Sustainable, sharing communities explored in Karen Litfin’s book ‘Ecovillages’

The fields of Konohana Ecovillage all lie under the watchful eye of Mt. Fuji (Image courtesy of Karen Litfin).

After twenty years of teaching global environmental politics at a major research university, watching the state of the world go from bad to worse, I became increasingly curious: “Who is devising ways of living that could work for the long haul?” My research led me to ecovillages: communities the world over that are seeding micro-societies within the husk of the old. I traveled to 5 continents, living in 14 ecovillages and doing in-depth interviews with their members over the course of a year, and publishing the results in Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community. My sampling reflects their diversity: rural and urban; rich, poor and middle class; secular and spiritual. I was also curious to know what, if anything, unifies the astonishingly diverse Global Ecovillage Network.

I learned that “sustainability” varies with context. Ecovillagers in the Global North focus on reducing social alienation, consumption and waste, whereas those in the Global South focus on village-based employment, gender equality and food sovereignty. Los Angeles Ecovillage, for instance, is an island of frugality in the heart of Southern California’s consumer culture, whereas Colufifa, a Senegal-based village network, is primarily concerned with hunger prevention. Yet both are drawn to bicycles and permaculture, suggesting that ‘sustainability’ has some common ground in east Hollywood and west Africa.

Most important, I found evidence of an emerging common worldview in the global ecovillage movement, including these basic tenets:

• The web of life is sacred, and humanity is an integral part of that web.
• Global trends are approaching a crisis point.
• Positive change will come primarily from the bottom up.
• Community is an adventure in relational living—ecologically, socially, and psychologically.

As a consequence of these beliefs, ecovillagers are unusually sensitive to the consequences of their actions, both near and far, and unusually open to sharing. If I had to choose one word to express the essence of ecovillage culture, it would be sharing. Because ecovillages in the Global North share material resources, both their consumption and incomes are quite low compared to their home country averages. At Earthaven in North Carolina and Sieben Linden in Germany, for instance, members had annual incomes of less than $12,000. Despite being far below the poverty line, they described their lives as “rich” and “abundant.”

Material factors like self-built homes and home-grown food tell only part of the story. A more encompassing explanation is the prevalence of sharing—not only of property and vehicles, but of the intangibles that define community: ideas, skills, dreams, stories, and deep introspection. Ecovillagers consistently reported that human relationships are both the most challenging and most rewarding aspects of ecovillage life. “Being here is like being in a fire,” said one. “Your lack of trust, your anger, your family neuroses—everything that separates you from the world comes out here!” Ecovillages are, as much as anything, laboratories for personal and interpersonal transformation.
In many ways, my global journey was a paradoxical one. As an international relations scholar acutely aware of the global nature of our problems, why was I touring micro-communities in search of a viable future? Even including the 15,000 Sri Lankan member villages in Sarvodaya—by far the largest member of the Global Ecovillage Network—less than 0.05% of the world’s population lives in an ecovillage. Time is far too short to construct ecovillages for 7 billion people but not—as the book’s final chapter, “Scaling It Up,” suggests—too short to apply their lessons in our neighborhoods, cities and towns, countries, and even at the level of international policy. Given that some of Earth’s life-support systems may have passed the tipping point, success is far from guaranteed. What is guaranteed, however, is a sense of shared adventure and worthy purpose—qualities I found in abundance in ecovillages.
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This post was written by Karen Litfin, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. You can read the first chapter of her book Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community here.

 

Peter Kelley

News and Information

The forest provides firewood for the 40,000 Tamil villagers who live around Auroville, founded in 1968 in South India. Auroville is now home to 2,000 people from 43 different countries and is one of the few places on Earth where biodiversity is actually increasing.

Karen Litfin is a University of Washington associate professor of political science and author of the book “Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community.” She answered a few questions about the book, and her work, for UW Today.
Q: What is the main message of “Ecovillages”?
A: After teaching global environmental politics for two decades and watching planetary conditions deteriorate, I grew disenchanted with top-down solutions. I also grew tired of making my students anxious, depressed and guilt-ridden. If our ways of living are unraveling planetary life-support systems, then we must answer the question: How, then, shall we live?
My search for models led me on a one-year journey around the world to ecovillages, intentional communities aspiring to live sustainably. Living in 14 ecovillages on five continents taught me that not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over.

“Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community” was published by Polity.

The point, however, is not that we all should live in ecovillages; rather, we need to learn from them and scale up their lessons to existing social structures, from the household to our neighborhoods to our cities, nations and even to the level of global governance.
Q: How did you choose which ecovillages to visit?
A: I took a year to map my journey and arrange the logistics. I selected for “success,” which I conceived as an amalgam of factors including longevity, size and reputation. Most communities I visited, for instance, had a 10-year history with at least 100 members.
Because I wanted to understand the movement’s global character, I also selected for diversity: rural, urban and suburban; global north/global south; rich, poor, and middle class; secular, religious and spiritual: high-tech and low-tech. Across this enormous diversity, I then looked for the common strands.
Q: You write amusingly that the term “ecovillage” may conjure images of “shabby rural outposts populated by long-haired iconoclasts,” but that you found them less easy to pigeonhole. How instead would you describe them, and what do they have in common?
A: I saw a few scruffy shacks but for the most part, I found tidy, smallish homes that reflected a kind of organic beauty. I also found unusually capable and articulate people committed to integrating the four dimensions of sustainability: ecology, economics, community and consciousness.
I learned that “sustainability” varies with context. Ecovillagers in the global north focus on reducing social alienation, consumption and waste, whereas the global south focuses on “sustainabilizing” traditional rural villages. Los Angeles Ecovillage, for instance, is an island of frugality in the heart of consumer culture, whereas Colufifa, a Senegal-based village network, works to prevent hunger.
Yet both are drawn to bicycles and permaculture, suggesting common ground between east Hollywood to west Africa.
Most important, I found ecovillages embrace these basic tenets:

• The web of life is sacred and humanity is an integral part of that web.
• Global trends are approaching a crisis point.
• Positive change will come primarily from the bottom up.

If I had to encapsulate ecovillage culture in one word, it would be sharing. Because ecovillages share material resources, both their consumption and incomes can be far below their home country averages.
Material factors like self-built homes and home-grown food tell only part of the story. More important is the prevalence of sharing — not only of property and vehicles, but of the intangibles that define community: ideas, skills, challenges, and celebrations.

One year, 14 ecovillages:
Auroville — India
Colufifa — Senegal, the Gambia
Crystal Waters — Australia
Damanhur — Italy
Earthhaven — North Carolina, USA
EcoVillage at Ithaca — upstate New York
Findhorn — United Kingdom
Komohana — Japan
Los Angeles Ecovillage
Sarvodaya — Sri Lanka
Sieben Linden — Germany
Svanholm — Denmark
UfaFabrik — Germany
ZEGG, Center for Experimental Cultural Design – Germany

Q: How does the ecovillage movement, if we can call it that, differ from “back to nature” trends of previous decades?
A: Ecovillages are far more integrated into society and many of them are in cities. Rather than separating themselves, ecovillages tend to be educational centers; their members tend to be socially and politically engaged. The Global Ecovillage Network, for instance, works with the United Nations and the European Union.
Q: You note people saying, “That’s all fine for those lucky ecovillagers, but what about the rest of us?” How do you reply?
A: We should understand that being an ecovillager is more a consequence of inspiration and hard work than luck. And, because sustainability is the nonnegotiable precondition for inhabiting Earth over the long haul, “the rest of us” would be wise to learn from ecovillages.
Q: This has been a very personal journey for you. How has this work changed you?
A: First, the journey gave me a strong sense of grounded hope: I have seen and touched some seedlings for a viable future. Second, while ecovillages are not for everyone, some people yearn for the intimacy, focus and integrated solutions of ecovillage life. I learned that I am such a person.
Third, I wanted to write a book that would be both emotionally and intellectually engaging, which required learning a whole new way of writing — and therefore thinking.
Q: Based on what you’ve learned, what suggestions would you offer to people looking for sustainability in everyday life?
A: Beyond the green practices that most of us are familiar with —conservation, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, etc.— I would emphasize the social dimension of sustainability.
The stronger the sense of community, the more we are willing to share. Beyond our households and neighborhoods, we need to scale up the lessons to every level of governance.

