The concept ‘Ecovillage’ came into existence in 1991 in a sustainability report, “Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities: A Report for Gaia Trust” written by Diane and Robert Gilman for a Gaia Trust seminar in Denmark. By the mid-90s, many intentional communities had begun to call themselves ecovillages. In 1993 Robert and Diane Gilman and John Talbott sat together at the International Intentional Communities Conference in Washington and discussed collaborating on a conference at Findhorn. The 1995 conference ‘Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities – Models for the 21st Century’ was the result, at which of over 400 people attended from 40 different countries with many hundreds being turned away.

All conferences at Findhorn have played a formative role in the evolution of the Community over the years. This is particularly true for this one, as The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) was born out of it. The Findhorn Community has hosted the GEN office for many years, fostering a strong connection between both.

John Talbott, co-focaliser of the conference, recounted how the conference week brought together many aspects of sustainability. A diverse and varied experience was offered of listening, seeing visual presentations of other’s work, giving and taking workshops as well as doing hand-on projects, such as tree planting, constructing a straw bale house and building a ceremonial earth lodge. The arts on offer included early morning singing, circle dancing, creative art workshops and musical performances and jam sessions. Details of the conference follow. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been possible to include summaries of all the events and workshops. For a comprehensive collection of conference presentations and workshops, see Eco-Villages & Sustainable Communities: Models for 21st Century Living, ed. by Jillian Conrad & Drew Withington, FPress, 1996.

In an interview Roger Doudna reflected on this conference in 2024:

 

From 7-13 October 1995 are large number of presenters came together to shape the content of the conference. They included Jonathon Porritt, Peter Russell, Peter Dawkins, Glen Ochre, Jill Jordan, Robert Muller, Guy Dauncey, John Todd, Alan Watson Featherstone. Conference Focalisers were John Talbott, Diane Gilman (hyperlinks lead to the profiles of those who are COIF Members).

OneEarth Magazine Issue 21 featured an article by Carola Splettstoesser of the conference highlights.

We are pleased that we have a short video of highlights of the conference:

The Presenters

Jonathon Porritt is an eminent writer and campaigner on sustainable development. For the last 30 years, he has provided strategic advice to leading UK and international companies to deepen their understanding of today’s converging environmental and climate crises. He is President of The Conservation Volunteers and Population Matters, and is involved in the work of many other NGOs and groups. In 1996, he co-founded Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainable development charity. He was also a co-founder of the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme. Jonathon was formerly Co-Chair of the Green Party (1980-83), and Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90). He was awarded a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

Jonathon’s presentation at the conference was entitled ‘Save the Earth’ with emphasis on the importance of community. Firstly, defining what community is, and equally important what it is not. He argued that community needs to be embedded in a place and businesses are definitely not communities. He defined community as social contract; as living livelihood; as natural system; and as spirituality. Most importantly he stressed the need for eco-communities to be outward looking and engaged with communicating to a wide audience, to share knowledge and awareness of how to achieve a sustainable future.

He also contributed an article to the next OneEarth Magazine with the same title.

Peter Russell His talk at the conference was entitled ‘The Great Awakening’ and he emphasised the need for self-awareness and the recognition of the need to look within when experiencing a crisis of consciousness. He advocated for recognition that once basic needs are met further consumerism isn’t what is needed to solve a personal crisis of consciousness. In his talk he says ‘… it all comes back to human beings; to human greed, to love of money and love of power, and to the fact that we are not yet fully awake as to who we really are.’

Peter Dawkins practised architecture for several years before devoting himself to the development of Zoence, a Western equivalent of Feng Shui. Peter has led workshops and lead pilgrimages on the subject of landscape temples and the healing of the earth. He is founder of the Gatekeeper Trust. He helped to complete Peter Caddy’s autobiography In Perfect Timing, Findhorn Press 1996 (see p377) after Peter’s death in 1994.

His conference talk focussed on his reasons for leaving architecture as a profession so that he could research the effect that place, or the environment, has on us. He emphasised the need to grasp the pattern of relationships in the landscape, the way that one thing relates to another, and to build human structures that harmonise with this.

Glen Ochre (1944-2014) was a social activist with a passion for people’s empowerment and collaborative models of living and working. She trained as a social worker and specialised in group facilitation. She co-founded the intentional community Commonground in Victoria, Australia. She was involved in the women’s movement and provided support for women escaping violence. At the conference she talked about models of collaborative living and how to find people-pathways through to sustainability. She led a meditation in which the audience reached out to find and hold the hands of others, symbolic of the interdependence and connectedness that was the subject of her talk. She brought together the three strands of her life’s philosophy: the connection people share with the Earth, the emotional realm they bring to relationships, and her understanding of the structures and processes needed to build community. This blogpost gives a eulogy to Glen.

