Bioregions & Bioregionalism: Literature Review 1970-1985

Literature Review.

Because this is likely the reader’s first introduction to bioregional thought, some care will be taken in presenting a clear definition of both the specialized vocabulary and the populist literature that presently hounds the concept. With this consideration in mind, this section is divided into three related parts. First, a bioregional vocabulary will be defined as presented in the literature. Second, an annotated listing of the limited number of bioregional texts will be offered. This chronology will aid the reader in understanding the progression of an academic notion into a populist movement. Third, a brief listing of texts that have influenced the bioregional movement will help to flesh out the concept’s recent intellectual under­ pinnings.

The vocabulary of bioregionalism represents the continuing vitality of the English language. A potent concept is encapsulated in root meanings thousands of years old to communicate what is essentially a major evolution in human perception of environment, society and self. A consequence of the possibilities of a new lexicon is a vital confusion of terminology. A bioregion is not bioregional is not bioregionalism. It is extremely important to find specific definitions for these terms which are precisely separate and complementary. As part of this assembly of terminology liberal use of direct quotes will be employed. This is not done to shirk the duty of summation, but to expose the power of a populist literature.

Bioregion is from the Greek bias (life), and the French region (region), itself from the Latin regia (territory) and earlier regere ( to rule or govern). Etymologically, bioregion means life territory or place-of-life (Dodge: 1981,6). This basic root word meaning is taken by Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann and expanded to become a term that:

refers to both geographical terrain and terrain of consciousness – to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place. Within a bioregion the conditions of life are similar and these in turn have influenced human occupancy.

A bioregion can be determined initially by use of climatology, physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other natural sciences. The final boundaries of a bioregion are best described by the people who have lived within it, through human recognition of the realities of living-in-place. (218)

The notion of living-in-place introduces the greater meaning of the word bioregional. The suffix -al, when applied to a noun denotes process and action. Thus there is an active bioregion process which Berg and Dasmann describe as:

…following the necessities and pleasures of life as they are uniquely presented by a particular site, and evolving ways to ensure long-term occupancy of that site. A society which practices living-in-place keeps a balance with its region of support through links between human lives, other living things, and the processes of the planet – seasons, weather, water cycles – as revealed by the place itself. It is the opposite of a society which makes- a-living through short-term destructive exploitation of land and life. (217)

If ‘bioregional’ denotes the active practice of living­ in-place then bioregionalism is the body of law, or doctrine, which guides this existence. The final suffix -ism, among many meanings, is adherence to a system or a class of principles. This tenor in the literature is supported by bioregionalism’s definition by David Haenke as being:

an awareness that bioregions are whole systems composed of sets of diverse, integrated natural subsystems and run by ecological laws and principles., Bioregionalism recognizes that humans, as one species among many, must work in cooperation with these laws if -there is to be a sustainable future. The ecological laws and principles form the basis for the design of all long-term human systems: economic, technological, agricultural, and political. (n.p.)

In essence then, bioregionalism is a teaching which helps people to both describe the bioregion where they live, and then to live within its natural capability to support life on a sustaina- ble basis by ecological laws. This combination of ideas is extremely potent and goes far beyond the musings of academics isolated behind the facade of individual disciplines. To live-in­ place requires each citizen to be aware of the simple precepts of ecology, economics, physical sciences and politics. It requires regional political control of an ecologically regulated economy. The overview that bioregional ism encourages is a protective cultural force against any action or doctrine which would attemp to exist at the expense of a sustainable regional future.

Once the basic idea of bioregional thought is understood there are a number of supporting terms which bring depth to the vocabulary.

The first such embellishment is the idea of reinhabitation.

Implicit in much bioregional literature is a call to integrate rural and urban populations on a more mutually beneficial basis. As part of this new, more balanced relation­ ship, it is understood that large urban agglomerations cannot, by any stretch of technology, support concentrated populations of millions on a basis compatible with ecological law. The answer is to encourage the reduction in size of large urban centers by increasing the number and even distribution of smaller urban centers. Kirkpatrick Sale, in Mother of All: An Introduction to Bioregionalism, is most explicit on this issue, stating that a city be “indeed no larger than 50,000 to 100,000 peo­ple.” (22).

The voluntary movement of people to rural areas and new city centers would be a continuation of a general urban to rural trend· started in the mid-1970’s. People who are new to a place, ideally, would become reinhabitants.

To be labeled as such involves:

Learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation. It involves becoming native to a place through becoming aware of the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it. It means understanding activities and evolving social behaviour that will enrich the life of that place, restore its life-supporting systems, and establish an ecologically and socially sustainable pattern of existence within it. Simply stated it involves becoming fully alive in and with a place. It involves applying for membership in a biotic community and ceasing to be its exploiter. (Berg: 1978, 217-218)

Thus, a reinhabitant can live in the largest city or most isolated countryside and still embark on a period of discovery, learning about the possibilities of place. This lifelong residency is made easier by learning how native cultures lived with the land, how pioneers used simple technology for sustenance, and the history of economic abuses which need to be corrected.

The next additions to our vocabulary will show what basic ecological precepts must be mastered by a reinhabitant. It is impossible to live with the bounty of a region without a simple understanding of how it ‘works’.

