Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
Hello again, this is Jackie here for Constructive Voices. This is going to be a historic episode because for the very first time I am handing over the driver's seat to a young lady called Sarah Austin. Sarah is our first volunteer program person here at Constructive Voices. She comes with a really interesting background and she's done a lot for her age so far. She's put together this episode which is going to be focused on Cloughjordan Eco Village. We have a wonderful guest, Peadar Kirby, who has lots and lots of information to impart about how the Eco Village was set up, how it works and how it is educational to others and so on. And he's going to be an amazing guest, I know that. Sarah, would you like to just introduce yourself briefly, please?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you, Jackie. Yes, with pleasure. So, my name is Sarah Austin. I'm from Ireland and currently living in France. I'm a sustainable development practitioner with a background in natural science and very passionate about biodiversity. I'm looking to pursue a career in sustainable development with a particular interest in agriculture and food systems. And I'm volunteering now with Constructive Voices to hopefully, hopefully impart some of that knowledge that I bring and to learn a bit more about what's happening in the news and sustainability around the world.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Fantastic. Sarah and I was quite honoured when you approached us because you've also worked with a couple of global organizations as a volunteer, haven't you?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yes. So I've done some environmental education with Eco UNESCO in Ireland and since then as well, I worked in change management with the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome. So I've had some really interesting experiences that have really broadened my horizons in the field of sustainable development.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now, Peadar, absolutely thrilled to have you here today and if you would like to just introduce yourself to the audience, please, you're very welcome.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: Well, I'm a retired professor of international politics and public policy, worked in Dublin City University and in the University of Limerick. I've written many books, particularly on models of development with a particular focus on Latin America over the decades and then more recently on the applying the similar framework to the issue of climate change, biodiversity loss. What sort of model of development is going to get us to a low carbon and biodiverse society? I've been very troubled that these issues have been missing in the discourse on climate change and biodiversity loss, which to me has been far too driven by technological fixes rather than by focusing in on the sorts of power structures that we have and the ways in which we organize our economy and society.
So that's what I've been doing. My last book was about Carl Polanyi and how his theoretical framework, his view of the world, particularly his focus on the need to commodify land, labor and money, are, it seems to me, some of the essential theoretical tools we need for the transition to a low carbon and biodiverse society. And my most recent book, which hasn't yet been published, is my first novel. It's a novel in Irish which links Scotland, Ireland and Spain 600 years ago and I'm currently revising it in the light of publishers comments and hopefully to get it published quite soon. It won second prize in the Eroctus Literary Competition last October. So I'm moving into exploring the possibilities of fictional writing, creative writing, as a way of sharing important messages of large scale transformation.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: That's absolutely fascinating and I can imagine that we may have another episode in the future if you would like to work with us again in the future about at least one of your books. Peadar, because the messages are there from what you're saying. It's absolutely in tune with what we're trying to do here. Constructive voices as well as link together.
The link between the people, the planet and the places and biodiversity and community are absolutely integral. Know when it comes to these things.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: A lovely way of putting it.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Thank you very much Father. So now Sarah, I am going to. It's a hard thing for me to do, but I know I've no better woman to do it with. I'm going to hand over the reins to you Sarah.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Thank you very much Jackie.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Thank you Sarah.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: So Peadar, I'd love to learn more about Clockjordan Ecovillage. I know it's Ireland's only eco village and you're a resident there. So for those who don't know, could you tell us what is Clockjordan Ecovillage?
[00:05:11] Speaker C: It is a. It's. It's really a Nico neighborhood of the village of Clark Jordan, which is very old village in the midlands of Ireland, North Tipperary, just on the borders with County OFFALY. We bought 64 acres here which links to the main street of Cloughjordan. We've actually created a crossroads right at the center of Cloughjordan opposite the village green. So we're very much integrated into the existing village of Cloughjordan. On our 64 acres we've built 55 houses. We have about 90 adult residents, about 15 to 20 children. Of course the children grow up and they move on. So the figure is Fluctuating and we seek to model what it is to live sustainably. Though increasingly we have great difficulties with the term sustainable because it is so meaningless in some ways, but to live in a regenerative and respectful way, sharing these 64 acres with many, many other species, plants, animals, insects, and seeking to live together to make the place flourish and to live with as low and as light a footprint on the planet as possible. So that's, that's a very brief summary of what is a very big and complex project.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: And how did the idea for this come about?
