Social Networks, Education & Activism

5.1. Module 5 Introduction

‘A growing number of people are recognizing that in order to secure the clean air, water and food that we need to healthfully survive, we have to become guardians of the places where we live. People sense the loss in not knowing their neighbours and natural surroundings and are discovering that the best way to take care of themselves and to get to know neighbours, is to protect and restore their region.’ First Continental Bioregional Congress

WHILE MANY EARLY ECOVILLAGE PROJECTS saw themselves as ‘lifeboats’ in a civilisational shipwreck, almost all of them understand how impossible this isolationist scenario is. We must create a sustainable, thriving and regenerative future for all, where nobody is left behind, or we will not succeed as a species in the planetary era.

(Stock image, creditcienpies)

Consequently, most mature ecovillages in the world have, over the last two decades, developed extensive outreach projects in their local regions. They have learned to speak the language and build partnerships with their regional and national governments and through theGlobal Ecovillage Network (GEN)have even become a consultative influence at the United Nations.

Jonathan Dawson, former president of GEN, has offered a new metaphor for ecovillages, from lifeboats to ‘yoghurt culture’, transforming the nutrients of their regions into a delicious, digestible and long-lasting form of cultured nourishment.

It is now accepted that it is impossible to create or sustain a community in isolation and that many of the synergies and win-win design solutions that define regenerative cultures can only happen at regional scale. So although we need to start with sustainable communities, the process does not end there. Eventually when a group is formed and begins to collaborate effectively, there is a need to expand the community vision beyond the original group, seeking ways to connect with other groups in the regional and/or global networks – including under-represented or marginalised groups or non-human species.

As the group expands its spatial horizons from the local to the regional to the global, it will also expand its temporal horizons to its ancestors who left a rich legacy and whose traditional wisdom might hold at least part of the key to a regenerative and thriving future. In becoming conscious of who we are working for - less for ourselves and more for the yet unborn future generations - we are reconnecting with the ancient wisdom of how to live wisely on this Earth.

• A horizontal dimension where we create living networks with other groups, other projects and other communities in our local, regional, and/or global environment.
• A vertical dimension where we acknowledge our vital connection with history, with all living beings that were here before us and with all living beings that will be here after us.

In the design framework that supports Gaia Education’s approach, we call this awareness and action across multiple spatial scales (local, regional, global) and temporal scales (the distant past, the present and the future)scale-linking design. While we engage in sustainable community design to take a stance and offer practical solutions in the transition towards a sustainable human presence on Earth, many of the patterns and processes we need to create in this transition cannot be created at the scale of a small human community of a few dozen or a few hundred people. They require collaboration between communities to create these patterns at a bioregional scale.

Just as the ecovillage culture has changed its metaphor from ‘lifeboats’ to ‘yoghurt culture’, most sustainable community and ecovillage founders understand that to chase the dream of complete independence and isolatedself-sufficiency, so popular among the hippies of the 1970s, is a futile goal. In many ways this goal goes hand-in-hand with the story of separation.

As the story of interbeing gains greater recognition, regional, national and global interdependence becomes more easily understood. Thus it is important to design and build scale-linked structures of increased local and regional ‘community care’ (see Module 4) to meet basic needs within thriving regional economies that are elegantly adapted to the bio-cultural opportunities and challenges of their particular region.

This requires us to build networks within our bioregions, educate ourselves and others, and engage in activism that discards dysfunctional systems and generates new ones that nourish and sustain human and nonhuman life.