Are you curious about what ecovillages are doing and how they are contributing to creating a more sustainable world?
We are, so we worked together with researchers and ecovillages from around the world to create the Ecovillage Impact Assessment – a tool for communities, groups and people to map, analyse and showcase their work for participatory cultural, social, ecological and economic regeneration. Click on the figures below to explore results for all of GEN.
Average for all Impact Assessments - SDGs
Average for all Impact Assessments - Map of Regeneration
Economy
Social
Ecology
Culture
Integral Design
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 Culture
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| Clarify vision and higher purpose | |
| My community has a clear vision or higher purpose that is shared amongst its members | 5.56 |
| My community’s vision or higher purpose is clearly reflected in our practices and day-to-day life | 5.17 |
| Nurture mindfulness and self-reflection | |
| People in my community are aware that mindfulness and self-reflection are important for living well together | 5.20 |
| We have shared practices that support personal and collective self-awareness and reflection | 5.02 |
| Enrich life with art and celebration | |
| Community members are encouraged and supported to express themselves through art and creativity | 4.97 |
| We often come together to celebrate and to honour life | 5.16 |
| Honour indigenous wisdom and welcome positive innovation | |
| We respect and incorporate local, indigenous and traditional wisdom, skills and practices in the way we live | 5.09 |
| We are skilled at innovating and integrating new ideas, practices, technologies and ways of living | 5.46 |
| Engage actively to protect communities and nature | |
| We take action to protect the rights and wellbeing of nature, communities and people locally | 5.04 |
| We take action to protect the rights and wellbeing of nature, communities and people beyond our local area | 4.63 |
| Reconnect to nature and embrace low-impact lifestyles | |
| Our lifestyle connects us to nature and its cycles | 5.38 |
| Our shared lifestyle minimises our negative impact on the environment | 5.61 |
 Ecology
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| Grow seeds, food and soil through regenerative agriculture | |
| We promote local and regional food security by growing our own food and seeds | 5.02 |
| We grow and/or obtain our food in ways that regenerate soils and ecosystems | 5.00 |
| Clean and replenish sources and cycles of water | |
| All our wastewater is safely reused or treated in ways that benefit the local ecosystem | 4.91 |
| We harvest and use water sustainably | 5.07 |
| Move towards 100% renewable energy and transport | |
| All our energy comes from renewable sources | 4.02 |
| We choose modes of transport that minimise the use of fossil fuels | 3.85 |
| Innovate and spread green building technologies | |
| We cultivate and spread green building skills and methods | 4.99 |
| We build or retrofit using low impact, natural, locally appropriate and renewable materials | 5.09 |
| Work with waste as a valuable resource | |
| All our waste is treated as a resource through reusing, recycling, refurbishing or composting | 4.91 |
| We eliminate waste by paying attention to the types and amounts of goods and materials we consume | 4.93 |
| Increase biodiversity and restore ecosystems | |
| We increase the diversity and varieties of species and habitats in our territory | 5.20 |
| We engage actively in ecosystem regeneration | 5.31 |
 Economy
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| Reconstruct the concepts of wealth, work and progress | |
| Our economic activities reflect that true wealth and progress require ecosystem health and community wellbeing | 4.88 |
| We organise and value work in a way that helps us recognise diverse contibutions and live meaningful lives | 5.36 |
| Commit to responsible production, consumption and trade | |
| Social responsibility and justice is a priority in how we produce, consume and trade goods and services | 4.93 |
| Ecological health is a priority in how we produce, consume and trade goods and services | 5.40 |
| Cultivate social entrepreneurship for local regeneration | |
| We support and prioritise enterprises that regenerate and enrich our local economy | 5.43 |
| We promote and cultivate entrepreneurship with positive social and ecological impact | 5.18 |
| Increase economic justice through sharing and collaboration | |
| We have shared practices that create an economic life based on collaboration, generosity and mutual support | 4.98 |
| We work to remove economic barriers to being part of our community and its activities | 4.86 |
| Ensure equitable access to land and resources | |
| We own, hold or share land in ways that promote equitable access to all community members | 4.79 |
| We value, safeguard, and expand the natural and cultural commons | 5.38 |
| Use banks and currencies that strengthen communities | |
| We use currencies and other exchange systems designed to strengthen local economies and relationships | 4.12 |
| We save and invest using practices and institutions dedicated to positive impact and community benefit | 4.81 |
 Social
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| Nurture diversity and cohesion for thriving communities | |
| We actively make our community welcoming to people of different backgrounds, means, genders, ages, cultures, religions and abilities | 5.57 |
| We share a sense of belonging and have plenty of opportunities to celebrate achieving our shared goals together | 5.24 |
| Develop fair, effective and accountable institutions | |
| We have clear ways of holding each other accountable for how we act and the decisions we make | 4.97 |
