Sustainable Communities and Consciousness – The Missing Link to a Low Carbon Transition in Developing Economies

Global warming and climate change have created an urgency for change in the global system. This change is envisaged through regulations, financing, policies, technology and innovations related to all of them. In this chapter, I argue that such a techno-centric, piecemeal, mechanistic and transactional approach is bound to fail unless we have a spiritual foundation and a sustainable community building strategy. All work of the society ultimately aims for a group of people living together harmoniously. Thus, sustainability transition has to be founded on commonalities of consciousness often found in ‘intentional’ communities – a group of people bounded by a common aspiration/faith and living together. The chapter analyses the case of Auroville, located in Puducherry, India, and its 54-year history to draw conclusions about sustainable community building and discuss its implication for a low-carbon, equitable, net-zero society.