The Ecovillage Ideal

Could this be the model for sustainability in the 21st century?

“We’ll have to have a good sized carpark for the people who come at weekends,” said John. It was 1990 and I was at the London home of David Pearson, a well-known environmental design author. John Button, another writer, had got us together to talk about starting a green housing community in the west country. “We could get grants,” he said, “because there’d be a strong educational component. We’ll be a model for sustainable living.”

John thought that if we pooled our resources - and what he called our “reputations as green leaders” - we could start a project with a high profile. “It’d do a lot of good,” he said, “people could see green living in practice.” David and his wife were thinking of buying a house in Stroud, a small industrial town in the Cotwolds, a beautiful part of England where people like Prince Charles live. John thought Stroud would be a good location. On the one hand it was cheap and had a reputation as a Green Party center, and on the other there were lots of tourists in more picturesque areas nearby.

I wanted to leave London and lead a greener life, yes. I had already looked at an intentional community, and visited a smallholding in Shropshire. I knew I wasn’t interested in the ‘spiritual’ side of being green, as John and David were. Maybe I was just too conventional. Maybe I was a skeptic about using our own desires for a place to live in the country into something that would be a model for other people. I had spent a year being interviewed as Britain’s “green mum” but I wasn’t interested in raising my kids, then preschoolers, in a model home with coachloads of visitors. There had to be another way to find a sense of community, and a place to call home.

I thought of John’s project when I was writing about ecovillages, a type of community development where we would all live in harmony with the earth and with one other, for the Journal of Utopian Studies. Ecovillages had become the popular face of alternative living, and quite a few people, including the UN Environmental Program, consider them a model for a sustainable future. The project John wanted us to develop, with shared living quarters, an educational center, and tax-exempt status, is what ecovillages are, or want to be. And I discovered that Birchwood Hall, the vaguely Marxist intentional community in Worcestershire I visited in 1991, is now an ecovillage. So what exactly does the ecovillage idea mean, and what implications does it have for the way we live now?

Note: This article was written some years ago and never published, and seems a worthwhile exploration for the new year.

Environmental responsibility

The idea of environmental responsibility has to become part of communitarian thinking, as a vital way in which to balance the rights and responsibilities of individuals, and communities. It aims to remedy a human tendency Aristotle wrote about, the tragedy of the commons, which is a label for the way we tend  to overuse and degrade resources - air, fresh water, rangeland - that are used in common. Campaigns against littering, too, are an attempt to control the tragedy of the commons.

There are two ways to look at this kind of responsibility. First, there is what greens like to call the seventh generation principle. This is based on a Native American principle of obligation to the future, to the 7th generation. Second, there is the First World (or “One-Third World”) responsibility to the global community, to seeing that living standards and opportunities are equal throughout the world.

In addition to these rather grand responsibilities, there are principles of neighborliness on a smaller, more local scale: whether to burn leaves or use a power mower, for example. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) groups oppose cellular towers or a new power plant, and major environmental groups try to address the issue of environmental justice while satisfying the personal-health-and-safety interests of their mostly white and middle-class members.

Most discussions about a sustainable way of life come down to decisions about what personal limits we will accept in exchange for a healthy environment. The range of solutions is vast. Will buying recycled toilet paper and organic chocolate save the rainforests? How about eating locally-grown mesclun salad? The best known side of green lifestyle movement has been focused on switching to different products (organic, fair-traded, locally-produced), but other significant trends are energy reduction and what is known as the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, which has spawned a remarkable number of glossy coffee-table books.

The central premise of the green and VS movements is that our lifestyles should conform to what natural systems and known technologies could reasonably provide to everyone on earth. The slogan of VS is “Living simply so that others may simply live.” There are various ways of calculating what this might mean. The comparison of consumption patterns in different countries is called “footprint analysis.” A “footprint” is the impact each of us has, in terms of using energy and raw materials and creating waste and pollution (including CO2 and other greenhouse gases).

There are many books that examine this premise. The bestselling Material World consists of photographs of families around the world with all their material possessions. A guide like UCS analyzes the total impact of various lifestyle changes, and shows that various popular green actions - such as choosing paper over plastic at the supermarket - are unimportant compared with choosing a smaller car.

