Most newcomers to permaculture meet the 12 principles first: observe and interact, catch and store energy, obtain a yield, and so on. Useful, but they sit on top of something deeper. The principles are how. The ethics are why. Without the three ethics underneath, the principles flatten into a checklist of clever gardening techniques, and you lose the part that makes permaculture different from any other organic gardening method.
The three ethics are Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, codified by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the late 1970s and 1980s and still the philosophical bedrock of every Permaculture Design Course taught today. For broader context on the discipline as a whole, see our practical guide to permaculture for gardeners. This guide explains what each ethic actually means, how the three relate to one another, where the third ethic has been refined, and how you turn each one into action this growing season. Every claim cites Mollison, Holmgren, the Permaculture Association, the Permaculture Research Institute, or peer-reviewed work.
Key Takeaway
The three permaculture ethics are Earth Care (regenerate soil, water, biodiversity), People Care (meet human needs through dignified systems), and Fair Share (return surplus, set limits on consumption). They were defined by Bill Mollison in the original Permaculture Design Course and refined by David Holmgren and later practitioners like Looby Macnamara. The ethics define why we design; the 12 principles define how. Skip the ethics and you have organic gardening with a different label.
The ethics were articulated by Tasmanian biologist Bill Mollison and his graduate student David Holmgren during their early collaboration at the University of Tasmania in the mid-1970s. Their first joint publication, Permaculture One (1978), introduced the concept of permanent agriculture as a designed alternative to industrial farming. The ethical framework was crystallised in Mollison's Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988) and reformulated by Holmgren in his 2002 book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.
The historical context matters. Mollison and Holmgren were responding to the same crises that produced Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), the 1973 oil crisis, and the early reports on biodiversity loss. They saw conventional agriculture as the largest single driver of ecological collapse and concluded that any solution had to start with explicit ethical commitments rather than tactical fixes. The Permaculture Association UK's official summary remains the cleanest one-page reference.
The first ethic is to care for the planet on which we depend. Holmgren's official definition reads: "Earth Care: Care for the soil, the species, the atmosphere, the forests, the microhabitats, the animals and the oceans". In practice, Earth Care means designing systems that build soil rather than deplete it, capture water rather than waste it, and increase biodiversity rather than eliminate it.
The evidence base for Earth Care has matured substantially since the 1980s. Rodale Institute's long-term Farming Systems Trial, now in its fourth decade, documents that organic and regenerative systems sequester 26 percent more soil carbon than conventional, hold significantly more water during drought, and yield comparably in normal years. EarthDay.org's regenerative agriculture brief summarises the broader research linking soil practice to climate outcomes. USDA Climate Hubs publish ongoing biochar trial data showing soil carbon gains and water retention improvements.
For a home gardener, Earth Care is concrete: stop tilling, build a compost system, plant cover crops in any bare bed, retain rainwater on site (swales, rain barrels, mulch), and choose plants that support pollinators and ground-nesting insects. Our composting for beginners guide covers the soil practice end of this; the companion planting chart covers the biodiversity end.
The second ethic is to care for ourselves, our families, our communities, and the wider human world. Holmgren's Permaculture Principles website defines People Care as ensuring "people have access to the resources necessary for their existence". This is the ethic newcomers most often skip, and the one experienced practitioners like Looby Macnamara have spent the most effort on developing.
People Care operates on three nested scales:
Self. Burnt-out gardeners are not regenerating anything. Sleep, food, rest, and pacing are part of the ethic. Looby Macnamara's People and Permaculture (free PDF) is the foundational reference on this domain.
Family and household. Designing your home, schedule, and food system for the people inside it. This includes accessible garden design (raised beds for older bodies, low-maintenance perennial crops for busy weeks).
Community. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), seed swaps, gleaning programs, community gardens. USDA's National Agricultural Library on CSA documents the practice; the National Gleaning Project coordinates US gleaning networks. One Community Global tracks ecovillage-scale People Care case studies. The Global Ecovillage Network covers the most ambitious community-scale implementations.
