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Report - Ecovillages: Beyond Stereotypes Agriculture & Ecology 30 Maart
This is a report written by Mischa about the second Ecovillages: Beyond Stereotypes event. The theme of this event was Agirculture & Ecology. There were two speakers this evening. The first speaker was Malika Cieremans, an expert in Food Forest design who has experienced many eco communities and therefore was a really good expert on sustainable agriculture in ecocommunities. The other speaker was Jurre Zwart, Coördinator for Otherwise who gave an overview of some of the research initiatives that are out there on ecocommunities. This presentation was done in the light of the research project underlying the Ecovillage: Beyond Stereotypes series.
Malika Cieremans shared her experiences and insights with us, from living and research ecovillages. She started with an overview of ecovillages.
In Russia e.g. the Grishino Ecovillage, the Svetlana Camphill and the Korcheg Ecovillage. Eventhough in Russia many people grow their own food without any relation to ecovillages, these initiatives are more then only food supply. A series of books called ‘Anastasia’ are taken by as inspiration by many people in Russia, which also turned into a movement – with this goal of self-sufficiency. Some of the challenges of the communities are for example the common infrastructure, how to manage water, costs, things breaking and how the community organizes itself.
In Portugal, there is an ecovillage called Tamera which already exists since the 60ties, therefore already in the 2nd generation (maybe third). Terraces and lakes have been built to make the land suitable for agriculture. There is a lot of knowledge and knowledgeable people (Global Campus) in Tamera, all in all Tamera seems to be a nice success story.
Other ecovillages around the world are e.g. Lama foundation (also a spiritual community), Global Ecovillage Network (RefuGEN), SWSC (US), Findhorn (Scotland), ZEGG (Germany), Schweibenalp (Swiss), Vale de Senarcioues (Spain), Bergen (NL); for more examples look at the slides;
The struggles in general are the high land prices (speculation especially is a problem causing this), and the relationships amongst the community (power, money etc.), therefore it is important to find a culture of working out conflicts.
Malika also mentioned the transition town movement or neighbourgood farms as nice examples of finding a compromise or starting small.
Jurre told us about his trail to find information, research or structural assessments of Ecovillages (or ecocommunities). This seemed to be difficult, not much information available on the environmental performance of ecovillages. A positive example was the Lammas Ecovillage in Wales, they also provide information online and are interested in research e.g. by offering internship to students. GEN is also trying to assess the sustainability of a community. They are using indicators. Also see slides for more information.