Is Auroville prepared for an uncertain
future? In 1968, Auroville was a desertified plateau. Since then, the landscape
has been greened by millions of trees and fauna and flora have exploded. But
could Auroville return to that former state in the foreseeable future?It seems highly unlikely. Yet Auroville and the
bioregion are threatened by a potential water crisis while the world outside
its boundaries at present is wobbling on its axis due to the coronavirus. In
addition, mutually reinforcing challenges like climate change, large-scale
species extinction, pervasive pollution, serious geopolitical tensions and a
precarious global economy – the extreme vulnerability of which is presently
being tested by the coronavirus and an oil price war – all suggest that the
future is, to put it mildly, extremely uncertain. One school of thought, basing
itself on worrying statistics like those released by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, believes that we have already surpassed a t...
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3 Comments
This is a great article! And it should be widely read both in AV's residential community and in the AVI world. I have been quite out of touch with the AV Collective for years, questioning its role and relevance on Planet Earth as global crises spread like wildfire in recent decades. It takes courage to face our default denial. This article sensitively but honestly confronts that denial. As a first-generation AV resident who helped jump-start the reforestation program and other community-building, eco-collaborative initiatives, this article, its interviewer and interviewees dared to shine a light into the deep darkness of this evolutionary moment. Thank you! Onward... ~Savitra
Pondicherry with its 1 million residents 10 km from Auroville has no water shortage and neither do we; it does have traffic jam and pollution problems. Auroville's local traffic can de-oil when we get the few last missing lands for a ring road.
In Auroville neither wind nor solar can fully replace grid electricity because of local conditions plus their intermittent nature. During this lockdown we had very few grid power cuts because regional farmers could not run their "free electricity" pumps: best for all if they switch to solar pumping and less water demanding crops, but all this is linked in to government subsidies.
Any economy based on visitors flying in long distance is not only oil dependent but can also bring other disadvantages as we found out recently with covid19.
Maybe we should all adapt to less physical globalism: that was mainly good for stock prices of the 0.01% both sides of the North Pacific & Atlantic?
Pondicherry with its 1 million residents 10 km from Auroville has no water shortage and neither do we; it does have traffic jam and pollution problems. Auroville's local traffic can de-oil when we get the few last missing lands for a ring road.
In Auroville neither wind nor solar can fully replace grid electricity because of local conditions plus their intermittent nature. During this lockdown we had very few grid power cuts because regional farmers could not run their "free electricity" pumps: best for all if they switch to solar pumping and less water demanding crops, but all this is linked in to government subsidies.
Any economy based on visitors flying in long distance is not only oil dependent but can also bring other disadvantages as we found out recently with covid19.
Maybe we should all adapt to less physical globalism: that was mainly good for stock prices of the 0.01% both sides of the North Pacific & Atlantic?