[00:06:42] Speaker C: It came about originally in the late 1990s when a group were meeting in Dublin more with a view to setting up a co housing project in the city centre in a piece of land now tame Temple Bar, which has now been developed and of course is very central to sort of the part of Dublin that tourists congregate in. But back 20 years ago it was owned by CIE, the national transport company. It was, you know, really a bit of an unused space, buildings allowed to fall into ruin. And there was a group meeting with a view to developing there a co housing project and that then soon moved more into a more ambitious plan to develop an eco village. Since many of the people meeting were very concerned about what was happening in terms of climate change and biodiversity loss. And they felt that the challenges of our time require more than simply co housing in the centre of Dublin, that they require us to model long term sustainable living, to living within the planetary boundaries and to living in a way where we live in balance with all the different other plants and species that we co inhabit with. And so therefore the group began to develop towards buying a site and developing that as an eco village. And the company that now owns the site and of which we're all members, Sustainable Projects Ireland was founded in September 1999, in the early 2000s. Then they put an ad in the Farmer's journal looking for a piece of land and they got 15 replies. They went around and they visited all the places and they settled on Cloughjordan and bought the 64 acres in about 2003, 2004, got outlined planning permission from Tipperary County Council, the first area ever in Ireland that was given a designation for sustainable development. And then we went on to put in the infrastructure and to start building our houses. So that's a potted version of the history.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: And how did you come to choose Cloughjordan as a site for ecovillage?
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Well, there were a number of criteria. One of the criterion was that it had to be on a train line since we obviously tried to ensure that people travel in a way that puts as little pressure as possible on the environment. And of course, given the way that the train services in Ireland were run down for so many decades, that was a big ask. So Cloughjordan is on a train line, even though when we first arrived, there was a great threat that Irish Rail were going to close down that line. And now, of course, that threat has passed and they've actually begun to invest upgrading the line, which is good.
And the story is, I wasn't involved at the time that Cloughjordan was the only village that they visited where the people actually, you know, tried to convince them to come, that they realized that this was an opportunity to regenerate a village that was dying on its feet. It's not on the main road to anywhere. When we arrived, there was no place that you could actually stay for a night. There was no hotel, there was no B and B. And so young people were leaving.
And some of the more senior people in the village realized that this was an opportunity to turn it around and that it has proven to be. But we had to work for about two years before we ever began to even lay the infrastructure for the 64 acres that we bought to work with the local community and to win their approval and their support for the project. And that was an investment of time very, very well spent because it meant that, you know, we weren't facing opposition and that, you know, as you'd expect in a small rural village, the sort of suspicions that people had of these, of these environmental champions coming in were allayed, I think, before we ever started building. And now relations are very good and we much integrated into the community of Cloughjordan. And, you know, in many ways, we're not two separate communities, we're one community. And we've brought a whole new economic and social and cultural life to the community of Clark Jordan, which I think is much appreciated by many people.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And so what did you need to do to persuade or reassure as needed, the local community for you guys to go ahead with the project?
[00:11:52] Speaker C: I think it was mostly getting to know one another. So some of the people who now live in the ecovillage came to live in Cloughjordan. They rented houses. Then we worked with the kids in the two primary schools to sort of map out what we were hoping to do so that the parents were getting an idea of, you know, of the seriousness of this as a project that. That we were, you know, we were spending a lot of money to buy a relatively large amount of good agricultural land. And we were, you know, there was seriousness about what we were planning to do. So I think all of that, you know, allayed fears and obviously suspicions often grow where people don't know one another. So simply getting to know one another and living side by side helped to overcome a lot of the initial, well, initial anxiety, I suppose, on the part of the people of Cloughjordan.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I suppose that makes a lot of sense. If they're going to join and be members of the community. It does come down just to the human level.
