A sustainability vision quest throughout the Indian subcontinent -- part A: motivations

I am presently gearing up for a massive campaign of grant-writing to support my upcoming travels, work and research in India. I figured that as long as I am getting thoughts down, may as well put them up for review on the blog. So...

Roughly speaking, my plans are to travel to and within India beginning December 2006 for 1 – 3 years learning and working for sustainability in various capacities including but not limited to:

• participating in the bi-annual International Society of Ecological Economics conference in Delhi, December 2006;
• in ecovillages, intentional communities and organic farms, especially in the Kerala region;
• with ecological/economic non-profits such as the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED) in Bangalore, and Vandana Shiva’s agricultural, ecological and democracy education and research center at Navdanya;
• and in the Earth Institute, Institute for Educational Research, economics department and Centre for Scientific Research in the experimental global community of Auroville.

My goals are to learn about sustainability and community in practice through experience and participation – to learn in an experiential manner and develop my ecological intuition and emotional intelligence for community, sustainability and connection among people and ecosystems. Some areas of practical interest are:

• creating and maintaining intentional communities;
• earth building materials and architecture (cob, straw bale, living roofs, passive solar and solar-thermal technologies, gray water utilization and treatment systems and waste composting, biomass energy systems);
• permaculture and localized, biodynamic agriculture methods;
• democratic, participatory, non-hierarchical, experience-based liberatory educational modes and creative self-expression;
• nonviolence practices including communication forms and spiritual development methods such as yoga and meditation;
• being immersed for a time in the Eastern cultural and philosophical milieu; and
• practical alternative (ecological) economics – promoting equity, sufficiency, quality over quantity, and sustainability – how encourage living very well (abundantly!) with less monetary wealth and with smaller Ecological Footprints

I will indulge in modes of learning that are inherently different from the Western, linear, reductionist, mechanistic, academic, detached and often alienated style I have been immersed in for most of my life. The trip is a research trip in that I will perform participatory research in effort to build a base of ecological wisdom which will (eventually) be brought into play back here in the Bay Area in a project to create a living-learning center. This concept is being organized by my new friend and colleague Karl Steyaert. I aim to tune my research trip in India to produce experiences and wisdom that will be ultimately useful to advancing the aims of the living-learning center to foster an intentional and sustainable community here in the US in the urbanized ecosystem of Oakland CA.