#Seed020: A Bioregional Approach to Community
Bioregions and why they matter to people and places
A few months ago, I wrote about small-scale economics. I argued that households originally served as the bedrock of communities. This becomes even more evident as global markets collapse, and food and housing costs skyrocket. It’s no coincidence that in times of crisis, we see populist and nativist movements on the rise. On the one hand, these movements tend to demonize certain groups of people. On the other hand, these movements stem from a desire to reclaim local sovereignty from the intruding forces of globalism.
We’ve often heard about the idea of the global village. But we forget (or ignore) that Marshall McLuhan, the man who coined the term, wasn’t imagining a kumbaya-type of world. He wrote that the “new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” The key word here is image. We perceive an image that we are globally connected, but we aren’t. This so-called village doesn’t give any of the benefits of living in one. Neighbours are consistently more isolated from one another, and local businesses are annihilated by global super-corporations. We may think we’re connected, but the image has replaced the real thing.
This is why I argue that we need a physical approach to community development and engagement. By physical, I mean an approach based on proximity, relevance, and touch. That said, we live in a globalized world, so there is still room for global engagement, networking, capacity development, and the sharing of best practices. But we need to recognize that places matter. In other words, land, water, soil, weather patterns, food, culture, arts, spirituality, and language are just some of the phenomena that are deeply intertwined in a particular place. And that particular place could be thought of as a bioregion.
Bioregions
According to One Earth, a “bioregion is a geographical area defined not by political boundaries but by ecological systems. It is smaller in scale than a biogeographical realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem.” There are 185 bioregions. Each bioregion is made up of smaller ecoregions. For example, I am located in the Eastern Canadian Temperate-Boreal Forest Transition ecoregion of the Northern Great Lakes Forests bioregion. You can explore the Bioregion Navigator to learn more about your bioregion. Bioregions, and more specifically ecoregions, will tell us about the unique features of a particular landscape. It defines what we mean by local, not through political man-made boundaries but rather the God-given boundaries of our natural geography.
With the pretext of a global village, familiarity with the land around us is important. That familiarity will help us better understand growing seasons and food culture, efficient energy uses, disaster mitigation, natural resources, and appropriate use of technology. All of these can inform how we can take a local approach to building physical and social infrastructure. Whether we are reflecting on ways to insulate a home or ways to celebrate a harvest, places impact how we interact with the world around us. More importantly, it turns our concerns to the well-being of the creatures around us. It takes us away from the paralysis we may get from apocalyptic news, and turns our awareness to the places we love.
Unfortunately, defining the places we love has proven to be challenging. Nationalism was a modern attempt that sought to unite people based on a common language, culture, and land. But at its extreme, leads to a disdain of others. We are taught that the Prophet Muhammad said, “the love of one’s land (waṭana) is a part of faith,” may God continue to nourish his soul and our connection to him. Waṭana is often translated as country or homeland, and has been used to justify nationalist movements throughout the Muslim world. But the word is etymologically linked to the idea of residing and settlement. It is linked to the place in which one dwells rather than the idea of a nation. In other words, I’d argue that it’s linked to the bioregion.
Land-based Communities
In an earlier piece, I wrote about the question of scale; “as groupings of people become increasingly complex, people tend towards polarization and violence.” Unfortunately, this polarization and violence prevails in our political discussion and debates. We claim to share a common place, but our cosmopolitan cities and nations are actually filled with strangers. The big questions of our time become polarizing. Sex education, climate change, war, jobs, and housing are just some of the topics that make up “big news.” If we don’t take a community approach to these important issues, our discussions around these topics become apocalyptic. Compromise is lost when your political opponent is an enemy not a neighbour. Wendell Berry pinpointed this exact issue. Discussing climate change, he wrote,
“Climate change, supposedly, is recent. It is apocalyptic, ‘big news,’ and the certified smart people all are talking about it, thinking about it, getting ready to deal with it in the future.
Land abuse, by contrast, is ancient as well as contemporary. There is nothing futurological about it. It has been happening a long time, it is still happening, and it is getting worse. Most people have not heard of it. Most people would not know it if they saw it.”
We hear about climate change all the time and the polarizing debates that surround it. But we know almost nothing about the degradation of soils, rivers, and forests. The irony is that land abuse isn’t debatable, it either happens or it doesn’t. A bioregional approach to community development turns the gaze away from “big news” and back to the land. Communities become educated on the health of soil and water, and begin to care about their communities. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold calls this the land ethic: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” We can easily change “land” to “creation.” Love and respect is the product of belonging. Bioregions help us understand what we belong to every day.
Drawing Inspiration
Every week, I share books, podcasts, films, and other resources that will support your journey as a community designer and facilitator.
Books
Given that I often mention Wendell Berry on The Sufi Gardener, I think it’s worth sharing his most recently published book, The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice. At the dusk of his life, Wendell Berry pens a profound work that looks at the history of race in America. Interestingly, the book hasn’t been received with as much acclaim as The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (which should be read by anyone who likes The Sufi Gardener). Perhaps the political climate doesn’t give space for a white Kentuckian man to write about race. Nevertheless, Berry pinpoints the issues of race as an issue of local economics and land. An idea that should be more commonplace than it actually is.
What a wonderfully written post!