The most often used example of a bioregion boundary is the watershed or river basin. Although not by any means the exclusive agent of delineation, the watershed vision is extremely powerful, presenting an image of cupped hands nurturing a continuous flow of life. Peter Warshall in The Next Whole Earth Catalog further explains the suitability of river boundaries:

Because waterflow does not obey human desires, it forces humans to join together to control and to use and to re-use beneficially. Because waterflow does not foliow human desires or subdivision maps, it creates the need for cooperation. (64-67)

What is essential to any bioregion is that its border be primarily natural rather than man-made.  Jim Dodge in “Liv ng by Life

:_ Some Bioregional Theory and Practice” lists only a few of the ways which borders can be defined:

• 1. Biotic Shift. If, for example, 15 to 25 percent of the species in one place varies from another adjacent place then they are different bioregions.
• 2. Watersheds.  Logical units but sometimes too large or small – as is the case with living in San Francisco and being tied into the San Joaquin and Sacramento River drainages or being a resident of a steep slope coastal creekshed.
• 3. Physiographic Region. Landforms are easily recogniz­ able, especially in areas such as the Prairies where often units such as watersheds are not easily dis­ cernable.
• 4. Cultural /Phenomelogical. Simply put, your bioregion is where you perceive it to be. A trusted source of culturally defined boundaries can be found by learning the territories of Native peoples.
• 5. Spirit Places. A provocative idea to delineate a bioregion is by the dominant psychophysical presence in an area. Such places are oceans, mountains, or any group of natural features which contribute a source of awe.
• 6. E1evation. The difference in foothills and flat land culture and biota manifest elevational bioregions. (7-8)

There is no single best way to define bioregion boundaries. The literature shows a continuing friendly disagreement between those who favor ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ boundaries. An emerging consensus seems to be that several types of lines should be laid down to overlap into a flexible and fluid demarkation more attuned to friendly relations than warfare (Sale:1983, 10; Dodge: 1981,  7).

Once the ecological limits of a larger home territory are defined it is necessary to further divide the bioregion into smaller, day-to-day, life units. For instance, watershed tiers can become a progression of creek, stream, river and multi-river units, within and between which human communities relate to each other and the environment (Berg and Tukel: 1980, 16).

Once boundaries of detailed concern exist the reinhabitant must begin to become a layperson ecologist to understand home area natural processes.  Although bioregional literature is very fuzzy on the details of basic ecological function, several related terms are beginning to be used more commonly. As part of a resources inventory, descriptive listing and functional

understanding of a natural environment is gained. Such an inventory lists such elements as native plants and animals, climate, soils, geology, topography, water resources, land use patterns, population density and air quality. This standard modelling is expanded to include bioregional concern for distribution of domestic plants and animals, and surveys of such natural low-energy sources of energy as solar radiation, moving and standing water, wind and biomass. (Berg and Tukel: 1980, 17).

Once these static representations of separate systems are delineated it becomes necessary to know what ‘drives’ the natural environment. This force is called solar income by Berg and Tukel (1980), and is the animating factor which moves separate elements of life and matter to change and interrelate (15). Examples of the two major types of activity created by solar income are (1) physical forces such as climate, hydrology, and wind; and (2) transformation of solar radiation by photosynthesis into plant material which sustains animals and nutrient -cycles. The inter­ relationship of physical and energy-fixing solar driven processes creates thousands of large and small dynamic associations. The all important name for this animate and inanimate mixing, intimately defined by the specific conditions of a place or area, is an ecosystem.

All ecosystems are moving towards a state of climax which

is achieved by the process of natural succession. As solar energy is fixed by plants their growth and decomposition over time creates different conditions for life. From pioneer plant and animal associations made up of few species, and vulnerable to destabilization, a change slowly occurs as soils are built up and diversity of species increases. More complex associations become stable, using energy efficiently to support complex food-webs and nutrient recycling. Damage or disease in part of a complex ecosystem will set it back from the ultimate stability of a climax state. The destiny of any life in any place is always to reach a climax state which is continuously regenerative, or sustainable.

A reinhabitant guages the condition of bioregion ecosystems to fix what is called the carrying capacity of the natural environ­ ment. Carrying capacity was originally used as a measure of a site’s ability to support plant or animal life. A bioregional use of the term expands this measure to include ability to also support a level of human population on a continuous basis which does not harm an ecosystem’s existence as, or movement towards, a climax state.  This crucial consideration introduces humans as part of a natural ecosystem community and reduces the possibility of environmental exploitation.

