Bioregionalism is a philosophy and worldview that encourages us to reevaluate the way humans organize ourselves in the world. It challenges the notion that political boundaries should be drawn solely along lines that ignore the intricate ecological tapestry of our planet. Instead, bioregionalism calls for the recognition of natural boundaries and ecosystems as the foundation for governance and economy.
Bioregions are geographical areas defined not by political boundaries but by the confluence of ecological systems and human inhabitation.
Ecoregions are the building blocks that make up each bioregion. Ecoregions describe areas where ecosystems are generally similar, providing a spatial framework for the research, assessment, and monitoring of ecosystem functionality.
Ecological disruptions know no political boundaries, and are beyond any one city, region, state or country to address alone. Further, the current coordination problem is exacerbated by a crisis of governance rooted in political boundaries out of sync with natural systems. In contrast, bioregionalism is a philosophy that empowers improved coordination to address these threats in ways that are hopeful, sustainable, democratic, and grounded in place and ecology.
Today, experiments in bioregional coordination and governance are exploring how we can again live on planet Earth in community with each other and in connection with the land, water and biosphere upon which humanity depends for our survival. Critically, bioregionalism is grounded in a deep reverence and respect for the Indigenous communities who stewarded bioregions for millennia, and seeks to lift up and learn from the voices of Indigenous leadership.
The concept of bioregionalism emerged from the Deep Ecology movement of the 1970s, carrying the hopes and dreams of fostering ecological awareness, sustainable living, and a profound connection between communities and their unique natural environments. In the closing decades of the 20th century, a small, passionate group of ecologists, community organizers and “back to the land” proponents organized nearly a dozen Continental Bioregional Congresses across the United States, as well as a series of five Shasta Bioregion Congresses in Northern California. Unfortunately, few if any, institutional artifacts remain from these efforts.
However, a new crop of new bioregional efforts have emerged. Some examples include:
- Salmon Nation is an effort gestated by EcoTrust intended to organize a nature state – a big, diverse, powerful and holistic integration of people and place, with thriving local communities living in deep relationship with the lands and waters that nourish all of us.
- Regenerate Cascadia is a social movement organization developing a long-term bioregional vision and framework for the regeneration and health of the Cascadia bioregion along the northeast Pacific rim of North America and beyond.
- The Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning & Transformation (COBALT) is a learning network that gathers a diverse set of fellows from across North America, South America and Europe. Based out of the Casco Bay bioregion in Maine, this group is also affiliated with Team Zostera, an muti-disciplinary eelgrass restoration effort.
Bioregionalism Resources
The following list is an ongoing compilation of resources and inspirations regarding bioregionalism. Feel free to peruse!
Table
Name
Type
Author
Organization
Description
Focus Area
URL
References
Reading list
A brief history of the origins of the North American Bioregional Congress (NABC),
focusing on the first five Continental Bioregional Congresses convened on Turtle Island.
focusing on the first five Continental Bioregional Congresses convened on Turtle Island.
Organization
Our Living Waters
Watershed governance - the ways decisions are made and upheld within a watershed - informs how well our water is managed. Most of the 25 major watersheds in Canada do not fit into one province or region, but are commonly dissected by these political boundaries. The unintended result: no one entity is typically in charge of the watershed as a whole. Instead, small pockets of the watershed are managed independently with inadequate consideration for the other parts. Too often we see decisions in one area literally flow downstream to impact another. What’s lost is governance that supports the ecological integrity of the entire watershed.
watershed governance
Examples
Reading list
The Bioregional Learning Centre
We are collecting case studies, resources and experience so that we can share them with you.
Our aim is to professionalise the role of place-based systems change leader and to teach this role drawing on examples from the South Devon Bioregion.
Here is our roadmap for developing a bioregion. Each of these steps include key Bioregioning skills. Contact us if you would like help in developing these steps and we ask that you let us know if you are following our roadmap. Visit the Learning Centre to find downloadable assets.
Our aim is to professionalise the role of place-based systems change leader and to teach this role drawing on examples from the South Devon Bioregion.
