Bioregionalism is a movement suggesting the organization of
societies by commonality of place, the immediate and specific
places in which people live. We all live in areas that have their
own unique physical and cultural geography. This base provides
us with a common heritage and framework for building economically
and socially sustainable systems of living.
Peter Berg, Director of the Plant Drum Foundation, and Raymond
Dasmann, wildlife ecologist, have offered the
following definition:
"Bioregions are geographic areas having common characteristics of soil, watershed, climate, native plants and animals that exist within the whole planetary biosphere as unique and intrinsic contributive parts. A bioregion refers both to geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness -- to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place. A bioregion can be determined initially by use of climatology, physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other descriptive natural sciences. The final boundaries of a bioregion, however, are best described by the people who have lived within it, through human recognition of the realities of living-in-place. There is a distinctive resonance among living things and the factors that influence them which occurs specifically within each separate place on the planet. Discovering and describing that resonance is a way to describe a bioregion."
We are not organized by bioregions at present. Political divisions
of nations, states, counties, water districts, sewer districts,
voting districts and so on have nothing to do with inherent geographical
physical, cultural and economic patterns. Many of our political
subdivisions actually make management of our resources and our
opportunities for social involvement more difficult.
Kirkpatrick Sale states the rationale for bioregional organization
in terms of scale, economy, polity and society in Dwellers
in the Land, Chapters 5-8:
Scale: People can understand issues and their connections to them
at a scale "where the forces of government and society are
still recognizable and comprehensible, where relations with others
are still intimate, and where the effects of individual actions
are visible; where abstractions and intangibles give way to the
here and now, the seen and felt, and the real and known."(pg.
53)
Economy: "... a bioregional economy would seek first to maintain
rather than use up the natural world, to adapt to the environment
rather than try to exploit or manipulate it, to conserve not only
the resources but also the relationships and systems of the natural
world; and second to establish a stable means of production and
exchange rather than one always in flux and dependent upon continual
growth and constant consumption..." (pg.. 68-69)
Polity: "... a bioregional polity would seek the diffusion
of power, the decentralization of institutions, with nothing done
at a higher level than necessary, and all authority flowing upward
incrementally from the smallest political unit to the largest."
(pg. 94)
Society: "... symbiosis is as apt a model as any for a successful
human society, which we may envision as a place where families
operate within neighborhoods, neighborhoods within communities,
communities within cities, cities within regions, all on the basis
of collaboration and exchange, cooperation and mutual benefit,
and where the fittest is the one that helps the most -- and of
course is thereby the most helped. The most important instance
of such an interaction on a bioregional scale would be the social
symbiosis between the city and the country ..." (pg.. 113)
Planet Drum has published a Bioregional Directory and Map
(Raise the Stakes, #24). It contains over 200 contact individuals,
groups and publications that consider themselves to be bioregionally
oriented. A Bioregional Association is being formed to provide
links between bioregional groups.