Jill Jordan (1946-2010) was an Australian community development consultant, lecturer and activist, who helped to found the Maleny Credit Union, LETS, Wastebusters and other organisations. She studied Buddhist philosophy in Thailand and developed co-ops in a rural community in Okinawa, Japan before moving to Maleny in 1970. Her talk at the conference was entitled: Shaping their own Destiny; Revitalising Towns and Villages. She described her work in the 1970s in Maleny which started with a wholefood cooperative. Locals became involved and the enterprise grew. She started the Credit Union in 1984 and it grew to be a multi-million dollar organisation. She then introduced the community to an alternative economic strategy called LETS designed to trade without money, with wealth lying instead in goods and services. Jill was elected to council and the wider community of Maleny started to gain power through public participation. Jill maintained that this system is replicable across the world as long as strategy comes from communal need. You can get more information about Jill in this obituary.

Robert Muller (1923-2010) worked for the United Nations for 40 years focussing his energies on world peace. He became Assistant-Secretary General to the UN and created a ‘World Core Curriculum’. He was Chancellor of the University for Peace created by the UN in demilitarised Costa Rica. He has published widely on his plans for a peaceful, happy world. Read here more about his biography.

In his conference presentation, he guided his audience through an overview of a framework for world development. He explained that initially the focus of the UN was on human rights, with no mention of the Earth or nature. The Earth’s resources were thought of as limitless until the 1970s when Sweden raised the first concern about the environment, focussing on acid rain. This was followed by concerns raised by climatologists in the 1980s. He stated that a new economics was needed for the 21st century, based on sustainability and restoration, moving away from an assumption of limitless resources. He suggested that what was needed was a world association of eco-villages on the model of Findhorn.

Guy Dauncey is an author and ecofuturist who works to develop a positive vision of a sustainable future, and to translate that vision into action. He is the founder of the West Coast Climate Action Network, and the author or co-author of ten books. He is an Honorary Member of the Planning Institute of British Columbia, a Fellow of the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Read here more about Guy.

At the conference he told a fictional story of the birth of a sustainable earth-economy in the Moray Firth region of Scotland over the years 1995-2015, the components of which are described in his 1996 book, After the Crash: The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy. He also gave a workshop based on his consultancy to the Trust for Sustainable Development in relation to the planned development of Civano, a large-scale sustainable community settlement planned as a village to be built within the City of Tucson, Arizona. The settlement continues to thrive 30 years later and provides a model for sustainability elsewhere.

John Todd is a Canadian biologist who pioneered the use of ecosystems as a form of technology, otherwise known as Living Machines, for purposes including the treatment of wastes, purifying water, and food production. He co-founded the New Alchemy Institute, with Nancy Jack Todd. He was the first biologist ever to receive the Chrysler Award for Innovations in Design, in 1994. This Wikipedia page gives a lot more information about John.

During his conference presentation he introduced the audience to technologies that are symbiotic and supportive of the natural world, and serve humanity. He explained that the scientific foundations of the technologies, called Living Machines, are rooted in ecology, evolutionary biology, natural history and engineering. The parts of a Living Machine are alive and made up of thousands of different species. The first Living Machine, the Microcosm, was a geodesic dome providing food for a small group of people without the use of fossil fuels. Living Machines also treat poisonous waste. A pond in Massachusetts was so badly damaged it had lost its ability to metabolise its own dying organisms. A Living Machine was installed to pump water over beds to remove ammonia, and the pond lived. John explained that living Machines shrink the need for humans to impinge on the natural world. The first Living Machine in Europe, treating waste water, was opened at Findhorn at the time of the conference.

Alan Watson Featherstone Alan was Director of the charity ‘Trees for Life’ at the time of the conference. His presentation called ‘Sustaining Eco-Villages’ started with a quote from Henry David Thoreau, “What use is a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” which Alan widened to include “What use is an eco-village …” He stressed the need for sustainable ecosystems for the whole community of life on the planet, including the need for the restoration of ecosystems that have become depleted and damaged. His own project, Trees for Life, was designed with the restoration of the Caledonian forest in Scotland as its goal. Alan discussed his love for the landscape and trees and of his personal nurturing of a particular seedling growing in an unlikely place. Love as the essence of all life was the key to his message.

