Alliance for Sustainability Chequamegon Bay, Wisconsin
  • Home
  • About Us
    • History
    • Board of Directors
  • Projects
    • Current Projects >
      • ReSource ReUse Store
    • Past Projects >
      • Pie & Ponderings
      • Chequamegon Bay Renewable Energy
      • Audacity 2040
      • Seed Savers Alliance
      • Local Living Economy Summit
      • Ecomunicipality 5.0 with Tourbjorn Lahti
      • Sustainable Chequamegon Initiative
      • Chequamegon Bay Asset Map
      • Eco-Municipailites and The Natural Step
      • Chequamegon Transition
      • Campaign Sustain
      • Green Team Network
      • Energy Independent Communities
  • Donate
  • Contact Us!
  • Sign Up

Chequamegon Bay Eco-Municipalities
and the Natural Step

What is an“eco-municipality”? An eco-municipality is one that has adopted a particular set of sustainability
principles as guiding municipal policy and has committed to a bottom-up, participatory approach for implementing this. Over 70 cities and towns in Sweden – 25 per cent of all municipalities in the country - have adopted a common set of sustainability principles and have implemented these widely and systematically throughout their municipal operations and larger communities. The communities have made a resolution to follow the Natural Step Sustainability Principles:
  • eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted
    from the Earth's crust
  • eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society
  • eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical
    degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes
  • eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs.[4]
The concept originated in Sweden in 1983 with the founding of the first eco-municipality, Övertorneå. That pilot project in a northern rural town of 5,000 was such a success that it sparked what today has become a national movement. In 2005, the Wisconsin communities of Ashland, Washburn, and Madison became the first eco-municipalities in the United States when their city councils each voted to adopt the Natural Step Principles. Washburn, WI received an award from Wisconsin’s governor for taking this path-breaking step. Ashland and Washburn, together with Bayfield, WI and the neighboring Bad River and Red Cliff tribal nations, are part of this eco-region initiative .

Learn more about the Natural Step below...





The Alliance for Sustainability is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. P.O. Box 143, Cornucopia, WI 54827