And so what makes Cloughjordan ecovillage or the eco neighborhood of Cloughjordan different from other communities? What are some of the features of, of the eco village that demonstrate a sustainable way of life?
[00:13:12] Speaker C: That's a very good question. And I'm often asked that question by groups, visiting groups that come here. And I at this stage identify three things that distinguish us from any neighborhood of any town or village in Ireland. The first is that we from the beginning built our houses to a very high ecological standard. We started building here in 2009 and at that stage we were building houses to a much higher standard than national regulations required. Since then, national regulations have caught up on us and we're now moving into a new development phase where we're hoping again to push out the boat a bit and to increase the environmental standards that we build houses to. But you know, levels of insulation, the fact that all our houses are south facing so we benefit a lot from the heat of the sauna. I mean, it's. Since I moved to Clark Jordan 15 years ago, it's transformed my view of the Irish climate because so much of the heat in my house comes from the sun, even in mid winter, because I'm facing south, I have big windows and the house is so well insulated that the heat is captured and kept. So that's one thing is building our houses to a high ecological standard. The second is that we're unique in Ireland as a neighborhood that is heated by a district heating system that is fueled by renewable energy. And so all our houses are heated in a way that's carbon neutral. And that's very unusual. The average house in Ireland is heated by oil or by gas or by coal, of course.
And so it always seems to me that the.
I don't see why any housing estate in Ireland wouldn't have a district heating system fueled by renewable energy to heat all the houses. Apart from giving us very, very comfortable houses at low cost and shielding us from the sorts of increasing risks to our heating supply that come from very sudden Environmental disasters like we had recently with Storm Eowyn, we manage, as we manage everything, we manage the district heating system in common. So it's one of the many things that binds us as a community because, you know, as always happens with any piece of machinery, there'll be problems at times. We'll get an email from the team of, of volunteers from the ecovillage that look after the district heating system saying, oh, the boiler cut out last night. We're waiting for a part to come. You won't be getting hot water until that's fixed. And usually a few hours later we'll get an email saying, all fine. Now the hot water is flowing again. And we have big tanks in each of our houses that holds plenty of hot water that lasts for days and days. So. So, you know, we're all in this together. And that's, that's the thing that really reinforces our sense of community. So that's the second dimension that makes us something unique. And the third one is that we have our own food system.
To us, food, the growing of food, the way in which we tend the land to grow food, is really absolutely crucial, both for reducing carbon emissions and for fostering biodiversity. So we put about 8 acres of our 64 acres aside as a community farm.
There are members of the farm both from within the ecovillage and from outside the ecovillage. All adult members pay €64amonth, and for that, then they can take all the produce that is deposited in a central location here in the ecovillage twice a week. And as members of the farm, I mean, I'm a city man. I lived in cities all my life before I moved here. And it's a great education to meet the farmers, to hear about the problems that they're facing. And every time we have meetings of the farm members with the farmers, we learn about the growing challenges of climate change for farming today.
Then we tell the farmers what we like, what we'd like them to experiment with. They're all the time experimenting with growing new crops. At the moment, we have more than 60 different varieties of vegetables, of herbs, of fruits that are grown on about five acres because we allow about one third of our acreage fallow at any one time to regenerate the soil. We test the soil regularly and we actively foster ever greater diversity in the soil so that we grow our food in a completely organic and biodynamic way. And it is really tasty food. It embodies no food miles because no emission there. It involves no emissions to deliver it to our coach house where we pick it up in the eco village. And we just eat very, very well at relatively low cost. So the €64amonth that each of us pays as adults, children go free is then used to employ two farmers.
One of our farmers is currently an Eco village eco villager. So he lives in the eco village. We've just changed over from a young man whose family have an organic farm in County Meadow who spent about half the year with us. He's now gone back to his family farm and we have a new young woman who's just started as our second farmer. And these are supplemented by the work of volunteers that come on the European Solidarity Core program. They come for a year from all over Europe and they become very active and full members of our community in that year and offer a huge amount of vitality and music and good food to the community. So it's a wonderful addition to our community life. The volunteers.com at the moment we have four. Two had to leave recently for unexpected reasons and so we'll supplement. So about 6 to 8 would be with us for a year at any one time.
