Intro to Bioregionalism

90 mins Personal intro - 5 minutes

Bioregionalism: plan for our time together

• Where do we begin? (Miro board input)

  • How much do you think you know about bioregionalism
  • Word association

• Definition

• Confusion

• Developing your bioregional vibe

  • Scoring session

• Bioregions at a conceptual scale

  • Big ideas
  • its placed based
  • So… whats my bioregion?

• Bioregions at a tangible scale

  • Examples from my area (implicit)
  • Examples explicit bioregionists

• Bioregionalism against the machine

  • Tensions and challenges

My simplest definition

‘political localism with ecological features’

political - bit of a loaded word. I prefer to talk about coordination (how do we coordinate?)

localism - an anchoring our focus and coordination at the local level.

• does not preclude wider coordination
• localism by itself has been associated with

ecological - meaning ‘to have a relationship to the ecology of the place’

Done! Or at least we would be if anyone agreed with me…

Bioregionalism out in the world

A few years back, I summarized what you could find out about bioregionalism in a 20 minute google search. This turned up:

• Dictionary definitions
• Wikipedia articles
• The World Wilderness Fund (WWF)
• And random little explanations from odds corners of different sites (One such corner is a year 2000 post on a mailing list)

Reading through those, we arrive at an annoying conclusion

There seem to be two different understandings of what a ‘bioregion’ is.

• One that seems purely ecological, and

one is more like my ‘simple’ definition.

The three elements of bioregional vibe

If we take the three key aspects of the simple definition; ecological, local and political, we can use each of those as a little scale by which to consider how ‘bioregional’ something is.

For example

WWF

https://www.oneearth.org/bioregions-2023/

https://www.forestsforever.org/archives_resources/cabioregions/index.html

Scoring activity

Why is the one earth schema nice?

• hierarchy
• distinct boundaries
• global

What are some of the big ideas behind bioregionalism

• solar punk
  • chobani ad
• political identity
• ecologies don’t respect borders
• cosmolocalism
• Art/literature
  • A half-built garden

What are some dominant paradigm challenges to bioregionalism

• globalization
  • globalized supply-chains
• nationalism
• modernist extremism
• cities: how do they integrate into bioregions?
  • Yimby/Nimby; local control
• Regulation
  • Rigidity from a different logic can hinder innovation

Local examples

• https://www.bylt.org/
• https://briarpatch.coop/
• https://thecuriousforge.org/
• https://yubariver.org/
• https://www.sollearning.com/projects
• https://wildandscenicfilmfestival.org/

Mission:

• What local groups have a bioregional flavor/vibe?

Built-environment:

• how were people building in your area, one hundred years ago

SECOND SESSSSSION

Big questions (SECOND SESH)

• If bioregionalism really took off, and had some initial success, what new challenges or difficulties would it face? (What entrenched interests would it come up again?)
• If you were building an online platform to help bioregionalist organize, what features would you want to include? What about if you also wanted that platform to help people discover bioregionalism?

Bioregional organizers

• https://www.salmonnation.net/
• https://cascadiabioregion.org/
• https://www.hylo.com/groups/salmon-nation/post/71914

Cross-paradigm efforts

• https://ecococon.eu/us/
• https://vivahomes.com.au/
• https://www.materialspalette.org/palette/ built-environment