Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community

Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community

Karen T. Litfin

Language: English

Pages: 224

ISBN: 0745679501

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up.

In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet.

Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come.

You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/

Principles and Methods in Landscape Ecology: Towards a Science of the Landscape (Landscape Series)

Tigers In Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers

Ecology and Management of Forest Soils

Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civilization. Ecovillages are part of this “blessed unrest,” as Paul Hawken calls this movement of movements, comprising perhaps a million initiatives, which he likens to a planetary immune system.12 Ecovillages, in particular through GEN, have a global presence through UN initiatives, North–South partnerships, and international gatherings. In 2012, a landmark year for GEN, 500 people from twenty-eight countries gathered in Colombia to establish CASA (a Spanish acronym for the Council of.

Sustainable global civilization. At every scale, the relational turn underpins sustainability. At home in the global ecovillage I have told many stories in this book – stories of ecovillages and their pioneering members, as well as the story of a professor getting educated. But the overarching story is that of our species, groping its way toward sustainability. The ecological and social debt of fossil-fueled affluence is coming due, no doubt, and the circle is closing. The question is not so.

Linden. A University of Kassel study of Sieben Linden put their ecological footprint at 28% of the German average – and the German footprint is already half the American! But what really caught my eye was Club 99, a Sieben Linden neighborhood where the residents (according to the same study) have managed to reduce their footprints to 10% of the German average – or 5% of the American average. And these were not rural villagers in Africa! Club 99’s commitment to natural building was most evident.

Exists within the community that supports it. Unlike most CSA farmers, Jen and John live side by side with their most committed members. This proximity, both geographic and emotional, bodes well for the farm’s future. But in a world where organic food is mass-produced by industrial farms, the success of West Haven Farm is far from assured. The question of meat Svanholm’s sprawling farm has expanded community agriculture to another level. One of my favorite pastimes at this Danish ecovillage.

Technologies and their more glorious artistry into their places of worship. Why should today be any different? We may even need these spaces now more than ever; perhaps they are quintessentially the right use of things. Yet I feel uneasy in the same way as I did with Angus’s remark about jet travel: “When you feel it’s time to integrate your life as a soul, nothing gets in your way!” Really? Nothing? I did not become enlightened on my journey, but I did grow tremendously. I also emitted more.

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