So those are the three things that I think make us something quite distinct. The ways we build our houses, the ways we heat our houses and then the food system that we have, that's very much part of our economic life and our social life.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: It really sounds very interesting and so many aspects of it really are a no brainer in things that should be implemented in communities everywhere. But I think something that stands out a lot is the importance of community involvement and the effort that the community makes on bringing the community together, which I think is really lovely.
So can I ask, I'd love to talk a bit more about the community in the Ecovillage but can I ask first, why did you decide to join the Ecovillage?
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Well, I suppose the quick answer to that is that my wife was very interested. She was, she was going to these visits to these meetings in Dublin in the late 1990s and coming home. We lived down in Dublin, coming home very enthusiastic about this idea of an eco village. I'd never heard of an eco village at that time and wasn't particularly interested in environmental issues. To be very honest.
It was a little later that I began to really awaken to the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. So that was the.
I suppose it came on our horizon at that stage. I was working in Dublin City University and of course we didn't know at that point where the Ecovillage was going to Set up. There was a hope that they might set up in County Meath, which is just north of Dublin. So if that was the case, then it might have made it possible for us to live there while I was working in Dublin City University. But instead, in 2001, 2002, they bought the land here in Cloughjordan. And I remember my wife telling me about that. We had lived in Chile for that year and so when we came back, she was telling me that they had bought land in this place called Cloughjordan, which I didn't know where it was and we should think of buying a site there for our retirement. And again, it seemed a bit unrealistic to me, but it was when I moved universities and got a chair in the University of Limerick in 2007, that suddenly it became a very real prospect to buy a site and to build a house there so that we did and have never looked back. It's been absolutely wonderful community to live in. For me, it's been a wonderful education, really, in the realities of the climate crisis and of the biodiversity crisis. So as a university professor, it was a great place to retire into. I retired here five years after coming to live here. I retired from the university. So I feel that my. My. Both my teaching life, because we're an educational charity, so I do do a lot here as part of our education team and then also my. Then my life as a learner because I'm every day learning more and more about so many absolutely fabulous aspects of nature and what nature can do and of the realities of the climate crisis and just what a risk it is for the future of humanity. And that's a great way to be when I'm in the final phase of my life.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Can you tell me a bit about the services available to community members? What is life like in the Ecovillage in the sense of amenities, infrastructure, cultural activities?
[00:23:40] Speaker C: Absolutely hectic and active and so much going on. So, I mean, the main services that I've mentioned, them, I mean, there are Community Farm and our Community District heating system, all of which are managed by members of the Ecovillage. So we do everything really on a voluntary basis.
And so, you know, we do everything for one another. It's not as if some people offer services for other people. And I think one of the great things for me living in the Ecovillage is the immense creativity and talent of everybody.
You know, it's just as astonishing, the range of talents that flourish here because, you know, we depend on each other. We have a great saying in Irish that we live in One another's shadow and under one another's protection. And I think that that. Shanakhal, that old saying in Irish, really comes alive for me here because we do really all depend on one another in, you know, a myriad of ways that it's almost impossible to describe. It's just a culture of the place.
And, you know, that the. It's very interesting. Every day we will get emails from one another.
People asking for lifts, people asking to borrow things, people asking, saying, I have a problem with this. Can you recommend a dentist or a plumber? Or, you know, just the everyday things of life that we. That we depend upon.
And almost instantly, you know, somebody will have looked for lift and within five minutes they'll be back saying, yeah, lift sorted. Or people will be looking for a loan of something. Loan sorted. So, you know, it's a very active community in that sense that we're responding to one another all the time.
And so, you know, among the talents that people have, it means that they. They provide things for people. So lots of music sessions, Pilates, yoga, meditation, meals. I'm just trying to think. I mean, the everyday things that we take for granted because they're. They're happening all around us. So we have a cine club.