Photos by Karen Litfin.

Karen Litfin was “thoroughly impressed” by her first stop, Earthhaven, a 320-acre off-the-grid community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. In its 15 years, she said, the community has created “a rapidly evolving expertise in forestry, a range of natural building styles, 100 percent energy and water self-sufficiency and several thriving farms — all in what was once raw forest.” This the Council Hall, a 13-side structure built by the community.

The forest provides firewood for the 40,000 Tamil villagers who live around Auroville. “Founded in 1968 upon a severely eroded plateau in south India, the first order of business for the pioneers was to revitalize the land. Three million trees later, Auroville is home to over 2,000 people from 43 different countries and is one of the few places on Earth where biodiversity is actually increasing,” Litfin writes.

Larger homes are built with compressed earth bricks, made from a simple machine pioneered by Auroville’s Earth Institute, and run on solar electricity.

Litfin attends a meeting of village leaders in Colufifa, in Senegal and the Gambia. Colufifa is not an ecovillage exactly, Litfin notes — more a Senegal-based network of 350 West African villages seeing to become self-sufficient. Meeting topics ranged from plastic bags clogging local waterways to poultry vaccination programs.

Sekou Bodian teaches high school biology in Colufifa by day and, with the help of a light bulb and a small generator, plants trees at night. By his estimate, he has planted 300,000 trees in his lifetime.

Findhorn, in Moray, on the northeast coast of Scotland, was formed in 1962, Litfin writes, “when three spiritual seekers with no previous gardening experience transformed a barren, windy bluff on the North Seat into a cornucopia.” Litfin herself spent some time working in the garden.

Konohana Family, Litfin writes, is an ecovillage “that sits under the towering presence of Japan’s Mt. Fuji (and) takes its name from the goddess once thought to inhabit this venerable mountain.” The village is almost completely food self-sufficient, and here residents prepare organic vegetarian meals for hundreds of people in the region. As of 2012, the village comprised about 58 adults and 25 children.

L.A. Eco-village was founded in 1992 in a multiethnic neighborhood in East Hollywood. “As a consequence,” Litfin writes, the village “is the most ethnically diverse community I visited.”

Litfin writes that she at first glance, the village’s two renovated tenement buildings were unremarkable. But around back, she found the village’s “lush permaculture garden is alive with free-range chickens, a compost pile, and dozens of varieties of fruit trees and vegetables.”

“In a country where agrochemicals are used intensively, Sarvodaya trains farmers to cultivate rice (shown here) and other crops organically,” writes Litfin. “When people ask how many ecovillages there are in the world, I tell them it depends upon whether you count the 15,000 Sri Lankan villages working with Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest nongovernmental organization.”

Litfin writes of this off-the-grid German ecovillage, “Its commitment to one-planet living and a spacious rural environment make Sieben Linden an ideal hands-on learning community for classes and workshops. Founded in 1997 and named for Linden trees on the land, the village is one of several that Litfin says “sprouted in the fertile soil of the East after German reunification.

Svanholm, a rural Danish community, is “a prosperous and highly functional commune,” Litfin writes, with most of its 85 adults and 56 children “living in small ‘home groups’ in this enormous 1749 manor house.” She adds that the commune’s 988 acres devoted to organic farming “dwarf those of most ecovillages and its farmers have played a pivotal role in setting Danish — and therefore European Union — organic standards.”

UfaFabrik, in the heart of West Berlin, was founded in 1979 when about 100 peace activists took over an abandoned Universal Film Studio site, Litfin writes. “Eventually, they gained title to the land and transformed the old film studio into a 160,000-square-foot state-of-the-art ecological demonstration site” visited by up to 200,000 people a year.

All members participate in communal work in this community west of Berlin founded in 1991 called ZEGG, or the Center for Experimental Cultural Design (or Zentrum für esperimentelle Gesellschaftsgestaltung). Here, members raise a big tent for the community’s annual summer camp. Litfin writes that for 15 years, the community has offered courses on a group process to explore feelings developed there called The Forum, “as a tool for fostering greater self-awareness and social bonding.”

Litfin writes, “Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over.”

