Model and learning site water-soil-climate by Ökodorf Cambium – Leben in Gemeinschaft

A model & learning site for innovative water management & regenerative soil building. Life-affirming and effective answers to the climate crisis! Experience locally what works globally and also makes life more beautiful!

What moves us?

We have been moved by environmental issues for years, observing a nature that is increasingly losing its balance. We see how the global climate is heating up, our landscape is drying out, groundwater is dwindling. We see how heavy rains and floods erode the soil and destroy human lives. We sense the resulting suffering, political upheaval, displacement, hopelessness.

Coming from a variety of directions, we have lumped all our knowledge and questions together. Thousands of conversations, countless disagreements, dozens of trainings later, we now find concrete connections between the issues of water, soil and climate. More and more we have understood how to get CO2 out of the air again and what could stabilize the weather again. In harmony with nature, without a lot of technical gimmicks. Surprisingly easy to implement, beautiful to look at and right on our doorstep. Don’t you want to join too!?

Our solutions, linked to a model: imitable – even on a large scale.
Therefore we dedicate ourselves intensively to…
•    regenerative soil building and
•    innovative water management

Because: Both processes are interdependent. Soil building binds CO2 from the atmosphere and increases the capacity to store water like a sponge. Innovative water management increases the availability of water for the soil, plants, animals, fungi and humans. This creates a water cycle that balances weather and precipitation and helps nature to regulate itself.

And the most beautiful thing about it…

With the help of you and the Ecocrowd, we are building a hands-on learning and observation site. For those who want to know more.

Click here on our project profile and read more details!

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We only ask for money when we are sure what we are doing. That\’s why we pre-financed and implemented our first projects out of our own pockets:

• water-retaining agroforestry orchard with soil-building pasture farming
• Soil-building comunity supported  self-sufficiency garden
• Houseful wastewater recycling
• rainwater collection pond with infiltration landscape

And there is still so much to do before we really have something to show off. Our preliminary work would like to be connected to a really effective big cycle. Especially in water management we still have a lot to do. With your money we will be able to collect a really big portion of our rainwater and infiltrate it into the ground. Before our eyes, it will then be converted to groundwater or evaporated via plants to precipitation-forming moisture in the air. Cooling biotopes filled with life will be created in the process. Drinking water for irrigation and toilet flushing will soon be a thing of the past. Know How is prepared for all who want to learn more.

What if the funding goal is not reached?

No matter how much we collect, we will use every Euro for these projects. Just maybe in a different order.

And if we exceed the funding goal?

Then we have to let our further ideas mature faster. Anyway, the money will be used for the further development of our model and learning place.

With this project, we are trying to take the most integrative approach possible. It is designed to be so comprehensive that virtually all Ecocrowd focus areas are affected.

For us and local people, it creates a sustainable and beautiful living model that also protects and builds the livelihoods of others. Soil, water and air are the media we work with concretely to improve their condition. At least locally but – if imitated on a large scale – also far beyond, our climate and rainfall will benefit. In most of the subprojects biodiverse habitats are created. Also for rare animals and plants.

We want to make regenerative cycle thinking even more acceptable, especially through our claim to pass on the collected knowledge in a low-threshold manner. In doing so, we focus on achieving as much effect as possible with just a few well thought-out and relatively inexpensive steps. We use almost only natural materials, since we are building habitats.

Apart from some pipes and diesel for necessary earth-moving, everything we use comes from our farm and from our own workshop. We work economically – just because of the costs – and do everything ourselves and with helpers. Above all, we save resources by using existing infrastructure like the sewage plant instead of demolishing it. The little electricity used will of course be renewable.

We are the ecology team of the Cambium community. We live with a group of 60 people who have been working together since 2017 in southeastern Styria to transform the grounds and buildings of an old barracks into an ecovillage. As a communal living project, we are not only exploring new ways of togetherness, communal living and communal decision-making. As a growing ecovillage, we also see ourselves as part of our environment. We are therefore researching sustainable and regenerative solutions for people and nature. Quite practically at work in the garden, with the animals, in the forest or with the water or quite theoretically in the Xth course, in front of scientific texts or quite banally on Youtube.

We just know. It takes all of us. Humans, trees, birds, worms and also everything not so visible!

we work with nature…