We every year because we have a NAMFI theater now. We put on a whole program of concerts during the summer. One of our members, who's a playwright and a professional actor, writes a play every year that's put on in on the amphitheater.
Last year he wrote a play about the animals, Judging the humans. Great play and very pertinent, obviously.
So, you know, it's a very, very rich community life with so much happening at times, one feels almost overwhelmed by the amount that's happening.
And that's as life should be, where we really depend on one another. Don't spend our lives locked in our houses and really are almost called forced to give of our best for the good of the community. We run what we call mehls, the old Irish word used regularly for people coming together to help their neighbors, usually on the farm.
And we've now adopted that and we have regular mehls. We had metals over the weekend where we were planting 2,000 additional trees up on the farm and it had to be postponed for a day because of the rain. But, you know, that's just an example of the everyday activities here.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: It really sounds so lovely and it sounds like there's this sense of community and giving back to the community that is lacking in a lot of. In a lot of places. These days. And it's really lovely to see that that's a possibility that that can be. Can be brought back to today, if you get me.
I'm sure that it's that there's also the trickier times when decisions need to be made. How do you guys manage that process of decision making when it comes to village developments or any issues that come up? How do you guys manage the decision making and maintain relations in the ecovillage through all of that?
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Well, I sometimes surprise visitors when I start talking about our governance system. I suppose because I was a professor of politics, I'm very aware of the importance of governance systems. You know, when people visit here, it's not on their mind, what's your governance system? But it does seem to me that one of our successes has been to develop a very flat governance system. I mean, a traditional governance system as we know them in our national society, in many organizations, is that you have a board of directors and they run everything and they sort of direct what needs to be done, by whom, when, etc. And we do have a board of directors because we're a company, a formally registered company, limited by guarantee, but we run a much more flat structure. It's not a hierarchical structure at all. We call it the Viable Systems model, which was developed by an Englishman called Stafford Beers, who used to work with British Steel when it was a big state company, very hierarchically organized. And he saw the way in which so much talent wasn't put to the best use. And he began to observe the way nature organizes. And he developed this system called the viable Systems model to try to develop organizational structures according to the principles of nature. Because nature isn't directed by anybody, there's no board of directors. Nature organizes itself in flourishing ecosystems where all the different elements collaborate together, unless there's some something that interferes with that collaboration. So using the viable systems model, we have a very flat system whereby members give remits to different groups to carry out activities. And that means that the different groups don't have to go back all the time looking for permission to do this, that and the other.
So we organize ourselves. The main groups are what we call primary activity groups who run the primary activities in the ecovillage. Our primary activities are using our land, developing our land. So we have a land use group and education.
And now we're setting up a development primary activity group because we're moving into a new phase of development, of building out the eco village. So as I say, the members then give a remit to these Groups to, to do, to act in their domain. And all these groups have many subgroups so each of them are themselves like a little ecosystem, a domain of activities and they organize that together. And then we have a process group that is a support group for all the governance processes. So they organize our monthly members meeting which is, which is at 3 o'clock on the third Saturday of every month. And that is the main decision making forum for the ecovillage. So the members come together and in a consensual way because we never vote on anything.
We discuss the major issues that face us every three months. Then we produce a coordination report where all the different groups report on what they've done for the previous three months, which is sent to members before that month's members meeting. And all the coordinators of the different groups then attend the members meeting so that there's accountability for what they're doing. So there's a constant feedback to members for all that's going on. Because even though we all live together, there's so much going on that you can never know everything that's going on. I always learn a lot from the different coordination reports, even though I'm very active in the eco village. And then of course members have a right to raise issues, to be critical if there's something happening that they don't like. But often just to say, wow, I'm delighted that that's happening, can I be of help? So the governance system is a very interactive system to that extent and then we set up, if you like, subgroups where they're required for particular challenges that we face. So at the moment, and for the last few years, the biggest challenge we faced is that there's no planning permission to build new houses in the village of Cluck Jordan due to the fact that the town wastewater treatment plant needs to be upgraded. By Ishka Erin Irish Water, the semi state company that now looks after the national water system. And we have been engaging with HGARN and with Tipperary County Council to overcome this difficulty. And we're now moving into a new development phase in anticipation of finally the upgrading of the town treatment plant over the next few years by Ishka Aaron and that means that there's a lot of new challenges that emerge. So the very challenge of dealing with the issue, we plan to develop a reed bed treatment plant for our water and that means that we set up groups to do that and they also report then to members what they're doing. The team that manages the district heating system which has been planning to put Solar panels on the roof of the Energy Barn, as we call it. So that's another group that will report. So there's lots of activity going on all the time, almost all of it on a voluntary basis. And simply the complexity of keeping everything going keeps us very, very busy.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: There really is a lot and it's very admirable to see how the community comes together and make sure everything is done and is done well.
