Ecovillage Transition Toolkit and Handbook

 Source: https://ecovillage.org/ecovillage-transition-in-action-2

Ecovillage Transition in ActionAn EU funded collaboration to scale up ecovillage solutions

August 29, 2022 by Carolin Waldmann 

Project Summary

Addressing systemic crises will not derive only from international organisations, governments and politicians, they require a greater collective response. Communities, citizens, NGOs and other forms of civil society hold many of the solutions. In a fragmented world, successful cross-sectoral collaboration is key, particularly partnerships that blur the lines between top-down and bottom-up, i.e. partnerships between municipalities and community-led initiatives (CLIs).

It is common in our networks to see examples of engaged communities working for positive change who feel unsupported by local governments. We also see municipalities determined to act and support, who are struggling to build genuinely collaborative relationships with communities and other local initiatives.  

The project “Ecovillage Transition in Action” explored how ecovillages, community-led initiatives, local government and local academic institutions can better collaborate to scale both horizontally and vertically in order to catalyse regional sustainability innovation.

Completing a three year long partnership, the Ecovillage Transition in Action is now proud to share learnings, inspirations, outcomes and tools created throughout the international project to:

– Grow the capacity of educators, local initiatives, local authorities, citizens and community organisers to facilitate this crucial but complicated collaboration, and to teach those skills and capacities to others.

– Provide accessible and transferable educational tools, curricula, and methods for bringing together community-led initiatives and local government actors, and increase the depth and quality of collaboration between them.

– Provide a set of replicable trainings that support our target groups to acquire key competencies and skills for what we call Ecovillage Transition – a process where municipal authorities and local citizens work together to develop alternative pathways to local development, based on a holistic framework of social, cultural, economic and ecological regeneration.

Collaboration Partners

Ecovillage Transition in Action was a strategic partnership between 5 organisations from 4 countries funded by the EU Erasmus+ programme.

University of St Andrews – ECOLISE – Hurdal Ecovillage Norway – Global Ecovillage Network Germany – Global Ecovillage Network International

Materials and Resources developed through the 3-year project

Ecovillage Transition Toolkit

A toolkit to collate and curate knowledge and practices in ecovillages and community-led initiatives can integrate with local government institutions and processes (municipalities, regional municipalities, local authorities and community councils as appropriate) to catalyse regional innovation and impacts in line with the SDG aspirations and actions. The educational exercises and tools previously developed in other Erasmus+ partnerships like T2R, CLIPS and SIRCle can provide core ingredients, as will the foundational tools of the Map of Regeneration (with the Ecovillage Design Cards) and the Journey of Regeneration. In addition, new tools and knowledge creation has been fed into the Toolkit while making tools available in French, German and English.

Ecovillage Transition Toolkit von Carolin Waldmann

Handbook: Communities and local authorities collaborating for sustainability

A curriculum offering fresh framings for different actors to work with communities and across sectors for bioregional transformation and restoration. Individuals from ecovillages, community led initiatives, local government and local colleges or universities can come together to learn how to design and implement local and bioregional regeneration in line with the Ecovillage Principles and the SDGs. The complete handbook is also available for you in French and German.

Handbook von Cameliaz Olarte

Trainer’s Handbook

A train the trainer programme to equip facilitators with the tools, skills and competencies to facilitate local and regional processes of transformation and regeneration.

Trainer’s Handbook von Cameliaz Olarte

Co-operative housing: A greener and more sustainable way of living?

 Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/communities-communal-living-cooperative-housing

• Community living is an affordable way for people to live, in ways that fit their shared values.
• These communities are usually climate-conscious and strive to be as sustainable as possible.

Frankie lives in a six-bedroom house on the outskirts of Leeds. She is her own landlord, but doesn’t own the house. Instead she is part of a co-operative housing group: together, they have been able to buy the house and then rent it at an affordable price back to themselves as tenants.

