Eco-communalism
Encyclopedia
Eco-communalism is an environmental philosophy based on ideals of simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...

, self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...

, sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

, and local economies. Eco-communalists envision a future in which the economic system of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 is replaced with a global web of economically interdependent and interconnected small local communities. Decentralized government, a focus on agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

, biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...

, ethnic diversity and green economics are all tenets of eco-communalism.

History

Eco-communalism finds its roots in a diverse set of ideologies. These include the “pastoral reaction to industrialization of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

 and the nineteenth-century social utopians (Thompson, 1993); the Small Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr...

 philosophy of E.F. Schumacher (1972); and the traditionalism of Gandhi (1993)”

The term eco-communalism was first coined by the Global Scenario Group
Global scenario group
The Global Scenario Group was a team of environmental scholars, headed by Paul Raskin, who used scenario analysis to analyze future paths for world development in the face of environmental pressures and crises...

 (GSG), which was convened in 1995 by Paul Raskin
Paul Raskin
Paul Raskin is the Founding Director of the Tellus Institute which has conducted over 3,500 research and policy projects throughout the world on environmental issues, resource planning, and sustainable development...

, president of the Tellus Institute
Tellus Institute
The Tellus Institute is a non-profit research and policy organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Its mission is to advance the transition to a sustainable, equitable, and humane global civilization. The Tellus Institute was founded in 1976 by Paul Raskin, Richard Rosen,...

. The GSG set out to describe and analyze scenarios for the future of the earth as it entered a Planetary Phase of Civilization
Planetary Phase of Civilization
The Planetary Phase of Civilization is a concept defined by the Global Scenario Group , an environmental organization that specializes in scenario analysis and forecasting...

. The GSG's scenario analysis
Scenario analysis
Scenario analysis is a process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes . Thus, the scenario analysis, which is a main method of projections, does not try to show one exact picture of the future. Instead, it presents consciously several alternative future...

 resulted in a series of reports. Eco-communalism took shape in 2002 as one of six possible future scenarios put forth in the GSG’s 99-page essay entitled "Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead." This founding document describes eco-communalism as a “vision of a better life” which turns to “non-material dimensions of fulfillment – the quality of life, the quality of human solidarity and the quality of the earth”.

Alternative scenarios

The eco-communalist vision is only part of GSC
Global scenario group
The Global Scenario Group was a team of environmental scholars, headed by Paul Raskin, who used scenario analysis to analyze future paths for world development in the face of environmental pressures and crises...

’s scenario analysis in the Great Transition essay which is organized into three categories. The first, Conventional Worlds, sees capitalist values maintained and only market forces and incremental policy reform
Policy reform
Policy reform, in addition to its more general meanings, has been used to refer to a future scenario which relies on government action to correct economic market failures and to stimulate the technological investment necessary for sustainable development and the creation of a truly sustainable...

 trying to curb environmental degradation. The second, Barbarization, is one in which environmental collapse leads to an overall societal collapse
Societal collapse
Societal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...

. The third, Great Transition
Great Transition
Great Transition is a vision created by the Global Scenario Group of how humanity could create a civilization that reflects egalitarian social and ecological values, affirms diversity, and defeats poverty, war, and environmental destruction....

, is a pathway that includes the “social revolution of eco-communalism” (October 2005 Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster) which finds humanity changing its relationship with the environment. Eco-communalists would be actors in a broader global citizens movement
Global citizens movement
In most discussions, the global citizens movement is a socio-political process rather than a political organization or party structure. The term is often used synonymously with the anti-globalization movement or the global justice movement. Colloquially the term is also used in this imprecise manner...

.

Philosophy

At its core, eco-communalism holds a mindfulness for sustainable development, a belief in human goodness, which often manifests itself through conflict resolution
Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...

 or multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...

. Also apparent is a longing for society to advance past reckless industrialism towards a more localized, environmentally palatable system.

