Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 24 Jan 2007 06:46 PM PST
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Summertown, Tennessee, USAGlobal VillageInstitute for Appropriate Technology
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of tools and techniques now in the public domain. Your contributions welcome!
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Our 2007 Target: 20,000 trees in highly climate-affecting regions.
One tree removes 55 pounds of carbon each year, equal to 1100 miles of car travel or 5500 miles in a commercial airliner (assuming 2 passengers out of 200 on the flight). |
Where we are planting trees right now:
in the West Bank providing water, food, fuel, peace and hope to the peoples of the Middle East from the peoples of the Middle East |
Now Offering: Post-Petroleum: Permaculture, Alternate Fuel and Energy, and Natural Building
Workshops and Apprenticeships
Global production of petroleum per capita peaked in the 1970s. From
here on, we need to how to live with less, and yet our profligate
lifestyles are still expanding, still straining the web of nature. Our
workshops combine the Permaculture Design Course with introduction to
straw, cob, wood and other natural building materials, conversion of
vehicles to bio-fuels, alternative energy and more. Participants will
learn ecology, energy and resource conservation, social and community
skills, creating local currencies, and the economics of environmental
sustainability. Field trips will include visits to a bamboo nursery,
solar homes and local permaculture sites. Instructors include Andrew
Goodheart Brown, Diana Leafe Christian, Howard Switzer, Katey Culver,
Albert Bates, Valerie Seitz, Jennifer Dauksha English, Matthew English,
Scott Horton, Wendell Combest, Ed Eaton, Patrick and Ashley Ironwood,
Adam and Sue Turtle, Murad Al Khufash, and many more.
Get more information now!
Average daily oil production, by month, averaged from estimates by the EIA and IEA, together with 13 month centered moving average, and recursed moving average of the moving average. The last two data points in the monthly data are from the IEA alone, and the moving average windows are reduced at the graph edges to only include the data that exists. May 15, 2006. |
We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can’t possibly happen again. You can only use oil once. You can only use metals once. Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered. M. King Hubbert, 1983 |
 The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times
by Albert K. Bates now available from |
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Institute program areas over the past decades have included research into food and energy applied sciences towards the end of improving food security and reducing climate-altering dependence upon fossil fuels; using improved communications methodologies for demonstrations of alternative economic and social experiments; and multidisciplinary research into mechanisms for narrowing the gap between the developed and developing world without undue negative cultural and environmental impacts. |
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Our focus is on a convergence of renewable energy, environmental building, sustainable agriculture, biological wastewater systems, community conflict resolution methodologies, holistic community planning, permaculture design, experiential education, natural capital economics, ready access to global information, and a host of emerging modalities for systemic social improvements. We have received numerous awards and frequent recognition for this work, which has always been at the leading edge of systemic social change, but we continue to rely principally on grassroots support in the form of donations to pursue these efforts.Working in Fundraising? Take a look at our project proposal and reports for Womens Training in Sustainable Community Development in Ecuador |
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The Institute's principal work in the late 1970s related to the transportation sector. Working under a series of contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy, The Institute performed groundbreaking work on concentrating photovoltaic arrays, low cost, long-distance electric and hybrid vehicles, and multi-fuel heat engines. This work led to the inception of the Solar Car Corporation of Melbourne, Florida and Groton Connecticut. SCC went out of business in the late 1990s, a victim, like the Tucker, of being too far ahead of its time. With a capitalization of less than $10 million, SCC lacked the financial ability to combat the conjoined forces of industry and government which quickly arrayed against it, despite a vastly superior product that correctly foresaw fundamental shifts in transportation demands. |
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Other applications coming our of the solar car research included 1 kw solar (dish) Stirling and rotary turbines; direct current-powered compact air conditioning; solar powered electric watercraft; and trough concentrator arrays for solar water heating. |
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What
is new today is a merging of all these disparate threads into a
holistic vision for the future. Click on this image to learn more. |
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2002 we inaugurated partnerships with EcoEarth Alliance (for programs
and displays in connection with the World Summit on Sustainable
Development) ; UNITAR (for Type II initiatives to train municipal
authorities in ecological design concepts); Owen Plastics LLC (for use
of their extensive machine shop); and ZOXY (for field test of Zinc
Oxide fuelcells).