Just a few miles away, another group has secured funding to design and build an eco-community of up to 30 households, including what is known as a common house: a shared house with a kitchen, laundry, workshops, a meeting space, guest rooms and gardens.

Have you read?

• For resilient, sustainable city mobility after COVID-19, these trends must continue 
• The great sustainable reset: The new world of work after the pandemic 
• Why the ocean holds the key to sustainable development

The plans for Chapeltown Cohousing

Image: Chapeltown Cohousing

Much further away in north-east Germany is a 37-acre site where a group of people live and work together sharing food, childcare and resources. They have created a community where relationships and the environment are given primacy.

All three of these are examples of intentional communities: groups of people who have chosen to live together in a way that reflects their shared values. These communities come in a variety of shapes and forms, from squats and housing co-operatives to communes and co-housing communities.

Intentional communities are by no means a new idea, but they have often been cited as the experimental spaces or test beds for the future. They are sometimes considered as utopian experiments where groups and people strive to create a better life.

Many people are looking for antidotes to ever-increasing consumption and feelings of social isolation. There is no single solution, and we will need to look at all aspects of our lives, from the way we consume to day-to-day practices. But for some, the solution is to be found in communal living and intentional communities. It may be that some of the ideas being tested in these communities can create the blueprints for the towns and cities of tomorrow.

Alternative lifestyles

There is some evidence that intentional communities are formed as responses to the concerns of society at any given time.

Back in the 1970s, many new communities were formed as a backlash to mass urbanisation and industrialisation. Such groups bought up rural property, often with land, and attempted a “back to the land” lifestyle informed by ideas of self-sufficiency.

Many of these communities failed, but some still function successfully today, often in their original form. For example, Canon Frome Court collectively manages a 40-acre organic farm in Herefordshire. Together, the community grows much of its own food and keeps cows, sheep and chickens.

A community working the fields in their communal garden.

Image: Canon Frome Court

It is difficult to estimate the number of intentional communities worldwide, but they are certainly in the thousands. In the UK alone there are around 300 listed (and many more that are not), with new communities springing up every year.

If we were to use intentional communities as a gauge of social discontent, then the multiple pressures of housing, lack of community, an ageing society and, of course, climate change would be central to this feeling. Look a little deeper, and these problems are actually part a much wider group of social concerns around consumption, global inequality and planetary limits.

In mainstream society, the solutions to these interlocking ideas are presented as top-down measures made via policy, legislation and global agreements, but also as personal choices made by individuals and groups: driving and flying less, consuming more ethically, eating a more plant-based diet, changing the way we work and live.

Those within intentional communities would say that they have been ahead of the curve on this for many years, with ideas such as vegetarianism and self-sufficiency often central to their way of life. They often occupy the necessary middle ground between government policy and individual action. The documentary maker Helen Iles named her series of films on intentional communities “Living in the future”.

Living in the future

So what can we tell about possible directions of wider society from the intentional communities of today?

Some rural communities have embraced low-impact development. For example, Rhiw Las, a rural eco-community in west Wales, has created a sustainable settlement based on strict ecological guidelines.

Meanwhile, urban-based communities, such as Bunker Housing Co-operative in Brighton, look to create high-quality affordable housing for local people. Such co-operatives are based on the principle of collective control and management of property.

They enable groups of people who might not have access to secure housing to form a legal entity, which enables them to collectively buy and own property. They also have the capacity to incorporate or support co-operative businesses, such as food or printing co-ops.

Urban housing co-ops are particularly relevant in areas where house prices and rents can be prohibitively high and exclude certain groups, such as precarious workers or younger people. Housing co-ops can offer secure housing options that also empower people and enable them to live within their means.

The group Radical Routes (a network of radical co-ops) also suggests that when people are freed from excessive rent payments, they are then freer to engage with their communities and participate in social change.

Today’s urban communities capitalise on urban cycle networks and public transport. They are also more likely to engage with green transport options such as electric car pooling and on-site work spaces to reduce travel entirely.

