NewsBreak Original

An article in Cosmos Magazine is talking about a community that started with two people wishing to form their own ecovillage with only three and a half hectares or about 8.65 acres. With that bit of land and a dream, they were able to start a small ecovillage as well as a non-profit company called Eco Villages Australia that works to create a little ideal society within Queensland, Australia. They also realistically describe the problems and issues that come with starting an ecovillage. According to Claire Ogden - one of the duo who helped to create this village - "Many, many people are interested in starting a community, people are contacting us all the time, but very few are able to do it. The barriers are huge. Mostly, the projects don’t get off the ground. It’s a shame, but that’s the reality."

Earlier, I wrote about the idea of making a one-acre ecovillage. Now, I am adding to that idea and showing how to build on all of that with logistics from some of my previous writings as well as new information I was able to get from sustainability experts.

Last time, I wrote an article explaining what an eco-village is, which was pretty well defined by sources that could give a pretty good basic definition like this definition given by sustainability expert and astrophysicist Robert C. Gilman: "[a] human-scale full-featured settlement in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development, and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future." However, this story is pretty much just me considering a hypothetical challenge based on what information I can get from experts: is it possible to create such a community with a single acre of land? I know it is not ideal, but it should work as a start for a community that is between five to twenty-five people - the number of people the Maleny Eco Village people believe you should consider having when starting an eco-village.

Many people have probably heard about ecovillages, but very few people probably know exactly what an ecovillage is and what separates such a thing from a normal village. According to ecovillage.org, an ecovillage is'an intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designed through locally owned participatory processes in all four dimensions of sustainability(social, culture, ecology, and economy) to regenerate social and natural environments.' Basically, it is a village that tries to limit the impact it has on the environment while having a self-sustained economy, unique social structure, and unique culture usually unified around some kind of ideal or ideology.