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With the Peoples Republic of China we have been exploring a legal system of standards for ecovillage design. It is an inconvenient truth that all proposals or efforts to slow global warming or to move toward sustainability are serious intellectual frauds if they do not advocate reducing populations to sustainable levels at the local, national and global scales. Albert Allen Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado |
The USA and China are like two drinking buddies staying at the bar until closing time. They will drain every last drop of petroleum (and other natural resources) that they can get their hands on. What happens next is not even remotely on their minds. Everything they are doing is for the sake of keeping the binge going. Peak Oil on the Web
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Did you know that the urban habitat crisis could be solved by allowing people to grow their own houses?In the 1970s the Institute began research into fast growing plant species that could serve multiple purposes even while providing residential building materials for an expanding world population. Our experimental hybrid poplar and chestnut plantations are now more than 20 years old. Our tree varieties, including Tennessee's own state tree, the Tulip Poplar are able to process wastewater and reclaim severely eroded landscapes. Today we have more than 20 varieties of temperate bamboo growing at our Ecovillage Training Center, and more than 200 varieties under study at the nearby Earth Advocates Research Center for size, growth rates, temperature tolerance and other characteristics. We like bamboo as a cultivatible architecture. Only 500 square meters are needed to grow one house in one year, about the size of a typical U.S. living room. |
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To provide owner-built homes for the 100,000,000 people now without adequate housing, the area needed to grow bamboo for one year is less than the area annually being clearcut in the Caribbean rainforests of Belize, Honduras and Colombia each year!
In 1983 The Institute financed the creation of a food sciences
laboratory which, in cooperation with the USDA, experimented with a
number of soyfoods and other ecologically secure ways of feeding the
world. In 1985, the food science laboratory was transferred to a
community business, the Tempeh Lab, which today is one of the world's
largest suppliers of soy fermentation inoculants.
In the mid-1980s The Institute also created a forest research program
to identify ways to give standing forests greater commercial value than
saw timber and residential subdevelopments. That effort created another
commercial enterprise for the local community, Mushroompeople, which is one of the nation's largest mail order suppliers of specialty mushroom spawn and growing supplies.
Did you know that water hyacinths can be used to fight AIDS?Water
hyacinths are a nightmare plant for many water management authorities.
Untreated wastewater from cities and nutrient runoffs from farms
provide ideal growing conditions for hyacinths in rivers and lakes,
hindering recreation and navigation, starving fish of oxygen, and
blocking water pumps. Hyacinths put out lovely flowers that make them
useful for decorating and gardens, but millions of them can kill a
freshwater ecosystem. In the early 1990s, the Institute began using the
multiplying effects of hyacinths in wastewater reclamation experiments.
We found that hyacinths could be harvested and composted and turned into
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garden soil. Then we discovered another use: as substrate for the Reishi mushroom, Ganoderma lucidum. Reishi,
which has been ground and taken as a tonic in Chinese medicine for more
than 1000 years, contains powerful immune boosters known as ganoderms.
Laboratory trials have confirmed that ganoderms are effective in
combating viral and bacterial infections by stimulating the production
of interleukin 2 in the bloodstream. Reishi is now being used in the
treatment of AIDS. At our Ecovillage Training Center in Tennessee we
demonstrated the complete cycle, from greywater remediation through
water hyacinths to composted mushroom substrate, to cultivation and
processing of Reishi and other edible and medicinal mushrooms. All of
the waste products are used. These techniques are now being distributed
by development organizations in the Americas and Africa to produce
clean water, food, medicine, energy, fertile soil, and healthy children.
Consulting
with schools such as Witts University (Johannesburg), Cal Poly Pomona
and Berea College (Kentucky), we are designing new "green campus"
population centers to steer universities into the transition to
sustainability.
Throughout
its history, it has been a goal of the Institute to serve as a living
laboratory for developing, incubating, and showcasing new technologies.
The Institute provides the scientific and technical expertise that
advances new ideas from paper to practice, and builds and tests
prototypes in the real world, in combination with other technologies
which affect overall performance. Once an idea is proven to work, the
Institute takes it to the stage of commercial viability.
Today, the Institute's principal work relates to the creation of a prototype Ecovillage Training Center which offers courses and immersion apprenticeships
in permaculture, agriforestry, soyfoods, solar cars, constructed
wetlands, biomimetic engineering, natural capital restoration,
alternate energy, ecological building, conflict resolution, consensus
and community, midwifery, natural nutrition, alternative medicine, healing touch, and many other promising paths to environmental sustainability.
