世界上的14个生态村

武夷山

美国华盛顿大学政治学和环境学教授Karen Litfin女士2013年底在美国Polity出版社出了一本书，题为Ecovillages：Lessons For Sustainable Community（生态村：可持续发展社区的经验教训）。作者采访了世界各国的14个生态村，写成此书。我发现，这些生态村的规模总起来说都很小，故对于人口密集的中国没有直接借鉴价值，但这样的探索极其可贵，因为人类的未来也许就系于这样的探索。

下面，我将各生态村介绍中的人口数（或相关事实）择译出来，可见其规模较小。

1. 印度的Auroville。这里居住着来自43个国家的2000多人。

Auroville is first and foremost an international township with a spiritual objective—to embody the ideal of human unity—and its ecological work comes as a consequence. Auroville’s overarching vision is grounded in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, which understands biophysical reality as an evolutionary unfoldment of Spirit.

Founded in 1968 upon a severely eroded plateau in south India, the first order of business for the pioneers was to revitalize the land. Three million trees later, Auroville is home to over 2,000 people from 43 different countries and is one of the few places on Earth where biodiversity is actually increasing.

2. 西非的Colufifa。Colufifa是法文“消灭饥饿委员会”的缩写。Colufifa并不是一个生态村，而是350个西非村庄构成的网络，以塞内加尔为中心。这些村庄都从事有机农业。

Colufifa, a French acronym for the Committee to End Hunger (Comité de lutte pour la Fin de la Faim), is not really an ecovillage. Rather, it is a Senegal-based network of 350 West African villages seeking to become self-sufficient through the following efforts:

· organic farming

· microfinance

· adult literacy

· malaria prevention

Colufifa’s work, as in much of the developing world, is not to build new villages but to make the existing ones sustainable.

3. 澳大利亚的Crystal Waters永续耕作（有人译为“朴门农艺”）村。居民约200人。

In 1984, when Crystal Waters Permaculture Village was founded in northeastern Australia, it was the world’s first permaculture village. Some 200 residents now live on 85 private one-acre lots, with another 500-some acres held in common as a wildlife sanctuary. As a consequence, kangaroos and wallabies are a common sight along the road.

In a region plagued by extreme drought, Crystal Waters stands out as a sparkling oasis whose intricate network of dams channels rainwater into thriving streams and lakes.

By rural Australian standards, the community is high-density; most homes deploy solar energy and rainwater catchment. Yet the nearest town is a 30-minute drive and the community itself is spread across five steep ridges, making Crystal Waters very much part of the dominant car culture.

Residents enjoy their own bakery, a community center, and a monthly country market.

4. 意大利的Damanhur。30个“核心”社区共居住了600个居民。

Damanhur’s roughly 600 residents live in 30 communities, called “nucleos,” spread across a spectacular subalpine valley in northern Italy.  Each nucleo in the Damanhur Federation is devoted to a specific field: solar energy, seed saving, organic meat production, education, healing, etc.

Appropriately, Dendera, a new nucleo dedicated to international exchange, served as my gracious host.

Damanhur may be the world’s most fast-paced, high-tech ecovillage. For instance:

· It has its own molecular biology lab that tests for genetically modified food

· a smart-phone for every member

· and a highly successful complementary currency—the credito.

5. 美国北卡的地球港。现有60人，计划扩充到150人。

My first stop was Earthaven, a picturesque 320-acre off-grid community and educational center nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Established in 1994, Earthaven aspires to be “a living laboratory and educational seed bank for a sustainable human future.” Its roughly 60 members share an affinity for permaculture and aim to become a self-sustaining village of 150 living on 56 home sites.

6. 美国纽约州的绮色佳生态村。居住着约100位成年人，60个孩子。

EcoVillage at Ithaca, with its architectural designs and angular wooden construction, sees itself as a model for middle America.

A suburban co-housing community with roughly 100 adults and 60 children living on 175 acres in upstate New York, EVI has succeeded in reducing its average per capita ecological footprint to about half the U.S. average, while enjoying most of the comforts and conveniences of the proverbial American Dream—plus much more.

Residents enjoy trails for walking and cross-country skiing and a pond for swimming and ice-skating, as well as the bounty from two ecovillage farms. Other amenities include a plethora of on-site businesses as well as offices for working from home, a tool library, car sharing, a children’s room, a fitness room, and much more.

