Nurturing inner resilience means strengthening relationships and experimenting with practices to ongoingly address issues and challenges.
Several areas of inner resilience where ecovillages are strong, are also areas in which they often experience challenges. While this might seem strange, it simply shows that ecovillages are aware of what they need to pay attention to, and chose to have practices in place to constantly nurture inner resilience where it really matters.
One example is strong social cohesion, high trust, and good communication and governance. When these do not work in a community, it quicklt makes it hard for people to live well together and work effectively towards their shared goals. Ecovillages are not perfect and conflict free places! Communities struggle with breakdowns in communication, lack of participation in collective projects, periods of overwhelm, unaddressed conflicts, getting bogged down in inefficient governance, stumbling on issues of rank and power, and feeling the need for more clarity around shared intentions and values.
What makes ecovillages different is that they have shared practices for consciously working to maintain or improve their levels of trust and cohesion, and their skills in communication and self-governance. They are strengths in ecovillages because they are muscles that are used frequently. While many people who live in ecovillages share core values that make it easier, having high trust, strong social cohesion, and the ability to work together to reach common goals require practice and dedication. One of the biggest challenges a community can have is when members stop making the effort.Â
Strong social cohesion, community spirit, and capacity for collective action are essential elements of what makes ecovillages successful – so ecovillages value practices that help build resilient social relationships.
Social cohesion and capacity for collective action are things that have to be nurtured. Building strong relationships is ongoing work that requires dedication and energy, especially when many new members join. It is also important to cultivate more self-awareness to not let fear and stress trigger old patterns and behaviours, and to work on increasing awareness of power, rank and group dynamics to be able to work well together. In some communities personal development and training is needed for members to have confidence in their own potential and qualities to meet the various challenges facing the community.Â
In a practical sense, ecovillages:
- Come together often for meetings, shared meals, celebration and other social and cultural events to strengthen community bonds.Â
- Formulate a shared purpose based on environmental and social regeneration and shared core values of love, gratitude, celebration and respect for each other.Â
- The ability to assume individual and collective responsibility for community and ecological well-being are seen as foundational in building collective capacity to act and respond.
- Learning about both social-ecological and inner resilience to climate change together, and developing shared processes, standards and goals for resilient behaviour can help channel our capacity for collective action towards increasing resilience.Â
“Our main strengths in fostering personal and interpersonal resilience is our shared vision of environmental and social sustainability. The relationships which have grown over years while coping with serious challenges, ultimately resulting in our beautiful neighbourhood. The culture we have built of how we relate to each other and what we collectively value.” – Earthsong, New Zealand
Some of the most important elements to nurture are trust and skills in communication and governance.
Building and maintaining trust, coupled with clear and open communication channels, are very important for effective community governance, decision-making, and conflict resolution. Communication is also a key aspect of dealing with crises and strong emotions, and giving space to emotional responses to environmental and social challenges is important both for our personal wellbeing and to nurture collective trust and resilience.
In a practical sense, ecovillages:
- Prioritise having communication agreements and common ground rules, clear decision-making processes, effective teamwork, flexible organisational structures and proactive policy development to address community needs and challenges.Â
- Come together often to dialogue, share, listen, and value and empathise with each other’s dreams, struggles, grief, and perspectives
- Have workshops and practise skills collectively to build collective skills and shared understanding, and use this to learn new things and practices together.
“Our decision making system Holarchy helps us to react fast and be flexible. I find that helps me in my personal resilience. We have monthly events to share, to come together, to have fun and relax. We also have processes to help solve conflicts.” – Boekel Ecovillage, Netherlands
“Some of our strengths are our Common Ground agreements, and that we meditate, worship, and celebrate together, have community dinners, and a constant flow of workshops, programs and events” – Ecovillage Findhorn, Scotland
Having social cohesion, trust, and good communication skills also makes ecovillages skilled at creative and collective problem-solving.
With high social cohesion and community spirit comes creative and collective problem solving. This is another strength that ecovillages rely on, and that often allow them to achieve new things and overcome obstacles. It is important to both leverage this strength, and to not let overconfidence in it lead to insufficient planning and preparedness. Knowing that you live in a strong social network able to quickly respond and come together is a great source of personal and interpersonal resilience.
In a practical sense, ecovillages:
- Take action and quickly form special focus groups, conflict resolution teams, and community processes to address challenges.Â
- While ecovillages tend to lack clear emergency protocols, successful initiatives are often developed autonomously by community members when needed.Â
- Nurture the capacity to maintain a solutions-focussed approach and respond creatively to emergencies together.
A strength in our ecovillage is “having the certainty that we can solve the problems that arise. We stay together as a community and will find answers” – Sieben Linden, Germany
“The thing that we have for real is each one of us, the really big heart, the social structure, the ability to make decisions, to go through difficult times together.” – Aldea Feliz, Colombia
Nature connection, ecosystem restoration, and regenerative ecological practices are central for how ecovillagers understand and strengthen their own inner resilience.
Centering connection to nature, ecosystem restoration, and regenerative ways of meeting human needs is a core ambition and practice of ecovillages which brings people together and contributes to their individual and collective sense of being resilient. Living in more vibrant and productive ecosystems also has an effect on community members, who have greater direct access to necessary resources like clean water, food, and natural beauty. Beyond physical nourishment, it is a source of inner resilience to know where food and water come from, and to live with a sense of increasing beauty, and abundance as members of increasingly healthy ecosystems.
In a practical sense, ecovillages:
- Use a wide range of approaches, from organic farming to spiritual rituals, to deepen their relationship with the land.Â
- Work directly with the land through activities like gardening, planting, rewilding, and participating in community development projects is a common way of nurturing personal, interpersonal and social-ecological resilience.
“We try to use a lot of ecosystem services in a way that strengthens them. Our houses are still in a construction phase, so we need to be patient, before we have a balanced ecosystem”. – Boekel, the Netherlands
“Connecting with nature is a daily practice for me, I choose to live very close to nature and I observe and ask for feedback from the non-human realm” – La Tierrita/La Comarca, Uruguay
Cultural and spiritual practices and beliefs are central for inner resilience, ecosystem stewardship, and community cohesion.
