Agenda 21 and Local Government
Agenda 21 is a real attempt to specify what actions are needed throughout the world to reconcile economic and social development with environmental concerns...
Asia Visit Early 1997
From early February to the beginning of April 1997 Max Lindegger, Regional Co-ordinator of this office, visited six countries of our region: Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan...
Autonomous House
Robert Vale, together with his wife Brenda, a Professor of Architecture in New Zealand, built the first autonomous house in England a few years ago...
Community Development in Bali, Indonesia
During November and December 1999, Morag Gamble travelled to Bali to teach a Permaculture design course to women from around Indonesia...
THE Global Eco-Village Network (GEN) - Beginnings
Background to the early years of GEN, including the founding of the organisation...
Life in the Bush
Agriculture, once a way of life, employs very few people today and in many cases can’t feed a family. Farmers are mostly retail buyers and wholesale sellers - they’re between a rock and a hard place...
The Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales UK
Peter Harper is a biologist, gardener and landscape designer who has worked at the Centre of Alternative Technology (CAT), possibly Europe's best known eco-centre, since 1983...
Ecovillages or EcoCentres - what's the difference?
All ecovillages need an economic base. The inevitable failure of CAT's original self-sufficiency programme led within a year to an economic crisis. This was solved by reorganising part of the site as an exhibition and opening it to paying visitors, who would also buy meals other goods...
Cities are Feeding Themselves
Cities have started to feed themselves. In every major city throughout the world, there is evidence of these urban communities beginning to provide food for themselves...
Ecovillage Business: Clayworks
I started making natural clay based bodycare products after attending a workshop in Crystal Waters on the subject by an Austrian visitor in December 1997...
Cohousing
The Cohousing movement offers a great model for the residential aspects of eco-village design, where the community is actively involved in the design and development of their living environment...
Community Size... A Numbers Game
My experience of community, both as a designer and as a resident, has led me to believe that different population sizes create different social pressures on the residents, and a variety of behaviour patterns emerge...
Community Land Trusts
Land is in short supply. Housing is expensive. Is there a way through this mess? Mortgages keep you in debt. Community Land Trusts offer an exciting way of building a pathway out of the land ownership quagmire...
Community Welfare Foundation Bangladesh
The Community Welfare Foundation Bangladesh (CWFB) is a non-government voluntary organisation in Bangladesh. Primarily we have been working in rural development since 1995...
Crystal Waters and Local Agenda 21
Acknowledged by the presentation of a special award in the 1996 UN Habitat Awards for its ‘pioneering work in demonstrating new ways of low impact, sustainable living’, Crystal Waters is a 640 acre (259 hectare) settlement carefully designed to minimise human impact on the environment...
Ecology of Work
Nestled in the alpine foothills of Northern Italy is Damanhur, a remarkable federation of communities working to create a new culture of sustainability, self-reliance and well-being...
DUS-Bangladesh
The aim is to build a Training Centre to train people in sustainable farming techniques. 85% of Bangladeshies are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood...
Eating into the Future
Australia's first conference concerning food and the environment was well attended by leading health policy makers from around Australia and internationally including academics and Federal, State and Local Government representatives. Industry representatives also attended...
20 Ways to Reduce Your Ecological Footprint
Actions you can take to conserve biodiversity, from the Australian Conservation Foundation...
Energy Tips
When is off still on? Many household and office appliances and equipment consume energy even when turned off. These energy costs can be up to $140 for a typical household each year, adding as much as 15 per cent to electricity bills...
European Eco-villages -- a study
David Kanaley, the Director of Byron Shire Council’s Environmental Planning Services Department, reports on his recent tour of European ecovillages and presents his views on the key elements of ecovillages and their viability...
Green Korea United
Green Korea United is one of Korea's leading non-governmental environmental organisations, with 10 local chapters throughout the country. We are committed to building and maintaining an ecologically sound and sustainable Korean Peninsula. We work both nationally and internationally on issues of concern to the Korean people...
HABITAT II Thoughts
GEN was exceptionally well represented with 15 GEN people at the recent Habitat II conference in Istanbul. The Conference was publicised as the last of the big United Nations conferences for the century...
HABITAT II Conference Outcomes
The intentions agreed upon by the world community in the Habitat Agenda are relevant for the future work of national and international organisations...
International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
ISECs primary goal is to promote critical discussion of the foundations of modern industrial society, while at the same time examining the principles necessary for the emergence of more sustainable and equitable patterns of living...
Local Agenda 21
Cr. Peter Woods, OAM, President of the Local Government Association of NSW presented at the Newcastle Pathways to Sustainability Conference last year. His passion and dedication was evident then...
Maleny Co-operatives
In the last twenty years, Maleny has transformed from a fairly ordinary small rural town into a town with a thriving green economy. In the early seventies half a dozen new settlers, refugees from city life, decided to take their destiny into their own hands...
Mundially Fishermen's Co-operative
An enterprising group of fishermen in Calcutta, India, have found a way to 'farm' the city's waste! The 150-member co-operative utilises the effluent from the city...
Ecovillage Business - Mushroompeople
Mushroompeople, a non-profit ecologically-oriented supplier of spawn and cultures, plus tools, books, and videos to enable people to grow any kind of cultivable mushroom. Mushroompeople customers include home growers, as well as commercial producers of these delicious fungi...
Natural Cooling
Francisco Santana lives in the centre of Havana, the capital city of Cuba. His apartment is on the second floor of a house. His terrace is the rooftop of his neighbour’s house. One summer, his children were having trouble sleeping because of the heat...
