To live into the story of Bioregional Earth, you need to be like a tree – stay grounded, keep growing. And it's in the roots, not the branches, that a tree's greatest strength lies. Yet we usually don't see the roots. They are the history of the tree, they nourish the tree. In the same way, the roots of the story of Bioregional Earth nourish and keep it grounded in what really matters.
The roots of influence that ground the story of Bioregional Earth include Indigenous Lifeways, Bioregionalism, Earth System Science, Prosocial and the Earth Charter.
Indigenous Lifeways
From an Indigenous perspective, the essence of the story of Bioregional Earth is being in right relationship (with self, others, the land) within Natural Law for a good life.
Real relationship requires time, care, respect. We continue to build many relationships with Indigenous peoples in bioregions around the planet.
Joe Brewer has learned from Indigenous peoples in his bioregional regeneration work in Colombia. He also had an opportunity to meet and talk with Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Council of Chiefs, Haudenosaunee. With Susan Bosak and Brian Puppa in the Greater Tkaronto Bioregion, Joe is working with Dr. Dan Longboat, Associate Professor at Trent University and co-founder of the Indigenous Environmental Institute, which blends Indigenous knowledge and Western science. Joe and Dan recorded a powerful conversation on Finding a Third Way.
Some Western thinkers have lamented that Earth didn't come with operating instructions. Indigenous Elders would disagree, drawing on thousands of years of wisdom and teachings. Resources we've found particularly valuable include Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future edited by Melissa K. Nelson; Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change by Sherri Mitchell; and Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking by Tyson Yunkaporta.
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a perspective, a way of looking at your place in the larger context of the planet.
We tend to think in terms of the geography of cities and countries, based on human-created boundaries. But the Earth has its own boundaries, made by mountain ranges and watersheds. Local geology, ecology, and culture define any given bioregion – an understandable scale at which we can be more aware of and live into the interrelatedness of all life around us.
The prefix bio comes from the Greek, meaning "life." Environmental writer and bioregional thinker Peter Berg described a bioregion as your "life place" – the place in which you live your life and which gives you life.
In an introduction to bioregionalism, Berg wrote, "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."
In a 1998 interview, Berg explored the usefulness of a bioregional approach:
The bioregional idea at first seems to be a nature or outdoors-oriented view. In fact, it is a fairly profound philosophical perspective because it addresses basic civilization questions: who am I, what I am, and what am I going to do? In the context of the biosphere, a person as a member of the human species interacting with other species is a fundamental premise of bioregionalism…
Bioregionalism is proactive. It is carrying the concept of a life-place into the activities and goals of human society, as opposed to protest. Environmentalism has been a protest-oriented activity based on attempting to deal with a destructive industrial society. I believe the environmental movement is over… A lot of old-line environmentalists have felt assailed by the deep-ecology, bioregional, whole-systems perspective because single-issue environmentalism was a way to get through the day…
I look for a meta-level of bioregional identification: the bioregion is my window on the planetary biosphere and the means for participating in it. So, yes, this stream that comes through the area that I'm standing in is unique to this place, but that water is joining up with the water of the whole biosphere by mingling with other watersheds, by going to the ocean, through evaporating as clouds and coming back as rain. Just the idea that every molecule of water on the planet has been used and reused again and again is a marvelous cosmos-establishing experience.
Other pioneering Western bioregional thinkers include Raymond Dasmann, Allen Van Newkirk, Kirkpatrick Sale, and David Haenke. Find out more by reading about the history of bioregionalism and exploring material from the Planet Drum Foundation.
A bioregional vision also emerged from the work of systems scientist Donella Meadows, lead author of The Limits to Growth.
Following on the book were ten years of meetings in the 1980s of some of the best minds in the world. They called themselves the Balaton Group, named for the lake in Hungary where they held their first meeting. The Balaton Group explored the big question of how humans could live sustainably on the planet. Their answer took the form of a vision of a bioregional approach with centers "where information and models about resources and the environment are housed."
Donella Meadows wrote about the idea of Bioregional Learning Centers:
There needs to be many of these centers, all over the world, each one responsible for a discrete bioregion…
They would contain people with excellent minds and tools, but they would not be walled off, as scientific centers so often are, either from the lives of ordinary people or from the realities of political processes. The people in these centers would be at home with farmers, miners, planners, and heads of state and they would be able to both listen to and talk to all of them…
The centers collect, make sense of, and disseminate information about the resources of their bioregions, and about the welfare of the people and of the ecosystems. They are partly data repositories, partly publishing and broadcasting and teaching centers, partly experiment stations and extension agents. They know about the latest technologies, and the traditional ones, and about which ones work best under what conditions…
They are able to see things as a whole, to look at long-term consequences, and to tell the truth. They are also able to perceive and admit freely where the boundaries of the state of knowledge are and what is not known. Above all, the job of these centers is to hold clear and true the context, the values, the ways of thinking, through which all development plans and resource management schemes proceed.
Wraps up Meadows, "This will take years, but [the centers] have the potential to transform the way people all over the world think about [where they live] and their options."
Bioregional Learning Centers are now being created around the planet, like in the Greater Tkaronto Bioregion and South Devon, UK.
Earth System Science
Look closely at this image of Earth from space. Feel the wholeness of it.
The planet isn't divided into countries or other parts. For example, it's commonly thought there are five oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern (Antarctic). But technically speaking, there's only one ocean, a vast body of water that covers 71% of the Earth. All the "oceans" are connected by a continuous circulation of currents around the world, creating one single continuous body of water – a global ocean.
