How can human communities be sustained in the future?

Bioshelters
Bioshelters are described as a "crucible of change toward a non-nuclear and solar future." However wise this notion may be, the main drawback is the fact that bioshelters are inconceivable for the majority of the world's poor. To popularize the notion of a bioshelter, the conference looked to Dr. Margaret Mead for inspiration. While Mead died before the conference, her advice was to incorporate biospheres into a village setting "as most people in the world will never be able to afford a private house." More importantly, Dr. Mead recognized that villages in the past and in the future are important links for regenerating traditional land-based cultures.

A BIOSHELTER DESIGN FOR THE RIO CULEBRA UPLANDS
Designing a High Altitude Solar Adobe Village (HASAV) in the Rio Arriba (a vast area in northern New Mexico and the southern border of Colorado) has been influenced by Dr. Mead's challenge to recreate a village as solar ecology. Integral to this vision was the research pioneered at the New Alchemy Institute and Development Alternatives of New Delhi, India.

The necessity to maintain historic villages and construct new prototypes is critical as vast amounts of rural agricultural lands become transformed by nonagricultural uses. Typically, the most impacted areas are villages which are clustered in agrarian settlements, those sited in tributary valleys, and those low population densities. As agricultural landscapes are destroyed by the environmental impacts of resource extraction and over-development--village productivity decreases and traditional cultures and the ecological tapestries they maintained are lost. Traditional land-based cultures such as The Culebra River villages of southern Colorado have become hostage to the expanding globalization trends.

HASAV will be a symbolic refuge and support system where the Culebra villagers and other regional communities can gather together to discuss and to collectively organize to challenge the environmental destruction of village habitats.

"Creating a new village presents an opportunity to closely match community structure to critical ecological function. Today's village designers have access to more scientific and historical information, biological material, and startup energy than ever is likely to occur again."

The Sustainable Village is working with Architectural Design to help redesign refugee camps as ecologically sustainable settlements. For more information about this project, click here.

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