Sustainability

How Permaculture closely relates to sustainability:

Permaculture remarkably supports all of these 17 SDGs and directly contributes to 13 of them:

• #1: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”: Permaculture eradicates poverty by creating access to food, water, energy, shelter and designing self-sufficient communites.
• #2: “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”: The first focus of permaculture is on developing regenerative farming systems that produce a diversity of healthy crops.
• #3: “Ensure heathy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”: Nature is a healer and Permaculture provides access to healthy lifestyles with clean food, clean air, clean water and medicinal plants.
• #6: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”: Permaculture systems harvest, slow and store rainwater and create closed-loop systems where used water can be directed to and filtered through greywater treatement systems (such as reed beds) and reused for plants and productive systems to continue its cycle trough the evaporation and cloud formation processes.
• #7: “Ensure affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”: Permaculture optimises the use of passive energies such as solar and gravity and embraces the cleaner renewable energy systems that provide alternatives to fossi fuel.
• #9: “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”: Permaculture promotes the use of earthship, natural building and other techniques that are resilient, fire-proof, natural, non-toxic and adapted to a given climate. It also embraces innovative techniques such as hempcrete and mycotecture.
• #10: “Reduce inequality within and among countries”: Permaculture can be applied anywhere from desertic to sub-arctic areas to empower all communities to meet their own needs and become more self-reliant, building on the advantages that each bioregion can bring to setup their own adaptative systems.
• #11:”Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”: The very definition of Permaculture is to design sustainable communities based on observing and mimicking the attributes of diversity, stability and resilience of the natural ecosystems.
• #12: “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”: One of the third ethics of Permaculture is “fair share”, which means setting a limit to consumption and sharing the surplus. It is about designing productive systems that are also regenerative.
• #13: “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”: Practicing permaculture allows people to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, to divert from fossil energies and to regenerate degraded ecosystems. It directly tackles many leading causes of global warming by reducing over-consumption, food miles, pollution and other destructive practices.
• #14: “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”: Permaculture takes care of life below water by ensuring clean water cycles, no-waste systems and onsite fish habitat such as in ponds and riparian areas. 
• #15: “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”: Permaculture is a regenerative design science that focuses on the restoration and/or establishment of perennial systems such as food forests and native habitat for plants and wildlife of a given bioregion.
• #16: ‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”: Permaculture integrates rather than segregates, it is applied with the whole in mind to design systems that benefit all life form, reducing circumstances prone to conflicts. In recent years, it has grown into a global movement that collaborates with local and regional governments, education partners and grassroot organisations to build a better world for all.

Find-out more about the SDGs and progress here: https://sdgs.un.org/