7. 苏格兰的Findhorn Foundation。核心成员有400人，周边地区还居住着支持其理念的数百人，每年来生态村访问的客人有数千人次。 

As the community’s website says, the Findhorn Foundation is “a spiritual community, ecovillage and an international centre for holistic learning, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future.” Widely perceived as “the mother of all ecovillages.” Findhorn began in 1962 when three spiritual seekers with no previous gardening experience transformed a barren, windy bluff on the North Sea into a cornucopia. They attributed their success to their contact with nature spirits. Their astonishing results, inexplicable by normal scientific criteria, were broadcast all over the world; by the 70s, Findhorn had become a Mecca for New Age seekers. Now, Findhorn members serve as consultants for the United Nations and multinational corporations. While formal membership is around 400, the wider community includes hundreds more supporters living nearby and thousands more visitors. While Findhorn still grows plenty of vegetables in its Cullerne Gardens, it primary focus to day is on “growing people” through a popular smorgasbord of conferences and workshops on spiritual and ecological themes. Official website: 1 Virtual tour: http://www.findhorn.org/aboutus/virtual-tour/

8.日本的Konohana Family。截至2012年，这里居住着58个成人，25个孩子。

Konohana Family, an ecovillage that sits under the towering presence of Japan’s Mt. Fuji, takes its name from the goddess once thought to inhabit this venerable mountain.

As of 2012, 58 adults and 25 children belong to the Konohana Family. Because members share close quarters, all meals and all finances, their ecological footprint is about 1/3 the Japanese average—or 1/6 the US average. In other words, a Konohana lifestyle would be sustainable if everyone on Earth lived it.

The community’s bountiful fields grow 250 varieties of rice, soy, and vegetables. Farming is at once the basis of the community’s collective economy, its efforts to come into harmony with nature, and its spiritual life. Konohana’s motto is, “Before cultivating the field, first cultivate the mind.”

9. 洛杉矶生态村。约居住着50人。

After nearly 9 months on the road and in the air, I came full circle, returning to my home country by way of the graffiti-strewn East Hollywood neighborhood that is home to Los Angeles Ecovillage.

Having lived for 14 years in southern California, the epicenter of American hyper-individualism, I was curious to see what 50 adults committed to green living in a gritty urban neighborhood could accomplish.

10. 斯里兰卡的Sarvodaya 运动。该运动旨在贯彻圣雄甘地的乡村自给自足理念，参与该运动的约有1.5万个村庄。村民们民主决定要上什么公益项目后，就大家出工出力。秉持Sarvodaya理念的村民们会说：“我们修建了道路，道路打造了我们”。

When people ask how many ecovillages there are in the world, I tell them it depends upon whether you count the 15,000 Sri Lankan villages working with Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest nongovernmental organization.

11．德国的七椴树生态村。住有100名成人，40名孩子。

Sieben Linden, named for seven linden trees on the land, is another ecovillage that sprouted in the fertile soil of the East after German reunification.

Founded in 1997, this off-grid community of about 100 adults and 40 children now occupies roughly 200 acres of farmland and pine plantation.

12. 丹麦的Svanholm。住着85位成人，56个孩子。

Svanholm is a rural Danish community of 85 adults and 56 children.

With nearly half of its 988 acres devoted to organic farming, Svanholm’s farms dwarf those of most ecovillages and its farmers have played a pivotal role in setting Danish—and therefore EU—organic standards.

What most interested me, though, was this commune’s 30-year commitment to income sharing. The vast majority of the back-to-the-land communes of the 60s and 70s failed but this one has flourished. If sharing is the essence of ecovillage life, then surely full-on financial sharing deserves our attention—especially when the community is as prosperous as Svanholm.

13. 德国的UfaFabrik。社区内只住了35人，社区各类服务（包括有机咖啡厅、有机面包房、武术练功房、表演厅、儿童活动场所，等等）另外雇佣了150人，。

UfaFabrik is an urban ecovillage that began in 1979 when about 100 squatters occupied the former Universal Film Studios in the heart of West Berlin. Their Cold War message was “Peace through culture and ecology.” Their main mission was educational, but always with a splash of humor through street theatre and a home-grown circus.

Eventually, they gained title to the land and transformed the old film studio into a 160,000-square-foot state-of-the-art ecological demonstration site.

14. 德国的ZEGG（实验性文化设计中心）。截至2011年，这里总共居住着100人。 

Ninety minutes by train from Berlin, outside the town of Belzig, is ZEGG, the Center for Experimental Cultural Design (Zentrum für esperimentelle Gesellschaftsgestaltung).

As of 2011, ZEGG has 100 members, including 15 children.

Founded in 1991 on a former Nazi sports camp and East German secret police facility, ZEGG has regenerated the land and buildings with an ecological sewage treatment plant, carbon-neutral heating, thoroughly insulated buildings, and organic gardens.