Charting a sustainable, green future

Marco Kusumawijaya, Contributor, Bellagio, Italy, marcokw@centrin.net.id

Bellagio, two hours drive up the hill from Milan, Italy, is a perfect place to do green mapping. But the 22 green mapmakers from 14 countries -- six of them from developing countries, including this writer from Indonesia, were not there to do exactly that.

Instead, they were there staying at the Rockefeller Foundation's 50-acre hilly estate by the highland lake, from Dec. 2 to Dec. 6, to chart ways to move the world toward sustainable living with an ancient tool: map-making.

Green map-making is a process that involves ordinary people charting the interconnections between nature, culture and society in a built environment. They do this by spotting places of environmental and cultural significance and marking them using 125 award-winning universal icons developed by Green Map System.

In the process of producing the 119 green maps published so far, some local icons have also been invented by, or adapted to, different places. The latest map, which coincidentally is Jakarta's second green map, for example, has local icons for "traditional/ethnic food outlets" and "water-level watch places", as well as a "bike repair shop" icon adopted from Kyoto's bicycle green map. The map also enjoyed the privilege of being launched during that first global meeting of green mapmakers. Former minister of settlement and regional development Erna Witoelar was among the first prelaunch buyers of the 119th map.

The founder of the green map movement, Wendy Brawer, said she was moved to turn "green" when an orangutan in Yogyakarta's zoo tossed her a stone in 1989. She said she suddenly felt her life had a mission, and decided to focus on ecological activities from that point. Her lifestyle changed. She now rides her bicycle everywhere in New York and piles her garbage only in a composting unit in a community garden in her neighborhood.

Despite the inspiration it provided, Yogyakarta had its own green map published only in July 2002. The map charted the unique places in Jero Beteng, the walled surroundings of the Yogyakarta Sultan's Palace.

The green mapmakers who gathered in Bellagio are self-driven and autonomous people who became amateur cartographers because they believe that global-scale problems should not overwhelm our ability to respond and take actions locally. Their backgrounds and actual professions are diverse: philosophy, architecture, community workers, product designers, agriculture, tourism marketing, urban planning, eco-design. It seems that, trying to be optimists, all of us somehow have to turn into activists.

It took 13 years from Yogyakarta to Bellagio, but green maps have been used by people around the world to guide them to better quality of lives, sustainable futures and cities and towns. The maps guide citizens to outlets for responsible social action, help them live more culturally rich, ecologically literate lives, giving them stronger connections to diverse communities worldwide.

In Kyoto, hotels expressed a willingness to be part of a bicycle rental system in order to get onto the bicycle map. In Toronto, a green map has proven to be a big success with tourists looking for something besides conventional destinations. In Tamagawa, 500,000 green maps were distributed as centerfolds for a lifestyle magazine. Jakarta's first green map was actually the first to be published as the centerfold of a magazine, in this case AIKON.

But how do we assess the impact of these maps? That was among the questions discussed during this first global get-together. Also discussed was how to work together as a group of several hundreds green mapmakers around the world to better impact the planet through sustainable living. Ambitious tasks to be accomplished in the years to come include a first Global Green Atlas, a revamped green map icon system and an impact assessment system.

Those tasks justify the green mapmakers being the privileged guests of the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center in Bellagio. Their names were recorded along with the names of distinguished scholars such as Peter L. Berger and Samuel Huntington, who were both the center's guests in 1999

There could not be a better place than Bellagio to host the "green people", as a member of the board of trustees called them. Bellagio is in a way a typical Italian village: expansive lake, mountains of rocks with snow on the higher peaks, villas with bright-colored stucco and plenty of evergreen plants.

And the Rockefeller Foundation estate is a star in the area. A narrow gate surprisingly opens on a narrow village street, which is completely lined by buildings, leading us to a hilly promontory protruding into the elongated lake. The 50 acres of green space are only sparsely dotted with eight main buildings, connected by winding roads and steep traversing paths. Some buildings date back to the 17th century. The remains of a church built in 1080 have become part of the main Villa Serbelloni. The whole property was donated to the foundation by Ella Walker, heiress to Hiram Walker, the famous whiskymaker. She bought it in 1928 and lived there for the rest of her life, dying in a room that is now the library.

The Romans were already firmly established in the area by the first century A.D, with their villas dotting the edges of the lake. Pliny the Younger wrote about his own two villas in Bellagio: "One is set high on a cliff -- and overlooks the lake, supported by rock, as if by the stilt-like shoes of the actors in tragedy, I call it Tragedia. It enjoys a broad view of the lake, the ridge on which it stands divides in two -- from its spacious terrace, the descent to the lake is gentle."