The way in which a bioregion carrying capacity is discovered cannot be solely through resource inventories or ecological model- ling. Although the results of connected relationships in an ecosystem (which includes a human population) can be shown through the fascinating flow charts presented by Howard Odum in Environment Power and Society, the true measure of capacity is learned by experience. On a macro level, hy following what Haenke in Ecological Politics and Bioregionalism call natural law, humans have the ability to translate the principles which regulate natural systems into an institutional framework which similarly guides society. Haenke states that:

Presently, law, politics, and government are mingled together in human consciousness, and neither the pattern of their development nor the relationship among them is clear. In the aggregate human law/ politics/government are adrift and out of control because they reflect our species’ self-obsession and willful ignorance of natural law. “Law” in this sense means not only the operant principles of the natural and human physical systems but also that which guides and binds behavior and ethics. (1984,5)

On a more micro, or individual bioregion level, Peter Berg uses the term “figures-of-regulation” as denoting institutionalization of a process by which human activity is related to ecosystem carrying capacity. Such figures-of-regulation:

symbolize energetic and ecosystem processes (and events that epitomize their inter connectedness) in practice, ceremonies, observances, ritual cycles and holiday celebrations which ground human behaviour and cultural adaptations ….. They complement processes that govern the ultimate flow and cycle of energy through watersheds. Figures of regulation must be discovered through perception and study of watersheds and bioregions in their present condition and rediscovered through inter­ pretations of how they functioned in the past. Bioregional culture is an active adaptation undertaken with the understanding that human beings have accepted their interdependent relationship with the biosphere and intend to pursue creative and appropriate ways to live within it. (1980,17)

Implicit in the above vocabulary are human systems of activity and interaction that would incorporate all bioregion-related terminology into structures of governance and development. This aspect of the bioregional literature continues the theme of man as part of nature, but begins to focus more on human organization. The concept of bioregional worth is presented as the measure of how a government, development, figure-of-regulation, or any human accivity, contributes to restoring and maintaining the bioregion as a life-place. To this end, Peter Berg in Figures of Regulation: Guides for Re-Balancing Society with the Biosphere suggests a governance structure in which:

Individuals, society and the bioregion would be inter­ connected rather than existing as separate entities. A political manifestation of this connectedness could be in the establishment of small-scale bioregional governments with watershed bounded units. Smaller more naturally defined political entities would present many more opportunities for participation in the political process than currently exist, and decisions resulting from direct democracy would be more prevalent. The spirit of these governments could be naturalistic and non-hierarchical as a reflection of the operation of the biosphere itself. (14)

Bioregional governance is thus ideally practiced in smaller, independent units which are less likely to be exploited by a distant dominating population or group of corporations.  These units are not isolated as primative feudal units, but interrelated by a mutual consideration of biosphere maintenance and sharing of technology, tools, surpluses, information and culture. Such a level of interdependence does not induce a regression to a dogmatic self-sufficiency, but encourages a self-reliance that supplies local needs as best as sustainably possible within the means of place. The real goal of a bioregion government is to mimic nature’s eternal movement towards a steady-state climax. The governance structure will encourage “the greatest amount of diversity along with the widest range and greatest number of population per species.” (Berg: 1977,7). The enemy of this process is global monoculture which would eventually have every person on earth eat the same food, use the same tools, support the same values, watch the same television, and be manipulated by the same expectations. The governance alternative that bio- regionalism provides is motivated by a classical anarchy:

based upon- a sense of interdependent self-reliance, the conviction that we as a community, or a tight small-scale federation of communities, can mind our own business and can make decisions regarding our individual and communal lives and gladly accept the responsibilities and consequences of those decisions. Further, by consolidating decision making at a local, face-to-face level without having to constantly push information through insane bureaucratic hierarchies, we can act more quickly in relation to natural systems and, since we live there, hopefully with more knowledge and care. (Dodge: 1981, 8)

With a decentralized and responsive bioregional governance structure in place the next most important reorganization would be on an economic level. In several bioregion related monographs the idea of economics being replaced by ”ecologies” is suggested. Being from the same root word, ecologies simply reorients the present rogue capitalism:

… toward bioregional sufficiency and maintenance of natural life-system continuities rather then profit. The change of goods and services within watershed­ s·cale communities would follow standards of bioregional worth rather than abstract market mechanisms. (Berg and Tukel: 1980,19)

Ecologies can be best understood as the process of retaining as much energy, fixed, fluid, or otherwise, within the bioregion. An aid in this understanding is modelling, as developed by Odum ( 1971), which can show how solar incomes are transferred through environment and society in what might be called the ultimate measure of wealth.

The final term that must be introduced is the societal animation implied in George Tukel’s bioregional model. Simply stated (if this is possible) such a model helps to transform many of the terms that have been introduced into a process. Nature knows her own figures-of-regulation but humans must learn theirs. To make this continuous learning as easy as possible, detailed resources inventories, which take into account constantly changing successional. conditions, are used to illuminate the carrying capacities of ecosystems. The overlap which exists between what is needed to sustain successional drive and what is ‘surplus’ for human harvest, is the arena of the bioregional model. Available harvest is identified and cropped by human societies in a way which both satisfies reinhabitant need and ideally acts to enhance the health of the area of harvest. This requires a thorough understanding of appropriate technology, or tools that deliver maximum energy, value and benefit with minimal bioregion dis- ruption. These tools of human activity are screened before use by asking the following questions:

• Are material cycles being closed? (e.g. composting)
• Is the total biomass of the watershed and bioregion increasing?
• Are decentralized pathways of multiple material and energy use being nurtured?
• Are plant and species diversity increasing?
• Is energy usage per person per year changing in the interests of flexibility?
• Are energy sources becoming more interwoven with local biological processes? (Tukel: 1982,17)

When the tools of man’s use are carefully judged, the next area of concern is the form of human settlement they will be used to support. The practice of planning is thus changed from the management of growth to the promotion of homeostasis. Within this balance, planning becomes the art of building diversity into settlement and society by using the stable resiliency of a natural climax state as a guide. A settlement with wind, water, and wood energy systems, which heats passive solar struc­ tures within which a flexible mix of commercial, residential, and industrial uses can be maintained, is approaching the bioregional planning ideal. Tools used to support a settlement pattern, determined by conscious planning, based on the carrying capacity of a bioregion, repeated in a continuous cycle, equals the bioregional model.