Source: http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/07/15/sustainable-sharing-communities-explored-in-karen-litfins-book-ecovillages/

When reading Karen Litfin’s inspiring book, I was reminded of my recent visit to the Lancaster Cohousing community on the edge of the village of Halton in northwest England. For more than 10 years, young professionals have been battling with planners, bankers, architects and local residents to build some 40 eco-homes in a rural location, centred around a common house, which features shared facilities such as kitchen, laundry and pantry. Community members also co-run car-sharing and food-buying cooperatives.

The UK’s planning laws are not exactly conducive to setting up such sustainable ventures, as the Lammas community in Pembrokeshire also found out. Setting up shop there was even more complicated, as the community hoped to take over agricultural land and live on it as smallholders, which is impossible within the current legal framework.

Thanks to devolution, however, Wales now has an innovative sustainable development scheme called One Wales: One Planet, which enables rural, land-based livelihoods to be created. To meet its planning permission, Lammas must follow strict rules to minimise its impact on the ecosystem. The community achieves this by following permacultural, off-grid design standards, mimicking nature to sustainably manage the land, in stark contrast to the monocultures of contemporary industrial agriculture.

Lammas and Lancaster Cohousing are the sort of eco-villages that Litfin, a political scientist at the University of Washington, would love. They are part of a growing movement of intentional communities experimenting with new ways of sustainable living. In her quest to learn more about such communities, Litfin travelled the world, visiting 14 ecovillages on five continents. This book is her way of making sense of this research experience, as well as part of a very personal growth story. In lively, honest and reflective prose, she offers deep insight into how this research project has been part of her own mission of living more sustainably.
While Litfin provides us with a range of practical information about the principles of ecovillage organising – including countless nuggets of inspiration that will be useful to anyone, not just those intending to live in communities – she also puts forward a theoretical framework for analysing these emerging ways of sustainable living.

What she calls her “four windows into sustainability” – ecology, economics, community and consciousness – are not particularly new. The triple bottom line and three-legged stool approaches have defined sustainability as the balancing of ecology, economy and society for a long time. Litfin, however, adds the “inner dimension of sustainability, the deeper questions of meaning and cosmological belonging that have informed human existence for ages”.
Their thoughts dominated by economics – jobs, healthcare and education costs – many people in so-called developed countries have lost this dimension of consciousness, as well as their deep connection to nature. The natural world is more likely to enter people’s lives through consumption – eg, organic supermarket food – than via a real connection to the land.
Although the ecovillages Litfin visited are mostly based in developed countries – housing well-educated professionals, like me, who want to exit the rat race by reconnecting to people and the land – it is important to bear in mind that many developing countries are still dominated by rural, land-based communities. Their livelihoods are often threatened by large-scale so-called “development” projects: mining, dams, agri-businesses and forest plantations.

Any attempt to reconnect to the land in the rich world should be celebrated, but we must not overlook the struggles faced by poor rural communities trying to carve out a land-based living at the edges of industrialised capitalism. For the rich to go back to the land is important. Equally important is to enable the poor to stay on the land and make a decent living.

Source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/ecovillages-lessons-for-sustainable-community-by-karen-t-litfin/2010456.article

Mindful Living Revolution

As mindful living revolutionaries, our primary tool (for the heart does not need weapons) is simplicity. When we become clear about our daily intention, and are willing to simplify our purpose without confusion, in other words, when we know that conscious compassionate awareness is our core commitment, nothing stands in our way. Everything in our life experience - every interaction with our self, with one another, with our world-at-large - becomes an opportunity and part of our transformation. Deborah Eden Tull

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing our attention and awareness on the present moment with a gentle curiosity, an openness, and a willingness to be with what is. This gives us the opportunity to disengage from the conditioned mind and let go of unskillful and unsatisfying behaviors and habits, opening ourselves to the world of possibility. Mindfulness is a simple pathway to personal freedom. We can bring compassionate awareness to every moment and every aspect of our lives - from our relationship with ourselves and others to our relationship with work to our relationship with the environment.

