The Future is Ecovillages
Earlier this month I did a tour of Ecovillages in Portugal. The stops were all different, with unique approaches, styles and types of people… but aligned in purpose: regenerate the land and soil, retain and circulate the water, integrate with the plants and animals that also live there, celebrate biodiversity, live naturally. There was an intention to plug into nature’s beautiful complexity such that the output from one cycle becomes the input for another process rather than waste to discard. The people were present, healthy, inspiring, activated.
What makes something an Ecovillage is not exactly clear. Being a part of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is a good indicator. The first Ecovillage I visited, and have since returned to, Pachamama, is also part of this network.
We visited:
a village leveraging web3/blockchain for financing and operations
one of the longest standing Ecovillages that has a focus on peace and a knack for creating innovative water and solar techniques
a project focused on syntropic (experimental regenerative) farming
a community teaching contact improv and movement
an ambitious, nature-based regeneration vision for an entire town
a network of cooperatives
a re-wilding community experiment
a spiritual center that holds an annual festival
The food we ate was mostly vegan, and always delicious and homemade. Some of the others on the tour lived in Ecovillages and were looking for ideas to take back home. Others were interested in moving to one, at least for several months each year. I’m personally interested in how Ecovillages will work together with Festivals and Burns to form the infrastructure for a New Earth economy. Waking Life connected some more dots for me; I’ll write about that soon. Our lovely tour guides were both there! Maybe next year the tour should finish at Outra Lado…
Big encouragement for all of you to visit and support these places and projects, and find the ones near you. You’ll find them Everywhere.