Fishponds Co-Build, a prospective community on the edge of Bristol, has created its own sustainability action plan. Together, they have outlined ways they intend to reduce their carbon footprint through communal living.

The ideas fermented in past communities, such as straw-bale building and shared ownership, are being developed in exciting and creative ways to transform rural and urban living. This can incorporate new building techniques, such as PassiveHaus design in Lancaster Co-Housing, and the development of alternative spaces, such as car-free neighbourhoods.

Intentional communities may not be the solution to all our problems, but they certainly represent an area of experimentation in the ways we share space, shape community and provide a peek at potential ways forward in uncertain times.

Starting an Ecovillage with Few Resources

By Simon Leclerc

From the outside, the development of the Terre de la Reunion, located in the Laurentians, Quebec, Canada, seem magical. In 2010, my friend Serge Bolduc and I managed, with only $15,000 in our pockets, to create an ecovillage comprising 60 acres of shared mountain forest, 12 housing lots (with 8 houses built or under construction), and a common pavilion to be built. It took a lot of magic, because all this has raised its share of questions, reassessments and repositioning throughout the journey. The challenges were certainly significant, but the gifts were even greater.

At the time we started the project, I was not aware of the statistics showing that only 1 in 10 ecovillage projects were actually being implemented. If I had known this information at the beginning, I think I would have been discouraged by the obstacles encountered, but instead, each step was accepted as an invitation to maintain even more firmly the focus on the goal. For us, there was only one possible objective, and that was the material realization of the project. And when the other dreamers joined us, we were all able to work together to give the ecovillage its true momentum.

Today, our project is taking off internationally with the inclusion of the Terre de la Reunion in the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). To introduce us, I thought I would present our journey, the one that led us from dream to reality. I am writing on my own behalf, because the story I am about to tell you is the one of Serge and my very early days. It is the story of the path we took to go from our initial dream of the project to the first construction. Subsequently, the group’s vision took over.

Each project is different and unique, so we do not claim to have THE recipe for starting an ecovillage successfully. But if our history can inspire others, it will have served its purpose.

The Initial Vision
It all started with a dream, a vision that I had in mind. It is to live in a Smurf village on a human scale, with friends. I imagined myself living in a hamlet of dwellings located in the forest, where each house is connected with the others by unpaved roads. I perceived a community living environment, in harmony with nature, that respects both the need for everyone’s privacy (the model of the communes of the 1970s demonstrated its limits) and the desire to come together. It seemed to me to be a way of life perfectly adapted to my ideal of a New World where humans (re)learn to live with each other, in close proximity with their friends (nowadays or in the future).

The Joint Creation
A principle, shared by quantum physics, suggests that an observer has the power to influence his external reality. For example, if a researcher does not believe that it is possible to achieve outcome X, it has been demonstrated that their conclusions may be influenced by their preconceived ideas. According to this principle, for a reality to take tangible form, it must first exist within a being who accepts the possibility of its existence.

With this vision in mind, in October 2010 I asked five friends to work with me to create the fundamentals of an ecovillage project that I wanted to set up. I asked them to pause every night, each on their own and at the same time (if possible), for five consecutive days, to “see and feel inside of them” a housing project with friends on a shared land. I had defined four criteria to include in the vision. There had to be a forest, a lake nearby, houses connected by small paths and a common area to bring the whole group together.

For my part, my personal life journey has led me to conceive matter as part of a vast and infinite world that includes both visible and invisible aspects. My years of daily meditation have led me to perceive the links between the inside and the outside, the visible and the invisible. In this context, I knew that if my friends added their energy to my original vision, it would gain more strength and power. Together, we increased our chances of manifesting the project, and I was not mistaken.

The Physical Research
A week after the proposed visualization exercise, I received in my dream a vision telling me that “a place, which had been greatly cherished, was waiting for us”. I was told that it was located 1.6 kilometres north-northwest of where I lived. A few days later, I went looking for the place with a friend, without really knowing if it was real or just the result of my imagination.