Here is our roadmap for developing a bioregion. Each of these steps include key Bioregioning skills. Contact us if you would like help in developing these steps and we ask that you let us know if you are following our roadmap. Visit the Learning Centre to find downloadable assets.
bioregioning
Practice
Reading list
Nation of Hawaii
Ahupuaʻa is a Hawaiian term for a large traditional socioeconomic, geologic, and climatic subdivision of land (comparable to the tapere in the Southern Cook Islands).
community governance, stewardship
Idea
AbundantCommunity.com
Trust, associations, collective impact
Examples
Colorado State University | Institute for the Built Environment
A Sustainable Regional Systems Research Network for Colorado
System map: https://wastedfood.american.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Cross_Planning_for_a_Network_to_Address_Pressures_Responses_and_Sustainability_Intersections_across_a_Growing_Innovative_and_Dry_State2.pdf
IBE is facilitating an integrated applied research network to increase the health, equity, and vitality of communities across our region.
The environmental and socio-economic changes we face over the coming decades are dynamic and complex. We believe that working and learning together is essential for navigating the path forward; as researchers, part of our work is to examine our role and evolve our methods to meet the times.
What We Do
Applied Research
Community Engagement & Facilitation
Custom Sustainability Programs
Healthy Green Buildings
Project Examples
Special Programs
While integrated, applied, and engaged research is challenging, we are deeply committed to collaborating with community members, practitioners, and policymakers to create positive change. By facilitating a research network, we are growing our collective understanding and capability to work across sectors, disciplines, and diverse perspectives.
From mid-2022 into early 2023, we hosted a series of network development workshops; hosted a series of community conversations in five different communities across the state; compiled an inventory of sustainability data related to regional sustainability in Colorado; and launched a network survey. This work, funded through a National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant, provided the foundation for the continued collaboration we’re leading now.
System map: https://wastedfood.american.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Cross_Planning_for_a_Network_to_Address_Pressures_Responses_and_Sustainability_Intersections_across_a_Growing_Innovative_and_Dry_State2.pdf
IBE is facilitating an integrated applied research network to increase the health, equity, and vitality of communities across our region.
The environmental and socio-economic changes we face over the coming decades are dynamic and complex. We believe that working and learning together is essential for navigating the path forward; as researchers, part of our work is to examine our role and evolve our methods to meet the times.
What We Do
Applied Research
Community Engagement & Facilitation
Custom Sustainability Programs
Healthy Green Buildings
Project Examples
Special Programs
While integrated, applied, and engaged research is challenging, we are deeply committed to collaborating with community members, practitioners, and policymakers to create positive change. By facilitating a research network, we are growing our collective understanding and capability to work across sectors, disciplines, and diverse perspectives.
From mid-2022 into early 2023, we hosted a series of network development workshops; hosted a series of community conversations in five different communities across the state; compiled an inventory of sustainability data related to regional sustainability in Colorado; and launched a network survey. This work, funded through a National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant, provided the foundation for the continued collaboration we’re leading now.
Systems research, network change
Research
Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes,Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Climate-change projections for California confidently describe a future with warmer temperatures, more evaporative demand, less snow, more rain, earlier and f lashier runoff and streamf low, and drier summer conditions. The future of annual precipitation is much less certain, but a fairly unanimous projection of drier, more drought-prone conditions punctuated by occasional stronger-than-historical storms is almost as common among projections as is the warming itself. Rather than focusing on the less certain annual precipitation changes, we recommend more focus on keeping water in the headwaters longer. Doing so will involve reducing winter f lood f lows from headwater catchments, reducing the summer aridification (and wildfire risks) there, salvaging some groundwater recharge that would likely otherwise be lost, and overall, perpetuating headwater (and downstream) hydrologies under more historical and natural conditions.
groundwater recharge
Research
Stanfor University
New research reveals why some rivers in the San Joaquin Valley are causing the ground to uplift when others aren’t. The answer lies beneath the ground’s surface. A new study from scientists at Stanford University combines satellite data with airborne electromagnetic (AEM) flight data to see exactly what’s happening with recharged water from the Sierra Nevadas. The satellite process, called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR,) bounces signals onto the ground which can read over time where ground has uplifted due to groundwater recharge. The data, from the wet year of 2017, shows water traveling through the valley underground uplifting the surface as it moves.
Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article289853014.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article289853014.html#storylink=cpy
water, groundwater recharge
References
Idea
Climate Water Project
Groundwater creates rain.
This is a process that science has begun to show is real in recent years.
Its an important process to highlight, because while the world has been blaming extreme droughts solely on global warming, the worldwide practice of draining our aquifers is likely also a contributing factor to the severity of droughts.
This is a process that science has begun to show is real in recent years.
Its an important process to highlight, because while the world has been blaming extreme droughts solely on global warming, the worldwide practice of draining our aquifers is likely also a contributing factor to the severity of droughts.
water, conservation hydrology
Examples
tools
Mapping
Watershed Investigations
The Watershed Pollution Map reveals a huge range of potential pollution sources that can harm rivers, lakes, groundwater, coasts and more.
It shows: river, lake and groundwater health | bathing water health | damaged and protected waters | sewage dumping | chemical pollution | urban and road pollution | substances being discharged into waters | years of Environment Agency sampling results | intensive pig and chicken farms | intensity of cattle farming | landfills, waste sites and contaminated land | big industrial sites | political constituencies for 2024 and 2019 | flood risk | economic deprivation
It shows: river, lake and groundwater health | bathing water health | damaged and protected waters | sewage dumping | chemical pollution | urban and road pollution | substances being discharged into waters | years of Environment Agency sampling results | intensive pig and chicken farms | intensity of cattle farming | landfills, waste sites and contaminated land | big industrial sites | political constituencies for 2024 and 2019 | flood risk | economic deprivation
mapping, watersheds
Process/Framework
We introduce the concept of the Partner State Approach (PSA), in which the state becomes a 'partner state' and enables autonomous social production. The PSA could be considered a cluster of policies and ideas whose fundamental mission is to empower direct social-value creation, and to focus on the protection of the Commons sphere as well as on the promotion of sustainable models of entrepreneurship and participatory politics...While people continue to enrich and expand the Commons, building an alternative political economy within the capitalist one, by adopting a PSA the state becomes an arbiter, retreating from the binary state/privatization dilemma to the triarchical choice of an optimal mix amongst government regulation, private-market freedom and autonomous civil-society projects. Thus, the role of the state evolves from the post-World War II welfare-state model, which could arguably be considered a historical compromise between social movements for human emancipation and capitalist interests, to the partner state one, which embraces win-win sustainable models for both civil society and market.
Governance
Organization
The Omega Collaborative is a steadily growing working group of partners around the world. Collaborative partners have three things in common: shared overarching goals, a deep sense of synergy, and a commitment to mutual respect and kindness..
polycrisis
Process/Framework
Reading list
The Approach
Three Horizons is a simple and intuitive framework for thinking about the future. At its simplest we can see it as describing three patterns of activity and how their interactions play out over time. The framework maps a shift from the established patterns of the first horizon to the emergence of new patterns in the third, via the transition activity of the second.
But the Three Horizons are about much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. The central idea of Three Horizons, and what makes it so useful, is that it draws attention to the three horizons as existing always in the present moment, and that we have evidence about the future in how people (including ourselves) are behaving now. The outcome of Three Horizons work is a map of transformational potential which enables us to act with more skill, freedom and creativity in the present, both individually and together.
Three Horizons is a simple and intuitive framework for thinking about the future. At its simplest we can see it as describing three patterns of activity and how their interactions play out over time. The framework maps a shift from the established patterns of the first horizon to the emergence of new patterns in the third, via the transition activity of the second.
