Is Sustainability the Same as Self Sufficiency?

by Marc Tobin, May 19, 2009  

     Many people, particularly in the U.S., confuse sustainability and self-sufficiency as synonymous.  They assume that if a community or ecovillage is working towards "sustainability", it must also be working towards producing all of it's own goods and services on site and processing all of it's own resources-we-call-wastes on site.  In some case on-site self sufficiency is more sustainable. In some cases it is not. For example, if we were to cut down all of our forest in order to create more space for vegetable gardens that receive full sun, we could drastically increase our food self sufficiency on site.  However, this would decrease our sustainability, in terms of the effects on biodiversity to our site, decreasing our sites carbon absorption, and have a negative effect on our stream's ability to support native fish.  Yes, if we buy conventional food from grown across the country or the world, that is also not sustainable.  However, the choice is usually not that extreme, and the notion that it is connects to particularly U.S. cultural attitudes towards black and white thinking, rugged independance, and notions of landscape based to an extreme degree on private property lines.  In the food example, if there are people in our local watershed who have land that is already cleared of trees, has good growing soil, and they are using organic methods, then the ecological impact of us developing partnerships with them can in some cases be less than if we grew that same food on our site.  We must remember that our proerty boundary is not an ecological boundary, but is somewhat "imaginary" from an eoclogical perspective.  In reverse, our impact upon our neighbors land and their ability to make a sustainable living is less imagary than is generally thought of in our individualistic society.  Sometimes people attracted to community and ecovillages in this society, longing for more collective connection, attempt to create collectivity within the boundaires of the community itself, yet, ironically, create greater boundaries with locals outside of the property coundaries of the ecovillage. This is a community acting, paradoxically, as a collective rugged individual.  Instead, at LVEC, we are oriented towards interrelated sustainability. 

     This is why our first indicator of sustainability at LVEC is our is education, not primarily of residents, but of people who come through LVEC, have a learning experience and then move on into the greater world. The positive impact they can make after they have left LVEC, are on the whole, far greater than the positive impact of LVEC's residents going about our daily life, if we didn't offer education, regardless of how sustainable we are in our daily lives.  In the U.S, cities and subburbs hold over half the population and generate the majority of the environmental impacts.  Rural ecovillages and not going to have a great effect on broader sustainabiliy unless they are educating people, many of whom then bring that knowledge and skills into cities and suburbs to create transformation. 

     This is also why we do not measure our sustainability completely in terms of self-sufficiency, but rather, in terms of indicators that include our broader relationship with the world. 

     Is this to say that we shouldn't value self-sufficiency at all?  No, it does have value.  First of all in many cases, being more self-sufficient is more sustainable, partially because of reduced erngy inputs from transportation of people or materials.  In some cases, an ecovillage has the ability to do something with more ecological sensitivity on-site then larger off-site operations.  For example, a home grown organic tomato will often be grown with more in a "organic" way , rather certified or not, than a tomato grown on a large industrial organic farm, where the scale demands certain ecological compromises.  "Doing it ourselves" may also give us a sense of empowerment, and help us develop a relationship with place, and our ability to sustain ourselves by our interactions with a place. On-site self-sufficiency also has ecological educational value- it forces us to see linkages between our actions and ecosystems, that our industrial society often makes invisible.  For example, if we use greywater directly on our garden, if we put something toxic down the drain, we will be able to directly witness plants dying as a result, whereas, when connected to municaipal treatment system, we need to read studies or articles, or infer from the wanrings on the label, to be aware of the impacts of those chemicals.  Seeing the connections directly, can make us aware of our inter-realationship with ecology in amuhc more real way.  That said, if for some reason, we find our selves in possesion with a large amount of toxic liquids, then we should not pour it into our grey water system, just ot see the effect- as a home or ecovilage greywater system will not be able to properly process it.  Instead, we would want to take it to a large scale, specialized treatment or remediation facility, even if it is relatively far away. 

    So, in summary, on-site self sufficiency is not always inherenlty good or bad from the standpoint of self-sufficieny and effect on the greater world.  It depends on the context.  The industrial paradigm seeks larger and larger scales in a knee jerk way, without considering context.  However, we should mimic that oversimplification in reverse, by seeking smaller and smaller scales ina knee jerk way without considering context.  Instead, we should think about appropriate scale for a given situation.  The scale that is appropriate in one context will not neccessarily be the one that is appropriate in another.  For example, in a given situation, water catchment might be most sustainably done from the roof of our house, energy might be most sustainably harvested from a micro-hydro turbine a half a mile away, and clothing might be most sustainably procured froma thrift store in a nearby town.  In another situation, it might be more sustainable to catch water in a pond on a top of a hill on our neighbors property and trade them apples, harvest energy from our roof, and make our own clothes from the hides of elk we eat or organic fiber we grow.  The goal is not to prove that we can "do it on our own" for the sake of ego gratification or trying to live up to some eco-macho rugged individualist frontier arctype, even if the whole ecovillage is collectively fronteir individualistic. Rather it is to develop the undertanding and sensitivity to ecological contexts, and respond with ecological design differently and appropriately to these different contexts.