We walked around the identified area, looking for a water basin, as this was part of the initial vision. The place was rather marshy and inhospitable, so we decided to climb the adjacent small mountain in order, I thought at the time, to access a higher view of the region. We wanted to be able to better observe the surrounding areas. And it was at the top of the mountain, which includes a beautiful flat peak, that my heart opened.

It was an old maple grove that had already been in production in the past. There was even a small sugar shack at the bottom of the trail. It was autumn in Quebec at that time and the leaves of the trees were multicoloured. I mention these details because in the initial message, I was told “a place that was greatly cherished”. I understood that the vision in my dream was about this forest that had already been cultivated in order to optimize the production of maple water in the spring. And when I discovered it in the fall, the mountain appeared in its magnificence, making the place even more magical.

The Purchase
The next day, I returned to the site with friends (some of whom had participated in the initial group visualization) to show them this newly discovered magical place. The opinions were unanimous, everyone fell in love with the mountains. While going down the hill, Serge met the owner of the place, and learned that the mountain was for sale. This is when the acquisition process began.

From the beginning, it was clear to us that we had to limit the number of people involved with the seller to
simplify the buying process. We had agreed on a price of $160,000, but we only had $15,000 available at the time. And since we had to take steps with the city to ensure the feasibility of our project before buying the land, we agreed with the seller to sign an offer to buy, payable in 6 months, conditional on the project’s acceptance. The $15,000 was therefore used as a deposit to formalize our offer and demonstrate our seriousness. But at that time, we didn’t know how we would find the missing $145,000. We had a few possible solutions in mind, but nothing concrete.

Six Months of Creation
After the offer to purchase was made, Serge and I took the appropriate steps with the city, and soon learned that the project would be accepted. We therefore spent all the time we had left before signing with the notary to define the specific basis of the project, step by step. We thought that during this time, “life” would certainly present us with a solution that would allow us to obtain the missing $145,000.

During this period, we were put in touch with people who would have had the money to help us buy the land, but each time we did not feel the impulse to partner with them. We did not want their financial support to be exchanged for a veto or any form of privilege over other future participants. At that point, it became clear to us that if we wanted the project to work, each member had to be equal to the others, including Serge and me.

I must admit personally that it was difficult for me to move from concept to reality at first, because I was afraid of “losing” a specific location that attracted me a lot. I agreed with the principle, but once it became reality, I was afraid that I would not be considered in the equation if I applied the proposed notion of equity. I too had to learn to trust, because I had to agree to give up all forms of privilege if I wanted to be consistent with the vision we were proposing to others.

So, during the six months preceding the purchase, we located the shared common areas and the places where to install the residences. In order for each house to harmonize with its immediate environment, we defined the optimal number of homes that could be built without denaturing the mountain. In addition, we also positioned the road and estimated the cost of infrastructure. To this evaluation, we had to add the price to bring the electricity to the houses, as well as all the survey fees.

From the beginning, we knew that a common pavilion would be needed to nurture the ecovillage’s community life. In line with the vision of equity presented above, we have kept the most beautiful location on the land to build the future common pavilion. And we have added the estimated cost of its construction to the amount of all the infrastructure necessary to implement the overall project.

When all costs were added together, we divided the total amount by 12, the number of land parcels available, to determine the purchase price for each of the lots offered. This amount includes ownership of a one-twelfth share of a 60-acre shared mountain, infrastructure and a future common pavilion (already paid for), as well as an individual lot for the construction of a house [for cost details, see the website listed at the end of this article].

Three Weeks Before Signing
When the whole project was clarified and the main lines were defined, we still did not have the money to buy the mountain. Three weeks before the signing, we organized two events to present our project to our family and friends, imagining a participative financing scenario. These meetings brought together about 75 people.

