Motivations for living in an eco-village

Last updated on April 3rd, 2024 at 01:54 pm

While traveling in Asia and deciding upon what other places to visit, we also talk to others we meet while traveling and ask them about their recommendations. Primarily we search for information on the internet including searching on google maps.

Once when searching on google maps, we saw an organic farm nearby on the map just by zooming in on the surrounding areas. Then we thought, lets search for another related term called “ecovillage”. We then found and also visited such a place nearby near Kuala Lumpur called The Noble Gateway. You can read about our experience there in this blog post: Noble Gateway – a small community near Kuala Lumpur

While spending time there and talking to the owners, we talked also about motivations behind starting such a project and living in such a way. This made us think more about this topic and share some more information about it.

In a world, where you would wish yourself and everyone else only the best, it doesn’t make sense to destroy our own health and our own home, neither destroy the home of others or their health. By home I mean not only your physical body and the place where you sleep, the places where you spend most of your time during the day, but it is the whole planet, because if anything goes majorly wrong on this planet, it will impact your home and your life.

How are we destroying or worsening our health? For example, by getting exposed to too many chemicals mostly through food, drinks, air, water, skin, which can accumulate and silently in the background decrease our health. Modern and mainstream lifestyles contain a shockingly large amount of chemicals, which can have very adverse effects on our health. Of course, various sources of stress, mental and emotional stressors negatively impact our health as well.

How are we destroying or worsening our environment and living conditions? For example, by continuous overuse of plastics (for example so many products in supermarkets and other shops are using plastics for packaging), destroying the soils by using degenerative profit-oriented agricultural methods (for example monocultures) and chemicals (including non-organic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers), too much meat production, polluting the air for example by burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal), water pollution, deforestation, overfishing, illegal killing of animals and more.

One of the motivations behind writing this blog post is to help bring and spread more awareness about the importance of living in an eco-friendly way instead of a destructive way. We need to take some action and start living not only in a healthy way, but also in a sustainable way. It is not enough to care for your own health, but if you care about your children, and you want them to be healthy as much as possible and as long as possible, then you have to think one step further and think about the whole environment (the whole planet) in which they and their children will have to live – we cannot keep destroying it and making it worse, sustainability is something everybody should know about and change and keep adjusting their lifestyles from non-sustainable living towards reaching sustainable living. The sooner we make this change the better for the planet and the future of life on this planet.

First we will briefly explain what an ecovillage is, before writing about some common motivations for living in an eco-friendly way in a village, for joining an existing eco-village or for starting a new eco-village or simply educating yourself about them, what they do and how they do it and what aspects of it you could start introducing and implementing into your life and lifestyle.

What is an eco-village?

It is a village situated in a rural area, where people strive to live in a way, which is very environment-friendly, meaning that their lifestyle has ideally not just no negative impact on the environment, but also a positive impact in several different ways. People there give more intention, attention and focus on living in harmony with nature and animals. They have a very considerate and healthy approach towards the usage of Earth’s resources.

The goal is to stop using more resources than is actually available in the long-term and avoid contributing to creating worse conditions for living for the future generations, where life could become a huge challenge with huge restrictions or no longer possible or possible only for a much smaller population. The goal of an ecovillage is to create an environment, where people live in a sustainable way, “1-Earth-is-enough-way”.

Do eco-villages already exist?

Yes, many ecovillages exist! Check out the website: https://ecovillage.org/

It is possible to visit many of them and learn from them.

Are eco-villages good?

Yes, ecovillages are very good for example for the environment, because people living in such villages are living in a way, which has a positive impact on the environment. The goal is ecological sustainable living. Not just no more destroying, but help regenerate what has been destroyed. It would be great if people who already live in the countryside could start doing it more or in an even more ecological way.

Ecovillages alone will not save the planet, but they will contribute saving it, and people there can live in a very healthy way.

There is a trend that there are more and more people living in big cities who wish to move to living in the countryside. For them, it is relevant information as well: if you want to live in the countryside, please educate yourself about the ecological and sustainable aspects of living and do your best to incorporate them into your new lifestyle, it will make a positive difference for you and others.

Or when deciding about moving to live in the countryside, it is a new option to consider joining an existing ecovillage or at least live nearby an ecovillage and benefit from it in some ways.

What does it mean to live in a sustainable way and why does it matter?

It is a lifestyle, which minimizes environmental degradation (use of natural resources, CO2 emissions, waste and pollution) in order to make the planet’s resources last as long as possible. It’s about positively impacting the planet and providing a better quality of life for all.

It matters, because currently modern human lifestyles in many countries are actually destroying our home and are still very ignorant about it. Destroying the only place where we and our children and future generations live will probably lead to much worse living conditions very soon, and highly probably to huge catastrophes, one of which could be even the extinction of humans.