Why This Works: Earth Care and People Care Are Inseparable
You cannot regenerate the planet while immiserating its inhabitants, and you cannot care for people on a degraded planet. Mollison's insistence on linking the two was partly a critique of 1970s deep ecology, which sometimes framed humans as simply parasitic on nature. The permaculture position is that humans are nature designing for itself, and that healthy human communities are part of healthy ecosystems. This is the same logic at work when our 12 permaculture principles guide talks about integration over segregation.
The third ethic is the most contested in modern permaculture. Mollison's original formulation was "Setting Limits to Population and Consumption". Holmgren reframed it as Fair Share, sometimes written as "Fair Share: Return of the surplus". Looby Macnamara has more recently proposed Future Care as a name that better captures the intergenerational obligation embedded in the ethic.
The substance is the same across all three names. Tierra Permaculture's reading of "return of the surplus" captures it well: when a system produces more than it needs (a fruit tree that yields more than your family eats, a chicken flock that produces more eggs than you can use, a garden that produces more seeds than you can plant), the ethical move is to redistribute the surplus into the system, the community, or the future, not to hoard it.
In practice this looks like:
Seed saving and sharing. The single highest-leverage Fair Share practice for gardeners. Save seeds from your best-performing varieties; trade or give them at local seed swaps. Heather Jo Flores's seed-saving guide on Free Permaculture is the most accessible introduction.
Composting and biological return. All organic matter eventually goes back to the soil. Designing systems where the byproduct of one element feeds the next is the most direct expression of Fair Share at the ecosystem level.
Gleaning, sharing surplus harvest. Donating excess produce to food banks, neighbours, or community fridges. Joining a CSA where surplus is intentionally shared.
Voluntary limits. Choosing to consume less than you can afford. The original Mollison framing of "limits to consumption" is uncomfortable for a culture built on growth, but Holmgren is explicit that this is the ethic doing its hardest work. A summary of Holmgren's ethics talks elaborates.
Holmgren's Permaculture Flower visualises how the three ethics support seven domains of action: Land and Nature Stewardship, Built Environment, Tools and Technology, Education and Culture, Health and Spiritual Wellbeing, Finance and Economics, and Land Tenure and Community Governance. The ethics are the centre; the domains are petals; the design principles are the spiral path between them.
| Layer | What It Is | Example |
| Three ethics | The values that say what we should be doing | "Care for the soil" |
| 12 design principles | The strategies that say how we do it | "Use and value renewable resources" |
| Seven flower domains | The fields of human activity where ethics and principles apply | Land Stewardship, Built Environment, Education, Finance... |
| Specific techniques | The tactics in any given garden or system | Sheet mulch, swales, food forest, herb spiral |
Sources: Permaculture Principles: 12 Design Principles, Permaculture Flower (seven domains), Holmgren Design: What is Permaculture
For the principles layer specifically, see our 12 permaculture principles guide.
Theory matters, but the ethics only mean anything if they change what you do. Here is a practical translation for a typical home gardener in zones 5-8.
Earth Care: stop tilling and build soil this season
Switch to no-dig methods on at least one bed. Plant a cover crop (crimson clover, winter rye, or buckwheat) on any bed not currently producing. Compost everything organic, and apply 2 to 3 inches of mulch to bare soil. Provide pollinator habitat by leaving some flowering plants to bloom and seed.
People Care: design for the humans, including yourself
Make at least one ergonomic decision: a raised bed at waist height, drip irrigation that takes care of itself, perennial crops that need less attention than annuals. Share a meal cooked from your harvest with someone outside your household once this month. If you are part of a community garden or CSA, show up reliably.
Fair Share: return surplus to the system
Save seeds from at least one open-pollinated variety this season. Donate excess produce to a food pantry, gleaning network, or neighbour. Compost crop residues and food scraps rather than putting them in landfill. Participate in (or start) a local seed swap.
