Eco Villages support an interesting solution to climate change, a massive scale down of our current lifestyle. Eco Villages take us back to our roots in the land and create smaller scale societies where environmental efficacy is paramount. As Professor Litfin delved into her studies of eco villages I was struck by the still vast differences in the villages consumption around the world. While an admirable lifestyle compared to the way most Americans live, the community in Ithaca was still using many times the amount of resources that any person in global south consumes, living in an eco village or not. With only consumption as a focus, why do we not see the developing world as the heroine of the climate crisis story?
Pondering this question forced me to redefine my ideas about sustainability, and triple bottom line aided me in doing so. Triple bottom line sustainability is the idea that change must come to create sustainability in three sectors, ecology, economy, and equity. This global fight is for sustainability, and not having access to food or clean water is in no way sustainable. Resources exist for a reason, consumption in many areas of the world is a survival tool. In America these words only have negative connotations because we have so greatly over consumed resources. The push for global sustainability will mean many societies increasing their resources use, there is no way to avoid that, nor should we. Sustainable means ability to sustain life. For Americans we have to focus on not deteriorating our earth to the point it is unlivable, but that focus for developing countries is on having basic human needs met.
If an eco village is a society that is focused on creating a self sufficient, sustainable way of life, that can mean either decreasing or increasing consumption depending on where the starting point is. So much credit is due to communities, like the ones we discussed in Senegal, who are focused on increasing their consumption to amounts that allow for healthy lifestyles while simultaneously creating environmentally friendly consumption habits.
