Written by representatives of the movement of ecovillages of Russia, united in the Network of ecovillages and eco — initiatives, member of the Global Ecovillages Network
1. To qualify the ongoing movement of ecovillages on the global and national scale as a new forward looking trend that provides the growth of the life standards and as a way to overcome the arising environmental and social catastrophe.
2. To draw attention of the upper federal authorities of our country to the fact that now clean environment: incontaminated soils, fresh water sources and remaining forests worldwide are becoming the most precious and already rare resource.
3. To define conservation of this invaluable wealth of Russia as one of the key priorities for the legislative and executive bodies on all the administrative levels. For this, the following activities must be implemented:
- To accept the elaboration and the adoption of nature-conserving environment-friendly sustainable technologies in all the industries and businesses as a national priority.
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To set firm standards of preserving the cleanness and the fertility of the soils for all agriculture producers and landowners.
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To facilitate the access to the landfields and to provide a favorable policy and state support to the organizations and citizens that are practicing an environment-friendly organic agricultural methods which assure the rise of the natural fertility of the soils and of the landscape biodiversity.
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To restore in the national legislation the form of the land-use concerning the dedication of the land and forest plots to organizations and citizens for the permanentenvironmentally sustainable use. To create an effective scheme of restitution of the lands back to the national stock and their redistribution, if the use of the land causes the environment’s degradation.
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To accept conservation and proliferation of the forests as one of the national priorities. To develop more strict and sustainablestandards of forest utilization, with focus on selective logging and the total prohibition of extensive methods of industrial forestry.
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To develop and introduce the «Ecology» (« Nature Conservation») subject as a prior discipline on all the levels of national educational system, from primary school to the universities, to provide continuous environmental education and formation of environmental awareness in Russian citizens.
4. To introduce in the National Forest Code the category of the «social forests». The Social forests include the local forests surrounding rural communities. These forests are the backbone element necessary for sustainable life and development of these communities (indigeneous people communities, traditional rural communities, ecovillages). Within the borders of the «social forests» the particular order must be set on and maintained, assuring access of the above mentionned communities to the forest resources, restoration of the accustomed right of local social forest management, the support of the traditional non-exhausting symbiotical use of natural resources.
5. To provide a propitious climate and governmental support to intentional rural communities: ecovillages and other forms of intentional communities that are already practicing environmentally-friendly agricultural methods, soil fertility restoration, biodiversity rising, reforestration. To accept that these new rural intentional settlements are today an experimental pilot zones for the approbation of the sustainable living and economic activity models as well as an educational clusters for progressive development of environmental awareness of Russian citizens.
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To provide state support to the existing traditional rural settlements for the purpose of conservation of the acquired skills and practices of environmentally-friendly non-exhausting agriculture and forest utilization, developped during many centuries of sustainable sedentary living on the same territories, that insured the transfer of the surrounding soils, subsoils, air, water and forests from one generation to another in their safety, integrity and suitability for a sane and wealthy life in the foreseeable future.
