Courtesy of The Automatic Earth.
Arthur James Northwood Maori woman with catch of fish on Northland coast, New Zealand 1910
Atamai Village in New Zealand is an ambitious project aimed at providing its villagers’ basic needs, food, water, shelter, once the global economy and its energy resources start running dry. Changes to the climate are also on many people’s minds. The idea is to build a community that has an internal economy, with people buying each other’s products, in which permaculture plays a major role, while others work outside the village as long as that is viable. Since it’s expensive to set up a project of this scale, we’re talking a few hundred people, it’s not cheap to purchase a plot of land and/or a home. That is a problem in and of itself, because it selects for those with a certain amount of wealth, who will on average be “older”, while a good age balance is vital. It’ll be interesting to see how Atamai, and other projects of its kind, deal with that issue. Still, you have to start somewhere.