There are many other meanderings of bioregional literature. As a group of only 30 booklets and monographs, many self-published, they represent a diverse yet consistent body of thought. The ideas are rough, the vocabulary borrowed or new, and the intent is decidedly mischievous. The themes of living-as-nature, de­ centralization, self-reliance, flexible resiliency and local control for local benefit are extremely powerful. These ideas are all too often sterilized in academic classification. With a humorous wink and the motivation of those who know they’re on to a good idea the bioregionalists have let these ideas out of their separate cages. Together these ideas form a loose amalgamation of good intention which promises a present and future safety which is not contingent on war, environmental damage, or allegiance to anything but life itself.

With a working vocabulary of bioregionalism mastered, the reader is deserving of a less rigorous look at the doctrine’s evolution. What follows is a chronology of writing and gatherings which have coalesced the bioregional movement. This review will be limited to strictly bioregion writing except where some related work was so influential as to be ‘adopted’ as a bioregion text.

The immediate roots of bioregionalism are found in the systems approach to interrelated classification found in the study of ecology.  The man who seems to be universally cited as a bioregional precursor is Raymond Dasmann, a California based ecologist, who in the earl’y 1970’s worked with the Inter­ national Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

As part of his work, two 1973 monographs, Biotic Provinces of the World and A System for Defining and Classifying Natural Regions for Conservation, were published. For the first time, these monographs introduced a wide audience to the concept of naturally defined provinces. Dasmann’s colleague Miklos D.F. Udvardy amplified this idea, publishing the first popular graphic rendition of the earth’s natural biotic regions in 1975.

The notion of regions’ whose borders had nothing to do with ideology, or war, or boundary guards, appealed to the sen­sibilities of a rare generation. Raised in affluence and having the luxury of relative peace to plot dozens of utopias, several million western young adults came to the collective realization that the status quo was a mess. War was fought for economic reasons, not to preserve democracy. Freedom was a relative term dependent on race and income. Affluence for a few was obtained at a terrible cost to the environment and the great majority of humans. Organized religion had become a hollow excuse for spiritu­ality. There had to be a better way to guide man’s agency on the earth.

The individual who can be credited with being influenced by his time to the point of birthing the idea we are studying, is a man by the name of Alan Van Newkirk. Born as an American, and later adopting Canadian citizenship, Van Newkirk coined the word ‘bioregion’ in 1974. After two tentative outlines of a bioregional research project, Van Newkirk received an Explorations grant from the Canada Council in 1975 and proceeded to form the Institute for Bioregional Research. The original tenor of bioregional ideation was tied very closely with the discipline of biogeography. 

The linch-pin difference to the study of biomes and biotic provinces was Van Newkirk’s introduction of man as a clement of nature. By adding this important bipedal ingredient to the study of natural and damaged ecosystems he opens up the potential for man, “the culture-bearing mammal” to reintegrate his activities back into balance with nature (1975,3). Van Newkirk’s exploration of bioregionalism includes a call to map and understand natural regions and to promote cultural adaptations through the use of biotechnics, bioeconomics, and regional human biogeography. The accent of his scant written material is a quirky mix of scientism and 1960’s post-beat obscurity. The overall impression is of an individual with an intellectual vision which by its orientation, is somehow isolated from digestion by the ‘common man’. The Institute for Bioregional Research had a very short active life and Van Newkirk has not played a major part in bioregionalism’s evolution since 1977.

The bioregional ideas which Van Newkirk first proposed was a seed planted in fertile ground carefully prepared by several noteworthy predecessors. Other than the previously mentioned Dasmann and Udvardy, three additional authors can be credited with writing seminal bioregional texts. The first credit must go to Howard Odum who, in 1971, wrote Environment, Power, and Society. Odum eloquently introduces a graphic language called “energetics” that demonstrates the energy relationships between nature and man. Ecology meets general systems theory to create easily understandable diagrams that show how literally everything is related to everything. Academic obscurity is transcended by simple pictures which, 15 years after their first publication, still convey the powerful message of Jconn·ctedness’.

The second major work is a less well known 1972 monograph by Peter van Dresser titled A Landscape for Humans. It is ironic that what is arguably the best writing on bioregionalism is in a text which does not use the word. The topic of van Dresser’s work is the suggestion of a strategy for revitalizing the Uplands physiographic region of northern New Mexico. Perhaps, because of his residency in the region , his vision for the future of an obviously well-loved home area is extremely potent. In a non- romantic, yet impassioned style, he provides definitions of the region’s problems, an annotated review of public management efforts in the area, and finely detailed prescriptions for a restructured socioeconomic order. A Landscape for Humans is a very short work, 128 pages, yet it offers a staggering amount of basic bioregional thought. By way of example, the following “strategy of adaptation” is offered by van Dresser in the intro­duction to his exceptional book:

1.      There should occur a redistribution and regrouping of population, of means of production, and of patterns of trade in such a manner as facilitates greater local and regional self-sufficiency in the production of goods, services and amenities.