And it's great to hear as well that there's progress being made on the wastewater facilities too.
I know that Cloughjordan is part of the global ecovillage network, but could you tell us, has this network helped to facilitate the sharing of ideas, inspiration and knowledge? Have you been in contact with any of the other eco villages around the world?
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Yes, we're members of GEN and it's a membership that's very important to us. However, I think any of us would say, because we're so busy on so many other things that we haven't been able to play the active role in JEN that we would like to. So some of our members do visit other eco villages. I've visited eco villages in Spain myself and we're in contact with them, particularly over issues to do with research at the moment, because many people come to do research here in the ecovillage, usually master's students, PhD students, and there's a whole database of research that's been done on the ecovillage on our website for anybody who wants to look it up. And Jen had been very interested in the ways in which we manage this program within the ecovillage and they want to learn from us. So that's the main way in which at the moment, we're involved with Jen. But I think overall there's a great sense, even though we're not actively involved, there's a great sense of being part of a much bigger global movement that we read about, that we hear about, because we get lots of updates of news from Jen that is very important to us, that it's something bigger than just this small community of about 100 adults here in Cloughjordan in the centre of Ireland. We are part of a bigger global movement.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: That must be very reassuring and encouraging to know that you're not the only ones working towards similar goals.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: Very reassuring and also, I think, very supportive to the extent to which we realize that the challenges that we face are very similar to the challenges being faced by eco villages around the world. There was a wonderful book published about 10 years ago by a US political scientist who went to live in 14 eco villages around the world. It's simply called Eco Villages, the book by Karen Litfin. We interviewed her afterwards on one of our webinar series, and that interview can be seen on our website. But what I was amazed. I was sent a book to review for an academic journal, and I was absolutely amazed reading it. And I felt I was reading about ourselves, even though she never came to visit us. So there's the similarity of life that one gets from the different eco villages. We're facing the same challenges and we're, you know, we're going through, I suppose, phases of growth and development and aging indeed, that are similar, that themselves throw up similar challenges. So, yeah, it's the ecovillage network. And the whole concept of the ecovillage and the way it's lived out in different parts of the world is something very, very active and real for us.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: And these ecovillages, although they may have similar objectives and practices. You mentioned that range of talents among the community. And how do you feel that your unique community in Cloughjordan has come to shape the development of the ecovillage?
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Well, inevitably, the eco village will develop according to the vision and the values and the aspirations of the people living here.
I mean, I often think that one of the pluses of our experience is that we have a very diverse community. It's, you know, looking at the outside, looking in from the outside, one might think, oh, these are all very ecological people who live a very simple and sort of, you know, radically different life. And among us, I suppose, we have people who live more simply than others. But I think what characterizes us really is that we're a group of ordinary people who've come together trying to face the great challenges that humanity faces. We're not a sort of an extra special sector caste of people who are somehow different from other people. And it's in facing those challenges and showing that one can face those challenges, and through facing those challenges, living very, very well, living really rich lives and supported lives. I think that's the really big lesson that we have to offer other people. And in fact, that we ourselves, you know, sort of model, if you want to use that word now that, that isn't without its, its, its challenges. And obviously, you know, people who come to live together following certain ideals, you know, we have big egos, we come with things to achieve. And that means that at times there are clashes, there are differences of opinion, there are tensions. The economic downturn that hit Ireland 2008 hit us very badly because we expected that we would be long since completely Built and developed by now. And yet for the last 10 years, because of the knock on effects of the Celtic Tiger boom and then of the collapse in the housing market in Ireland, we haven't been able to build any more houses. And so we are not even halfway there in terms of, of building out the eco village. So all that obviously led to difficult years, lots of tensions, lots of disillusion, people leaving.
