Gaviotas

It was founded in 1971 by Paolo Lugari, who assembled a group of engineers and scientists in an attempt to create alternative and sustainable modes of living that were specifically adapted to the tropics in developing nations.

Gaviotas has developed many internationally recognized technologies such as windmills and water pumps specifically designed to be low cost and adapted to tropical environments,[1] it has also planted around 10,000 hectares of forest that have allowed hundreds of native plant and animal species to thrive in a harsh environment from where forests have long receded.

Las Gaviotas is largely apolitical, a strategy which has allowed it to grow amidst the cocaine growers, paramilitary organizations, insurgent guerrilla groups, and military troops present in the Llanos.

[1] So Lugari wanted to see if the Llanos could be made inhabitable while rejecting reliance on technology and knowledge from distant, temperate places like the United States and Europe.

The Llanos were very sparsely populated apart from Guahibo peoples and refugees from La Violencia, which for Lugari made the region ideal testing ground for a new tropical way of living.

In 1970, Sven Zethelius, the son of a Swedish immigrant to Colombia, told Lugari about the greenhouse gas effect and the rapid loss of biodiversity across the entire planet.

Different water pumps, soil cement, windmills or any kind of device that could help people and be adapted to local conditions were encouraged.

[1] Furthermore, the pine trees produce sap that the people collect, process, and sell as colophony, turpentine, and rosin for stringed instruments' bows.

[5] In 1982, Sven Zethelius had theorized that the pine trees would require help from mycorrhiza to properly digest the Llanos soil, which was later confirmed during their visit to a Venezuelan plantation.

[1] Lugari's initial intention was to settle the Llanos, finding ways to support large populations here in a manner that was not environmentally destructive.

[1] In principle, this contradicts the initial goal of creating a new way of life for widespread settlement, since it cannot be replicated, but many of the innovations coming out of Gaviotas have been shared with the world and benefitted thousands of people.

Gaviotas is situated in the Llanos, an ecoregion defined by flat grasslands with dispersed islands of gallery forests growing along rivers and streams, which have a rich variety of palm species.

The rainforest expanded through the Holocene but throughout the Llanos it has receded over the past 2.3 thousand years giving way to a savanna ecosystem dominated by grasslands.

[10] In any case, it is known that the grasslands Lugari chose to develop Gaviotas in have been covered by forest in the past, but in the present it is notoriously hard to grow anything on this land.

A government forester had spent years trying unsuccessfully to get native and exotic species to grow in Gaviotas by the time Lugari came back from Venezuela with the idea to plant Caribbean pines.

[1] Lugari did think that this was a species that was perfectly suited to local conditions, which was later confirmed by biologist Catherine Caulfield, who found pockets of Caribbean pine populations dispersed around the Amazon.

In order to encourage mycorrhiza, the Pizolithus tinctorius fungus is also applied by a mixture of water with a powder made from ground mushroom caps.

This was never the intention of Gaviotas, it was in fact an accident of experimentation, but it has become a point of pride and a cornerstone for the community's approach of environmentally restorative ways of life.

[3] The cool temperatures and moist environment created by inside-forest conditions under a closed canopy also provide a plethora of microhabitats for many species.

[11] Large amounts of fauna have moved into the Gaviotas forests including deer, anteaters, capybaras, eagles, armadillos, tapirs, pumas, and more.

[3] Gaviotas has created many technological innovations over the years, including a double action water pump, a one-man manual cement mixer, windmills suited to the Llanos, a pedal-powered cassava grinder that reduces 10 hours of labour into 1, a one-handed sugar cane press, a see-saw sleeve pump, a solar kettle for sterilizing water, solar heating panels, a low cost technique for building artificial ponds by using chicken wire and soil cement, and more.

[1] In light of the goal to harness renewable energy and work with nature, Gaviotas spent years designing windmill prototypes.

The see-saw sleeve pump has also been installed widely around Colombia, and so inspired United Nations delegates in 1979 that it was part of the reason UNDP funding was extended that year.

Alonso estimated that it was even more effective than the British version and it worked remarkably well in accumulating heat even in cool, cloudy conditions.

It turns out they massively underestimated how difficult it is to haul heavy cargo on a lighter-than-air dirigible, but they did build a Zeppelin and use it to monitor wildfires across the thousands of forest hectares that Gaviotas manages.

Bicycle riding is traditionally a masculine activity in South America because of the widespread belief that bike seats cause injuries to female genitalia.

The Gaviotas water pump design led to a regional decline in cattle death as many ranchers now had access to underground aquifers during dry season.

The community has been visited by Colombian president Belisario Betancur, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, prime minister of Spain Felipe Gonzales, co-founder of Club of Rome Aurelio Peccei, the Chinese ambassador to Colombia, among others.

The films were shown in Canada, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, France, Netherlands, Peru, England, and Paraguay.

[1] Las Gaviotas has a hot and humid tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Am) with a short dry season from December to February.