What is it?

Ecovillage economics is all about the process of developing a sustainable economic component to ecovillages and sustainable developments throughout the world. 

This not only relates to ecovillages which exist but also the process which is required to ensure that more ecovillages actually take place.  What our research has found is that in the area of ecovillages,  in fact sustainable developments, there is a high awareness and engagement of people in two of the three components of sustainable development.  The social and environmental aspects have a high awareness and correspondingly there is a lot of effort and engagement of people involved in these facets.  However with regards to the economic aspect there is surprisingly a lack of engagement both from the startup aspect of any project and the ongoing establishment of a project.

Ecovillage economics is all about increasing the awareness and importance of economics within the evolution of ecovillages around the world.  For this to take place it is necessary to have a key group of people engaged early on and to be involved through a direct understanding of the benefits which will take place through the development of a good ecovillage economics base.

It has been stated that 19 out of every 20 ecovillage projects will never occur.  One of the key reasons for this is simply that there is not the required financial aspect i.e. money to make these projects happen.

Research on numerous projects indicated that due to the complexity in dealing with the establishment of enterprise and economic structures, the economic aspects of sustainable developments is left for the new residents to sort out for themselves.  What experience shows is that when people move into an ecovillage there's very little evidence of any collaborative economic or enterprise activity taking place, unless this has been pre-organised in the project.

So ecovillage economics is a mindset which is all about creating an awareness and the process of facilitating the creation of more ecovillages on the planet through a viable economic methodology.