And I think through that we've learned a lot about the challenges of maintaining a community through difficult times. In particular of maintaining the founding vision, of ensuring that the founding vision is kept alive in, in very difficult and changing times, as we well know we are living through. And it is really the sort of talents and skills of the group that are here. Many people are, we have a number of psychotherapists, facilitators, people who do training in nonviolent communication. All of those have become of immense importance as we navigate through difficult times, difficult times for our community and difficult times for the world around us.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: And having gotten through so many of these challenges, what would you say is the vision for the future of Cloughjordan ecovillage? Are there any plans in place or new developments underway?
[00:41:40] Speaker C: Yes, we are. Now.
At the beginning of 2024, we decided we were moving into a new development phase because we'd reached agreement with Ishga Erin and with Tipperary County Council as to when we might be able to submit for planning permission when the embargo and planning would be lifted by the council. And so we have the green light from the council to go ahead and to start making our plans because as soon as planning permission is lifted, we want to have plans ready to go into the council. And so we decided to start and we spent 2024 doing a process of really going back to our founding vision and exploring what connects us, I mean, what makes us a community and the depth of those connections. And that was a very, very interesting process which threw up some very interesting, sometimes difficult issues. And that has laid the groundwork, I think, for us now moving in as we enter 2025 into getting into more concrete issues of, you know, we face challenges of building out the eco village, but we face many, many issues of how are we going to do that building to what environmental standard? How do we do that building while maintaining the rich biodiversity that we have fostered here?
How do we make this housing available for whom? How do we try to draw in the sorts of people with the skill sets that we need? How do we ensure that when people are joining, they know what they're joining you know, living in community, it's wonderful. It's very demanding and it can at times be difficult. And so people need to be aware of that if they, if they choose to come and live here. Where do we get to finance for this? I mean, all these are major, major challenges that are going to test us. And also obviously they encourage us. It's very exciting to be moving into this phase.
So, you know, that's what lies ahead. And we hope that by spending the last year revivifying, really making alive again our vision and where we hope to see the ecovillage going, that this provides us with a good grounding to be able to work creatively and in a very regenerative way through these challenges that lie ahead.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Thank you for the very honest view of the ecovillage. Of course there are so many benefits, but it's going to come with some hard work and some challenges. But I think the Cloughjordan Ecovillage is an excellent role model in terms of sustainable community living and rural development.
So what changes could an existing community make to live and develop sustainably similar to the way of Cloughjordan Ecovillage? If you were to give a few key tips.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: Well, the first thing I would say is that the word community itself has become a very problematic word for me since I came to live here, I suppose, because I began to realize just what it takes to really live as a community and how far from that are most of our housing estates and, you know, apartment blocks, etc. Because really we have to acknowledge that most people in modern society, in the Western world anyway, live very isolated and individualistic lives. They don't really depend on each other. They depend on services provided by private providers or by city or county councils, or by the state, et cetera. And living in a way where we all depend on each other and where what, what happens really requires our response, fosters community at a far deeper level.
It's an interdependence, a real interdependence on one another.
And how do we then really transform, you know, all the places where we live together into that sort of interdependent community is to me, the single greatest challenge that humanity faces if it's really to begin to live within the carrying capacity of the planet and not to surpass the planetary boundaries as we're very fast doing at the moment. And I think that's a lost art. I mean, in the past, throughout most of human history, people had no choice but to live in a very interdependent way. And we've lost that in the Western world. I think we've so much to learn from other more indigenous communities, if you want to call it that, around the world in the ways in which they do live in harmony with one another and with the environment, far better than we do. So I've already mentioned the three ways that make us the three things that I think make us a distinct neighborhood and that I think provides the key for all neighborhoods or even apartment blocks.
