Bioregionalism
This page is for community groups and community agency networks (CANs) interested in developing a bioregional approach, or simply interested in finding out more about bioregionalism.
News
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The regen farmers challenging food system foundations, wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk (Jun 05, 2025) — large-scale regenerative farming study renews hope for nature-friendly food producers- Tools for Bioregional Organizing: Research and Product Development, Clare Brodeur, medium.com/terran-collective (Feb 11, 2025)
- The Bioregional Pulse #1, bioregionalweavinglabs.substack.com (Oct 04, 2024) — Weaving together stories of active hope from bioregional changemakers
- Collaborative Finance (CoFi): rethinking finance for the commons, growingcommons.substack.com (Jun 07, 2026) — What finance looks like when communities build and govern it themselves, Michel Rauchs
- Radical change can lead to a fairer and greener world, says new report, positive.news (Jun 04, 2026) — A major new study argues that rising living standards, shorter working hours and a liveable climate are not competing dreams, but parts of the same future – if the world is willing to tackle extreme inequality
- Dutch kids declared the world’s happiest (again). Here’s why, positive.news (Jun 02, 2026) — Dutch children are consistently ranked the happiest kids in the developed world. What is the Netherlands getting right? And does the humble bike have something to do with it?
Video
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Events
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Jan 19, 2026 (Mon) — Bioregional Hope, systemic innovation across bioregions in Europe, with presentations from 7 Bioregional Weaving Labs, bioregionalweavinglabs.substack.com
Helping bioregions emerge and evolve
[edit | edit source]- The Bioregional Conversations. Action-learning initiative of seven cutting-edge conversations, May - July 2024, to explore the different ways in which bioregioning is taking shape around the world. This small circle of leading bioregional practitioners intends to deepen the learning culture developing around bioregions internationally.
Near you
[edit | edit source]Latin America
[edit | edit source]- Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, added 16:46, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
- Regenerative Colombia, "People, bioregions and organizations co-creating conditions to regenerate life"
- Regenerative Costa Rica, bringing together a community with multiple capacities to reflect, plan and activate projects that facilitate the transition towards a regenerative paradigm. Blog: costaricaregenerativa.org, added 10:02, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
- Sinal do Vale, Serra da Estrela Bioregion, behind the Guanabara Bay, 50 km from the center of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Video: on youtube.com
Europe
[edit | edit source]- Bioregional Weaving Labs, Ashoka, ashoka.org, Currently 8 BWLs established: in Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Austria, Romania and Spain. added 20:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
- Bioregional Weaving Lab - South East Ireland, added 13:05, 15 February 2025 (UTC)
- Burrenbeo Trust, landscape charity founded in 2008, dedicated to connecting all of us to our places and our role in caring for them. News: burrenbeo.com, added 08:34, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Resilience Earth, Reviving the Re·Generation of the earth, (Catalonia), "non-profit change management cooperative, committed to community resilience, regenerative design and the social and solidarity economy as fundamental tools for social, ecological and economic transformation." Video: Resilience Earth on youtube.com
- Atelier LUMA, Arles, France
- Mallorca: Since 2010 Daniel Christian Wahl has been working on the long-term plan of establishing the island of Mallorca as a living lab for bioregional regeneration. Read more: Bioregional Regeneration for Planetary Health, medium.com
UK
[edit | edit source]- Bioregional Learning Centre UK, Community Interest Company (CIC) founded in 2017 to serve the people and place of South Devon. Video: Bioregional TV on youtube.com. Blog: bioregion.org.uk, UK Bioregional Community of Practice, bioregion.org.uk
- Bioregioning Tayside, Map, Bioregioning in Tayside, bioregioningtayside.scot, added 17:07, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
- Findhorn Watershed Initiative, "multi-generational vision to restore a mosaic of nature rich habitats, grow a local culture of nature connection and enable a thriving nature-based economy for the people and places of the Findhorn watershed, from the Monadhliath Mountains to the Moray Firth.", added 08:20, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Oceania
[edit | edit source]- Enlivened Cooperative, worker-owned, not-for-profit, eco-social learning organization. (Hawaii). added 15:28, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
North America
[edit | edit source]- Terran Collective, terran.io, "We are a collective with a common vision of a world in balance", San Francisco Bay Area, California.
- Bay Delta Trust, "a convening and weaving initiative seeking to improve bioregional coordination in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta." added 14:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hudson River Flows, "collaborative of writers, thinkers, practitioners, visual creatives, and network entrepreneurs writing a new narrative in support of a truly regenerative economic redevelopment of our bioregion." Stories form the field, hudsonriverflows.com
- Salish Sea Restoration, Salish Sea Wiki
- Bioregions mentioned in Appropedia articles:
- Ozark Area Community Congress, "The forested, stream-dissected hills of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas form a distinct bioregion known as the Ozarks." link checked 10:20, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- Mid-Michigan bioregion, Michigan community action
- Salmon Nation, US-Canada, "aims to inspire, enable and invest in regenerative development."
- Regenerate Cascadia, 501(c)3 social movement organization developing a long-term bioregional vision and process that works with on-the-ground communities to design and implement new frameworks of governance, ecology, and economy for the regeneration and health of the Cascadia bioregion along the northeast Pacific rim of North America and beyond.
The Cascadia bioregion is a bioregion located near the Pacific Northwest as defined through the watersheds of the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath rivers, as defined through the geology of the region. It extends for more than 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometres) from the Copper River in Southern Alaska, to Cape Mendocino, approximately 200 miles (300 kilometres) north of San Francisco, and east as far as the Yellowstone Caldera and continental divide and contains 75 distinct ecoregions.