At the end of each presentation, we invited people who could (and wanted) to make a personal loan to us, up to the cost of acquiring a lot. The aim was that their support would eventually turn into a land purchase, once all the documents of the co-ownership had been formalized and agreed between the members. Serge and I then undertook to sign documents confirming the debts, and to place all the money received in a joint account requiring a double signature. Even if people knew us and trusted us, we wanted to convince them of the seriousness of our approach.

By April 2011 Serge and I had been able to raise all the money we needed to buy the mountain. And one month after signing before a notary, we had the funds to finance the 1-kilometre road, which began construction in the fall of the same year and was completed in the spring of 2012. It was in the fall of 2013 that the project became a divided co-ownership and members were able to transform their loan into the purchase of a lot.

I would like to point out here that some of the people who were initially present left the project along the way. They either changed their minds, or simply wanted to help us get started, without necessarily considering living on the land. In the original loan agreement, it was stipulated that we would repay those who wished to be reimbursed as soon as new people joined the project. I would like to highlight this detail because this clause has greatly facilitated the deployment of the Terre de la Reunion by avoiding the need to draw on the working capital to reimburse people who wanted to leave.

Today
My partner Serge, who is a builder of healthy and ecological houses, started the construction of the first residence on the Terre de la Reunion in the fall of 2013. Today, six years later, eight houses are being built or under construction, and there will soon be 14 permanent residents. And as soon as it is possible for us to do so, we will build the common pavilion. In addition, the group also includes four “active members” (non-owners) who assume responsibilities and take part in various activities (community meals, happy chores, movie nights, hikes on the trails, festivities, etc.), as well as four children. And we are constantly expanding.

Instead of the houses being grouped in clusters, as in the original vision, the Smurfs village has rather been spread out in length so that each residence benefits from optimal sunlight (all the houses are built on the southern slope of the mountain). There is indeed a lake near the land, but we overlook it from above, instead of being situated next to it.

As with all ecovillage projects, experience has taught us the importance of cohesion among the group. Today, our goal is to bring together people who share common affinities and ideals with us, not to force less natural alliances. As a result, we have put in place a step-by-step welcoming and inclusion process that allows us to better integrate newcomers. This ensures our overall cohesion and allows us to form a solid core of members who feel like family and who share common ideals.

The original dream evolved along the way to include the individual contribution of each new member so that everyone feels they are an integral part of the project. The two founders have gradually abandoned their role of initiators, to stimulate everyone to find their own place in the group. I must admit that this transition was not always easy for Serge and I, because if our leadership skills were necessary in the early years, we had to learn to delegate (and sometimes to fade away) so that the participants felt more involved. But it has been a wonderful learning experience for both of us and today I am delighted to see that each member of the Terre de la Reunion shines in his or her respective ever-changing role.

Living Together
I consider the human being to be fundamentally a community person, a being whose deep and true nature is to seek to unite with the life around them. This is a natural impulse. But when they feel judged, unwelcome or forced to adapt in order to be loved, they then develop a closure to others, a social pressure that leads them to want to distrust, separate and withdraw. On the other hand, when they feel welcomed and loved, they gradually cease to compare themselves, or to be in competition with others, and develop the desire to grow among people who correspond to them, people with whom they feel affinities. This is a natural instinct that is present in everyone.

At the same time, I think that people who choose to live as hermits, withdrawn from the world, do not do so by choice, but by reaction and fear. Fences, borders and walls were invented by humans who fear what they do not understand, what they do not control. Physical ramparts have become symbols to justify the mistrust that some humans have of each other. They highlight a model of life accepted by many, where the quest for natural quietness present in everyone (our need for privacy) has been transformed into a search for protection and separation, in order not to manage our fear of the unknown.