Through Mindful Living Revolution, Deborah Eden Tull offers weekly classes, workshops, retreats, and personal consultations, to support us all in our efforts to create a kinder, more sustainable world from the inside out. She also offesr a blog and daily awareness practices on Facebook. Her second book, Mindful Living Revolution: How to Live Sustainably from the Inside Out, is in process.

Deborah Eden Tull’s blog: http://www.deborahedentull.com/schedule.html

Join the Mindful Living Revolution Facebook page for daily awareness practices to cultivate a kinder, more sustainable world from the inside out.

Source: http://www.deborahedentull.com/mindful.html

Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto,

Layoffs. Failing companies. Collapsing economies. Tainted products. Scarce resources. These are but a few of the seemingly intractable problems that plague the world we live in today. And these problems will only get worse—unless we change how we do business.

That calls for the relentless pursuit not of short-term profitability, but of long-term sustainability—and that doesn’t mean “green.” Leading business strategist Adam Werbach pushes sustainability well beyond quaint notions of saving the planet. In Strategy for Sustainability, Werbach redefines the movement to address not just environmental and economic trends, but also social and cultural ones.

Werbach underscores that strategy has always been about making profits first, and that can’t change. But what must change is how we go about making those profits. He proposes a new business strategy framework that is keenly attuned to the world around us, flexible enough to respond to rapid change, and focused on the long view. A strategy for sustainability requires constantly analyzing changes in society, technology and resources to determine how these changes will impact your company—and creating “North Star” goals that tie your success to positive global trends you see developing. From there, you can implement the three core tools of sustainability—making information transparent, engaging people inside your company, and leveraging networks of customers, suppliers, and communities—to identify and solve pressing problems.

Through success stories within companies from Xerox to method to Wal-Mart, Werbach shows how some companies are already realizing profits by putting sustainability at the core of their business. Not with top-down directives from executives, but from dozens, even hundreds of small steps taken by people at every level of their companies.

The sustainability movement is just beginning—and you have the chance to reinvent everything. The question is: what will you do?

Adam Werbach is a premier thought leader on business initiatives around sustainability, Global CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S, former Sierra Club President, and the author of many influential writings on sustainability including the 1997 book Act Now, Apologize Later.

Source: http://www.strategyforsustainability.com

How to Sustain a Business in Turbulent Times

This is the subtitle of Adam Werbach’s new book “Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto”, available July 2009. Adam Werbach, Author, Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S and one of the world’s leading experts in sustainability, joins Maria Surricchio to discuss the core ideas in the book. Adam works with companies like Walmart, P&G, General Mills and WellPoint that have nearly $1 trillion in combined annual sales, in countries as diverse as China, South Africa and Brazil to mention a few. Adam explains how the idea of sustainability needs to extend well beyond the limited concept of saving the planet and challenges the notion of the “triple bottom line” , showing how business can and should prosper by linking their goal of serving a higher purpose to delivering long-term sustained profitability: the only meaningful business metric. In doing so, he demonstrates how a strategy for sustainability strengthens and energizes companies, stimulates increased levels of game-changing innovation and vigorously engages employees at all levels in the organization. Adam will be sharing more of the ideas in his book at Sustainable Brands 09, May 31-June 4 in Monterey, CA. Listen to their conversation here.

Source: Sustainable Life Media

Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered

Excerpts from "Reconnoitering" in Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered by Woody Tasch. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Chelsea Green Publishing.

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/58/slow-money-excerpt/

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The World is Flat (free audiobook)

The World is Flat - Part I

(mp3, 132MB)

The World is Flat - Part II

(mp3, 123MB)

The World is Flat - Part III

(mp3, 133MB)

To download, right-click (or Control+click) and select "Save Target As".

Discussion Guide

2.56 MB

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Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Hardcover
September 2008

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America

Thomas L. Friedman's no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

www.ThomasLFriedman.com

Corruption, Accountability And Transparency For Sustainable Development

Book review by Adewale Adeyanju

BOOK: Corruption, Accountability And Transparency For Sustainable Development, Edited by Ayorinde Aderinwale ALF Publications (Africa Leadership Forum www.africaleadership.org)

The book which contains 259 pages and about 5 chapters provides insights into the heart-rending paradox of Nigeria as a stupendously rich country with a desperate poor people. The book explained why, despite its massive earnings from oil, 70% of Nigeria is estimated 120
million people live below the poverty line. The book identify gaps in current policy initiatives and frameworks for combating corruption in Nigeria; Facilitate the creation of a broad based network for combating corruption as well as review administrative capacity of the government and other actors for enforcing sanctions against corrupt practices. Finally, it takes religion and spirituality as one sure way to remedied the sitaution if we all change our ways and be of God-like character.

