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Gaviotas |
The eastern savannas of war-ravaged Colombia, known as the llanos, are among the most brutal environments on Earth, an unlikely setting for one of the most hopeful environmental stories ever told. Here, more than twenty-five years ago, an intrepid visionary named Paolo Lugari set out to create a village that could sustain itself agriculturally, economically, and artistically. He reasoned that if a community could survive in the Colombian llanos, it would be possible to live anywhere. The new village was named after the graceful river terns common in the area, los gaviotas.
The early inhabitants of Gaviotas soon realized that if they wanted even basic necessities, they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water, and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun.
They even invented a rain forest! Two million pine trees planted as a renewable crop have unexpectedly allowed the rain forest to re-establish itself. Paolo Lugari and the Gaviotans, in their quest to create a model human habitat, serendipitously renewed an entire ecosystem. This is why Colombian author Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez has called Lugari as “The Inventor of the World."
How this book came about:
In 1994, a team of independent journalists was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to produce a special series for National Public Radio, which would document humanity's search for solutions to the greatest environmental and social problems threatening the world today. One member of that team, Alan Weisman, took his quest to an unlikely spot: war-torn, drug-ravaged Colombia. Twenty-five years earlier, he'd been told, a group of Colombian visionaries had decided that if they could fashion self-sustaining peace and prosperity in the most difficult place on earth, it could be done anywhere. Then they had set out to try.
For sixteen bone-breaking hours, Weisman traveled by jeep past roadblocks manned by army, paramilitary, and guerrilla forces to reach what those visionaries had forged in the harshest setting they could find: the extraordinary community called Gaviotas.
Chelsea Green's Editor-in-Chief Jim Schley heard Weisman's report on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and immediately sensed the similarity between the Gaviotas story and Jean Giono's classic fable, The Man Who Planted Trees, a Chelsea Green book which has sold more than 150,000 copies since publication in 1984.
Schley contacted Weisman, who agreed to write a book about Gaviotas. Weisman returned to Gaviotas repeatedly, visiting extensively with the residents including the community's founder, Paolo Lugari, who has been called by Colombian author and Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez "The Inventor of the World."
"Elsewhere they're tearing down the rain forest. Here, we're putting it back. If we can do this in Colombia, there's hope that people can do it anywhere."
—Paolo Lugari, Founder of Gaviotas
240 pages
Chelsea Green Publishing
Alan Weisman
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| Item # |
Description |
Price |
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| VE3665 |
Gaviotas |
$12.56 |
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