But the Three Horizons are about much more than simply stretching our thinking to embrace the short, medium and long term. The central idea of Three Horizons, and what makes it so useful, is that it draws attention to the three horizons as existing always in the present moment, and that we have evidence about the future in how people (including ourselves) are behaving now. The outcome of Three Horizons work is a map of transformational potential which enables us to act with more skill, freedom and creativity in the present, both individually and together.
Organization
The Landbanking Group exists to stop and reverse nature loss, and to drive global prosperity for the long-term. We do that by establishing a new asset class that shifts land-use incentives towards nature positive practices: this is Nature Equity
Land stewaredship, restoration
Organization
The Indigenous Values Initiative is dedicated to articulating, disseminating and promoting values expressed by the leadership of the Onondaga Nation, the Central Fire (or Capital) of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (made up of the Seneca, Tuscarora, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk nations). Haudenosaunee means “People of the Longhouse,” and are most often mistakenly referred to as the “Iroquois”). The Onondaga Nation is unique to the world, in that they are the only Native Nation recognized by the United States, and the United Nations, that still operates according to their pre-colonial clan form of government. The Haudenosaunee organize themselves in a matrilineal clan system of extended families. Their ceremonies are aligned to phases of the moon, and are based on thanksgivings to the natural world. As we all face climatic changes, it is urgent that human beings reorient themselves to the rhythms of the earth. Indigenous value systems need to be heeded in these troubled times. Intercultural understanding, however, must be based on healing generations from colonization, missionization, genocide and assimilation. The Haudenosaunee understand the need for collaboration with individuals, institutions, communities, governments and businesses to articulate, disseminate and promote the ancient and enduring values of Indigenous Peoples traditions to the world. The Indigenous Values Initiative (IVI) raises funds to support educational projects which will disperse information through conferences, classes, exhibitions, publications, speakers, expositions, etc.
Indigenous
Idea
The article below was written by David Haenke in 1996 and has not just historical but more importantly conceptual and practical significance to the growing impulse of bioregional regeneration around the world. In a recent interview with David I spontaneously offered to ‘host’ three of his most important pieces of writing on my Medium blog as a means for him to share them more widely with an interested audience. Enjoy! — Daniel Wahl
bioregioning, economics
Examples
The OECD Rural Agenda for Climate Action
Highland Boundary operates under a circular economy business model that integrates carbon capture, distillery operations and sustainable forestry. A key aspect of Highland Boundary’s is its ability to balance inputs to generate both a healthy business and contribute to climate protection and social impact.
circular economy
Reading list
Process/Framework
governance
History
Reading list
A description of the history and function of bioregional learning centers.
governance
Reading list
Process/Framework
Center for Wise Democracy
governance
Organization
community, governance
The Institute for Community Studies is a different kind of research institute, with people at its heart. We believe that involving communities leads to better decision-making on the issues that most affect them. We engage with people across the UK, amplifying their diverse perspectives, and directing their most urgent questions toward policymakers and researchers.
Organization
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is an award-winning independent think tank working to fulfill a bold commitment: to create a world where people and the planet thrive.
Sustainable development
Organization
The Institute for Community Leadership enables students to actively participate in the civic process, and for them to engage others in participation. From educating within local councils and state legislatures to registering voters to ecological restoration, ICL students become aware of what’s needed for change in society.
civic education
Organization
Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure
ISI catalyzes systemic change in the world of civil infrastructure, with the Envision framework as the vehicle. Understand the benefits of ISI membership and find links to Envision credentialing and project verification below.
infrastructure
Program
Johns Hopkins
Cities of Service helps mayors build stronger cities by changing the way local government and citizens work together. We help coalition cities tap into the knowledge, creativity, and service of their citizens to help identify and solve critical public problems. Cities of Service supports a coalition of more than 300 cities, representing over 84 million people across the Americas and Europe.
communities
Organization
Institute for Sustainable Communities
ISC is an international non-profit committed to helping communities develop practical, scalable solutions to environmental and safety challenges. We work alongside local leaders to co-create initiatives that improve quality of life, strengthen local economies, and deliver lasting results where they’re needed most.
communities
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