Oldal 263 [263]
ECOVILLAGES 261
The history of the international and Hungarian
ecovillage movement
The history of green movements and the communities they have created goes back
a long way (for a summary, see Farkas 2017a; 2017b). From the 1960s onwards,
communities started to multiply, following their religious teachings and spiritual
beliefs and later became models for eco-communities, including the international
ecovillage movement — as ecovillages themselves. These include Findhorn in
Scotland, Auroville in southern India and The Farm in the United States. These
communities were established in the countercultural-spiritual upswing of the 1960s
and 1970s,” with a strong emphasis on harmonious coexistence with nature from
the very beginning, and the concept of ecovillage, even the name ecovillage, has
‘caught up’ with them.’ The 1970s saw both a renewal and strengthening of
environmental movements and new attempts at community building. Among
them, the first ecovillage initiatives emerged. The concept itself had already
appeared in the 1970s: according to one of the historians of the ecovillage movement
(Bates 2003), Mother Earth News magazine (Hendersonville, Northern California)
began to create organic gardens and energy-saving houses next to its office in 1975.
These also served as educational centers. They began to be called ecovillages in
1979. Around the same time, a protest was launched in the German town of
Gorleben against the planned nuclear waste repository there. The activists created
a small settlement on ecological foundations and called it ékodorf: Though the
camp was cleared away by the police, the idea got stuck and Okodérfer began to
crop up all over the country. It was also at this time, in the 1970s, that the
cohousing movement began to flourish in Denmark and played an important role
in the creation of ecovillages. Robert and Diane Gilman began to report on these
and similar initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s in their journal /n Context (Seattle).
They believed that these initiatives could serve as a model for sustainable living.
The magazine was soon discovered by Ross and Hildur Jackson, who run the Gaia
Trust, and a collaboration between the magazine, the organization and the eco¬
village projects began. The 1990s were the heyday of the ecovillage movement,
with the first meetings that marked a major step forward in the history of the
movement. The first meeting was held in Denmark in 1991, with the aim of
formulating the concept of ecovillages and developing a strategy for their
dissemination. In 1993, the Danish Ecovillage Network, the first of its kind, was
established. It served as a model for the international ecovillage movement that
"On the basis of Bates 2003; Borsos 2016, and personal communication from Hungarian ecovillage
founders.
The Scottish village of Findhorn was started by the first inhabitants of the emerging community
in 1962. Auroville (City of Dawn) was founded in 1968 by French-born Mira Alfassa (or, as her
disciples call her, The Mother). Auroville was founded on the teachings of the Hindu philosopher
Sri Aurobindo, and was an early adopter of ecological principles. The Farm was founded in 1971
by San Francisco hippies with a focus on non-violence and respect for the earth in the state of
Tennessee (Meijeering 2006).
5 In Hungary, the story of Krishna Valley is similar: the community created its living space according
to the teachings of its religion, which fitted perfectly with the idea of the ecovillage, and so in the
late 1990s they joined the ecovillage movement and started to consciously strengthen the ecovillage
character of the settlement.