This book is an outcome of a proceeding of a conference organised by the Africa Leadership Forum (ALF) held between 7th - 9th February, 2003 and edited by Dr. Ayodele Aderinwale, Executive Director of ALF.

This book dealt in depth as to the reasons why Nigerians are corrupt. It is because both the haves and have nots are corrupt. I am made to understand that there is corruption of need. There is corruption of greed and there is corruption as a result of systemic failure. Some people are corrupt because of needs and opportunities and they know they can get away with it. You need money to sort out yourself. Like a man whose children are sick, he needs money to address the hospital bill. His income is small. He is where they smuggle goods and offered fifty thousand Naira (N50,000:00) as bribe. One would say he should not be corrupt because God frowns at it. Another will say his children must not die.

Police onroad with guns, not paid 2 or 3 months with wife and children at home must be catered for. Government should address system issue, things that government is supposed to provide. You should have on ground a system that make things work. When you create a crisis you
provide avenuefor corruption. An excample is the fuel scarcity resulting in queue. People beat the queue. A rational person will thinkof what to do. Do I give N200 or N300 to beat it at the expense of 3 or 4 man hours? The value of my time is more than N200. You can also contend with getting fuel importation through Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the problems assocaited with it. Sometimes, scarcity is created to make room for corruption.

Sanction has to be imposed to stem corruptionfrom thriving. For this to happen, the government need to have the political will and committment to fight corruption. Since corruption does not come to the society overnight, we should recourse to spritual and spirituality if the battle must be won. For example, if we recourse to the Bible in the book of proverbs, Solomon says "Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is reprocah to any people". It is suggested that man should seek God and his ways will be clean.

In the Holy Bible, we were given account of how man fall. This shows how badly things have gone wrong. Not only is man's relationship with God disturbed, but also that with his environment. Loss of fellowship with God at Eden and subsequent expulsion from the lofty garden marked
the begining of a self-destructive and unsustainable lifestyles that threatens the natural environment, other creatures and man himself.

Book makers have given to the world another buzz word "green ethics" - a concept that seeks to strike a balance between human activities and the God - given environment, which calls for a paradigm shift from the old ways of doing things; lifestyles and activities that endanger the common destiny of human kind. The Bible's New Testament scriptural reality confronts man at his wits end. It is imperative call to change from responsible care and stewardship to his creator in natural resources utilisation, wealth creationand material prosperity. This will definitely require a change of heart and re-orientation in value systems that brings about a perfect harmony between man, his creator, other creatures and the global environment.

A spiritual awakening in mankind of the original purpose of God in terms of fellowship, bearing his image and dependence on Him will engender a new coinduct and disposition which will subsequently impact his physical relationships and activities in a positive manner for the overall good of mankind.

Emil Brummer captures this succintly when he wrote in his open citation as follows: "A civilisation and culure which has severed its connection with God, and thinks more of achievement than of p[ersons, necessarily becomes inhuman. It loses its true centre, and thus
disintegrates into sectional spheres and sectional interest, each of which comes into conflict with others and tries to develop itself at the cost of the rest. True civilisation and true culture can only
develop where the cultural creation and activity is directed and ordered from a centre which transcends culture.

A culture or civilisation which is indifferent to morals and religion is bound to degenerate. Religion and morality however, are identical, where God of Holy Love is known as the foundation of all being, and His will is the norm of all moralitry; that is where man knows himself to have been created by God for love, and for communion with God of love in faith through Jesus Christ.

Upon this foundation alone also will man use his mastery of nature aright; only thus will he be preserved from a selfish, arrogant exploitation of nature which is a p[erversion of his powers. Man is not called to an absolute, arbtrary mastery of nature buit to a mastery of nature which remains under the order of the creator, and therefore honours and loves created universe as God creation.