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Send Me the ChartCommon Mistake to Avoid
Treating ethics as optional or interchangeable with principles. The 12 design principles can be applied to a chemical-intensive monoculture with negative outcomes; what stops them is the three ethics underneath. If your design fails on Earth Care, People Care, or Fair Share, it is not permaculture, regardless of how many swales or guilds it includes.
The other misunderstandings appear repeatedly in permaculture forums:
"Fair Share is anti-capitalist". The ethic is about ecological surplus, not political ideology. Holmgren explicitly avoids the political reading. The point is that natural systems return surplus to the system; human systems should learn from this pattern.
"People Care is just self-help". No. People Care includes designing accessible food systems, supporting community resilience, and engaging with the humans you share land with. Looby Macnamara's People and Permaculture spells out the difference.
"Permaculture is religious or spiritual". The ethics are secular and pragmatic, derived from observation of ecological systems. They are compatible with most religious and spiritual frameworks but do not require any.
"The ethics are too vague to act on". The vagueness is intentional and contextual. A market gardener in Vermont, a balcony grower in Lagos, and a homesteader in Tasmania all apply the same three ethics to radically different conditions. The ethics scale; tactical recipes do not. Our guide to permaculture around the world covers the cultural variation.
If you want primary sources rather than summaries, three texts are foundational:
Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988). The original encyclopaedic reference. Dense but definitive. PDF available here.
David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002). The modern restatement and the source of the 12 design principles still taught today. PDF available here.
Looby Macnamara, People and Permaculture (2nd edition). The deepest treatment of the People Care ethic. Free PDF here.
For a curated list of further reading, Good Earth Design's top 10 permaculture books is a reasonable starting point. To put the ethics into spatial design practice, our permaculture zones guide walks through the practical layout, and our food forest guide shows the ethics applied to a productive multi-layer system.
What are the three permaculture ethics?
Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. They were defined by Bill Mollison in the original Permaculture Design Course in the late 1970s and codified by David Holmgren in his 2002 book. Earth Care covers regenerating soil, water, and biodiversity. People Care covers meeting human needs through dignified systems. Fair Share covers returning surplus to the ecosystem and community rather than hoarding it.
Who created the permaculture ethics?
Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Tasmania, Australia, in the 1970s. Their 1978 book Permaculture One introduced the integrated framework. Mollison's 1988 Designers' Manual formalised the three ethics. Holmgren's 2002 Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability reframed them in their current form.
What is the difference between permaculture ethics and principles?
The ethics define what we should be doing (the values). The principles define how we do it (the design strategies). The three ethics are universal across all permaculture practice; the 12 design principles are tactical guidance for applying the ethics in specific contexts. You can think of ethics as the "why" and principles as the "how".
What does Fair Share mean in permaculture?
Fair Share is the third ethic, sometimes called "Return of the Surplus" or more recently "Future Care". It means that any system producing more than it needs should redistribute the surplus to the wider system, the community, or future generations rather than hoarding it. In practice this looks like seed saving and sharing, composting all organic surplus back to soil, gleaning programs, and voluntary limits on consumption.
How do I apply permaculture ethics to my garden?
Start with one practical action per ethic. For Earth Care: stop tilling, plant a cover crop, build a compost system. For People Care: design ergonomic beds, share harvest with a neighbour or food bank, join a CSA. For Fair Share: save seeds, return organic matter to soil, contribute to a local seed swap. The ethics are scalable; even a balcony garden can express all three.
Is permaculture religious or spiritual?
No. The ethics are secular and grounded in observation of ecological systems. They are compatible with most religious or spiritual frameworks but do not require any. Mollison was explicit about this: permaculture's ethics emerge from how natural systems actually function, not from doctrine.
Why do some permaculture practitioners say "Future Care" instead of "Fair Share"?
Looby Macnamara has proposed Future Care as a more accurate name for the third ethic, capturing the intergenerational obligation built into it. The substance is identical to Mollison's "limits to consumption" and Holmgren's "Fair Share". The name change reflects ongoing refinement of the ethical framework, not a fundamental shift.
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