Ecological responsibility, wellbeing, and transformative reach: a three-dimensional framework for assessing ecovillages as social innovations toward sustainability

Ecovillages are collective experiments in maintaining wellbeing within planetary limits, testing whether human flourishing can be maintained while material throughput is reduced. Drawing on a critical narrative review of intentional communities, ecological economics, commons governance, and self-determination theory, we propose a three- dimension, two-layer framework joining ecological limits, wellbeing, and the propagation dynamics of social innovations. The outcome layer includes five elements across three dimensions: critical natural capital and biophysical flows (ecological), material sufficiency and eudaimonic wellbeing (wellbeing), and transformative effect (transformative), an outward axis specific to social innovations. The lever layer includes three transversal levers: a sufficiency economy that drives throughput reduction, a commons governance built on Ostrom's design principles, and a propagation infrastructure that carries practices beyond the host site. Empirically, ecovillages deliver 35 to 80% footprint reductions and achieve partial closure of nutrient cycles. They meet a decent material floor through commons-based provisioning while sustaining or improving wellbeing. They propagate practices via transmission, replication, partnerships, and political influence. Four structural challenges constrain systemic contribution: limited actual impact on ecological, host- territory, and cultural dimensions; dependence on the mainstream provisioning system; barriers to scale (demanding resident profiles, high attrition); and social selection. We argue that ecovillages are best understood as generative laboratories of transposable knowledge and living alternatives that act as vectors of cultural changes. We propose an agenda for a wider community-based transition, associating multi-scale architectures with supportive economic models, facilitative institutions, and a deliberate research program. We situate this Northern articulation within a wider pluriverse of place-based sustainability projects, of which ecovillages are one strand among many.