| Our community services and organisations are trustworthy and achieve their aims in ways that are fair and effective | 5.01 |
| Empower collaborative leadership and participatory decision-making | |
| We share power and responsibility in ways that enable engagement and collaboration | 5.31 |
| Members of my community actively take part in making decisions in areas that affect them | 5.49 |
| Practice conflict facilitation, communication and peacebuilding skills | |
| We have shared practices for peacebuilding and mediating conflicts in a supportive and reconciliatory way | 4.71 |
| The way we communicate and work together generates trust and empathy between us | 5.44 |
| Ensure equal and lifelong access to education for sustainability | |
| Lifelong sustainability education, curiosity and knowledge exchange is encouraged and practiced in our community | 5.50 |
| Our community or its members provide sustainability education and training to a diversity of people | 5.07 |
| Promote health, healing and wellbeing for all | |
| A holistic view of health, healing and wellbeing is embedded in our day-to-day community life and decisions | 5.08 |
| All members of our community have access to healing and healthcare | 5.73 |
 Integral Design
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| Learn from nature and practise whole systems thinking | |
| We observe and learn from natural patterns in order to design resilient systems | 4.61 |
| We understand that everything is interdependent and part of a greater whole | 5.71 |
| Identify assets needs and leverage points | |
| We build on our strengths and address our needs to further the health of the whole system | 5.20 |
| We prioritise opportunites where a small effort can create a big shift | 5.33 |
| Adapt solutions to scale and context | |
| We design considering the history and condition of place to express its full potential | 5.23 |
| We amplify our impact by intervening at the appropriate level and scale | 4.91 |
| Be aware of privilege and use it for the benefit of all | |
| We actively build awareness of individual and collective privilege and how it influences our perspectives and interactions | 4.73 |
| We use any privilege we have to support those in marginalised positions and create systems that benefit the whole | 5.09 |
| Build alliances across all divides | |
| We seek common ground and shared visions to enable collaboration with a diversity of others | 5.31 |
| We amplify our impact by working together with others | 5.50 |
| Engage all stakeholders in designs for the future | |
| We have processes to integrate a broad diversity of perspectives in our plans and projects | 5.10 |
| We cocreate interventions by inviting the active participation of all those affected | 5.21 |
| Spread core patterns of regeneration | |
| We identify, distill and implement solutions that lead to regeneration | 4.48 |
| We share, teach and spread regenerative principles and practices | 5.02 |
| Listen to the feedback of the world | |
| Being open to and learning from feedback is an integral part of how we function as a community | 5.61 |
| We design systems with feedback loops that allow us to keep improving our interventions | 4.77 |
The Impact Assessment gives results in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the GEN Map of Regeneration. Here you can learn more about how we adapted the SDGs to measure contributions from grassroots action.
The Ecovillage Impact Assessment is a survey with two levels:
Level 1 – the Personal Community Assessment measures the subjective opinions of community members about their shared lives and practices. This survey can be filled in by all community members, and the results are more reliable and count more towards the community’s total results if more people do it. Encouraging others to fill it in, is a great way to go! You will need to log in to, or create, a user profile on this site in order to do an assessment.
Level 2 – the Collective Community Assessment measures the presence, scale or frequency of specific practices for cultural, economic, ecological and social regeneration in a community. These answers are recorded only once, through the official account of the ecovillage. If you want to do the Community Assessment, you need to log in with the same email that was used when you created its official profile in the GEN Database.
We think it will take you about 20 minutes to complete a personal assessment. The community assessment will take longer, since it requires you to gather data you most likely do not have at hand.
To do the assessment or to see current results, select a community in the drop down menu below.
If your community or initative is not there, you first need to register it in our database.
You will see your results immediately after finishing – in relation to the GEN Map of Regeneration, and in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. If you want to know more details about how the assesment was constructed and how it is scored, head over to our in-depth explanation (coming soon). To learn more about how we worked with the UN SDGs to measure ecovillages, head to the page on Sustainable Development the Ecovillage Way
We created this tool to:
- Showcase and celebrate the activities of community-led initiatives
- Support community evolution through easily understandable data and results
- Inspire further action
- Provide data for understanding and improving the impact of ecovillages, community-led initatives, GEN, and the wider movement for regeneration.
It has been developed together with communities, ecovillage experts and researchers from around the world, and generously supported by the European Union. More functionality is coming. If you encounter a bug or problem, please let us know!