The Cascadia Bioregion encompasses all of the state of Washington, all but the southeastern corner of Idaho, and portions of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia. Bioregions are geographically based areas defined by land or soil composition, watershed, climate, flora, and fauna. The Cascadia Bioregion claims the entire watershed of the Columbia River (as far as the Continental Divide), the Fraser River, as well as the Cascade Range from Northern California well into Canada. It's also considered to include the associated ocean, the Cascadia Inner Sea, and seas and their ecosystems out to the continental slope running down the entirety of the Cascadia subduction zone to the Cape Mendocino Fracture Zone. The delineation of a bioregion has environmental stewardship as its primary goal, with the belief that political boundaries should match ecological and cultural boundaries.
The area from Vancouver, B.C. down to Portland, Oregon has been termed the Cascadia Megaregion, a megaregion defined by the U.S. and Canadian governments, especially along the "Cascadia Corridor". Megaregions are defined as areas where "boundaries begin to blur, creating a new scale of geography now known as the megaregion. These areas have interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources, and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together. This area contains 17% of Cascadian land mass, but more than 80% of the Cascadian population. The Canada–US border is diminishing in the face of further economic, political and cultural integration with such programs as the enhanced drivers license program – which can be used to get across the Canada–US border between Washington and British Columbia.
Listings on Planet Drum
- Planet drum has a Bioregional Resource Directory with more extensive listings than here for North America.
Maps
[edit | edit source]- Bioregions on One Earth, oneearth.org. The Bioregions 2023 framework utilizes 14 realm divisions – further divided into 52 subrealms, 185 bioregions, and 844 ecoregions – as a framework to better understand the natural world that surrounds us. Navigator, One Earth, oneearth.org, added 20:36, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
- Bioregional cookbooks map
Community action projects
[edit | edit source]Bioregional mapping
[edit | edit source]Bioregional mapping is a powerful tool to increase understanding, change the story and influence policy. A good bioregional map shows layers of geology, flora, fauna, and inhabitation over time. All the interdisciplinary content that is integrated in this kind of map makes it a great communication tool to illustrate an ecological approach. One of the best examples of a richly communicative bioregional map is David McClosky's new map of Cascadia. W
Bioregional cookbook
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This is the How-To guide for Locally Delicious. Please contact us the authors/editors of Locally Delicious: Recipes and Resources for Eating on the North Coast at info@locally-delicious.org for a more thorough discussion of our process, struggles, and recommendations for putting together this type of collaborative community project.
see also: Bioregional cookbook, Locally Delicious - The book
Bioregional perspective
[edit | edit source]The bioregionalist perspective opposes a homogeneous economy and consumer culture with its lack of stewardship towards the environment. This perspective seeks to:
- Ensure that political boundaries match ecological boundaries.
- Highlight the unique ecology of the bioregion.
- Encourage consumption of local foods where possible.
- Encourage the use of local materials where possible.
- Encourage the cultivation of native plants of the region.
- Encourage sustainability in harmony with the bioregion. W
Bioregionalism is proactive
[edit | edit source]According to Peter Berg, bioregionalism is proactive, and is based on forming a harmony between human culture and the natural environment, rather than being protest-based like the original environmental movement. Also, while classical environmentalists saw human industry as the enemy of nature and nature as a victim needing to be saved; bioregionalists see humanity and its culture as a part of nature, focusing on building a positive, sustainable relationship with both the sociological and ecological environments, rather than a focus on preserving and segregating the wilderness from the world of humanity. W
About Bioregionalism
[edit | edit source]Bioregionalism is a philosophy that suggests that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable and just if they are organized around naturally defined areas called bioregions (similar to ecoregions). Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics. Bioregionalism stresses that the determination of a bioregion is also a cultural phenomenon, and emphasizes local populations, knowledge, and solutions.
Bioregionalism is a concept that goes beyond national boundaries—an example is the concept of Cascadia, a region that is sometimes considered to consist of most of Oregon and Washington, the Alaska Panhandle, the far north of California and the West Coast of Canada, sometimes also including some or all of Idaho and western Montana. Another example of a bioregion, which does not cross national boundaries, but does overlap state lines, is the Ozarks, a bioregion also referred to as the Ozarks Plateau, which consists of southern Missouri, northwest Arkansas, the northeast corner of Oklahoma, southeast corner of Kansas.
Bioregions are not synonymous with ecoregions as defined by organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, One Earth, or the Commission for Environmental Cooperation; the latter are scientifically based and focused on ecology. Bioregions, by contrast, are watershed focused, factoring in humans and informed by ecology, geology, and biology. In this way, bioregionalism is effectively kincentric ecology with a focus on bioregions.
See also: Arts and culture, Community currencies activism, Ethical consumerism, Food activism, Local food, Food Sovereignty, Free stuff, Getting to know your locality, Getting to know your region, Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle, Resilient communities, Sharing, Community energy, Towards sustainable economies, Urban sustainability, Community land trust, Types of resources
local information and news can be found, or shared, via our many location pages
External links
- Cascadia, Geography of Bioregion, Name, Flag, Images and Maps, cascadia-institute.org
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| License | CC-BY-SA-4.0 |
| Cite as | Philralph (2023–2026). "Bioregionalism". Appropedia. Retrieved June 15, 2026. |