This book summarises why we all need to choose God and path to spirituality so that we all can achieve sustainable development.

Adewale Adeyanju

Collapse (Jared Diamond)

Review by Christian Tena

Bottom up Management Approach as opposed to Top Down

p 277-278 "Small societies occupying a small island or homeland can adopt a bottom-up approach to environmental management. Because the homeland is small, all of its inhabitants are familiar with the entire island, know that there are affected by developments throughout the island, and share a sense of identity and common interests with other inhabitants. Hence everybody realizes that they will benefit ... Thats bottom-up management, in which people work together to solve their own problems."

p313 par 2 "I came to discuss the difficulties that regularly confront societies trying to reach agreements about environmental disputes... disputes could be, and frequently were, solved in the course of conflict (this didnt mean that it favors murder as a means of settling disputes). Instead ... its a mere observation that environmental problems often do create conflicts among people ... which can either be resolved thru coutroom process (like in the US or Phils) or nastier forms like that in Rwanda"

p320 2nd par "Friends of mine who visited Rwanda in 1984 sensed an ecological disaster in the making. The whole country looked like a garden and banana plantation. Steep hills are being farmed right up."

p469 p2 "Water transpiration from trees returns water to the atmosphere, so that deforestation tends to cause diminished rainfall and increase desertification."

This reminds me of living here in Mozambique where bush areas are transformed into machambas (gardens) where they plan corn and alot of stuff. On top of the cutting of trees they also (still do) slash and burn practice... very widespread. Which is sad because damages Mozambique's environment.

p450 par 2 "Chevron employees in several countries told me independently that every month they are every other Chevron employee around the world receive from the CEO an email about the state of affairs in the company... the authors (Peters and Walters) found that if managers want their employees to behave in a certain way , the most effective motivation is for the employees to see the managers themselves behaving in that way."

Christian Tena

The End of Poverty (Jeffrey D. Sachs)

Review by Christian Tena

pXIV Foreword
… isn’t it cheaper – and smarter – to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them?”

p130 par 3
… The United States received French support during the War of Independence. Europe and Japan (Marshall Plan) received extensive US aid after World War II, as did Korea a decade later. Israel has received vast financial support from the United States. Germany and Poland has their debts canceled. We should be wary of excessive moralizing, or telling the poorest or the most vulnerable or crisis-stuck peoples in the world simply to solve their own problems.

p130 par 1 Persistence Wins
… Still, the experience of hearing no, no, no, eventually followed by yes, has deeply affected my view of policy advocacy. I do not take as a given what is considered politically impossible, but rather I am prepared to argue incessantly, and annoyingly, for what needs to be done, even when it is claimed to be impossible.

P203 par 3
“If you want to get someone’s attention about the health crises in Africa, ‘show them the money.’ Help them to understand the economic costs of the disease pandemics, as well as the economics of disease control. Above all, propose practical solutions based on a rigorous emphasis on economic costs and benefits.”
- as quoted from Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland

p207 (par 3)
As always, these battles are never won, just pushed forward to new terrain. Since the fund started (Global Fund to fight against AIDS, TB and malaria), the continuing battle has been to get the resources the fund needs on a long-term reliable basis, and to help the low income countries to prepare and implement plans that are commensurate with their challenge. Still, after years of extreme neglect, the battle against AIDS, malaria, and TB has finally been joined.

P 208 par 1
In general, Africa lacks irrigation, and more than 90 percent of the food crops are rain fed. Rainfall tends to be highly variable in the sub humid savannah and the arid Sahel near the Sahara. Farmers lack access to roads, markets and fertilizers. Soils have been long depleted of nutrients as the result of repeated harvests without the benefit of chemical or organic nutrient inputs. Without transport, telecommunications, clinics and fertilizers, the hunger-disease-poverty nexus has only deepened.

P266 par 2
Today’s situation is a bit like the old Soviet workers’ joke: “We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us!” Many poor countries today pretend to reform while rich countries pretend to help them, raising the cynicism to a pretty high level. Many low-income countries go through the motions of reform, doing little in practice and expecting even less in return. The aid agencies, on their part, focus on projects at a symbolic rather than national scale, just big enough to make good headlines.