Eco-communalism is often associated with eco-socialism
Eco-socialism
Eco-socialism, green socialism or socialist ecology is an ideology merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, green politics, ecology and alter-globalization...

, which emphasizes a movement away from capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 and toward a less materialistic society. The word communalism itself is a term that describes social movements and theories which emphasize the centrality of the community, and eco-communalism ultimately sees the community as the catalyst to help propel the move away from greed and corporate irresponsibility. In 1983, E.F. Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr...

, a collection of essays in which he expressed the unsustainability of the modern world’s consumption behavior and the need for a new outlook to prevent otherwise inevitable environmental collapse:
"Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful."

These are the ideas espoused in the philosophy of eco-communalism – rather than a world of capitalist states and their often exploited workers driven by their own greed, eco-communalism envisions a world in which government is decentralized, settlements are integrated with larger cities, local farming is the primary source of produce, and ecological thinking and interconnectedness are the new human values (44-45). As John Bellamy Foster
John Bellamy Foster
John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and also editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory...

 describes in “Organizing Ecological Revolution,” eco-communalism will be the achievement through revolutionary struggle of a more egalitarian society.” It will be one in which “a vigilant civil society would foster more responsible corporate behavior and new values would change consumption and production patterns.” (19) The GSG gives eco-taxes, social subsidies, and green accounting as examples of how eco-communalism could be practically applied (61).

Real-world application

Eco-communalism has taken root all over the globe on different levels. Towns such as Auroville
Auroville
Auroville is an "experimental" township in Viluppuram district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, near Pondicherry in South India. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa and designed by architect Roger Anger...

, Nimbin
Nimbin, New South Wales
Nimbin is a village in the Northern Rivers area of the Australian state of New South Wales, approximately 30 km north of Lismore, 33 km southeast of Kyogle, and 70 km west of Byron Bay....

, and the Federation of Damanhur
Federation of Damanhur
The Federation Of Damanhur, often called simply Damanhur, is a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 30 miles north of the city of Turin. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the Valchiusella valley, bordering on the Gran...

 attempt to provide an environmentally low impact way of life. Larger groups such as the Findhorn Foundation
Findhorn Foundation
The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain....

 provide education to help new communities form. In addition, all of these groups and more are collaborators in the Global Ecovillage Network
Global Ecovillage Network
The Global Ecovillage Network is a global association of people and communities dedicated to living "sustainable plus" lives by restoring the land and adding more to the environment than is taken...

; which strives to support eco-communalism worldwide.

See also

  • Anti-globalization
    Anti-globalization
    Criticism of globalization is skepticism of the claimed benefits of the globalization of capitalism. Many of these views are held by the anti-globalization movement however other groups also are critical of the policies of globalization....

  • Back to the land
    Back to the land
    The back-to-the-land movement calls for occupants of real property to grow food from the land on a small-scale basis for themselves or for others, and to perhaps live on the land while doing so....

  • Bioregionalism
    Bioregionalism
    Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...

  • Commune (intentional community)
    Commune (intentional community)
    A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...

  • Ecovillage
    Ecovillage
    Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...

  • Global Citizens Movement
    Global citizens movement
    In most discussions, the global citizens movement is a socio-political process rather than a political organization or party structure. The term is often used synonymously with the anti-globalization movement or the global justice movement. Colloquially the term is also used in this imprecise manner...

  • Globalization
    Globalization
    Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

  • Great Transition
    Great Transition
    Great Transition is a vision created by the Global Scenario Group of how humanity could create a civilization that reflects egalitarian social and ecological values, affirms diversity, and defeats poverty, war, and environmental destruction....

  • Green anarchism
    Green anarchism
    Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...

  • Murray Bookchin
    Murray Bookchin
    Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...

  • Permaculture
    Permaculture
    Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...

  • Planetary Phase of Civilization
    Planetary Phase of Civilization
    The Planetary Phase of Civilization is a concept defined by the Global Scenario Group , an environmental organization that specializes in scenario analysis and forecasting...

  • Social Ecology
    Social ecology
    Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...

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