Ecovillage Day

Ecovillages are living workshops, testing grounds for the next evolutionary phase of human society. These communities are experimenting with food- and energy independence, and local authority  models often based on non-violent communication, gift economies, timebanks, and other socio-psychologic tools for a peaceful, equal, and just coexistence.

Some might say that on a planet where the dominant, intelligent species lives mostly in cities (a bit more than 50% of humans are living in cities now, this important borderline, historic milestone has been reached only very recently), urban sustainability issues are of utmost importance, and moving back closer to nature does not help in solving the greatest challenges humanity as a whole ever faced: changing our global way of life, so it stops ravaging the ecosystem it is part of. If you run to the woods, the zombies surviving the collapse of the urban-industrial society will eventually crawl out after you, first eating your crops, than eating you, they say.

But you have to start somewhere, and it's certainly easier to create something new in a more natural environment, than try to modify an infinitely elaborate system running at high RPM, from the inside. There are citydwellers who do try to do that of course, one example is the now-global Transition Towns movement. City sustainablity is a key issue, and many interesting and promising best practices are already in place. But for now, we focus on what's going on at the rural areas.

Global Ecovillage Network is, well, a global ecovillage network. 0422 is global Earth Day, and the media is always chock full of "green" events at that time of the year, like Critical Mass. It's also usually Car-Free Day in Europe, so the media-noise is extreme, and thus, overly uneffective, but anyway, the good people of GEN decided to have a sort of Open Day for all ecovillages all over the world on this established date connected to sustainability.

 Use the opportunity and get to know the ecovillage closest to You! In Hungary, most of these initiatives can be found under the name MÉH (Magyar Élőfalu Hálózat - Hungarian Living Village Network), and many of them are welcoming guests and volunteers, whether it is 0422, or any other day of the calendar.








We don't know what communities will participate in Hungary yet, but All Plants Bulletin will surely report about the most interesting upcoming events of Earth Day 2013 organized in Budapest, and other parts of the country.