“Community” is an essential component of an ecovillage and indeed of every proposal I’ve read for creating a sustainable society. "The goal of the changes proposed in this book is a bottom-up society, a community of communities that are local and relatively small." (Daly and Cobb 1989). A similar call to action came from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, "Because of the strain on resources it creates, materialism simply cannot survive the transition to a sustainable world. . . . the potential benefits of unleashing the tremendous quantities of human energy now devoted to designing, producing, advertising, buying, consuming, and discarding material goods are enormous.  Much undoubtedly would be channeled into forming richer human relationships, [and] stronger communities. . . ." (Brown et al. 1990).

What would a sustainable world with richer human relationships be like? This is the question ecovillages are trying to answer, so it’s useful to look at their aims and methods, and to assess the viability of the model they provide. 

Intentional community

In the beginning there were communes. Over time, they became more formal and started calling themselves intentional communities, which could be studied by academics just like the Shakers or the Oneida Community. These groups often considered the tribulations of living together to be part of a political journey, even though housework and sex were the main areas of conflict: “a key factor in the length of time a group of non-kin based people will tolerate living with each other depends on the individual’s personal tolerance of unwashed cups, cutlery and dishes.”  (Chris 1993) The daily intimacies of life in an intentional community were part of community building, that often had some intention of creating a model that society in general would want to follow.

Those who promote intentional communities have always talked about how they reduce resource use. People share space, tools, and cars, and are able to buy food in bulk. Only in the ‘90s, however, did communal households start to feel obligated to be green. Birchwood Hall in England set up a recycling committee. Sirius Community  in Massachusetts, which was established to be “A Center for the Evolution of Consciousness,” planted a large organic garden and began building a Solar Conference Center. Both now call themselves ecovillages.

In Villages, a renowned study of global communities, Richard Critchfield wrote, “Villages are man’s oldest and most durable social institution” (Critchfield 1981). There is no real definition of a village, but the idea of a village is far more palatable to most people than shared living quarters, and the cohousing movement which came to the United States from Denmark in 1988 had a village flavor, with separate family dwellings and some shared facilities. Today hundreds of established intentional communities of all types - religious, spiritual, service-oriented, cohousing, and plain old-fashioned communes - call themselves ecovillages, and the movement claims 15,000 communities throughout the world. (They recognize that this is an inflated number, based on self-identification by groups of even two or three people who have “ecological living as a central precept.”)

What makes an ecovillage?

Ecovillages espouse basic environmental goals such as renewable energy, organic farming, and reducing waste. According to their listings in various directories, they also value “earth connection,” meaningful work, lifelong relationships, control over local decisions, consensus decision making, permaculture, alternative healing, and spiritual development. Spirituality is important. Ross Jackson, the founder and financial supporter of the Global Ecovillage Network, is also the author of Kali Yuga Odyssey.

The founder of an ecovillage healing center in Jamaica describes the variety of “different perspectives on sustainable lifestyles” found in the settlement: “Raw food community, organic farm, international hippie scene, European artists, old British homesteaders, Oregon alternative-lifestylers, Australians, Haitians.” When I attended the annual Communal Studies Association conference there were nuns, unregenerate hippies, Synanon graduates, and conservative Christians.

But ecovillages are far more ambitious than the average intentional community. A description of Ecopolis in Siberia claims to be using wind, sun, and water power to build a City of the Sun, using an airship for transportation because of the lack of paved roads in the taiga. Since 1994, they claim to have had 2000 people living in 30 villages and settlements (the main eco-settlement, however, has only temporary buildings for 40 year-round residents).

Ecovillages are not what Rosabeth Moss Kanter called “retreat communes” but instead “service communes,” though who exactly they serve is considerably vaguer than it was for groups like Koinonia, an interracial community in Georgia. Ecovillages are, in theory, meant to serve the human race, the global community, by providing examples of sustainable living that will enable us to save ourselves when the global collapse comes. A French ecovillage says, “we aim to show visitors by example that it is quite feasible to find ways to make their own situations more sustainable.”

This is a serious intention, at least on the part of some. An international group of EVs made a presentation to the United Nations suggesting that the UN allocate $100m to furthering 50-70 ecovillage experiments around the world, more progress would be make towards charting a sustainable future than anything else currently underway. Ted Trainer, an Australian academic, is a major promoter of ecovillages because he believes that they are the only model with potential for saving the planet from ecological and social collapse. He believes that they should demonstrate “very simple lifestyles” and become the centers for “thriving, highly self-sufficient local economies.”