... more resilient and self-regenerative communities
in harmony with the natural environment.
Plenty's
Kids to the Country Program at the Ecovillage Training Center is now in
its 14th year in bringing underprivileged children from low income
housing and homeless shelters to a summer vacation of horses, hikes and
swimming holes.
The Institute sponsors the Western Hemisphere hub office of the Global Ecovillage Network, guided the formation of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas,
and is engaging in many other efforts to foster the expansion of the
sustainable community movement worldwide. The Institute's program
partners include the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka, Seoul National
University's Sustainable Urban Development program in Korea, Sortavala
in Russia, the Green Kibbutz Movement in Israel, Los Angeles
EcoVillage, The Tholego Development Project in South Africa, Luna Nueva
in Mexico, the Institute for Latin American Permaculture in Bolivia,
Columbia, Venezuela and Peru, Reserva Sasardi, the Institute for New
Frontiers in Cooperation, Builders without Borders, the United Nations
Best Practices program (ECOSOC), Context Institute, Plenty
International, Permaculture Institute of Peru, Grupo de Apoyo al Sector
Rural, Aztlan Centro De Rescate Ecologico, Ecoaldea en Huehuecoyotl,
Asociacion Gaia, Ecovillage Network of Canada, Comunidade Tribal Vale
Encantado and ABRASCA (Brazil), the emerging ecovillage communities in
Unguia and the Sasardi Reserve in Colombia, the Permaculture Institute
of Brazil, Fundacion Darien, 7 Generaciones (Uruguay), La Caravana
Arcoiris para la Paz, and many more. Global Village Video is a subsidiary production company which produces instructional tapes and dvds on a variety of subjects.
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Donations to the Institute are tax-deductible. In FY 2006, the Institute raised and spent approximately $240,000.
Its state and federal tax filings and a full disclosure of its financial records are available on line.
In the year ending December, 2006, we:
- Became a founding sponsor of the Sail Transport Network.
- Became a fiscal sponsor for Culture Change, host of the Petrocollapse conference series.
- Presented "The End of Suburbia" at the UN Committee on Sustainable Development 14th annual meeting.
- Brought participants from Mexico, Brazil, Ghana, Venezuela, Palestine, England, Iceland, Costa Rica, Wales, Japan, Australia, India, Nepal, Colombia, and Canada to the USA for training under the auspices of the UNITAR program.
- Attended
and presented at Peak Oil conferences in Washington DC, Boston, Berea
College, Kentucky, Yellow Springs, Ohio and New York City.
- Conducted Gaia University events and trainings in the USA, Germany, Netherlands and Italy.
- Published a training manual on post-petroleum living.
- Inaugurated the Sonnenshein green power Festival in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
- Attended the European Permaculture Conference.
- Completed our twelfth year as a site for the Kids to the Country summer program.
- Launched our Community Subscription Energy cooperative initiative.
- Converted four late-model vehicles to run on biofuels.
In the year ending December, 2005, we:
1.
Became a founding sponsor of Ecoaldea Gratitud, a
climate-change-mitigation broadly based ecovillage and nature sanctuary
program in Mexico.
2.
Brought participants from Belize, Brazil, Cameroon, Palestine, England,
Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Colombia, and Canada to the USA for training
under the auspices of the UNITAR program.
3.
Presented on ecovillages at the UN Committee on Sustainable Development
13th annual meeting in New York and also for Sustainable Hudson Valley.
4. Attended and presented at Peak Oil conferences in Lisbon, Portugal, Yellow Springs, Ohio and New York City.
5.
Attended the North American Bioregional Convergence at Earthaven in
North Carolina and the South American Convergence in Brazil.
6. Made multiple trips to China to work on ecovillage standard development.
7. Chartered Gaia University and established its first working campus.
8. Attended a tour of eco-development programs in Provence, France
9. Presented on Peak Oil and ecovillages at numerous university and community venues in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
10.
Attended the 75th Anniversary Celebration of Solheimer Ecovillage in
Iceland and met with the President of Iceland and numerous Ministers
and MPs.
11. Hosted the National Vegan Conference.
12.
Participated in the 7th International Permaculture Convergence in
Slovenia and the 2nd International Ecovillage Conference in Scotland.
13. Attended the Communal Studies Association meeting in Pennsylvania.
14. Completed our eleventh year as a site for the Kids to the Country summer program.
15. Invented a new process for making cheese-like fermented soyfoods that melt on pizzas and pack a lot of flavor.
16. Erected a new strawbale hipitat on our Tennessee campus.
In the year ending December, 2004, we:
1.