2.      As part of this regrouping, the smaller range of “urban places” (villages, towns and cities) must undergo a renaissance as vital functional elements in the economic and social order, and this should be accompanied by corresponding diminishment in the relative importance of major cities and metropolitan conglomera­ tions.

3.      An increasing proportion of our overall social effort should be diverted away from ubiqiiitouH mechanized commutation and massive mechanized transport and distribu­ tion, and towards the enrichment and diversification of localized production within efficient smaller communities, as the enlightened solution of the “logistic” problem.

4.      A type of production technology should be encouraged which is adapted to the utilization of renewable “flow resources” (vegetative growth, climate cycles and energies, etc.) on a small-scale, intensive, science-ski 11 and manpower-basis, rather than on a large scale, extensive machine-and-mechanical-energy-basis.

5.      There should be a correponding development of an ecologically grounded science of community design, adequate to guide the recolonization of vast semi­ abandoned and under-used provinces of the nation on a sustained-yield, symbiotic basis with the soil, climatic, and biotic regimes of such regions.

6.      Communication and education techniques should be developed such as will allow this organic type of population dispersion, renucleation, and regionalization to occur, while maintaining a high level of social and ecological awareness, and a degree of scientific and intellectual competence which will effectively counteract the dangers of parochialism and insularity. (xviii-xix)

The final seminal instigation is the classic Small is Beautiful, written by E.F. Shumacher in 1973. Continuing the approach of the two previous authors, Shumacher transcends the limitations of criticism and proposes a new and bioregionally oriented application of, in this case, economics. The simple message of Small is Beautiful hinges upon the fact that industry has treated its basic raw material, natural resources, as income rather than irreplaceable capital. This incorrect assumption has allowed technology and concomitant productive forces to deplete and pollute the natural capital of the ecosystems upon which they depend. Schumacher goes on to explain an alternate “technology with a human face” which promises to satisfy human need for challenge and diversity by using small-scale intermediate .technology and innovative organizational techniques of “buddhist economics”. The crucial man-nature link is reestablished by questioning purely materialist urges and proposing a practical society based more on human happiness than the quest for profit.

With the terminology and general orientation of bioregiona­lism set by Van Newkirk, and a rich intellectual environment provided by Odum, van Dresser, Schumacher and others, there was only one missing factor needed to popularize the concept into wider public knowledge and acceptance. A person, persons, or group, was needed to translate unfamiliar vocabulary and converging academic exclamation into something understandable, alive, and accessible. The animating element needed for this crucial leap was provided by Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft who by 1974 had, with others, formed the Planet Drum Foundation. From a background in the rich political/cultural soup of 1960’s San Francisco, Peter and Judy helped turn bioregional ideas from a limited intellectual understanding to a framework of perception and practice which would unite dozens of disparate reform movements. The energy needed to perform this most difficult task was that of a performer, a spellbinding salesman, and persistent organizer. Peter Berg’s intellect and personality include these abilities and he, more than any single person, has brought bio­ regionalism from obscurity to continental attention.

The Planet Drum Foundation grew slowly, with its bioregional message being spread by a loosely knit web of disciples. The original Planet Drum word was spread via ‘bundles’ which highlighted life and life-style of specific bioregions. Berg worked with Dasmann to add a political/economic platform to the identification and protection of bioregions. Linn (Freeman) House wrote eloquently on the importance of “totem salmon’ to west coast culture. Michael Helm used his magazine city Miner to interview Berg and develop the notion of a reinhabitant society in the Bay Area (Helm: 1977, 5-33). The Frisco Bay Mussel Group was formed to rediscover the original topography and life space of the San Francisco Bay area.

While this interaction and coalescence was occurring other bioregional texts were being published. In 1974 Rain Magazine hit newstands and became a highly regarded source of Northwest United States life-place knowledge (Ferrell: 1983, 5-9). In 1975 Ernest Callenbach’s classic utopian fiction Ecotopia was circulated. This spellbinding tale of how portions of California, Oregon and Washington secede from the United States, to form an ecologically based society, is both entertaining and supremely inspirational.

On the cultural front, Gary Snyder received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for his poems united under the title Turtle Island.

Snyder’s education as a philosopher, buddhist, writer and astute nuance observer had grown a literary style which linked poetic expression to perception of place. For the purpose of this thesis it is interesting to note that Snyder’s path towards bio­ regionalism was started as early as 1951, when he wrote He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth. This work is a sensitive analysis of how the Haida culture was linked in a sustainable relat onship with the Northwest environment through the gentle regulation of myth.

Another bioregional text was published in 1978 under the tit1e of Truck 18: Biogeographical Workbook( 1). This anthology of basically bioregional works lacks cohesion, but nonetheless is an important source of ideas from individuals such as Berg, Snyder, Rappaport, House and Gorsline.

