PW: 'Sustainable Living' in Colombia? It's Not What You Think

However unlikely, they have come together in Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman, due out in May from White River Junction, Vt.-based Chelsea Green Publishing. The book is a nonfiction account of a visionary community that, since its founding in the early '70s, has worked to develop innovative low-tech solutions to environmental problems, one of those solutions being the planting of a pine forest. Making the story of Gaviotas even more incredible is the location of this experiment: the grasslands of eastern Colombia, a desolate region characterized by mineral-poor soil and weapons-rich drug lords.

The publishing house was launched in 1985 with the publication of The Man Who Planted Trees, a 56-page environmental fable about a man who plants acorns in a desolate region of central France. Originally published in 1954, the story is by Jean Giono (1895-1970), an author highly esteemed in his native France and virtually unknown here. The Chelsea Green edition has not only remained in print, but gone on to sell 150,000 copies. And that number and more has since been sold of The Straw Bale House, another Chelsea Green title that envisions, well, how hay can make a home.

Just as Gaviotas (the village) is no ordinary subject, Gaviotas (the book) has no ordinary background. When Chelsea Green editor-in-chief Jim Schley heard an extended National Public Radio report on Gaviotas by journalist Weisman, he immediately recognized the similarity between Giono's fiction and the Colombian reality and decided that this was a book he wanted to publish.

But first he had to convince Weisman, author of La Frontera: The United States Border War with Mexico, issued by Harcourt Brace in 1986, and still under contract with the house, who was skeptical of the ability of a small press to financially support the project, for which he would need to return to Colombia to do additional reporting. While Chelsea Green wasn't able to come up with a sufficient advance, it did the next best thing and helped him to secure grants to fund his trip. "The attention Chelsea Green paid to this project was enormous," continued Weisman, who admitted an additional concern: "Can a small publisher garner the publicity to get this project out there?"

As befits an outfit whose focus is sustainable living, Chelsea Green is approaching that problem resourcefully. It took the unusual step, for a small press, of printing up readers' copies and sending them not just to reviewers and booksellers but to environmental activists as well. The Real Goods Trade Company, a Ukiah, Calif.-based catalogue marketer of solar energy products, is offering Gaviotas as a premium to its customers. Weisman will be a speaker at Sol Fest, at the Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland, Calif., June 20-21.

The first hardcover printing of Gaviotas will be a conservative 6000 copies. But Chelsea Green president and publisher Stephen Morris has high hopes, including the possibility of a trade house reprint deal. "It has taken the idea of sustainable living years to penetrate mainstream comprehension," Morris said. "We're just starting to see the mainstream media pick up on this story."