Jonathan Dawson, President of the Global Ecovillage Network, on the role of Ecovillages

I had the opportunity to hear some of the latest thinking of Jonathan Dawson (far right, above), President of the Global Eco-Village Network (GEN) and Executive Secretary of GEN-Europe, at an historical event during the week of March 22-29 at the Findhorn Foundation Community in Northern Scotland. The event was a conference entitled “Positive Energy: Creative Community Responses to Peak Oil and Climate Change,” for which Jonathan was the “focalizer,” or coordinator and MC. Jonathan gave a presentation at the conference entitled: “Moving outside the Bubble: The Ecovillage Contribution to the Sustainability Movement.” The following week, Jonathan also spoke at a conference held at the Cultivate Center in Dublin entitled “Convergence 13: Transition Strategies – Post Carbon Cities, Transition Towns, and Ecovillages,” which continued on in Cloughjordan, Ireland, where there is an exciting new ecovillage project currently under way.

I was inspired to interview Jonathan by an article Jonathan wrote for Communities Magazine in Fall 2006 entitled “How Ecovillages Can Grow Sustainable Local Economies,” in which Jonathan articulated “the need for intentional communities to belong to something larger than themselves alone.” At that time, Jonathan put forth a strategy far more ambitious than the creation of local, collective cottage industries and services. To accomplish greater autonomy from the destructive elements of the global capitalist economy at large and to contribute to the emergence of sustainable economies, Jonathan suggested that intentional communities expand upon the already emerging trend to participate bioregionally, and create alliances with partners with whom they can develop economic mutuality, thereby amassing far greater muscle for serving the planet. Now that communities are facing the dual challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil (or, rather, the multiple challenges of “Peak Everything,” as author Richard Heinberg calls it), this reader was curious about recent developments in Jonathan’s thinking about the progress that intentional communities have made in recent years and the task that lies ahead for them. Some of the content of these answers were gleaned from talks that Jonathan gave at both aforementioned conferences.

Jonathan, what progress do you think intentional communities have made over the last several years and what do you see as the role of ecovillages today?

Over the last 50 years or so there have been an astonishingly powerful series of initiatives that go under this cuddly label “ecovillage.” Traditionally the word “ecovillages,” at least in the European, North American context, has been synonymous with “intentional communities.” Unfortunately, the world has changed a lot in the last 20 years, making the ecovillage model more difficult to replicate: land prices have increased, planning regulations have tightened, there is a much more individualistic society. So, while the model itself is difficult, there are many lessons within the ecovillage that are of relevance to the sustainability movement more generally today. I wrote a little book a few years ago about ecovillages around the world (Ecovillages: New Frontiers for Sustainability, a Schumacher Briefing), and researching the book, I lost count of the number of times I wrote that a technology that has now become widely adopted in a country was first introduced into that country in an ecovillage. This is true of governance systems as well: non violent communication, conflict mediation techniques, both the software and hardware of community. It is no accident that this kept coming up again and again and again, that a technology that is now widely adopted as being just the sort of thing we need for a more civilized, sustainable society, was first introduced in an ecovillage. Ecovillages have been the early adopters and pioneers of initiatives that many people then simply adopt because it becomes the best way to do things. Ecovillages adopt new ways of doing things, not primarily for their own benefit, but as a way of demonstrating and modeling.

I notice that many ecovillages, including Findhorn, run ecovillage training programs. Ten or fifteen years ago, these programs were teaching people how to create ecovillages. Today they are not really doing that.They are providing immersion experiences in a new paradigm bubble that people can go back to the mainstream and take that inspiration with them, rather than trying to recreate communities like Findhorn. I think this is our gift. The ecovillage route is saying “we are going to achieve more if we gather together with people with very similar shared values and then really develop almost like an accelerated process.” For me, the real strength of the ecovillage movement is that it is made up of people who have taken themselves outside the system in order to give themselves license to make as few compromises as possible and create communities that are not just generating their own energy, not just treating their own sewage biologically, or living in ecological houses, but creating a distilled version, in terms of how the whole community works, of how a new society could be based along more sustainable, ecological lines.The smallness of scale of ecovillages is a also an important feature that goes back a long, long way; it goes back a millennia. Ecovillages are in keeping with the monastic tradition.

You have spoken about the need for ecovillages to step outside of their “bubble” and build alliances and partnerships with the greater community. What are some of these alliances you speak of?

Doors are open with organizations that ten years ago it would have been political suicide for them to have been identified with us. There is now an invitation to have a dialogue between various networks, including government. However, how we respond to oil depletion and climate change frequently involves what the government needs to do. For example, the government needs to set new standards for insulation or the government needs to address wasteful transport patterns; these are all essential things, but they often miss out how can we really dig into the well of human creativity. Together with the Transition movement, we are very much about how we can actually mobilize the greatest resource we have, which is the creativity of people, rather than become dependent on the government solving it for us. The Transition route and the Ecovillage route are not in competition; they are very much complementary.