Natural Paints
Traditionally paints came from products from the Earth. Australian indigenous people have traditionally used ochres and ground stone to create wall paintings which survive to this day, thousands of years later. Whitewash and other natural products were common in the days of our grandparents...
Model Housing Code - New South Wales Australia
The NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP) has prepared a model housing code. Focusing on medium-rise and multi-unit housing, this guide explains eight key design elements in an easy-to-follow format...
Legislation in New Zealand
New Zealand Resource Management Act - The purpose of this Act is to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. Within this Act sustainable "management" means managing...
NZ Ecovillage - a design exercise
In Easter 2000, Earthcare Design embarked on the ecovillage design of Valley Farm, situated between Paeora and Thames, at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is 400 acres of pristine, fertile river valley...
Pattern Language
Many years ago the Whole Earth Catalog devoted a full page to reviewing this book. It was the only book which received this kind of platinum treatment. If you are at all interested in putting life into community, variety into a world which is being globalised, and detail to the everyday places that matter...
Ecovillage Business - Rammed Earth Constructions
The market for rammed earth in this area back in the late 1980s was fairly small, but the people moving into Crystal Waters Permaculture Village were looking for alternatives, and rammed earth met many of their needs...
Renewable not nuclear!
Is nuclear power the answer to Australia's fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions? Definitely not, reports Sam van Rood. Renewable energy, not nuclear, is the answer to our country's pressing need to reduce greenhouse pollution...
Roof Top Gardening
In urban areas the idea of a vegetable garden may seem an impossibility. However, it is possible to grow surprisingly large quantities of food on balconies, window boxes and roof tops. There are many roof tops which are suitable for gardening...
Rural Enterprise in India
Our ultimate aim is to help the rural poor earn sufficient income from their local environment in a sustainable manner, so that the need to migrate to the cities shall be eliminated...
Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement - Sri Lanka
I decided the best way was to abandon the classroom, and take my students to the villages where people are poor and powerless, bringing them together. We helped construct schools, houses and so on...
Seed Savers Network - Australia
The principle aim is to preserve agricultural biodiversity in collaboration with individual farmers, gardeners and community groups. Seed Savers has helped put the conservation of original useful plants including fruits, vegetables, medicines and fibres into the public light...
Food From Small Spaces
An area of about 250sq metres is required to supply the total vegetable requirements of a family. This is less than the average suburban backyard, and you would have some room for some fruit trees, too...
Micro Hydro in the Solomon Islands
For the last twenty years APACE has concentrated on the design and installation of village-level micro-hydro electricity generating systems. Its first such installation was commissioned in 1983 in a village in the Western Province of Solomon Islands...
Sri Lankan Initiatives
Sarvodaya organizes "Shramadana Camps", where villagers come together to engage in physical work... School for the Deaf, which is an incredibly inspiring and worthwhile project. It was amazing to see what one woman, Mrs Tineke de Silva-Nijkamp, has built with the support of Sarvodaya and donations from Europe...
Green Education in Sri Lanka
Demonstrating to local farmers that organic farming, without the use of chemical insecticides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, but involves optimal natural inputs including cow dung, rice straw, Grilicidea leaves (abundant in the area), etc., allows for viable and successful vegetable cultivation...
Reclaiming Community
Local economies need a tough skin to protect them from being destroyed by outside economic forces, many communities in the industrialised world are trying to create such micro-economies in order to keep local resources working within the community. Here are 6 of the first steps a community can take to revitalise their local economy...
Sunshine Farm Japan
By studying more about permaculture and Japanese people's skills of olden days, we've started to make a design on Sunshine Farm with co-operative ways with people and nature and keeping it as an educational field for people to start thinking about their lives...
Sustainable Abundance
It is about lower consumerism, about a more equitable sharing of wealth, about protecting our environment. It is about the realisation that quality of life is derived from what we do rather than what we own or consume. It is about consumer control of corporatist pressure through careful purchasing decisions; not watching the advertising, nor buying the products...
Sustainable Housing
The money is wrong in most buildings.There should be more in basic structure, less in finish, more in maintenance and adaptation...
Sydney Eco-House
The changes they have made means that more than 100,000 litres of water can stay in the rivers, 60,000 litres of sewerage does not flow to the treatment plant, 4.3 tons of coal are saved and 8.3 tons of carbon dioxide does not pollute the Sydney air...
Food for Thought
The ecovillage movement represents a recognition of the need to develop radically new forms of settlement which will enable us to avoid generating problems of resource depletion and environmental damage...
Telecommuting
Morrison, who hails from the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, has been able to create 100 or so jobs "the sort requiring brains, not brawn" in a place typical of villages we find all around the world - communities in dire need of any work...
United Nations Best Practices
The Best Practices Database and Local Leadership Programme was launched as one of the key follow up activities to the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) and is designed to facilitate the implementation of the Habitat Agenda which resulted from that conference...
Urban Alternatives
If the population of a region is weighted too far towards small villages, modern civilization can never emerge; but if the population is weighted too far towards big cities, the earth will go to ruin because the population isn’t where it needs to be, to take care of it...
Waste and Want
Amsterdam is one of the most eco-aware capitals in the world. Dinyar Godrej compares it with his Indian hometown of Indore...
Whitmore Square EcoCity Project - Adelaide
The buildings will demonstrate a number of construction systems and climate responsive architecture for north-south and east-west orientated buildings in a compact, medium-high density urban infill context...