Cmo crear comunidades regenerativas y resilientes
Translator: Gisela Giardino
Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
We all go through difficult experiences
and hard times in life.
The death of a close relative,
a break up, an illness, a crisis.
Six months ago, Sol, my wife, passed away.
She was an incredible being of light
and a great teacher
who left a huge mark
on anyone who ever met her.
I had the honor and privilege
to be able to be by her side
until her last breath,
for almost 17 years.
To be able to travel
around the world, start a family,
have and raise our children
and count on her love and support
in all my projects.
In times when life
becomes uncertain or difficult,
everything that really matters
becomes clear.
What became clear to me
is how important
it is to have a community
that is regenerative and resilient
to help us get through
those critical moments of life.
When I talk about regenerative,
I’m talking about something
far beyond sustainability.
I’m talking about a design process
to restore, revive systems and resources,
producing much more
than we actually consume.
And by resilient I mean the ability
communities have to resist,
adapt to, and recover from adversity.
But, how do we built regenerative
and resilient communities?
Ten years ago I founded La Ecovilla.
A community in Costa Rica
where around 180 people
from 27 countries live,
in full contact and harmony
with nature.
I grew up in Buenos Aires, a big city.
And, like for many others,
during a great part of my life
nature was just that place
where I spent a few moments
during walk or on vacation.
Despite being where I cherished
most of my happiest memories.
When I was 20, I went backpacking.
And I traveled the world
for several years.
That was the first chance
to connect with nature, really.
And also witness the disconnection
in which we live from the environment
that makes us not be aware
of where the food comes from,
the water, the energy,
or where our waste goes to.
And that nature is much more
than our raw material supplier.
It is our home and that of
all the other species.
Maybe we don’t realize it,
but this disconnection
affects our mood,
increases our stress levels,
and leads us to distance ourselves
from our essence as a species,
creating an environmental collapse
that’s putting at risk our survival,
and that of future generations.
And I also think we’re losing
many aspects of community life.
And the contact with others.
For hundreds of years we lived
in communities
where parenting,
emotional needs for support, for growth,
didn’t just depend on the couple,
or a small family,
but an entire community.
And today we need that.
During my travels
I met ancestral communities
and other new ones living in harmony
and in contact with the environment.
And I was able to learn what works,
what doesn’t, and why.
At the same time, I like comfort,
and the benefits of modern life
and technology.
In an attempt to mix
all these ingredients
the project La Ecovilla was born.
After a long quest,
the ground appeared.
La Ecovilla is located
in a rural area of Costa Rica
called San Mateo de Alajuela.
It’s about 40 minutes from the city,
the airport and the beach.
And next to an amazing river.
In less than a year
the concept of La Ecovilla
attracted a group of people very diverse
in ages, nationalities
and socioeconomic contexts,
who joined us in this dream
of living in community.
Often the concept of development
appears related to the destruction
of the environment.
But it doesn’t have to.
Development can and should,
I believe, be regenerative.
The first thing we had to do
was to regenerate the ground,
restoring the soil
of what used to be a paddock
with livestock and monoculture,
to transform it, on one side,
in a forest of native species
which today is a reserve area.
And on the other hand,
planting fruit trees
that generated an abundant
edible forest garden.
Today we have orchards
and every week
we all get a basket with
all the fruits, vegetables, and herbs
in production.
Producing the food you eat
not only reduces the transport footprint,
but also the waste is used
to make a compost
that turns into fertilized soil
that we reuse in the same orchards.
We also harvest our own
power with solar panels
and we provide drinking water
and irrigation water.
This gives us a huge
sense of freedom
because we’re generating
our own resources.
It’s as if you printed your own money.
Real green currency.
All the waters from toilets,
showers, lavatories,
that is, the sewers,
go to a giant biodigestor
which not only treats the water
that comes out completely clean,
but it also breaks down the solids
and produces methane gas.
This has a lot of uses.
We use it for cooking.
We reduce waste by reusing,
recycling and reducing the consumption
of unnecessary things.
Every purchase we make has an impact,
and environmental and social consequences.
That’s why it’s important
to choose consciously
what we need and where we get it from.
Each of the families
we built our homes
using different materials.
For example, the structure of my house
was made with recycled cars.
And the walls, from recycled paper.
What we look for in buildings
is energy efficiency.
We achieve that using different techniques
such as cross-ventilation, natural light
and that they be low-maintenance
and high durability.
When I say that I live in La Ecovilla
people imagine that I live like Tarzan.
But life in nature
doesn’t have to be detached
from the breakthroughs of modernity.
An important thing for us
was to be able to work remotely,
so we can move as little as possible
and stay connected
with the rest of the world.
That’s why every house has fiber optics
that allows you to have
super fast Internet
to upload and download information.
All the streets within La Ecovilla
were made of panels
from 100 percent recycled plastic
that allows water
to leak into the ground.
A super important component
at La Ecovilla
is how we educate our children.
I confess, I was such a bad student
and I suffered for many years
having to go to school,
and having gone through
several by force,
I never thought I would be
involved in creating one.
But before we had kids, I told Sol
that if I ever had children
I wouldn’t send them to school.
She asked me to think
of an alternative
because she wasn’t going
to do schooling at home.
Through neighbors of La Ecovilla
we met the Orion group.
A group of Ecuadorian educators
who have nearly 40 years of experience
in innovation of education.
And together we created
Casa Sula, which in Bribi,
the native language of Costa Rica,
means, “the spirit keeper of the seed.”
At Casa Sula we believe that
we all come into the world
with the potential to develop,
grow and bear our best fruits.
We seek to preserve creativity,
the desire to learn
and help them find out who they are,
what they want and what they like.
That’s why children learn what
catches their eye at every moment.
Like small scientists who
through experimentation,
games, discovery and self-discovery,
work with projects without marks,
classrooms, or teachers.
We have guides who are adults
observing the processes,
intervening only when necessary.
Seeing the happiness
these kids go to school with
or the sadness they have
when the holidays come
or hearing them talk about their school
fills me with emotion.
And makes me dream
that all children in the world
have an education like that.
A lot of times they ask me
what was the hardest part
when we put together La Ecovilla.
Of course to restore the ground,
build the systems
for regeneration and production
took a long time,
effort and learning.
But the hardest part wasn’t that.
The hardest part are the invisible
structures of the community.
Building trust,
learning to make decisions,
work on the egos,
opening ourselves up to new ideas
and create strategies
to prevent conflict.
And if the conflict comes up,
learn how to fix it.
That’s why we organize common activities.
Retreats, workshops, meals, parties,
to create those invisible bonds.
That’s what makes a project successful
and go from being strangers
to great friends or a big family.
And this is what makes a project
become regenerative and resilient.
When Sol passed away,
the community members
organized an amazing ceremony
honoring her life.
And for several weeks, every time
we opened the door of our house
we ran into a buffet
with delicious meals
that our neighbors left us.
I feel very lucky
to be able to live in La Ecovilla
where we support each other
all the time.
But this is my story,
what I dreamed of and was able to do.
To create this, you don’t need to
go to the middle of the jungle.
Many of us already have a community
and we have to find out how to create
those bonds of trust, security,
connection between ourselves
and with the environment.
A few weeks ago
I was walking through a reserve
and I came across a sign that said,
“This land belongs to humanity.
Some have already died,
others are still alive,
but most, are not yet born.”
We’re at a time in history
where we can live in harmony
with nature again.
My dream is to see
this kind of communities
expand all over the world
to achieve that harmony.
I invite you to join in.
Thank you.