Since 2008, when the financial collapse began, I have been acutely aware that in the event that things get out of control, and complementary currency solutions cease to be an appropriate response, I have no bolt-hole to run to, and no special skills that would endear me to those who had the foresight to buy land and learn to produce food on it. In that five years, the LETS and the timebanks, the only networks who practice and to a lesser extent understand what I'm talking about have largely been overtaken by more youthful movements when it comes to building resilience in urban and suburban areas. So I went to the GEN-Europe (Global Ecovillage Network) conference hoping to find a partner who might participate more deeply in my work.
GEN is an umberella organisation which has been growing strongly in the last few years as new ecovillages are founded and hitherto independent intentional communities have joined. It seems to have many sources of funding, including subscriptions from the member projects and is building links with CSR initiatives in global corporations.
Asking around I learned that the idea of exchanging between villages had long been talked about, but never acted upon, and of course some of the larger villages, Findhorn and Damanhur, had their own localised-national currencies to capture tourist income and keep it circulating. The movement as a whole was largely not aware of the 'Money as Debt' critiques or the less obvious benefits of shunning national currencies as an internal accounting tool, but it instinctively realises the value of trading together.
At this conference 2 luminaries were front and center. Jakob_von_Uexkull‎ is best known for founding the Right Livelihood Awards. He had a lot to talk about and the centrality of the money system to his message was clear, although why he was preaching monetary reform to the ecovillage movement wasn't clear to me. Also a Dragon Dreaming course was run throughout the week by its creator, John Croft. He was Australia's top LETS activist in the 90s, pushing for it to gain political acceptance and support from government. I saw how for him, Dragon Dreaming was a development of LETS, a tool which gave people a context reciprocative exchange in co-realising their personal projects. Dragon Dream is not an overtly economic tool though as LETS always aspired to be.
Everyone seemed to agree that an exchange network between ecovillage was a key part of the GEN vision. I spent the week raising awareness and lobbying for a working group to be created. Any exchange project between the ecovillages could only be done with their cooperation, and for that, official recognition would be an absolute prerequisite for an exercise such as, a deep audit of the resources and needs of the network members.
It was a delight hanging out with the IT team and seeing their commitment to amateurism and voluntarism, and for now, that's where I need to be carving out my survival niche.
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