In this context, an ecovillage offers a magnificent way of life that makes it possible to realize people’s desire to live with each other, in harmony with the environment. It is a path of exploration, for the moment avant-garde, which allows us to put into practice what we have already learned about living together. But it is not a model for people who want to learn to open up to others, because the level of proximity and interaction is too high. In other words, to be happy in an ecovillage, residents must already have a community spirit, a fairly solid base rooted in them, because otherwise, the clashes may be too great.

If they want to live in peace and balance, members of an ecovillage must give more importance to the quest for harmony among all than to the issues of power and the individual needs to be right. I am not saying that personal opinions have no place, on the contrary. But once expressed, it is sometimes necessary to let go of certain elements that seem important to us, in order to promote the harmony and unity of the group. This ideal must be shared by each member, because otherwise there will be no cohesion. This is fundamental for an ecovillage project to work.

This understanding of “living together” has evolved along the way. Everything was not so clear to us at first, but the basis was there. And it is with this vision shared by the two initial dreamers that the village of Smurfs on a human scale was born. It demonstrated, through a material and real example, that it is possible to “live differently” in community.

The Magic
Since the very beginning of the Terre de la Reunion, life has magically dotted our path of common creation. It is as if our project were supported by an invisible “Big Hand” – as I like to call it – that facilitates each step of our journey. The most beautiful anecdote on the subject I can tell you is the one related to our high-speed Internet connection. When we began the process of obtaining it, the first estimates evaluated the connection costs at $140,000. It was very expensive. There were other alternatives such as satellite connection, but the speed is low and unstable.

One day, Serge had the impetus to check with a different company that offered the service in other regions. He then learned that a special budget for “new residential projects” had just been approved. So, we applied for service and were accepted. Three months later, we obtained an Internet connection by fiber optic to the Terre de la Reunion. It is the fastest residential Internet that currently exists on the market. And our project is located in the middle of the forest.

In addition, not only did we not have to pay for Internet connection, but we received $10,000 from the company so that they could use the poles that connected the houses to the power grid to install their wiring. Since these poles belonged to the land, the check was sent to us.

Instead of having to pay $140,000 to get a high-speed Internet connection, we received $10,000 to get even faster fiber optic, even though we are located in the forest. In fact, we may be the only forest ecovillage in the world currently served by fiber optic. And as you can imagine, this considerably improves the quality of life of the members of the Terre de la Reunion.

In Conclusion
Believing in our dreams is certainly a major factor in making them come true. But experience has personally shown me that, in addition to believing in them, we must feel them, live them internally as if they were already manifested. At some point, the inner world becomes so alive that the outside can only become its natural extension, the reflection in the matter. Obviously, this process requires a let go, because the when and how belong to the Great Unknown, but the more we hold on to the goal, to the dream we feel, the greater our chances of achieving it. At least this is what Serge and I experienced in the process that led us to create the Terre de la Reunion ecovillage.

I sincerely hope that our story will inspire other dreamers and visionaries who, like us, want to set up projects around the world in the coming years (ecovillage or other). I leave you with this wonderful quote that represents us well: “They did not know it was impossible, so they did it” (Mark Twain, American writer, 1835-1910).

Sincerest greetings,

By Simon Leclerc
Marketing and Communication Specialist

Co-Founder with Serge Bolduc of the Terre de la Reunion ecovillage, Quebec, Canada
www.terredelareunion.com

Source: https://ecovillage.org/starting-with-few-resources

Ecovillages - Models for Sustainability (Slides)

Ecovillages - Models for Sustainability 

Ecovillage: 1001 Ways to Heal the Planet (Ebook)

Ecovillage: 1001 Ways to Heal the Planet full pdf book download from Ursula Noamech

Kosha Joubert and Leila Dregger (editors)

"What a beautifully, lovingly constructed book! It conveys not only the variety and ideals of the ecovillage movement, but the heart of it as well. Kosha and Leila's book affirms the importance of ecovillages not just as an inconsequential alternative in the margins, but as an invitation to transform every place into an ecological collaboration between humans and the rest of nature."  - Charles Eisenstein

During the GEN 20+Summit in Findhorn Kosha Joubert and Leila Dregger presented the new GEN book about ecovillages worldwide, which they had written with the help of many longterm ecovillage members who contributed their very personal stories, thoughts, experiences, adventures, failures, learnings and successes. The book can now be ordered. Everybody interested in social and ecological change and building a global alternative should know this source of experience and wisdom.