Non-sustainable way of living means destruction of the environment and worsening of life conditions locally and globally. If ignored for a too long time, it may be too late to avoid very bad outcomes for life on this planet.

Reasons and motivations, why to live in an eco-village in an environment-friendly sustainable way

Here is a list of some possible motivations behind wanting to or choosing to live in an ecovillage in an ecological way:

To stop being ignorant, stop looking away, stop doing the things/actions which are making life on this planet worse, stop/step out of the “I don’t care”, “I don’t have time”, “Others are way worse” mindset or attitude
To have access to eating local organic and nutrition-rich fresh local food, which is one key component for health (unfortunately the current standard of the majority of food sold in many supermarkets is actually poisoned (containing harmful chemicals), nutrients-deficient (grown in low quality soils or simply in nutrients deficient environments), dead (harvested long-time ago) food – if you stop and think about it, this doesn’t sound right, does it?! Many people like to buy fruits and vegetables in local markets from local farmers, but many people don’t and buy it from the big producers.)
To be less dependent on outside food sources
To help regenerate soils and maintain healthy soils so that food can be grown in a healthy way for a much longer time
To help stop creating new environmental challenges and problems (help stop the likelihood of more weather extremes and humans-aided natural disasters due to additional harmful imbalances created by non-sustainable destructive living) in the future and for future generations (including our children)
To help keep the planet beautiful and make the parts humans destroyed beautiful again (not more polluted with more waste and destroyed nature)
To manage to live in a sustainable eco-friendly way yourself and help show others ways how it is possible
To live with like minded people who have mutual goals and values and who support each other, do things together. In an eco-village, people can work together on mutual projects, and they help each other more. The togetherness aspect is much more available, so its a more inclusive type of living going away from too much separation.

Fun fact: You can grow fruits and vegetables without harmful chemicals, it is possible, it works, it is also the sustainable way of doing it and it is no doubt better for your health and tastes better on top.

Who is it for living in an eco-village?

Ecovillages are usually made up of people, who:

love to spend more time in nature, like to live in or very close to nature and don’t like to live in big cities
love working in the garden and are interested to grow their own food
are health-conscious and care about what type of food they eat
are interested in having a positive impact on the planet
can still do what they are most passionate about even while living this kind of lifestyle
are interested in learning more about doing many different things themself, that they were used to buying
are interested in a more peaceful type of living with less traffic/construction/neighbour noise and cleaner air
are not interested in living a luxurious and too materialistic-way of life, but can feel happy even by living a simpler life with enough time for hobbies, friends and nature
care about others, like to help others, like to volunteer at least occasionally
have some kind of spiritual awareness, may have had some profound spiritual experiences and/or an awakening to the spiritual aspects of existence/life, have a deeper understanding about the true nature of reality and interconnectedness of everything

Sustainable-living key topics

People, who live in an ecovillage follow certain agreed-upon rules and resolutions such as:

all the farming of all the people in an eco-village is a fully organic type of farming (no harmful chemicals used)
doing also regenerative farming and using certain permaculture principles
no or at least just the absolute minimum use of plastic
using eco-friendly cleaning products and eco-friendly cosmetics
environment-friendly waste management including reusing (using reusable items/products), recycling and upcycling and reducing buying junk items
environment-friendly water management including collecting rain water and reusing water for different purposes
green energy and efficient usage of energy/electricity including using energy-saving types of devices
the houses/buildings built using green architecture principles
using more eco-friendly types of transportation
participating in some way in charity and community and awareness/education building projects, help and share with those who have nothing or not enough or need help

Closing words

If we want our children, and their children and all future generations to be able to enjoy living on this planet, we have to make our lifestyles sustainable.

We are just temporary visitors of this planet. See the planet as a member of your family, and act according to: “do to others as you want done to you”.

The destructive way of living is not a good way of living. Don’t just think about yourself, think about the bigger picture and the future generations as well. If there is a way to stop supporting and participating in a destructive (non-sustainable) way of living towards the planet and our health, and there is such a way, then it makes 100% sense to start doing your best according to your current possibilities to make the necessary changes step by step, day by day towards a more healthy, sustainable, environment-friendly way of living.

Each person counts, by example we show others that it is possible and how they can achieve it as well.

Do it for yourself, for your children, for the future generations, for the planet and the life on it.

Live with the thought: “I did my best, I lived in a way where I actively cared for my health and for the planet (my home and the home of everyone else). I didn’t follow only my own interests, but I made sure that my actions do not harm others nor the planet.”

The current era we are living in is calling for a deep re-evaluation of your life and living choices and lifestyle and a change in behaviour towards no more destruction, regenerating what has been already destroyed and brought out of balance, taking your health into your own hands and being a positive example to others.

What is your number one motivation to live ecofriendly? Let us know in the comments below!