Cohousing-L Mailing List: Coho-US sponsoring ecovillage webinar June 12

[Steve Welzer (stevenwelzer]

Next Monday (June 12) the Cohousing Association of the US will be
sponsoring a webinar: “Ecovillages as Regenerative Models for American
Housing” ...

https://cohousinginstitute.org/courses/6-12-ecovillages-as-regenerative-models-for-american-housing/

I’ll be attending. And here are some reflections on it:

Ecological consciousness advanced greatly between the publication of Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and Charles Reich’s The Greening of America
in 1970. For example: 1970 also saw the initiation of the annual Earth Day
celebrations.

The Greening of America contained quite a few flakey-Sixties ideas, but
also had an essential theme of social change: “There is a revolution
coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will not require
violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It
promises a higher reason, a more human-scale community, and a liberated
individual. Its ultimate creation will be a renewed relationship to the
Self, to society, to nature, and to the land.”

With the publication of that book the “greening” meme started to be
referenced in common discourse. Green energy. Green transport. Green
infrastructure. Green political parties. “Our lifeways must go green.”

An environmental movement sprang up in the wake of Silent Spring. But
something broader and deeper also emerged, a movement that I call “the
greening of society.” Ever since, there have been myriad manifestations of
it: Earth Day worldwide, deep ecology, voluntary simplicity,
bioregionalism, Transition Towns. And the attempt to construct ecovillages.

The email notification about the Coho webinar said: “Did you know that
cohousing communities can also be ecovillages? The principles of
ecovillages can be applied to traditional cohousing communities in pursuit
of ecological stewardship and regeneration.”

What are those principles? The Global Ecovillage Network (www.ecovillage.org)
delineates:

Social Practices
Nurture diversity and cohesion for thriving communities.
Build trust through transparency and accountability.
Empower collaborative leadership and participatory governance.
Promote health, healing and well-being for all.

Cultural Practices
Enrich life with art and celebration.
Honor indigenous wisdom.
Innovate in order to simplify, otherwise sparingly.
Reconnect to nature and embrace low-impact lifestyles.
Move towards equitable stewardship of land and resources.

Ecological Practices
Protect the soil through regenerative agriculture.
Clean and replenish sources and cycles of water.
Move towards 100% renewable energy and transport.
Adopt and spread green building technologies.
Work with waste as a valuable resource.
Increase biodiversity and restore ecosystems.

Economic Practices
Shift away from globalization toward communitarian economics.
Commit to responsible production, consumption, and trade.
Generate wealth through sharing and collaboration.
Use banking and exchange systems that strengthen communities.
Cultivate a high quality of life based on sufficiency rather than affluenza.

Constructing ecovillages as models to be emulated is key. But, more
generally, the ecovillage ethos can be applied in various ways to rural
communities, suburban townships, and urban neighborhoods. Diversity of
implementations is anticipated and desirable.

* * * *

For the entire expanse of our species history (“homo” goes back about six
million years; the emergence of “sapiens” is dated from about 300,000 years
ago), until the relatively recent rise of cities, states and empires, our
lifeways were communitarian -- bands, tribes, villages. Cohousing
represents a revival of communitarianism. It’s a very important phenomenon
of our time. Even more encouraging would be a turn toward
eco-communitarianism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFJdr8fwJUA

Steve Welzer
Altair EcoVillage project participant