Productivity and sustainability of permaculture: helping populations to cope with their environmental, economic and social issues

Although Permaculture has been successfully implemented and used various times over the past 40 years, too little is known about this notion and about how it can offer to humanity the solutions of tomorrow to cope with the current world situation. Throughout their books, articles and trainings, most authors and experts – such as Bill Mollison, David Holmgren or Toby Hemenway - used the same systematic and scientific approach to expose the major problems of the world. The same authors also tackled the solutions of these problems in the same way: what are the environmental and social problems that the world is currently facing, and how can Permaculture deal with them on a global scale. However, the latter lacks in implementing what is called a daily life oriented approach to the same topic, that is to say reflecting upon a profitable and sustainable way of dealing with the problems mentioned above that directly impact our daily life. This approach, which involves the concepts of livelihood, health and close environment, is better visualized by the majority of the population who can explore the various concepts of Permaculture via a different angle and get a clearer understanding of how Permaculture works and how it can help them in their daily life. Thus, this dissertation aims to determine whether Permaculture can be an answer to the main socio-environmental challenges that are poverty alleviation and sustainable development by examining the benefits of Permaculture in terms of productivity and sustainability. Productivity to ascertain whether Permaculture is able to support households’ daily life, and sustainability to ascertain whether Permaculture designed systems are meant to indefinitely last and be regenerative instead of degenerative for the environment. This thesis gathers, confronts and further develops the existing knowledge around Permaculture in order to encourage and guide people in adopting Permaculture ethics, principles and methods to ensure a better economic and ecologic environment for themselves and a sustainable future for their children.