lture, which involves clearing a natural area of trees and life immediately for large monocrop output and maximum financial profit in a minimum of time. This Promethean approach is one that quickly destroys ecosystems by immediately wiping out all that previously lived in the area and by applying fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to the land, while the permaculture approach that values smallness and slowness gradually strengthens ecosystems by increasing biodiversity, optimising moisture retention, creating organic fertility, etc. Mollison (1988: 53) provides some simple practical guidance on how to keep the implementation of such a permaculture system small and slow: the “golden rule is to develop the nearest area first, get it under control, and expand the perimeter. A single perimeter will then enclose all your needs.” Each permaculture action within the perimeter can also be chosen wisely for the optimisation of the components of the permaculture system: “Make the least change for the greatest possible effect” (Mollison 1988: 35).
An important feature of small and slow solutions is that, being small and slow, they are within the reach of the average person. The average person is generally dependant on ACID’s large-scale systems, systems that via numerous means are perpetuated whether the average person likes them or not – see Chapter 4 for information pertaining to selected perpetuation mechanisms. If one is caught up in consumer lifestyle where s/he has very few realistic options but to compete in the job market to pay for the necessities of life, it is unlikely that s/he can make big and quick changes to her or his life due to constraints of time, money, energy, etc. However, the small and slow implementation of changes to people’s lives allows them gradually to make steps towards a compost system, a food garden, water catchment and storage systems, grey water systems, alternative energy sources, etc. These small changes that are made gradually eventually add up, and eventually some level of self-sufficiency will be attained, which is a solution (albeit one that comes about slowly) to the problem of settlements where each household has water and energy piped in, sewage and grey water piped out, and no local sources of sustenance – all of which comes at immense ecological expense as seen in Chapters 1 and 2. It must also be mentioned here that this small and slow approach to implementing solutions to ecological problems can be applied not only in the individualistic context of ‘the average person’, but the average neighbourhood, city, region, and country – the methodology remains much the same.
A brief comment must also be made here in support of small and slow solutions characteristic of permaculture endeavours, as opposed to large and fast approaches common in ACID. If a proposed ‘solution’ turns out to be inappropriate for a specific context, then due to it being small and slow it would not have caused too much damage in an existing system. An example of this in permaculture is introducing a plant that at first grows quickly and provides shade in an overly sunny area, which may seem like an asset in a hot and dry climate. But later the plant may prove to be invasive, to reduce the growth rate of other plants, and to starve other plants of water – this is not a beneficial relationship between plant species and should be avoided in a permaculture system. Having slowly introduced a small number of such an invasive plant into the system, it is relatively easy to eliminate it from the system, allowing for different shade-providing plants to be incorporated instead; nothing much would have been lost in this endeavour. On the other, large and fast ‘solutions’ in ACID – for example, a massive fish farm in the bay of a city – appear at massive financial and energy costs, so there is incentive to keep them running even when massive ecological problems occur, in this instance problems like an increase in shark attacks at local beaches, as well as algae issues from the unnaturally high levels of fish-food substances (mo