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GEN Oceania Asia Recent Activities
Newsletter
You will no doubt have noticed that this newsletter is a little late. You have my humblest apologies! The combination of a great deal of consultancy work, government-induced accounting (just don’t mention Goods & Services Tax to me!), preparation for the January PLU course, the building of the new GENOA Education Centre, and of course the Christmas Season made getting the newsletter out in December an impossibility.
We have been producing this 12 page format for some time now, without increasing our subscription costs. With the rise in costs (for example the CPI has increased to 6.1% this year, probably due to the inflationary aspects of the new Goods & Services Tax), we have been forced to reconsider the viability of this newsletter. The 12 page format also increased our postage costs dramatically, as the weight of the newsletter has put it in a higher charge bracket for postage. We have decided to reduce the number of pages to 8 from the next issue, and hope that our readers will continue to support us.
The roof battens going on to the GENOA EcoCentre.
You can begin to see how the finished building will look.
EcoCentre
The building of the EcoCentre is going (more or less!) to plan, and as I type this the roof battens are being nailed in place. By the time you get this newsletter we should have the roof on, and, hopefully, the PV panels, which will be connected in due course to the mains electricity grid. Unfortunately we were not able to raise the funds needed to put the larger PV array on the building, or to go for the more expensive latest technology in PV — fabric PVs which form part of the roof itself. It was particularly hard to knock back part of the government grant for PV, but without the match funding we couldn’t access the full sum available. We are VERY grateful to the kind donors who sent us funds — donations ranging from $20 to $900 — it is with such donations that we will be able to complete the EcoCentre. We have received some wonderful surprises, like the donation by a local concreter, who provided 2 of his team and all the tools (laser levels, concrete vibrators and the like) for a day. It is heart warming stuff. You can check out progress on the building process on our web site at:
http://www.gaia.org/secretariats/genoceania/ecocentre/construction/index.htm
Left to right: John Oliver (builder), Graema Rickards (architect), Graeme Lederhose (Alternative Energy Product Manager, Energex), Neil Thompson (National Business Manager, Renewable Energy Systems, EnviroPower), Max Lindegger (Programme Director, GENOA Inc).
World Congress on Environmental Design for the New Millennium
Max Lindegger, from this office, was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Green Design section of this massive international conference held late last year in Korea. He went without high expectations, our experiences in conferences and talk-fests lately having been rather disappointing. He was agreeably surprised to find that the Conference was the best he had attended in many years, with presentations from some extremely interesting speakers.
Korean Ecovillage — A Misconception
One of the presentations Max attended at the Korean conference was about proposed ‘ecovillage’ in Seoul. The ‘ecovillage’ seems to consist of condomiums and apartments in multi storey buildings, built on a land fill, which are to house people who are to work in an adjacent massive commercial area ‘Digital Media City'. Essentially it seems that the ‘ecovillage’ is to be dormitory suburb for office workers who will commute to work in Digital Media City. The ecological angle appears to consist of good public transport, and a high speed telecommunications network, recycling of rainwater and use of methane gas from the land fill for heating. It includes an area of skyscrapers next to a park and a golf course. While it is encouraging to see that designers of such large scale developments are considering the environment at all, it is disturbing to see the word ‘ecovillage’ used in such a context. We may have been successful in getting the initial idea out, but there is obviously a fair old way to go yet!
Pacific Lutheran University
We are in the middle of our annual 3 week course for young US American university students. This always requires a great deal of work and time, but is also always rewarding. The satisfaction comes from hearing the students (and their accompanying professor on this occasion) talk about taking the initiative when they get home, of learning and experiencing just what it means to live a more sustainable life. Each of these young people will carry the lessons they learn here through their lives, and that makes the whole thing worth doing.
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