Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Gaviotas : A Village to Reinvent the World, 2nd Edition - Alan Weisman
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Gaviotas

A Village to Reinvent the World, 2nd Edition

By: Alan Weisman

Paperback | 1 September 2008 | Edition Number 2

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $47.50

$45.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $11.44 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

Los Llanos-the rain-leached, eastern savannas of war-ravaged Colombia-are among the most brutal environments on Earth and an unlikely setting for one of the most hopeful environmental stories ever told. Here, in the late 1960s, a young Colombian development worker named Paolo Lugari wondered if the nearly uninhabited, infertile llanos could be made livable for his country's growing population. He had no idea that nearly four decades later, his experiment would be one of the world's most celebrated examples of sustainable living: a permanent village called Gaviotas.

In the absence of infrastructure, the first Gaviotans invented wind turbines to convert mild breezes into energy, hand pumps capable of tapping deep sources of water, and solar collectors efficient enough to heat and even sterilize drinking water under perennially cloudy llano skies. Over time, the Gaviotans experimentation has even restored an ecosystem: in the shelter of two million Caribbean pines planted as a source of renewable commercial resin, a primordial rain forest that once covered the llanos is unexpectedly reestablishing itself.

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari "Inventor of the World." Lugari himself has said that Gaviotas is not a utopia: "Utopia literally means 'no place.' We call Gaviotas a topia, because it's real."

Relive their story with this special 10th-anniversary edition of Gaviotas, complete with a new afterword by the author describing how Gaviotas has survived and progressed over the past decade.

Industry Reviews

"...a book telling a tale too lovely for fiction, a lyrical, well-observed book that reports from the llanos of eastern Colombia, savannas tortured by guns and cows and cocaine, of an experiment in solar democracy in which 'appropriate technology' is anything but a sad product on the discount tables of broken, post-sixties idealism."--Tom Athanasiou, The Nation (This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title)

More in Development Economics & Emerging Economies

Thinking in Systems : A Primer - Donella Meadows

RRP $55.00

$30.75

44%
OFF
Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty

RRP $43.95

$34.75

21%
OFF
African Futures in the Making - Detlef Müller-Mahn
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers - Paul Kennedy

RRP $32.99

$26.99

18%
OFF
168 Hours : You Have More Time Than You Think - Laura Vanderkam

RRP $39.99

$27.75

31%
OFF
Less is More : How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Fed Up : A Chef's Adventures in Food, Farming and Feminism - Lucy Ridge