Green Communities

Green communities represent groups of people who are embodied by the ethos of green consciousness. The key focus of such groups is founding a dynamically sustainable ecological system with renewable energy and nutrients through responsible civic activities by human communities.

Green communities can be represented by business groups, nonprofit groups, and consumers as a generic group of advocates and practitioners. They all seek safer products and greater rights of information so as to make better-informed choices about the future. Green communities and their activist concerns of representation and social justice can traverse various aspects of consumer groups, such as race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Their purpose is to ensure that different identities and associated life experiences as repositories of knowledge do not become marginalized in the neo-construction of an ecologically effective world. Furthermore, there is constant dialogue between the various green communities (such as researchers, industries, consumer groups, and ecolabeling organizations) that exist [Page 191]within various networks. Some examples are the European Union–financed research network SCORE! and the United Nations network that creates the organization's Human Development Report. These relationships help to generate new theories and practice for sustainable development.

Green communities, as grassroots movements, seek actively to raise people's consciousnesses. Their key tools are local and international educational campaigns about improving people's lives and health and protecting the environment through effective resource management. Such efforts are driven by an understanding that power circulation at various levels of governance effects environmental change, conflict, and management. Hence, such efforts are aptly aided through the generation of governmental standards, active philanthropic support from major foundations like the Carnegie Trust, and enactment of charters of corporate social responsibility. These efforts focus not on up-front cost projections or net present value of projects but on their long-term or life cycle cost-effectiveness and generation of ecological integrity.

Such efforts are increasingly ushering in an era of green rush through creation of a Green New Deal (as evident in the current U.S. fiscal stimulus focused on generating more green technology and jobs). In the current economic crisis, such actions are also generating a shift in consumer mentality. A large amount of consumer research in the social sciences suggests that few consumers are “mindless hedonists” and that most are, instead, engaged in skilled, knowledgeable, and socially reciprocal consumption practices. This subjective well-being is reflected in widening consciousness about broader public and ethical issues of production and consumption, including a desire to live within one's own means, both financially and ecologically.

In this change of attitudes, religion is playing an important part. Faith-based communities are increasingly protesting the desecration of God's creation and demanding responsible and compassionate stewardship of nature and human relations. They are encouraging people to not be in denial or give in to despair. Instead, they are urging proactive action and self-sacrifice to save the planet for future generations. These include efforts such as stopping overfishing, avoiding excessive abstraction of water from water-stressed catchments, and investing in soil care.

Riding on this global change in attitudes away from atomistic individualism and toward more shared values and endeavors, green communities try to engender community development. Their attempts are reflected in efforts to organize people around their built environment and issues such as greening building, developing culturally relevant ecotourism, fighting against pollution, creating sustainable local energy resources, ensuring proper recycling and composting of waste, and ensuring sustainable nurturing of water resources.

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