Designing Regenerative Cultures

If humanity is to endure, the coming months must hold healing, not just of populations across the globe from the coronavirus, but of the Earth herself. As is true of many zoonoses (diseases that jumped from animals), this virus emerged from pressure humans put on a global ecosystem. [1]

A lack of healthy, natural habitats weakens the immune systems of animals and the resulting sicknesses pass rapidly through them. With each infection, it pops up a chance for a virus to mutate into one that can sicken humans, and sometimes, global livelihoods. As such, a vaccine alone, no matter how effective, will not tip the balance toward health because COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet. The renewal of a healthy relationship to our one shared mother, planet Earth, is the cure. [2]

Education for sustainability needs to provide basic ecological and social literacy. An increase in the ability of every global citizen to make informed and responsible decisions about his/her participation in natural and social processes is a key factor in facilitating the transformation towards sustainability. The ability to take decisions from a more holistic perspective and the skill to design, create, and act in accordance with those decisions is crucial now more than ever. 

The ESC project "Sustainable Synergies" is all about it: the way to get through is to educate in order to increase our understanding of the intricate web of processes by which nature and culture interact. Culture emerges from the relationships and interactions of living beings - in particular human beings - with each other and their wider material environment. As such, culture is best regarded as an expression of nature. [3] 

Education is a powerful facilitator of cultural change: it can revise our intentions, the source of our choices, towards the re-integration of cultural into natural processes.

Eco-literacy enables us to participate more appropriately in natural processe while helping us to develop intelligence and ability to meet our needs within the limits of local ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. 

Ecological/natural design (call it Permaculture if you want) is about how to make things that fit gracefully over long periods of time in a particular ecological, social and cultural context… It is not just a smarter way to do the same old thing, producing "green" goods or rationalizing and sustaining the current consumer culture; It is about how to create communities in which people grow to be responsible citizens who do not confuse what they have with who they are. The biggest design challenge is to transform a wasteful society into one that meets human needs with elegant simplicity. [4]

This kind of approach aims to humanity’s appropriate and sustainable participation in the Life support system of the planet. [5]

Design's underlying motivation is the maintenance or improvement of health as an emergent property of whole systems at the scale of individuals, local communities and eco-systems as well as on a planetary scale.

Furthermore, this introduces the concept of an emerging natural design movement. It suggests that the greatest synergistic effect on the transformation of human society towards more sustainable practices will occur when the diverse, already existing sustainable design solutions are integrated into a coherent movement that is engaged in trans-disciplinary dialogue.

This cooperation has to include the widest range of fields: health-care, education, food systems, politic, transports, architecture, community design, urban design, industrial ecology and bioregional planning. [6]

The implementation of the vast majority of solutions will have to occur from the ground up and include the full participation of ecological-aware citizenships. To achieve such participation people have to be empowered at the local level to take part in the decision-making process, through access to education for resilience: it is always needed a meaningful and desirable vision of sustainability in order to actively engage in conscious social and ecological design. [7]

The most promising way towards a more sustainable civilization lies in the linking of regenerative design solutions across scales, engaging in a cooperation that reflects Nature's intrinsic feature of deep interdipence of her majestic complexity.

[1] Protect human health preserving biodiversity https://www.wwf.it/pandemie_e_distruzione_degli_ecosistemi/

[2] James Maskalyk and Dave Courchene, The Globe and Mail - December 2020

[3] Peter Watson, "The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New"

[4] David Orr, "Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World"

[5] Brian Goodwin, 1999

[6] Bill Mollison, "Permaculture, a Designer's Manual" 

[7] Dragon Dreaming Design Method http://www.dragondreaminginstitute.org/