P309 par 2
Napoleon famously declared, “History is a fable often told.”

P311 page 2
“… (Africans) don’t know what western time is. You have to take these (anti-AIDS) drugs a certain number of hours each day, or they don’t work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives. And if you say, one o’clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about. They know morning, they know noon, they know evening, the know darkness of night.”

Andrew Natsios (USAID New Administrator) was asked about his ideas on introducing ARVs into a low-income setting.

It’s a real pretty stupid statement coming from someone I expect to be of knowledgeable. Although I don’t work on rural healthcare – my visits around the community (including clinics and hospitals) have made me realize that Mozambicans know about time – it’s just ‘the sense of urgency’ that needs to be realized. Even without clocks, even if these people haven’t seen clocks in their life they have radios and its everywhere even in the remote areas – and they do tell the time – IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE NOT WESTERN.

Christian Tena

Book report "Mining and the environment"

Recently I have read a book concerning Corporate Social Responsibility which is named as “Mining and the environment”. In that book, which is consisted of 8 chapters, 237 pages; there were widely discussed issues of mining mineral resources and its influence on ecology, problems it brings such as air contamination, water pollution, air pollution, ecological degradation; and all environmental costs which occur. And also the book suggests that new regulatory principle, which is named “pollution-prevention pays” should be implemented, as it aims to promote competitive and environmentally sustainable industrial development. The requirement that pollution be reduced at source implies a requirement for technical or organizational change, or both, in the production process. This, in turn, requires that firms develop new technological and managerial capabilities, technological alliances with equipment suppliers, and collaboration with R&D organizations. Also there must be used environmental innovation, mining companies must create new ways of extraction, implement new technologies with the help of which miners can extract several mineral resources at the same time. In order to be better environmental managers for mining companies given below approaches can be used:

1. Stimulate and reward innovation in pollution prevention with tax breaks for R&D and technology investment;
2. Require mandatory pollution-prevention and reclamation plans in project development, and stipulate bonds for that purpose;
3. Stimulate profitable innovation in waste management, such as re-mining, reagent and metals recovery, and biotechnological waste treatment, and remove legislative barriers to re-mining and waste treatment;
4. Reward firms for innovations in clean technology;
5. Use mechanisms such as credit conditionality to facilitate the commercialization and diffusion of pollution-prevention technology and work practices across the boundaries of firms and nations;
6. Promote new approaches to technology transfer, such as interfirm collaboration to develop the technological and managerial capabilities to innovate, in-depth training to manage technical and organizational change, and information-dissemination programs.

Strategy for Environmental Education for Sustainability in Mexico

Book review from Unai Sacona

National Strategy 2006-2014

The document collect the main objectives and strategies that national authorities will developed during the next years in order to improve the Sustainability in Mexico through Environmental Education. I want to share the document, because Mexico is one of the first countries, at national level, in elaborate a strategy on the UNDESD framework. The document is very interesting and I think it´s available on line but maybe it is just in Spanish.

Mission: To establish public policies in environmental education for sustainability at national and local level that will foster the construction of an environmental culture, improve the quality of life, strengthen citizenship and the country’s many cultural identities, and protect ecosystems and their biodiversity.

Strategic objectives:

1. To consolidate environmental education for sustainability as a public policy based on specific legislation and mainstreamed in other related fields, on solid governmental and civic institutions, on significant financial resources earmarked for important programs and project that aim for the construction of an environmental culture in Mexico.

2. To create a broad of environmental education and capacity building alternatives that will provide the country and its different areas with environmental educators responding to environment demands for the construction of sustainability and critical activities.

3. To have frameworks, at different levels, for the development of environmental education for sustainability.

4. To consolidate the Environmental Education as field of knowledge through programs to systematize and evaluate practices, foster educational innovations, training researchers, and create mechanisms for articulating, communicating, etc.

The strategy and the main objectives of the strategy sounds really great, but until now that´s just paper. The Sustainable are in the National Strategy Plan as a main goal for the country for the next 6 years, but the specific plan are not ready yet, during the next months we will know what exactly the government are going to develop in order to achieve the goal.

Regards from Mexico,

Unai