Why? I mean, the first thing is the way we build our houses. So, I mean, of course for houses that are already built, there's limits to what one can do, but one can try to retrofit to the extent possible to make them as environmentally friendly, to cut down the amount of energy that we lose in badly insulated houses, etc. That's now possible to do, but to a relatively limited degree, but certainly for all our new building to do it to the very, very highest ecological standard. That's the first thing. The second thing then is, of course, why can't all our housing estates have district heating systems, and particularly district heating systems which call upon the support of the people living there to help to run them. And that means, you know, everything that brings people together is a help to really create community. And the third one is why can't all our housing estates put aside a few acres of land to grow food for themselves and that they would grow it together. So again, it brings them together to work together and to get to know one another. And of course, the great thing about growing food together is that we learn so much about the soil. We learn about the plants, what works, what doesn't work, and then we enjoy the food together. We have parties together, we have meals together, we have sing songs together. All of those are what are missing so much in what we call communities. And that's a skill we have to relearn from the ages past and to really foster again the skills of living well together.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: Thank you, Padre. There really is. There's so much to gain from making a few simple but big but simple changes in our existing towns and villages to recreate that sense of community.
In addition to, of course, being closer to nature and having a lower ecological footprint, there really is a lot that we can gain from following the lead of Cloughjordan Ecovillage.
Now, we've covered a lot today, but I could talk about this all day. Thank you so much for your time, Peadarson. Is there anything else about Cloughjordan that you'd like to talk about?
[00:49:31] Speaker C: Well, the final thing I just mentioned, I mentioned it in passing, but to emphasize, again, we are a registered educational charity, so we often say that education is our DNA. In other words, we're not creating this just so that we enjoy living here. We're creating it to teach lessons to other people. And it's not as if we have all the answers by by far, we don't have. Nobody has all the answers to this huge challenge that humanity faces. But we have learned some valuable things. We continue to learn. And what we want to do is to share those as honestly as possible. We don't try to sugarcoat the pill, as they say. I mean, we try to share as honestly as possible what we're learning, how we're developing and to encourage one another. Because I think, you know, anybody living here would say we're very lucky. We live a very good life together. And that becomes ever more obvious as difficult times hit. Whether it's storms, whether it was Covid, whether it's shortages in the future, we're going to face all sorts of shortages. And you know, there's a sort of a wisdom in trying to all of us trying to live more in an interdependent way where we realize that the greatest asset we have are one another.
The technologies we have can help us, but it's the immense creativity and contribution that every single person has to make their own way once they discover their talents, which is, which is the greatest gift. So I do encourage people, if they want to bring groups or to come to visit themselves, they're very welcome. We have on our website we have a form there that you can fill out if you want to come to visit. And on the first Sunday of every month, there are guided tours of the eco village. You don't have to book in advance. You just Turn up at 3:00 in the afternoon at the Sheila Nagig bookshop on the main street of Cloughjordan, just up from the pedestrian entrance. That's a bookshop run by eco villagers where you can have lovely coffee and homemade little cakes and buns as well. And if you're there at 3:00 on the first Sunday of every month, there's a guided tour. So please do come and visit us because I often say I could talk about this all day and yet, until somebody comes and sees it in action, I think it's a very.
To communicate to people exactly what we're doing and, you know, how we're doing it and best to see it in practice.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm sure we'll all be there on Sunday night to see the village and to take the tour and for the lovely homemade cakes.
I think it would be. We've learned so much just from this, but it would be a whole other experience to see it there in person, to see all the work that's gone into it and the love of the community that they've demonstrated to developing the village.
Thank you very much for that lovely.
[00:52:49] Speaker C: Note to end on, and thank you very, very interesting questions you put today.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: Thank you very much. So thank you again for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today about Clough Jordan Ecovillage.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: Thank you both for your time. What a fantastic interview. Both Sarah and Peadar. It's been a real pleasure.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: Thank you, Jackie. It's been a pleasure for me as well.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: Thank you, Jackie.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: Thank you both. This is constructive voices.