This book introduces a selection of ecovillage projects from all over the world. The editors have aimed to give a taste of their richness and diversity with examples from Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa and North America. Most of the chapters are based on interviews with founders or long-standing members of ecovillage communities; while a few chapters are about regional or national networks of ecovillage transition. The book sets out both to honour successes, but also to learn from difficulties and failure.

As well as serving as an inspiration to its readers, the book is also intended as a learning resource. At the end of each chapter, the editors have given a few keywords, listing some of the best approaches used by each ecovillage, for example, in developing a water treatment facility,  building a straw bale house or supporting groups of people in their endeavours. You can find out more about these solutions in the GEN Solution Library - there are  links in the book.

“Ecovillages have long served a vital function as the laboratories of a resilient future, where solutions are tested, tweaked, adjusted. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, but it’s in the “what if?” spirit that their genius lies. Kosha Joubert and Leila Dregger’s new book celebrates the remarkable diversity to be found in the eco-village movement, and their insights resonate far beyond the ecovillages themselves”. - Rob Hopkins, Founder of the Transition Network

“Your heart will soar as you revel in this treasure trove of evidence that a new and better future is not only possible but happening NOW all over the world where ordinary people have taken matters into their own hands, building vibrant, loving, sustainable communities... even national governments are beginning to take them seriously enough to support their growth... You will be filled with new inspiration and implementable ideas, so spread the book itself as far and wide as you can!”
- Elisabet Sahtouris, PhD, evolution biologist & futurist, author of Gaia’s Dance

Nowadays, ecovillages are widely accepted as living and learning centers, as lighthouses for social and ecological sustainability in their regions, as alternative to the destructive mainstream lifestyle that has brought the planet to the edge of extinction. However, 20 or 30 years ago, nobody knew the word ecovillage. Many intentional communities that existed were regarded as dropout groups, hippie oases and they were, here and there, just beginning to cooperate with other sectors of society such as politics, economy or media. It took some time before the world acknowledged the many solutions that the pioneer generation has been testing in their remote places. It also took a while before the communities, with their different approaches to an alternative lifestyle, started to regard themselves as a global movement - diverse, with different experiences, but with the same aim and principles.
It needed people in the projects who were ready to look at the bigger, the global, picture and not only their own philosophies, situations and challenges. The communities had to come together and start to form community amongst themselves: to share, to learn from each other, even correct each other and form a common platform.

The concept of ecovillages first arose in the late 1980s, with the intention of offering an alternative to a culture of consumerism and exploitation.  Combining a supportive and high-quality social and cultural environment with a low-impact way of life, they have become precious playgrounds in which groups of committed people can experiment to find solutions for some of the challenges we face globally.  Ecovillages are now part of a worldwide movement for social and environmental justice and have become regional and national beacons of inspiration for the social, cultural, ecological and economic revival of both rural and urban areas.

Source: http://gen.ecovillage.org/node/5746

In defence of ecovillages: the communities that can teach the world to live sustainably

by Anitra Nelson

Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research (GUSS, RMIT), RMIT University

What types of communities do the best job of living with a minimal impact on the planet? I asked myself this question when I read a recent article on The Conversation, which argued that even if everyone on Earth lived in an ecovillage we would still be using too many resources.
I am more optimistic — some ecovillages provide a much better blueprint than others.

As a 2013 study of 14 ecovillages by US political scientist Karen Litfin shows, ecovillages can be regarded as “pioneer species”. They show people how to improve their sustainability: the ecovillages Liftin studied used 10–50% fewer resources than their home-country averages and, being whole communities, were more influential than a single sustainable household.

