale – and will presumably con-
tinue to do so as long as the present parliamentary/capitalistic/market-oriented system is allowed to prevail.
Large transnational organizations such as the EU, the USA, the SNG, China, India and others in this respect only act as further national states in the international battle about the resources.
The only transregional institution that would be able to secure regional autonomy and prevent infringement in the long run is the United Nations.