Sustainability = Stability in Change

An ecovillage is, in theory, a sustainable community. Community can be a confusing word, but generally we can take it to mean a group of more than sixteen people living together, working together, and sharing some sense of purpose and identity. Sustainability is harder to pin down. I like to define sustainability as "leaving more wealth for one's descendants for several generations to come," including in the definition of wealth such things as biological diversity, peaceful relations with other groups, and the skills that produce happy lives and great interpersonal relationships.

With this definition of sustainability, no actions are absolutely ruled out. Coal and nuclear power, for example, become "difficult elements to incorporate into a sustainable design", rather than "essentially unsustainable". Sustainability is about planning for the future, and choosing actions that are likely to create wealth for future generations.

All living systems maintain their own stability through constant change. Those changes include internal shifts of physical maturation and learning processes as well as behavioral shifts, changes in how the organism relates to its environment. If sustainability means planning, we must take into account the fact of change.

A single plan is not sufficient for any system intending to be sustainable, because no prediction of what will be required in the future is ever perfectly accurate. Often, our plans are complete rubbish because our predictions are so inaccurate. Businesses have begun dealing with this issue by using something called "scenario planning". In scenario planning, a group generates multiple stories about what might happen in the future, and then develops strategies to deal with those possible futures. Scenario planning, or something like it, is the only way any community can consider itself sustainable.

When I think about designing a village, there are three very general scenarios that I try to incorporate.
1) Apocalypse
2) Stagnation
3) Abundance

The Apocalypse scenario involves one or more disasters striking, and essentially means the large-scale collapse of our civilization. I don't regard it as the most likely outcome, but I'm also certain that I don't have the information I'd need to accurately lay odds. At the moment, the story I use for this scenario runs something like, "we have a global energy-crunch; global warming accelerates just as the global economy goes into a depression; a major icesheet (Greenland or one in the Antarctic) slides into the sea, raising sea-levels by seven meters and drowning major cities; large scale migrations and economic collapse produce the breakdown of social order". In that scenario, I want to be living in a community that can produce its own food, energy, and basic clothing / tools for a few years if necessary. We'd also need to be able to provide our own policing / local defense.

The Stagnation scenario is a much more likely scenario in my opinion. It is essentially "Apocalypse-Lite". "We all run low on oil and the global economy slows; global warming and rising sea-levels lead to loss of species, agricultural areas, and increased storm damage; some migration and increased disease combine with a slower economy to mean impaired health and reduced standard of living for many people." In that scenario, I want to be living in a community that can provide me a comfortable way of life with very little expense, but at the same time I want to have products and services I can put on the broader market so I can participate in the rebirth of the global economy (which will happen sooner or later). I also want my community to be well-integrated into my local area, so we can barter and help other people get organized.

In the Abundance scenario, the same challenges exist: global warming, mass extinction, exhausted petroleum deposits, sea-level rise, population growth. The difference is that this scenario assumes that we get our global act together enough to dodge most of the bullets. Renewables, some relatively clean non-renewables, and conservation/high-efficiency produce plenty of energy. We change our environmental management strategies so that biodiversity stablilizes and begins to increase again. This is a future of airships and sail freighters, high quality trains, bicycles and small super-efficient cars. It is a future of local manufacturing, a global information economy, employee ownership of companies, exploration of space, increasing longevity, and full life-cycle design of all industrial products. In this scenario, I want to live in a community that gives my children all the benefits of a stable, loving environment, that lets me do a few hours of physical work a week and relax with my friends easily in the evening, as well as keeping me connected to the booming global economy. I want to live in a simple home with access to luxurious community facilities and transport links to major cities and airport(s).

We can see that there are certain common themes, certain design features that will make it easier for me to accomplish my goals in any of these scenarios. Having some agriculture, some energy production, and some light manufacturing facilities on-site will be a requirement. Having good communications facilities is important as well. Relationships with other local businesses and producers of various kinds will be important.

In any case, my scenarios will have to get more detailed as we move forward on the village design. They will also change over time as the potential challenges clarify themselves. As the scenarios change, so should our strategies for navigating them. In this way, we can create a stable platform for building our dreams: maintain a well-crafted foundation of planning for change.