Litfin’s assessment took in a wide range of factors – ecological, economic, even psychological – but one example of how ecovillages show the way forward is in power consumption.

Mainstream households tend to rely on national or regional supplies of gas or electricity, with no (or little) control over their sources. In places like Victoria, which has a very emissions-intensive power sector, this can make it difficult to make sustainable choices. However, ecovillage neighbours who have banded together to access renewable energy, say solar or wind power, can make off-grid environmental savings.

While there are financial (and other) barriers to setting up environmentally sound residential neighbourhoods, there are useful rules of thumb. In general, small is beautiful and sharing is efficient. One simply cannot fit as much “stuff” into a smaller house, and sharing accommodation often economises on consumption of goods and services.

Some ecovillages shame others in reducing their environmental footprint. Where ecovillages re-inhabit and renovate old buildings, they save on resources. A good example is the postcapitalist eco-industrial Calafou colony, northwest of Barcelona, which houses some 30 people in an old textile factory complex.

Members of another community that I have stayed at, Ganas in New York City, live in renovated residential buildings and operate several second-hand businesses at which residents work. Residents at Twin Oaks in Virginia, where I worked for three weeks, have a surprising level of collective sufficiency, with residents working on farming and making hammocks and tofu to sell, the proceeds of which are shared between the group.

Such experiments can be scaled up, settling residents in ex-commercial and ex-industrial premises — effectively shrinking cities by encouraging higher-density, more sustainable collective communities.

Crops and solar panels at Twin Oaks in Virginia. Author provided

The global village

This feeds into the idea of “planned economic contraction” or “degrowth”, which as Samuel Alexander argued on The Conversation is necessary in order to live sustainably. But I don’t share his pessimism about the ability of ecovillages to show us a way towards this sustainable life.

An analysis of Findhorn ecovillage in Scotland showed that an average resident travels by air twice as much as an average Scot, yet their total travel and overall ecological footprint was half the Scottish and UK averages.

Residents of Findhorn and of another UK ecovillage, Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED), make significant savings in terms of car travel. It follows that just by avoiding air travel, these residents would have even more environmentally sound practices.

Managing without money?

Members of ecovillages such as Twin Oaks not only share “one purse”, but also complement their efforts at collective sufficiency with minimal use of money. (Avoiding money is part of the culture of squatters generally.) Members of Calafou put in money to the community on the basis of their individual capacity but share governance and benefits equally. Here social and environmental values dominate.

In contrast, money is the principle on which capitalism revolves. If we reduce consumption — and we will need to, to become sustainable — then production has to be reduced. But capitalist producers have no successful operating systems for shrinking. Most often, when consumption decreases it results in unemployment and austerity, rather than orderly degrowth.

Money pressures us to opt for more rather than less, or else risk poverty and powerlessness. Thus it applies a systemic pressure to expand. Growth is not simply a result of people’s greed – even not-for-profit cooperatives aim to create a monetary surplus. How would you run a business or your household using money income in a shrinking market? What would happen to prices and savings?
Many suggest a guaranteed minimum income, but the value of the currency will prove unstable in such conditions and, anyway, what really matters to us is what we can purchase with that income (meaning that prices matter).

Such questions lead us to the conclusion that strategies for degrowth must leap not only beyond capitalism but also beyond money. This is the strength of Litfin’s focus on ecology, community and consciousness, incorporating skills which we need to replace production for trade on the principle of money.

In the future, collectively sufficient ecovillages could operate environmentally efficiently on the basis of direct democracy and arrange production and exchange within the commons they lived off without the use of money. Instead, ecovillagers would make non-monetary exchanges, where necessary, on the basis of social and environmental values.

Thus we could reduce our footprint and stay within Earth’s capacity.

Source: https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-ecovillages-the-communities-that-can-teach-the-world-to-live-sustainably-44967

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.
—-
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