This will be an enviromentally friendly hotel complex.

WHAT IS AN ECOVILLAGE?

Eco-villagers utilise renewable energy technology, ecological building techniques, and human-scale design to reduce exploitation of natural resources, facilitate community self-reliance, and improve quality of life. They are about the creation of new settlements as well as retrofitting existing villages and urban areas.

An Eco-village is designed in harmony with its bio-region instead of the landscape being unduly engineered to fit construction plans. By thinking in terms of bio-regions, sustainable settlements are planned considering water availability, the ability to grow food, and accessibility.

Eco-villages are a contemporary endeavour on the part of responsible human beings to live with one another in harmony with nature and with one another at a local level. These villages are the forerunners of a movement to develop sustainable ecological communities. They provide space for experimenting with new ideas, techniques and technologies, which can then flow into mainstream currents within society.

The decisions set out in Agenda 21 at the World Summit in Rio (1992) confirm the need to develop ecological settlements and promote an exchange of ideas between such settlements and "normal" society.

The background or motivation for Eco-villages is the need to reverse the gradual disintegration of supportive social/cultural structures and the upsurge of destructive environmental practices on our planet.

Eco-villages are urban or rural communities of people, who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more.

Eco-villages typically build on various combinations of three dimensions:

Social/Community

Ecological

Cultural/Spiritual.

Eco-villages are communities in which people feel supported by and responsible to those around them. They provide a deep sense of belonging to a group. They are small enough that everyone feels empowered, seen and heard. People are then able to participate in making decisions that affect their own lives and that of the community on a transparent basis.

Community means:

Recognising and relating to others

Sharing common resources and providing mutual aid

Emphasising holistic and preventive health practices

Providing meaningful work and sustenance to all members

Integrating marginal groups

Promoting unending education

Encouraging unity through respect for differences

Fostering cultural expression

Eco-villages allow people to experience their spiritual connection to the living earth. People enjoy daily interaction with the soil, water, wind, plants and animals. They provide for their daily needs, food, clothing, shelter, while respecting the cycles of nature.