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Did you know that there are 11,000 sustainable villages in Sri Lanka and 350 such villages in Senegal? The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) knows. GEN is "a global confederation of people and communities that meet and share their ideas, exchange technologies, develop cultural and educational exchanges, directories and newsletters, and are dedicated to restoring the land and living 'sustainable plus' lives by putting more back into the environment than we take out."
Okay.but what's an ecovillage?
"The idea of eco-village has a large and flexible concept," writes Joao Silva in Accessible Travel Magazine. "In general, these communities search for a perfect relation between Men and Nature. This relation is based in the principle that the human activities should be harmless for the nature and integrated with it. The ideal is to give more to the nature than taking from it. These communities are intended to be socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. This means that most of the resources should be produced inside the community, giving it a large independence from the external world. In fact, eco-villages produce their own food (according with permaculture agriculture measures) and even energy is obtained from renewable sources."
