Ecovillage

From Ekopedia

An ecovillage (or eco-village, eco-place), is an agglomeration (rural or urban) as much as possible aiming the self-sufficiency and where the priority is to place the Man and the environment in the center of its interests. The guiding line is not to take from the earth more than we can return.

[edit] Description

The ecovillage word was born form the fusion of ecology and village. It's a widely term used to represent several community models. They try to integrate a mutual assistance social environment with a small impact on the ecosystem. To achieve it, they use different aspects such as permaculture, ecological building, green production, renewable energy, self-sufficient agriculture and so on.

Ecovillages (or intentional communities) integrate different aspects as permaculture, ecological building, green production, renewable energy, self-sufficient agriculture and so on.

The difficulty to gather the projects comes from the fact that none of the ecovillages is working the same way. Some of them have a political vocation while others mostly devote them to the life quality or to developping the artistic creation. The differences are huge between an alternative rural place, composed by a young and passing through population, and a real estate civil company created by several retired couples around ecological values. That's why some will talk about an intentional community, rather than an ecovillage. The common thing of all of these initiatives is a collective life place (rarely community), ecological and with solidarity.

Lived as alternative experimentation laboratories, ecovillages can accommodate a vegetable garden production, ecological buildings, a resources center, a reception place, or artistic workshops. The aim is to create, together, a convivial and fair way of life, with a minimal ecological trace. The collective aspect is the most difficult part. Deciding, building, moving forward together is a real challenge in a society where the individualism comes first. The reason of a failed project is often a human relationship problem. But the community is also an advantage : knowledge exchange, learning gathering, machines (vehicules or household electrical appliance for instance) and tools sharing, and above all permanent stimulation to go further into one's approach.

[edit] History

The ecovillage term was born during the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Because of the Brundtland report of the worlwide committee on environment made in 1987 which does the alarming established fact of the planet warming up, of the water rarefaction , of the living species extinciton and of the poverty increase in the world, the 178 coutries leaders meet each others in Rio to discuss about the planet future.

The boring Agenda 21 followed, setting ambitious targets to reach. Among them, Gaia Trust and Global Ecovillage network (GEN) proposed "Earth is our housing" in order to support financially the eco-homes as living examples of viable communities which can solve the multitude of complex problems raised by the Brundtland report. They could be used as experimental reproductable fields, in urban zones as in rural zones, in the world in various settlement, climate, culture types where a will et skills to develop a lasting way of life has already been demonstrated.

Surely because of their long experience in the cohousing communities, Danish people were ready in 1993 to create the first viable association of communities. Then Gaia Trust targeted 20 projects of ecohousing all over the world which could become eco-village projects because they had already developped several facets of the global concept of eco-village by their culture and their way of life, different from societies said modern.

The ecovillage model try to integrate as much as possible the human housing in the natural ecosystem.

As early as 1994, the GEN strategy becomes clearer and a network is get on its feet having as objectives ideas, cultural and educational development sharing in the aim of developing and demonstarting ways of life which are respectful of the environment and lasting for the next generations.

At the international conference of Housing United Nations II in 1996 in Istanbul, GEN introduced the eco-villages as positive living models of lasting development principles, combining the use of advanced technologies with a satisfying spirituality while living harmoniously with the nature.

The 20 eco-villages appointed by Gaia Trust presented their realisations and GEN and Gaia Trust asked for 100 millions to support the creation of the "Earth is our housing" program.

Since this moment, the 3 regional networks work great. Up to date, we can count 243 members of the world network. Some of these members are eco-villages, while others are associations of ecovillages as the Ecovillages French Network which group together 34 eco-villages projects. Besides, we have to take in count that only the members of the associations and networks are listed on the internet websites.

[edit] Putting into practice

[edit] Existing projects

[edit] See also

[edit] Internal links

[edit] External links

• Global Ecovillage Network Worldwide
• Global Ecovillage Network Europe

[edit] Bibliography

• Ecovillage Living : Restoring the Earth and Her People by Hildur Jackson and Karen Svensson, Ed. Paperback. ISBN 1903998166
• Voices from the farm - Adventures in Community Living by Rupert Fike. ISBN 157067051X