What is an ecovillage?

We aim for inclusivity

Communities Magazine, January 2003

The coordinating and volunteer offices of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA) receive lots of correspondence, and among the most frequently asked questions are: what is an ecovillage? How do I create an ecovillage? Or, what does my community need to do to qualify as an ecovillage? Sometimes messages are received questioning whether a particular community can or should be entitled to call itself an ecovillage.

In helping to grow the number and networking connections of ecovillages, and the ecovillage movement as a whole, the networks have attempted to define and evolve the definition of ecovillage, since the term came into use. Robert Gilman, in his book, Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities (1991), offered this definition, which we use as a starting point: "an ecovillage is a human-scale, full-featured settlement in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future."

Ecovillages typically build on various combinations of three dimensions: Social, ecological and spiritual. These dimensions also describe the reasons why people most often are attracted to ecovillage living, although one reason may predominate some philosophical approaches and be completely absent in others. The community sustainability assessment (CSA) was created by the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) to offer some balance to the many approaches that can be taken to make a community more sustainable.

From the early stages of ecovillage networking, consideration was given as to whether it would be useful and appropriate to specify criteria and establish a minimum threshold of achievement in order for a community to identify itself as an ecovillage. The decision taken was that we're not about sitting in judgment and monitoring, rather, encouraging everyone to do what they are able, to live sustainably. The CSA became an auditing tool communities could use to find direction and identify steps they could take. It is a measuring rod, allowing comparison to other communities, perhaps more importantly it allows an ecovillage to track its own progress against a somewhat more objective standard.

At a sustainability and education conference held in conjunction with a GEN board meeting in Denmark in 1998, attendees affirmed that a community is an ecovillage if it specifies an ecovillage mission, such as in its organizational documents, community agreements or membership guidelines, and makes progress in that direction. There are no ecovillage police to enforce these standards. Rather, there is a network to be a part of and with which to exchange experiences and methodologies, information and fellowship.

This liberal position of ours sometimes leads to receiving mail that questions a particular community's credentials as an ecovillage. We're often asked if a community can really be an ecovillage if a particular aspect of sustainable living isn't in place. Sometimes we are asked if our choice to be more inclusive doesn't detrimentally impact the movement as a whole.

Our response is that the ecovillage movement is too wide-reaching and experimental to fit some tidy model with enforceable standards. We stand at the junction between two millennia; the past one about building societies that ran on fossil sunlight and militarism. The next one, still a mystery, has to be more consciencious and humane or we won't survive.

There may not be, among more than 15,000 identified sustainable community experiments, a single example of a "ecovillage" in the sense of a full-featured human community untainted by earlier technologies, polluting material flows, or not engaged in theft of future natural heritage to some extent. The shortfall between dream and reality is an important ongoing topic for ecovillagers to explore.

The challenge of remaking urban environs is especially difficult. The alternatives, displacing topsoil and other biota for new expanses of steel and concrete, or suffering drastic human population cuts, are both unthinkably cruel (and unsustainable). So it has to happen. There have to be vertically oriented ecovillages. Ecocity Cleveland is inspired by the example of Los Angeles Eco-Village. That neither are as far along as, say, a rainforest eco-settlement in rural Columbia or a permaculture village in suburban Australia is more a measure of the greater distance city reformers have to travel than any lack of resolve.

Our movement is blessed with diversity. From rural to urban, neighborhood experiments to large districts in transition, in many cultures and geopolitical climates, people are reading the writing on the wall and getting on with the work that has to be done. They are not waiting for government grants or the ford foundation. They are picking up shovels and hoes and building tomorrow, often without a blueprint or even the ability to read and write. It is on the shoulders of these pioneers that the dreams we all haveÑfor peace, security, prosperity, family, and happiness into the coming generations of our childrenÑnow rest, whether they, or we, yet recognize it.

Be they traditional, tribal settlements or urban retrofits, young and forming or seasoned and well-rounded, for the ecovillage network, there are still many possible answers to the question "what is an ecovillage?" We like them all.

Linda Joseph, ENA President

linda@ecovillage.org

and

Albert Bates, ENA International Secretary

ecovillage@thefarm.org

Ecovillage WEB SITES:

Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)

www.ecovillage.org OR gen.ecovillage.org

Global Ecovillage Network - Europe (GEN-EU) - includes Middle East & Africa

www.gen-europe.org OR europe.ecovillage.org

Global Ecovillage Network - Oceania (GENOA)

genoa.ecovillage.org

Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA)

ena.ecovillage.org

ENA is now selling the new book - Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People, on-line. Go to: http://ena.ecovillage.org Follow the link to the Ecovillage Store, for more information and to purchase this comprehensive resource on ecovillage living.

By clicking on "what is an ecovillage?" at the Global Ecovillage Network (gen) website: http://gen.ecovillage.org/ or that of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas: http://ena.ecovillage.org/ you can access additional and different perspectives.