The final relevant text of the period was The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry, published in 1977. Berry is an essayist in the finest meaning of the tradition. He writes on Americana, highlighting in this case how large-scale agriculture has indus­ trialized the farm cultures of the American heartland. He relates how specialization, “the damage from which all other damages issue” has separated man from production of food to create a malaise indicative of a wider societal sickness.

In 1977 the Planet Drum Foundation assumed a much higher profile by publishing Reinhabiting A Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California. This exploration of a unique Northern California culture began to show how bioregionalism cut across interest and discipline to provide a unifying concept through which the best in a regional culture could be understood. By 1979 Planet Drum had generated enough of a following to initiate a regular journal titled Raise The Stakes. This important periodical. has become the clearinghouse of bioregional thought and provides an essential forum for physically separated bioregion organizations. Raise The Stakes has acted as the catalyst by which a local movement was effectively spread worldwide. One result of Planet Drum’s activity was a 1979 conference convened in San Francisco under the banner “Listening To The Earth: A Bioregional Basis for Community Consciousness”. This event provided the first face-to-face meeting of nearly a thousand budding bioregionalists, and was highlighted both by Raymond Dasmann’s keynote speech, and a three-hour panel discussion between Berg, Snyder, Murry Bookchin and Ernest Callenbach.

The success of bioregionalism as an idea must be measured by how groups outside the San Francisco region have adopted the concept. In 1980 this critical transference was made when the Ozarks Area Community Congress (O.A.C.C.) held its first gathering. Motivated by a common perception of the unique Ozark bioregion, the O.A.C.C. began to act as an umbrella organization uniting reinhabitory homesteaders, businesses, artisans, communes, pioneers and environmental groups. Emerging as one among many Ozark bioregionalists was David Haenke who, with Berg, has become a sought after organizer and speaker.

Bioregionalism further expanded its vitality by recognizing regional cultural independence movements in Europe as allies. Monoculture homogenization, fed by the insatiable industrial revolution, has swallowed an incredible number of bioregion societies. Places such as Fryslan, Eesti, Gallega, Breizh, Sovoie, Cymru, and Samiaena, which fight this trend, were made real in Raise The Stakes and a 1980 Planet Drum book by Michael Zwerin, titled Devolutionary Notes. What the popular press characterized as quaint traditionalists or terrorists were, in fact, bioregion populations fighting to retain their identity. The autonomist movement, representing aboriginal, regional culture and reinhabitory groups on all but polar continents, was illuminated as a far greater world force than anyone had guessed. Zwerin observes that states, or artificial assemblages constructed by strokes of the sword, had conquered nations, or geographical units with a common history, language and mores (9). He suggests that ”nationism” is the movement of all bioregion populations to reassert their control over traditional territories.

With the success of the Planet Drum Foundation came works which either embraced bioregionalism’s intent, or started to express details of the doctrine’s practice. In the first category Kirkpatrick Sale in Human Scale writes at great length on how large-scale mechanisms in society, economics and politics, create a lose-lose situation for the future of humankind. His alternative is a smaller-scale approach to giantism based on wide-ranging prescriptions to reduce the size of political units, industrial production and general societal organization. Sale has, since the publication of Human Scale, been a member/director of the Schumacher Foundation, to which he presented an address titled Mother of All : An Introduction to Bioregionalism in 1984. Sale is the scholar of the bioregional movement and is single-handedly responsible for introducing academic rigor to the literature.

Also in 1980 Ernest Callenbach published a sequel to his earlier book, appropriately titled Ecotopia Emerging. In the same excellent fiction as Ecotopia this work shows how a bioregion could emerge from the chaos of west coast monoculture. Callenbach is a master at interspersing plot development with riveting discourses on bioregional thought. The last bioregional text issued in 1980 was The Real Work: Interviews and Talks 1964-1979 by Gary Snyder. This collection of interviews makes Snyder’s thoughts far more accessible than in his poems, and shows him to be a prescient bioregional progenitor. As Snyder summarizes:

Ezra Pound said, to quote an oft-quoted line, that artists are the antennae of the race. How that probably functions in practice is that some people’s sensibilities, as well as maybe their lifestyles, are out at the very edge of the unravelling cause-and -effect network of a society in time. And also are, by virtue of the nature of their sensibilities, tuned into other voices than simply the social or human voice. So they are like an early warning system that hears the trees and the air and the clouds and the watersheds beginning to groan and complain a little bit. (71)

In 1980 Planet Drum expanded its mandate further to publish a series of more detailed bioregional explanations. Renewable Energy and Bioregions : A Context For Public Policy was written by Berg and George Tukel for the relatively enlightened administration of California Governor Jerry Brown. In 1981 Reinhabiting Cities And Towns : Designing For Sustainability was presented as a joint effort of Tukel and John Todd, founder of the New Alchemy Institute. By 1982 Berg had written Figures of Regulation: Guides For Re-Balancing Society with The Biosphere followed shortly by Tukel who produced Toward A Bioregional Model: Clearing Ground for Watershed Planning. Each of these works develops the detailed vocabulary, process and technology of bioregional practice. In addition to the efforts of Planet Drum, Coevolution Quarterly and Fourth World News printed “bioregion” themed issues in 1981 and 1982 respectively. Coevolution Quarterly is the intellectual standard of the North American counter culture, and Fourth World News is a British/American organization advocating institution of principles set out by Schumacher and Sales.