Analysis by reputable organizations, including the United Nations, of global resource use, distribution of resources, and polluting activities predicts a grim future for the human race, and for most of the earth’s flora and fauna. The Global Environmental Outlook 2000 says, “. . . efforts being made to halt environmental deterioration .  . . are too few and too late. . . .” A model for a better way to live is indeed needed, but the attention given to ecovillages seems to ignore the fact that the way they are currently being developed keeps them from being genuinely useful.

The economic dilemma

I don’t know when tax-exempt status, donations, and state support became part of the ecovillage, and also intentional community, phenomenon, but it concerns me as much as dependence on cars, building on open land, and the focus on tourism. Unlike the Shakers or the Oneida Community, few ecovillages aim support themselves through their own food production or small businesses. Their approach to generating income is starkly different from that of communal societies in the 1960s and 1970s, when living off the land, independent of conventional society, was important.

Ecovillages seem almost universally to seek tax-exempt status, with educational programs, conferences, and consultancy (along with the capital of wealthier members) as their major source of income. My guess is that one reason many intentional communities became “ecovillages” is that officials are more likely to see environmental education as meriting tax-exemption than spiritual growth.

Ecovillages clearly believe they should be supported by members and by citizens at large. But the ecovillage has no specific, long-term role in the wider society - the role a church might have, instructing children or interceding with God. In fact, the premise of an ecovillage is that they are a model for society, unlike a church or monastery which will never replace existing social structures. I am skeptical about the demonstration value of enterprises that depend on what’s been called “windfalls and welfare.” The rest of us cannot get grants to make environmental changes in our lifestyles.

It is true that seeing a solar- and wind-generating system, like the one at Sirius, is inspiring. The system cost $42,000, plus skilled labor available in the community, and an individual householder is unlikely to install such a system. If they did, they probably wouldn’t have school groups trouping through to look at it. Nonetheless, a school or other building where the public has regular access would be an even better place to site such a model.

Ecovillages also claim to offer a social model, a new “social ecology.” But unlike churches, which recruit without reservation, ecovillages, like intentional communities, are particular about who joins. They do, however, seek guests and students prepared to pay for holidays and courses, and “Volunteers are welcome, work camps will be arranged.” They often have supporting members, who live nearby and give them money to support the cause.

Many ecovillages give information on both year-round and summer populations. At Ces, a once-abandoned village in the Alps, there are only 5-8 full-time occupants, with 50 or more people there during the summer. The Oregon commune I lived on as a teenager was the same, a summer camp for college kids from California, and my guess is that some ecovillages are the equivalent of a summer cottage on the shore for urbanites with green aspirations.

Inspiration or ideal?

The ecovillage model is having most effect on communities that already existed in some form, creating the impetus to live in a greener way. Bill Metcalf, past president of the International Communal Studies Association, however, points out that communal groups - the conventionally alternative commune - may actually have a smaller footprint than an ecovillage or cohousing development. They’re more likely to live in an existing building (thus not contributing to sprawl through new building), to share equipment and space, perhaps even pool transportation. Other efforts to encourage self-sufficient community economic development with existing towns and neighborhoods strike me as more promising because they recognize that most people want jobs they can count on, independence as well as a sense of community, and a fairly conventional social life.

The ecovillage ideal, however, may well be something that could inspire planners and designers to create housing that will promote community feeling and reduce the human footprint. If the idea was extended to existing housing arrangements, from condos to suburban neighborhoods, it could be part of the answer to important questions for 21st century: how can economic development be balanced with the real limitations of the natural world? To what extent can individual choice about how to live (and, more importantly, drive) be limited in order to create healthy environments for human and other species? And, the most difficult question of all: should Americans make choices to live more simply, so others - including plant and animal species - may simply live?

Sources

Brinkheim, Barbro and Declan Kennedy, eds. Directory of Ecovillages in Europe. Steyerberg, Germany: Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), 1998.

Brower, Michael and Warren Leon. Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.

Brown, Lester et al. State of the World 1990. New York: Norton 1990.

Critchfield, Richard, Villages. New York: Doubleday 1981.

Daly, Herman and John Cobb For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Jimbey. (email), published in Ecovillages Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer 1998.

Kantor, Rosabeth Moss. Commitment and Community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Menzel, Peter. Material World. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994.

Schuman, Michael H. Going Local. New York: Free Press 1998

Trainer, T. (F. E.). The Conserver Society; Alternatives for Sustainability. London: Zed Books, 1995. Also www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw

Coming next: Homesteading, a brief foray. Below, a hen who really wants to be included in the story.

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