Many people are constantly asking us: “How are you going to arrange proper living conditions and other facilities for the sunlanders? How are you going to organize Sunland’s economy?” Some people even express doubts in our fairness, while quite the contrary others reproach us in unrealism and keenness on empty fantasies. In this short article I shall try to prove that the Sunland project is a genuine project and more over its significance goes beyond the framework of an ordinary settlement in some obscure location.
What we want to create on Sunland? If people think that we want to create some kind of village with customary middle-class conditions like in any American town, they are wrong. We want to demonstrate an alternative living style. For example, we shall be using natural materials to construct housing for our new settlement. An excellent material for the house building are pandanus trees and other natural materials, (something like this http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm ).
There are many examples of successful application of environmentally-friendly technologies around the world. With these technologies we can provide for ourselves. As for food, the island currently provides all our dietary requirements, (fish, coconuts; it is worth mentioning that aborigines got from coconut trees all that was necessary for their living before European colonization). We may bring to the island breadfruit trees and any suitable food plants that do not disrupt the local ecosystem. We must also consider that island species are unique and have endemic populations of species that have evolved uniquely on the island, therefore island ecology is more vulnerable to the decimation of indigenous species when there is an introduction of alien species of plant or animal. The case with small livestock is more complicated. It depends on the general consensus of the sunlanders some of which may be preferentially vegetarian. Simply speaking, our task is to establish a self-sustaining settlement.
Oeno Island is facing a serious environmental threat from external pollution, Oeno's pristine beaches are being contaminated with trash and tar of passing freighter ships. The island is on a regular passage used by Japanese cargo ships. These tankers illegally flush their holds near the island because Oeno is uninhabited by people, it is abhorrent that conservation regulations are not enforced to preserve the island ecology, simply because it is uninhabited. Cargo ships are not permitted to flush their holds near islands which have human settlements. Thus, Sunland will take on the duty to campaign for enforcement of conservation regulations, and to create new conservation policies to protect Oeno and the other islands from the pollution dumped by these passing freighter ships. Generally speaking, powers and businesses believe that they can do what they want on the Pacific islands with no consideration to island ecology. Oeno Island was used by the U.S. Air Force as a satellite observation post in 1969 and 1970. In 2001 a New Zealand company submitted a proposal to build a 1,200-meter runway and deluxe tourist lodge on Oeno, fortunately this proposal has so far not taken place. The question is will the future preservation of the Pitcairn islands benefit from a resort for the very rich, a military testing area or a regular dumping ground for passing cargo ships? What would be better?”
Considering all of the above points, we can see that Oeno is not without its challenges. Therefore, Sunland is not a project of escapism. The great visionaries of the past: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy and many others have expressed a phenomenon that can be expressed as “frustration by the alienated civilization”. Should this trend continue, with little or no change in the way humanity treats the environment, self-destruction of human civilization is inevitable. However, we are all familiar with the powerful force of example. The Sunland project would like to attain the possibility of becoming a working model for many others to live sustainably without destroying our natural habitat. Sunland will provide support to a worldwide network of newly established self sustaining communities to contribute to positive global changes towards a more harmonious world. In this sense, Sunland is a visionary project in action. Policy makers and scientist have spent too much time discussing whether or not there is an environmental crises, we barely enough time constructing solutions let alone implementing them, we need to act now.
Dmitriy Kremnev.
Original: Why Sunland project is absolutely possible and why it has to be done?