Understanding the planet as a whole is vital to forging a pathway to navigate through the global changes that are coming. As Joe Brewer explores in his book The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth, if we can regenerate at the bioregional scale AND simultaneously organize bioregions into a planetary network of learning exchanges between landscapes, then we can regenerate the entire Earth. We can affect the holistic planetary systems that "make the world go round." This takes us to the level of Earth system science.
One way of understanding the Earth as a whole is the Planetary Boundaries framework, first introduced in 2009. The idea was to define the environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate.
From global warming to the biosphere and deforestation, from pollutants and plastic to nitrogen cycles and freshwater: six of nine planetary boundaries are currently being crossed, while simultaneously pressure in all boundary processes is increasing.
Planetary Boundaries help scientists track and communicate how these rising pressures are destabilizing our planet. "We can think of Earth as a human body, and the planetary boundaries as blood pressure. Over 120/80 does not indicate a certain heart attack but it does raise the risk and, therefore, we work to reduce blood pressure." says Stockholm Resilience Centre researcher and co-author Johan Rockström.
The Planetary Boundaries clearly show us that the patient, the living Earth, is unwell as vital boundaries are breached. "We don't know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm."
Planetary Boundaries underline the tight and complex links between people and planet. It's clear that we need more systemic efforts to protect and regenerate the Earth.
Another useful whole-Earth analysis is tipping points. As the planet gets hotter, the Earth is undergoing large-scale changes: ice sheets are shrinking, sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying off. The cumulative impact of these changes could lead to "tipping points" and irreversible consequences.
Climate tipping points are elements of the Earth systems in which small changes can kick off reinforcing loops that "tip" a system from one stable state into a profoundly different state.
For example, a rise in global temperatures can, over time, trigger a change like a rainforest becoming a dry savannah. This change is propelled by self-perpetuating feedback loops, even if what was driving the change in the system stops. The system (in this case the forest) may remain "tipped" even if the global temperature falls below a given threshold again.
On top of that, the crossing of one tipping point could lead to the triggering of other tipping elements – unleashing a domino-effect chain reaction that could lead to some places on Earth becoming unable to sustain human and natural systems.
Climate tipping points are closer than scientists first thought.
As shown in the image above, tipping points exist in a range of systems – in the cryosphere, within ocean currents, and in terrestrial systems. The tipping points in the cryosphere include: Greenland ice sheet disintegration; West Antarctic ice sheet disintegration; East Antarctic ice sheet disintegration; Arctic sea ice decline, retreat of mountain glaciers, permafrost thaw. The tipping points for ocean current changes include: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC); North Subpolar Gyre; Southern Ocean overturning circulation. The tipping points in terrestrial systems include: Amazon rainforest dieback; Boreal forest biome shift; Sahel greening; vulnerable stores of tropical peat carbon.
Says climate scientist James Hansen, "Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the entire climate is out of humanity's control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean, there's nothing we can do about that."
Prosocial
Each local area needs to come to understand itself as a bioregion. But no bioregion is an island, not even the islands. The only way Earth regeneration can happen is if bioregions around the world meaningfully connect to learn from and with each other. In other words, we need unprecedented collaboration as bioregions evolve into tightly interwoven and supportive relationships.
The Nobel Prize-winning work of Elinor Ostrom looks at commons governance. The portrait of human nature that emerges is that of a species fundamentally self-interested, incorrigibly social, and perfectly capable – under the right conditions – of rational, bottom-up stewardship of commonly owned resources.
These are the eight Core Design Principles that are needed by most groups whose members must work together to achieve common goals:
1. Strong group identity and understanding of purpose.
2. Fair distribution of costs and benefits.
3. Fair and inclusive decision-making.
4. Monitoring agreed-upon behaviors.
5. Graduated sanctions for misbehaviors.
6. Fast and fair conflict resolution.
7. Authority to self-govern.
8. Appropriate relations with other groups.
Find out more at Prosocial World, which highlighted a case study of Barichara, Colombia written by Joe Brewer.
Earth Charter
The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental ethical principles for the planet. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the wellbeing of the whole human family, all other life on Earth, and future generations.
The Earth Charter is a product of a multiyear, worldwide, cross-cultural dialogue on common goals and shared values. In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a call for creation of a new charter that would set forth fundamental principles for sustainable development. The drafting of the Earth Charter involved the most open and participatory consultation process ever conducted in connection with an international document. Thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations from all regions of the world, different cultures, and diverse sectors of society participated. After years of consultation, the Earth Charter launched in June, 2000.
Here are some excerpts from the Earth Charter:
We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future…
It is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations…
The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living. We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more. We have the knowledge and technology to provide for all and to reduce our impacts on the environment. The emergence of a global civil society is creating new opportunities to build a democratic and humane world. Our environmental, economic, political, social, and spiritual challenges are interconnected, and together we can forge an inclusive way forward…
Everyone shares responsibility for the present and future wellbeing of the human family and the larger living world. The spirit of human solidarity and kinship with all life is strengthened when we live with reverence for the mystery of being, gratitude for the gift of life, and humility regarding the human place in nature…
Transmit to future generations values, traditions, and institutions that support the long-term flourishing of Earth's human and ecological communities. Recognize that peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part…
Life often involves tensions between important values. This can mean difficult choices. However, we must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom with the common good, short-term objectives with long-term goals. Every individual, family, organization, and community has a vital role to play.
Read the full text of the Earth Charter.
Indigenous Lifeways, Bioregionalism, Earth System Science, Prosocial and the Earth Charter are the roots of influence that ground the emerging story of Bioregional Earth. It's also very much transdisciplinary work that weaves together many strands – cognitive and behavorial sciences, sociology, cultural evolution, ecology, regenerative economics, collective healing, systems theory, and more.
Bioregional Earth is a story of stories.