Conference Focalisers
John Talbott was co-focaliser of the conference and was Director of the Findhorn Ecovillage Project from 1982 for more than twenty years. During that time he helped pioneer green building methods, ecological infrastructure and renewable energy systems. He is the author of ‘Simply Build Green: A Technical Guide to the Ecological Houses at the Findhorn Foundation, FPress, 1993/1995, He has lectured widely on the subject of building sustainable communities. John talks about ecovillage development in this YouTube video from 2020.

In his introduction to the conference John discussed the development of the eco-village model at Findhorn, pointing out the need to create financially viable and environmentally sustainable lifestyles that meet a basic need for adequate (but not extravagant) material comfort.

The following video clip gives a flavour of the vibrant atmosphere of the conference. John reflects on the organisation of the event as well as its message of hope for a positive way forward.

Diane Gilman (1945-1998) was a painter, potter, writer and co-founder of the Context Institute, as well as being co-focaliser of the conference. In her introduction to the conference she explained that sustainability had become an imperative, and eco-villages provide useful models and guidelines for sustainable living. Her view was that moving towards a sustainable future is not a technical problem as the necessary technologies are available, it is a human problem. She played a key role in the initial development and coordination of the Global Ecovillage Network. You can find out more about Diane on this Wikipedia page.

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN)

Ross Jackson gave a presentation at the conference entitled ‘The Global Eco-Village Network’. He described the origins of GEN as going back to 1987 when he and his wife, Hildur, founded the Gaia Trust in Denmark, to promote the transformation to sustainability, recognising that there was a systematic flaw in the way we have organised ourselves on our planet. Society seems to be in denial of the looming problems, with corporations the only organisations operating globally, but operating only within their own self-interest. The solutions to problems were known, and the technologies were available to solve the problems, but there was a problem with implementation. Gaia Trust decided that what was needed were good examples of what sustainable living means, and this drew them to the growing eco-village movement. In 1991 Robert and Diane Gilman surveyed existing eco-villages and wrote The Ecovillage Report mentioned above.. They brought people together from the best examples and these people began working together on new projects, including the 1995 Eco-Villages and Sustainable Communities conference at Findhorn. Ross concluded that the main goal was to create regional networks of eco-villages, using the newly developed internet as a vehicle for linking together and learning from one another.

Butterfly photo Cornelia FeatherstoneRoss likened the process of planetary change towards sustainability to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar changing to a butterfly. When the caterpillar goes into its cocoon, independent cells begin to appear that are rejected by the caterpillar’s immune system. Gradually some of these independent cells link together and form so-called imaginal disks, a ring like structure of several cells. The rings become very powerful and the point comes when they can no longer be rejected. They link together to form an indestructible network which gradually takes over from the dying organism. A butterfly actually fluttered around Ross during his presentation in the Universal hall in a sweet act of synchronicity.

Later on in the conference there was a workshop entitled ‘GEN – Creating Regional Networks’ with several facilitators from different eco-villages across the globe. A small group of representatives from nine eco-village projects were named as the first members of GEN: Crystal Waters, Australia; Danish Eco-Village Association; Ecoville Project, Russia; The Farm, USA; The Findhorn Foundation, Scotland; Gaia Villages, Denmark (secretariat for GEN); the GYURUFU Foundation, Hungary; The Ladakh Project, India; Lebensgarten, Germany; the Manitou Institute, USA. They were chosen, not as perfect models, but as having something important to contribute.

The workshop during the conference evaluated the possibility of creating regional organisations located in Europe, Oceania and North America. Membership was to be open to any individual, group or network interested in supporting sustainability and the eco-village model. For more information about the history of GEN click here.

The GEN internet site was established to link the regional networks, and to share information and expertise. The Global Ecovillage Network has since then played a crucial role in linking a highly diverse collection of autonomous ecovillages. GEN’s website can be accessed here.

Immediately following the conference, 20 people from different ecovillages met for five days and the Global Ecovillage Network was formally established, consisting of three regional networks to cover the globe geographically, with centres at ecovillages The Farm (USA), Lebensgarten (Germany) and Crystal Waters (Australia), with an international coordinating office at Gaia Trust, Denmark. Gaia Trust committed to covering the expenses of the network for 3-5 years. The plan was to focus initially on forming regional networks that would link existing projects. At the same time a second longer-term goal was set to create global services, like an education network, that would cut across regions, as soon as budgets and manpower permitted. The Findhorn Foundation became a founder-member of GEN.