Toward the mid-1980’s it became apparent that a bioregional constituency existed which would benefit from a formal North American continental gathering. David Haenke and a group of fellow Ozarkians were entrusted with the task of organizing a ‘Congress’, which was held near Kansas City, Missouri, May 21-25, 1984.  Attended by nearly three hundred delegates, the Congress proved beyond doubt that bioregionalism had a life far beyond its limited written expression. By Quaker rules of consensus eighteen Congress committees met separately to work out resolutions for presentation to plenary gatherings. At these convocations the full Congress heard, debated, and adopted indi victual committee resolutions. The result of this laborious and eloquent process is a unique North American Bioregional Congress Proceedings listing the results of shared consensus.   As befits a group concerned with literally all aspects of life-in-place, there was a dazzling array of resolutions made covering such topics as agriculture/permaculture, education, forestry, economics, water, Native peop1es , cu1ture/arts , comm uni ties , s piri tua1 ity and eco-defiance. By way of introduction to the general tone of the Congress, the following proclamation is included in its entirety:

WELCOME HOME!

A growing number of people are recognizing that in order to secure the clean air, water and food that we need to healthfully survive, we have to become guardians of the places where we live. People sense the loss in not knowing our neighbors and natural surroundings, and are discovering that the best way to take care of ourselves, and to get to know our neighbors, is to protect and restore our region.

• Bioregionalism recognizes, nurtures, sustains and celebrates our local connections with:
• Land
• Plants and animals
• Springs, rivers, lakes, groundwater and oceans
• Air
• Families, friends, neighbors Community
• Native traditions
• Indigenous systems of production and trade

It is taking the time to learn the possibilities of place. It is a mindfulness of local environment, history, and community aspirations that leads to a sustainable future. It relies on safe and renewable sources of food and energy. It ensures employment by supplying a rich diversity of services within the community, by recycling our resources, and by exchanging prudent surpluses with other regions. Bioregionalism is working to satisfy basic needs locally, such as education, health care, and self-governance.

The bioregional perspective recreates a widely­ shared sense of regional identity founded upon a renewed critical awareness of and respect for the integrity of our ecological communities.

People are joining with neighbors to discuss ways we can work together to:

1.  learn what our special local resources are

2.  plan how to best protect and use those natural and cultural resources

3.  exchange our time and energy to best meet our daily and long-term needs

4.   enrich our children’s local and planetary knowledge

Security begins by acting responsibility at home.

Welcome Home ! ( 13-14)

At the Congress several bioregional monographs were available, including the previously mentioned, Mother of All: An Introduction to Bioregionalism by Sale, and Ecological Politics by David Haenke. While Sale’s work can be likened to the philosophical scattergun approach of a Mumford, Haenke’s words highlight an important new divergence in the literature. The Ozarkian sensibility is. what can be likened somewhat to a stereotypical image of the American midwest. While Planet Drum exhibits a frisky experi- mentalist profile, Haenke is more the taciturn moralist. In Ecological .Politics he writes with a stern anger that, perhaps, will characterize the bioregional movement more in the future. The learning of how to perceive bioregions is Plant Drum’s forte. The teaching of practice of bioregionalism belongs more to the rural compatriots of Haenke who live on the frontiers of resource destruction. In perfect counterpart to the tone of the Congress, Haenke’s tract identifies “platforms” or “subsystems” of bioregional practice which begin to strengthen the concept into a p actical approach to sustainable culture. These detailed applications begin to look at the places of regenerative agriculture, appropriate technology, renewable resource stewardship, cooperative economics, ecologically based health policies, and land tenure in bioregional society.

The success of the Congress is hard to measure.  As an attendee the writer was struck by the huge diversity of alle­ giances that assemble under the bioregional banner. Great pains were taken o not alienate any person, or group, who had assumed the Congress was a forum for their particular ‘ism’. Diversity, the goal of natural ecosystems, may ultimately be a more difficult reality in the less predictable world of humans. The fact remains that most people are hard pressed to perceive whole systems, and are more comfortable with devotion to a single issue. This means that each component of the bioregion movement may be more interested in a wider audlence for their particular cause than in surrendering energy and identity to the wholism bioregionalism requires. The very heart of populist movements is a fickle constituency which is characterized more by emotional attachment to a cause than by long-term committment. Bioregionalism’s future is contingent on sustaining the sometimes difficult cooperation between divergent groups which was exhibited at the Congress. On a more mythic level the Congress did prove that a continental interest in bioregionalism exists. Word of the gathering spread widely and has inspired regional assembles, the most recent being in Bellingham, Washington in January, 1985. A dynamism exists about the bioregional concept that makes prediction of its growth as a large-scale movement difficult to guess. What is easier to ascertain is that many people, in many scattered places, are calling themselves reinhabitants. In bioregionalism’s case this dispersed invisibility may be just the supportive cover that fundamental societal change requires.

