A sustainability vision quest throughout the Indian subcontinent -- part B: methodology outline

OUTLINE

Intro – A sustainability vision quest throughout the Indian subcontinent

Central Research Question: How can we all live well within the means of one planet?

Background research and development of metrics

• Personal EF calculations
• EF and HDI national and global trajectories and ‘sustainable development’
• Localized HDI analogs: smaller-scale well-being indicators
• GPI disaggregated
• CIW
• Gross domestic happiness

Conference Attendance

• ISEE 2006, Delhi
• Unveil the Master Plan and enroll ecological economists in the quest!

Four live/work research internships:

• Kerala (3 – 6 months)
• Participant-observation and interviews in ecovillages, intentional communities and organic farms organized around permaculture and localized, biodynamic agriculture methods
• Identifying "best practices" and "exemplary people" who are leading communities in well-being and ecological lifestyles
• Observing how a democratically elected communist government operates vis a vis people and ecosystems
• Auroville – participant-observation in several sectors (6 months – 1 year)
• Earth Institute
• 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)
• Institute for Educational Research
• democratic, participatory, non-hierarchical, experience-based liberatory educational modes and creative self-expression; the practice of "holistic" and "integral" education at the elementary school age; environmental/ecological education
• Economics Department
• study how Auroville economy functions vis a vis 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; non-monetary economy
• Centre for Scientific Research
• Research and deployment of affordable sustainable technologies that can be easily transferred across cultures
• CISED (6 months – 1 year)
• Short-course on Environment and Rural Development Concepts and Debates for Practitioners and Researchers
• Research Associate on project(s) pertaining to
• Forests and common lands
• Water resources
• Forest-water-agriculture linkage
• Institutions and democratic decentralization
• Science, technology and society
• Navdanya (3 – 9 months)
• Work/live in agricultural intentional community / learning center
• Participate in educational and practical training sessions and short courses
• Water democracy
• Soil as a living system
• Sustainable agriculture
• Sustainable cities
• Women and food sovereignty
• Gandhi, globalization and self-organization

Data and experiences analysis, publications, translation of learnings to living-learning center in Oakland