Conservation Communities
A conservation community is a group of individuals and families living in a community who are committed to saving large parcels of land from ecological degradation. This land can be forested land, agricultural land, ranch land, or any other type of land that needs protecting from high-impact development.
Conservation communities are models of sustainable community development, a new approach to development which provides alternatives to conventional forms of development. They are adaptable to the needs of different regions and they use small-scale residential development to fund conservation, eliminating the need to depend on funding from private donors or governments. This land development model is important to the environmental movements towards sustainable development, Green homebuilding, local food security, and responsible management of natural resources.
Some of the tools used to create conservation communities are conservation covenants, ecoforestry covenants, and other forms of covenant registered to the title of the land. Covenants are a legal contract used to protect the integrity of land. Covenants help protect the ecological health of watersheds (which are damaged by increased development), maintain long-term access to natural resources and associated value-added opportunities, protect native plant and animal species, and prevent climate change impacts of intense development practices. Conservation communities are developed under a standard of performance that not only minimizes their ecological footprint on the Earth but also ensures that the development improves (or at the very least does not diminish) the existing ecological system’s performance.
The planning basis for the residential community focuses around maintaining and enhancing the ecological integrity of the land. The community, therefore, sits on the least sensitive part of the land from an ecological point of view, and is often built using low-impact infrastructure such as LEED-targeted housing.
Read more about Conservation Communities: The Economy, Community
Famous quotes containing the words conservation and/or communities:
“The putting into force of laws which shall secure the conservation of our resources, as far as they may be within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, including the more important work of saving and restoring our forests and the great improvement of waterways, are all proper government functions which must involve large expenditure if properly performed.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)