Again brought participants from Israel, Palestine, Italy, Colombia,
India, Japan, Taiwan. Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Ecuador, Ghana,
Norway, S. Africa and S. Korea to the USA for training under the
auspices of the UNITAR program.
2.
Presented on ecovillages at the Peak Oil conference in Yellow Springs,
Ohio and Permaculture Convergence at Earthaven in North Carolina.
3. Sponsored the first North American Conference on Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities in Cortes Island, British Columbia.
4. Hosted a Communities Activist Summit at The Farm in Tennessee.
5. Presented on Peak Oil at numerous university and community venues in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
6. Developed a Spanish language powerpoint on ecovillage design and debuted it in Solferino, Quintana Roo.
10. Provided six-month fellowships at ETC to visiting scholars from China and Japan.
11. Sponsored participation by GVI board members at the Annual Conference on Sustainable Villages in Boulder, Colorado.
12.
Sponsored participation by ecovillage representatives from Germany,
Norway, Australia, and Japan at the International Communal Studies
Association meeting in Iowa.
13. Completed our tenth year as a site for the Kids to the Country summer program.
14. Were awarded the National Gardening Association award for design of Children’s Learning Gardens.
In the year ending December, 2003, we:
1. Through GEN, joined the Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP), part of the UNDP/World Bank ESMAP Program.
2. Hosted
participants from Israel, Palestine, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Hungary,
Ghana, S. Korea and the USA for training under the auspices of the
UNITAR program.
3.
Facilitated the visa application process for the fledgling ecovillage
movement in rural China, enabling China to send a delegation to CSD-11
in NY and to host a side-event there. We sent 4 representatives to the
CSD and hosted our own side-event.
4.
Sent GVI board members to Rome to begin an ongoing consultative process
with the FAO SARD IFAD/NGO Extended Cooperation Program (ECP). GVI
provided updated information on the Major Group focal points to be
included in SARD’s powerpoint and multi-media presentations during the
International Forum on Partnerships for Sustainable Development.
5. With two GVI board members represented GEN in the 56th Annual DPI/NGO Conference at the UN.
6. Assisted the U.S. Department of Energy in developing a CD-Rom on alternative energy and natural building.
7. Guest edited Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living issue devoted to the topic of ecovillages, wrote a guest editorial for a 2003 issue of The Permaculture Activist, and assisted Dan Chiras in developing the theme article for Mother Earth News on ecovillages and the movement, which later became a book by the same author.
8.
Hosted a J-term class from Berea for a month-long training including
workshops in Ecovillage Design (in cooperation with Village Habitat
Associates) and Conflict Transformation.
9.
Hosted a North American Communities Conference May 23-25 at The Farm,
in conjunction with the Fellowship for Intentional Community.
10.
Financially underwrote the international ecovillage gathering, “Call of
the Condor†in Peru, an equinox ceremony at Machu Picchu and provided
presentations in Cuzco, Olantaytambo, and Aguacalientes in conjunction
with these events.
11. Hosted the University of Michigan’s Project SERVE Alternative Spring Break Program.
12.
Assisted with natural building seminars in Mexico for the Zopilote
Association and installed a multimedia display capacity for the Alfonso
Cervantes Gomez primary school in Tlaxco.
13. Developed a natural building powerpoint in Spanish and debuted it in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
In the year ending December, 2002, we:
1. Acceded to the Chairmanship of the Global Ecovillage Network and addressed the United Nations in New York.
2. Living-roofed the large cob Visitors Center, sawdust-plastered the
earthbag sauna building, and constructed an outdoor bamboo and cob
bread oven at the Ecovillage Training Center.
3. Embarked upon a partnership with Berea College to develop training programs for campus ecovillages.
4. Attended the GEN meeting in South Africa and lectured at Witts University.
5. Attended United Nations prepcoms and the World Summit on Sustainable
Development as an NGO delegate with consultative status.
6. Provided workshops and lectures at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa.
7. Formed strategic partnerships with Caravana Arcoiris Por La Paz, Red
De Solidaridad Con Los Migrantes, Exmigrantes y Sus Familias,
Tejemujeres, Centro De Educación y Acción De Las Mujeres Otavaleñas,
Federación Indigena y Campesina De La Inrujta, EcoEarth Alliance, Zoxy
Energy Group and Owen Plastics.
