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Practices and perceptions on water resource sustainability in ecovillages
Author(s) -
de Moura Leite Flavia Brunale Vilela,
Bertolo Lídia Sanches,
Santos Rozely Ferreira
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2015wr018117
Subject(s) - sustainability , natural resource , environmental resource management , resource (disambiguation) , environmental planning , population , environmental economics , ideal (ethics) , perception , resource use , compromise , water conservation , business , water resources , geography , computer science , economics , ecology , political science , sociology , psychology , computer network , demography , neuroscience , law , biology
In many areas of the world, groups of people have attempted to create urban landscapes that follow the principles of environmental sustainability. To this end, groups have devised alternative models, such as ecovillages, where low‐impact handling is used and a way of life different from that of large population centers is adopted. Although these villages exist, their efficiency in the conservation of natural resources has not been effectively evaluated. This study evaluated the practices used by two Brazilian ecovillages to conserve water resources to assess whether this new concept of living is indeed successful in meeting sustainability goals. We selected 25 indicators of water sustainability, and using the compromise programming method, we quantified the distance between those landscapes self‐referenced as sustainable and an ideal hypothetical scenario. We also interpreted the communities perceptions using the distance between the current situations and the envisioned scenario. We concluded that both ecovillage are far from technically ideal scenario, but the communities have a strong sense of their limitations in implementing water resources conservation. The communities attributed this fact primarily to deficiencies in the shared management.