Here is a video from Doctor Billy Campbell, a pioneer of conservation burial within the United States. Wherein he discusses
1.) The demographics and economics of death in contemporary America
2.) The nuts and bolts of conservation burial
3.) The long term consequences of conservation burial
Here are some quotes that particularly stood out to me.
“If our true great goal is sustainability we’re not talking about a million acres for two thousand years we’re talking about a hundred and twenty-eight billion acres for a million years, that’s the total area of the planet.”
Natural burial is a mechanism, not only to make conservation more economically viable to that it can happen in more broad acre applications, but also to change our relationship to the natural world so that we move the whole culture towards ecological Stewardship.
One of the big motivating factors behind Herland Forest and Windward, is to move beyond mere conservation and build a right relationship with the land wherein we can meet some of our core needs as human (such as food and fuel) from an ecosystem without destroying it.
For the true test of an ecologically harmonious culture is not what land it can lock up and leave alone, but how it treats the land it depends upon for it survival.
“[Conservation Cemeteries] these are not in the best definition cemeteries these are multi-dimensional social and ecological spaces where the burials don’t overwhelm the naturalness that is there there now”“the main point because it’s not so much about saving the land as it is connecting human communities to the natural communities that we depend on in forging stronger bonds between those communities bonds that could last for two thousand years”
So well said! This is why Windward, as an ecovillage and sustainability education and research center, started Herland Forest. To “close the loop” between how we live and how we die, and harness an area’s use as a natural cemetery to conserve and rehabilitate that land, while also incorporating long-term plants species (such as apples and chestnuts) that provide directly for the needs of the community.
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