As of this writing, a final bioregional text had just been published which is worthy of being this discussion’s closing remarks. Deep Ecology by Deval and Sessions summarizes a significant emerging evolution in the ecology/bioregion movement. Ecological consciousness is at the center of both bioregional perception and practice. While this ethic has been adopted by a mainstream of North American culture (Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth), the practical result is basically lip-service based on fighting wrong development and proposing parks. A sub-culture exists which is very good at these tasks, but fails to evolve to the more daring duty of instigating societal change. Deep Ecology is the bearer of this bad news and proposes a much more rigorous approach to environmentalism. While there is a poetic and mystical side to this new perception, it also brings a call for greater and more active resistance (direct action) against monocultural institutions. This hard-edge is best hinted at by the basic principles listed by Sessions and Arne Nass, originator of the deep ecology idea:

1.  The well-being and nourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.

2.  Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3.  Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

4.  The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.

5.  Present human interference with a nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

6.  Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.

7.  The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.

8.  Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes (Deval and Sessions: 1985, 70)

Before proceeding it is necessary to briefly list contem­ porary texts which are peripheral, yet important, to the bioregional concept. Bioregionalism did not spring from an intellectual vacuum, but from an approach to viewing modern society and technology which has been cultivated for many years. The genre of writing which encompasses bioregional thought is best characterized by the works of Louis Mumford, Carl Sauer, Murry Bookchin and Theodore Roszak. Each of these men captured an aspect of the condept’s concern which contributed to its gestation and birth.

Mumford typifies the philosopher generalist who has never felt confined by the trap of specialization. The freedom which a cross-disciplinary review of society allows a disciplined mind is ev{dent in Mumford’s incredible body of work. Most important for this stu y are the ideas be captured in Technics and Civilization published in 1934. This book places man’s use of technology in a context of being a massive and recent redirection of human energy. History in Mumford’s hands provides insight into a society which nurtured humans for thousands of years, yet is now nearly completely obliterated by use of machines. His valuable contextual frameworks have helped thousands of searchers to see their concern in both regionalist and larger than current terms.

Carl Sauer represents the same philosopher-generalist who, unlike Mumford, focussed his area of interest specifically on the quality of human life in the physical environment. During and after his 34 year tenure at the University of California at Berkeley, Saur developed a geography ba8ed on sympathy for indigenous ‘homefolk’ and a keen understanding of ecologically defined ‘connectedness’ (Leighly: 1969). This approach to observation lead Sauer to organize the seminal 1955 Symposium titled “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth”. The written result of Sauer’s participation is the essential ”The Agency of Man on the Earth”, which can be considered as an original accessible environmental text (Sauer: 1956, 49-69).

Murry Bookchin, yet another generalist thinker, represents the political side of bioregionalism’s progenitor writing. Bookchin spent the greater part of his life evolving through various communist, marxist, and anarchist movements._ From this experience he came to adopt a self-devised concept of ‘social ecology’ which essentially is a deep ecology manifesto: environ-

mentalism with teeth. Bookchin’s unrepentant politicism has until recently isolated him from widespread readership, a fact which has obscured his early (pre-Rachel Carson) observance of environmental damage and alternative prescription. One of his most recent works, The Ecology of Freedom, is an excellent companion text to any bioregional lib. ary.

Theodore Roszak is an author who perhaps more than any other has observed a subtle but fundamental reorientation of North American society. In an extraordinary series of books (The Making of a Counter Culture, Where the Wasteland Erids, Unfinished Animal, Person Planet), Roszak moves from being a mere social critic to an interpreter of a re-emergent new spiritual­ ism. In what he labels an “ecology of t’.1e spirit” Roszak observes how “material simplicity and visionary abundance” may lead to a security with, rather than over, the natural world.

There are many other authors whose contributions to bio­ regionalism’s gestation should be understood. Paul Goodman writes forcefully about the need for utopian alternatives in Like A Conquered Province (1965). The Whole Earth Catalog offered the first single source guide to reinhabitory books and tools (1968). Buckminster Fuller provided a mechanistic, but nonetheless whole, view of the earth as a system in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969). Ian McHarg champions environmental determinism in Design With Nature ( 1969). Paul Meadows and the Club of Rome gave the first overall diagnosis of the earth’s declining ability to support industrial society in Limits To Growth (1972). Ivan IIich explores the use of technology within conscious limits, which would empower individuals and small communities, i Tools for Conviviality (1973). Yi-Fu Tuan provides a brilliant introduction to the study of environment perception, attitudes and values in Topophilia (1974). Christopher Alexander and his colleagues show how architecture car become an expression of need and place in A Pattern Language (1977). In 1979 J.E. Lovelock presented Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth which boldly states that the earth is an organism whose purpose is the sustaining of life.

There are others, many others, who could be added to this list. They are from all disciplines and share a systems approach to knowledge which does not limit the search for larger truths. With the physical earth charted, these individuals have become pioneers in an intellectual migration. Their goal is simply to find a way that will guide humanity from a destructive path to a future based on only a small part of our collective capacity for good.

by Douglas Aberley and from his thesis: Bioregionalism, A Territorial Approach to Governance and Development of Northwest British Columbia by Doug Abereley at the University of British Columbia in 1985.

Douglas Aberley taught bioregional planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. From 1991 to 1994 he was a doctoral student at the Edinburgh School of Planning and Housing. He is the editor of Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment (1993) and Futures by Design: The Practice of Ecological Planning (1994).