8. Augmented the i4at website to include hippiemuseum.org, Murad's
Palestinian Permaculture Page, and many new inventions in the field of
appropriate technology.
9. Opened the Sesseljuhus Ecocenter in Solheimer, Iceland.
10. Completed the Womens Peacevillage in Ecuador, creating a network of
400 community organizations in that country for the first time.
11. Produced the video documentary Tejiendo Redes, Tejiendo Futuro (Weaving Networks, Weaving Futures).
12. Created an ongoing peace dialogue by developing joint Palestinian/Israeli permaculture projects in the Middle East.
13.
Attended the North American bioregional congress in Kansas and
sponsored attendance by other key bioregionalists from South America.
14. Launched our standardized 5-week apprenticeship training curriculum at our Tennessee center.
In the year ending December, 2001, we:
1.
Continued moving the Global Ecovillage Network towards financial
self-sufficiency by restructuring its strategic planning process.
2. Completed the biological waste treatment wetlands and roofed the
three-story strawbale building and the earthbag sauna at the Ecovillage
Training Center.
3. Visited with Cal Poly Pomona and CalEarth Institute and embarked
upon more and different training programs for emerging ecovillages.
4. Attended GEN meetings in USA and Australia and convened a strategic
planning meeting of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas.
5. Gave workshops on natural buiilding and consensus in Australian ecovillages.
6. Contributed to the planning meetings for the Mexican bioregional congress.
7. Attended the meeting of the Committee of Non-governmental Organizations of the United Nations on Sept 11, 2001.
8. Assisted preparatory sessions for the Conference on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit II).
9. Expanded the annual Kids to the Country Summer Camp for children of low-income neighborhoods and homeless shelters.
10. Improved our website to make our extensive library on global
warming and alternative technologies more accessible to more people.
In the year ending December, 2000, we:
1. Advanced the Global Ecovillage Network towards developing a strategic planning process and more diverse funding base.
2. Advanced our biological waste treatment wetlands, added an earthbag
sauna to our strawbale greenhouse, and began work on our three-story
strawbale building.
3. Conducted extensive training programs for emerging ecovillages in Antioquena and Chocoana, Colombia.
4.
Obtained consultative status for GEN at UN's ECOSOC in New York, and
exhibited at Hannover 2000 in Germany and Images of the World in
Denmark.
4. Attended GEN meetings in Italy and Germany and convened
a second international Council of the Ecovillage Network of the
Americas in Colombia.
5. Launched our Wastewater-to-Housing demonstration plot to show how
construction-grade temperate bamboo can be grown on greywater reedbeds
in Northern climates, simultaneously cleaning the water and providing
valuable material for food, buildings, and landscape design.
6. Advanced the design of low cost, fuel efficent heating stoves through trials in Native American Nations.
In the year ending December 1999, we:
1.
Completed organization of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas,
convening the first Council, establishing a central headquarters and 6
regional offices, and establishing ENA's tax-exempt status.
2. Instructed courses and workshops for individuals from more than 20 countries.
3. Began partnerships with Gaviotas; Fundación Darién; Institute for
Latin American Permaculture; Living Routes; Natures Spirit; Institute
for New Frontiers in Cooperation; and 7 Generaciones.
4. Produced a workshop handbook that sold 60,000 copies worldwide.
5. Harvested more than 3000 lbs of produce; including 1375 lbs of
potatoes, 800 lbs of tomatoes, 460 lbs of squash, 500 lbs of peppers,
500 ears of corn, and 265 lbs of other vegetables from our gardens and
planted 260 trees to compensate for 625,000 passenger-airmiles.
The governing body of the Institute is a five-person board, consisting of:
Albert Bates, attorney and author, Summertown, Tennessee (Chairman);
Alejandra Adler, artist and entrepreneur, Tepoztlan, Mexico;
Lois Arkin, community activist and educator, Los Angeles, California;
Frank Michael, engineer and inventor, Summertown, Tennessee; and
Andy Langford, permaculture farmer and educator, United Kingdom.
I would like to make a donation by fax or mail.
All donations are put to effective and efficient use.
Contact:
Institute for Appropriate Technology
PO Box 90
Summertown TN 38483
931-964-4474
email: ecovillage at thefarm.org
Go to
| Ecovillage Training Center
| The Farm Page
| Intentional Communities
| Global Ecovillage Network
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