As far as economic partnerships, I would say that it is important to partner with the sector that is seeking to recycle for the benefit of all rather than extracting profit for the benefit of a few investors, which is really what defines the not-for-profit sector. This includes credit unions, cooperatives, and social enterprise generally. An area really worthy of research is the cooperative movement. It is huge; it is one of the biggest international movements in the world. The number of people who are members of cooperatives is over a billion, I think. A substantial portion of the world’s population has a share in a cooperative, and they are designed to recycle the profits for the benefit of their members. The more I research in different lands, the more I come back to the origins of the cooperative movement in Rochdale, in Lancashire, in the 1840’s. They found answers to so many of the questions. They really got it right. I’d like to do more research to find out exactly how they have taken the correct principles and applied them in different areas.

Also, there is a growing awareness of the insecurity of current investments, which provides a wonderful opportunity, if we can get our act together, to provide safe, secure (or as secure as you can get) investments, and set up the mechanisms whereby people can invest with confidence in life-affirming activity rather than life-destroying activity. A lot of people for example, have their pensions or their savings invested in stocks and shares and this is profoundly unhealthy, and it is not safe. It’s just not safe. You never know when the coffers will pop.

You mentioned the importance of new investments. What are some of the best investments, and how would you persuade people with resources to redirect their investments?

Energy companies are the real deal; they are a potential major income earner for a community. And also, in many parts of the world, there are generous subsidies available to help pay for the capital costs. It is important to educate people that the only true wealth is natural resource in community and that, actually, their money would be more useful and more secure there. They might not get this big return on their buck, but were they to invest in, for example, wind turbines, and were the system to collapse, they would still be holding a share in real assets. So I think there has got to be potential for encouraging people, not just because it is the right thing to do, but out of self interest to them, to invest in real assets: forests, wind turbines, community centers. The other idea I had was for people to invest in high quality housing. To invest in really energy efficient co-housing, or other ecological housing developments, will again deliver a strong environmental benefit and will have the potential to deliver an income stream for years to come; it is a real tangible asset. The books Going Local, by Michael Schuman (an American) and Short Circuit, by Richard Douthwaite (an Englishman living in Ireland, using international examples with a European slant) are both peppered with examples of community owned enterprises.

As far as how to persuade people to redirect their investments, this is not a strategy that I often would prioritize, but I think in this case a dose of fear is not a bad thing; the fear would be about the security of their conventional investments, a realization of just how vulnerable they are. We are so used to defining wealth in terms of economy, or money, that actually we are overlooking the fact that so much of what really adds to the quality of life has nothing to do with money at all. It lies particularly in the strength of community, human relationships, social services that are often on a voluntary basis. With current investment strategies and under the current rules of the game, you really get the biggest buck, the biggest return, on the most profitable activities, of course, which are the very ones that undermine social capital and natural capital: mineral exploitation, war, pharmaceuticals, industrial agriculture. These are going to deliver a higher economic return for the individual but the social and ecological costs are huge. So actually, whether for their own retirement, or their grandkids, if they really want to increase wealth, it will be by directing their investment towards true wealth that is both secure and will increase the wealth of communities.

What do you think about the strategy of intentional communities linking their economies? For example, the Emmissaries of Divine Light, a spiritual community with more that half a dozen member communities in the U.S., Canada, and around the world, have a farm in Colorado and Indiana, and a publisher in Los Angeles, and they share their resources and products across the states.

I think that is a bad idea. Pretty much every time we have a gathering of eco-villagers, the idea is proposed of creating a currency to enable eco-villagers to network among themselves. I have no interest in it at all. The reason is because we are moving into an increasingly bioregional world. I see our alliance internationally with other communities in the eco-village network as being really important and valuable, but I see our key partners as being in the North of Scotland. I am much more interested in finding a way of building a network that links the North of Scotland than those which hold us in the bubble of intentionality. So, for example, with the Peak Oil/Climate Change scenarios rolling forward, there may well be scenarios where it is a bit dangerous out there. The food supply chains may well come under threat; they are already coming under threat in economically poorer parts of the world, but they could come under serious threat here. If that is the case, if we are growing food and our neighbors aren’t, and they see us as being linked primarily to a group somewhere else, there is no mutuality and ownership. Whereas if the work we are doing is consciously building partnerships so that they come to see that what we are doing is building exactly the skill base that they will need in a post Peak Oil world, it is the best chance we will have to protect ourselves.