How Sustainable is Your Community?

Introduction

With the aim of creating and presenting to the world outstanding examples of what it means in live in harmony with nature in a sustainable way, GEN promotes and facilitates communities--whether rural or urban--which develop and implement technologies and practices such that 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.

The Global Ecovillage Network is developing the concept of sustainability auditing to provide measuring rods for individuals and for existing villages and communities to compare their current status with ideal goals for ecological, social, and spiritual sustainability. In addition, these tools are learning instruments - pointing out actions aspiring individuals and communities can take to become more sustainable.

The process of community sustainability assessment is an exploration and cultivation of the qualities needed to bring mankind through the 21st century.

Community Sustainability Assessment (viewable HTML version) - aomprehensive checklist that anyone can complete to get a basic idea of how sustainable their community is. This assessment tool is applicable to any community. While it requires good knowledge of the life-styles, practices and features of the community, it does not require research, calculation and detailed quantification. This assessment takes about three hours for an individual to complete, or a series of sessions if done as a group experience by community members.