The Department of Bioregion was honored to be featured in a new article by Laurie Debove printed on August 10th 2022in the French publication Succession and to be included in the book “Generations”. Read the full article and in the original French here: https://lareleveetlapeste.fr/les-bioregions-une-geographie-alternative-pour-un-repeuplement-des-campagnes-plus-vertueux/
A bioregion must allow both “subsistence” autonomy and “governance” autonomy of human populations through the pooling of land and an attachment to the environment to be cultivated.
Faced with the failure of the administrative division of territories and our energy-intensive urban societies, a movement is proposing another way of inhabiting the world through the creation of bioregions. A radical alternative to metropolisation, the bioregion is defined by the ecological limits of a territory to allow the deconcentration of settlements, the relocation of certain activities, the decentralization of powers and the decrease of all human exploitation. A call has been launched to invite all people of good will to join the movement and swell the ranks of the 10 bioregions being designed.
The bioregion, an ecological territorial division
Founded in the 1970s under the pen of the eco-anarchist Peter Berg after his meeting with the ecologist Raymond Dasmann, the concept of bioregion is an alternative to the metropolis, which consumes too much energy and resources. It has returned to the forefront, from the worlds of research to the professions of territorial action, faced with the vulnerability of our urban societies which are exploding planetary limits.
It is in the reference work on the subject, Dwellers in the land by Kirkpatrick Sale, that we find a more precise definition. The bioregion is “a territory of life, a place defined by its forms of life, its topographies and its biota rather than by human dictates; a region governed by nature and not by human legislation” (trans. Rollot and Weil in 2020 under the title The art of inhabiting the Earth )
The founding work of bioregionalism: Reinhabiting a Separate Country in which is found the most accomplished version of the founding text by Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, published by the Planet Drum Foundation in 1978
One could therefore think that the use of this term by our French institutions would allow progress in the reorganization of our modes of production and consumption, but the members of the ecological society of the post-urban warn us:
“Our institutions, mimetically organized like the capital economy, have not remained orphaned by proposals around lived areas of life, and could suggest that the fold has already been taken. The problem is that these perimeters are functional, drawn overhanging. The terroir has become a marketing object rather than the essence of what it was, so the bioregion has been removed by the institutions but emptied of its substance, as in Gironde" denounces Guillaume Faburel, teacher-researcher and author of "Les Barbarian metropolises. De-globalize the city, de-urbanize the land”, and “To put an end to the big cities”, with La Relève and La Peste
Members of the Post-Urban Ecological Society movement
Between 2012 and 2015, the first official bioregional initiative in France was carried out in Gironde. In the end, this strategy will only have enabled the institutions involved to economically enhance the Aquitaine “natural heritage” through the development of infrastructures and tourism, far from participating in the resilience or the autonomy of the populations.
“The very essence of the bioregion is eco-anarchist, anti-speciesist and above all biocentric. It's a completely different way of inhabiting the Earth, more connected, more anchored, at the heart of the Living, more respectful of the other inhabitants of our planet and of the fragile ecosystem balances. The bioregion is at the antipodes of the concrete, totally artificial decorations of our urban and metropolitan environments which have cut us off from the Living and are directly at the origin of the ecological catastrophe. " says Jean-Christophe Anna, Co-founder of the NGO L'Archipel du Vivant involved in the post-urban ecological society , in La Relève and La Peste
To delimit a bioregion, the question of ecosystems plays a decisive role and serves as a crucible (and not as inert support spaces).
Sovereignty over a bioregional space is rethought, in particular around the communalization of agricultural land, forests, rivers, lakes, groundwater, etc., the use of which is recovered on the scale of small living entities. The aim is to achieve a reduction in anthropogenic pressures, achievable by an ecological symbiosis resulting from taking into account all forms of life.
Living in symbiosis with its territory
A bioregion is not necessarily synonymous with a small territory. The most successful bioregion experiment, to date, is in the Cascade Range and is named Cascadia . It was first named in 1970 by sociologist and ecologist David McCloskey, then a professor at Seattle University.
The Cascadia bioregion extends over 4000 km along the northwest coast of the United States and Canada. It includes British Columbia, the states of Washington and Oregon but its cartography is not fixed. It is home to just over 15 million inhabitants who have developed a certain social unity and are defending their region against major destructive development projects, such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, which they managed to cancel .
“The Cascadia constitutes a bioregion insofar as it shelters homogeneous fauna, flora, topography and geology, which form a specific ecosystem. In addition to this ecological unity, there is a strong cultural identity in Cascadia, where a number of residents consider themselves primarily "Cascadian". Various events and symbols reinforce this feeling of belonging to the same bioregion. We can mention the Cascadia Cup (football championship), the Cascadia Dark Ale (local beer), the Cascadia Poetry Festival or even Cascadia Day and the Cascadian Flag (flag with an Oregon pine tree)” writes Julie Celnik , geographer and PhD student at the CEMOTEV laboratory of Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (UVSQ)
Cascadia football team and flag – Credit: Cascadia Department of Bioregion
“The bioregion is also a great opportunity to finally establish true democracy. At L'Archipel du Vivant, our two main sources of inspiration are Rojava in Syria and Chiapas. At the entrance to this Mexican territory within the state of the same name, signs clearly display the color: “Here the people govern and the government obeys! “” explains Jean-Christophe Anna for La Relève and La Peste
A bioregion must allow both “subsistence” autonomy and “governance” autonomy of human populations through the pooling of land and an attachment to the environment to be cultivated. Concretely, the call to create bioregions specifies that:
"In the end, related to the person, and first in groups of 2 or 3 dozen gathered in hamlets, approximately 4,300 m2 are needed per person, including 3,200 m2 of wood (forest) per person and 400 to 600 m2 of crop gardens (including a cereal section)”. This calculation also includes the needs for small tools and travel.
“This calculation was made by crossing mostly official data on diets and the necessary conversion of land areas. It's about rethinking lifestyles that considerably revisit our Western needs by dividing them by 4 or 6, to go from consumption to production. This 4300m 2 draws a perimeter of 30km for 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants. Converted or multiplied by the number of inhabitants in France; we reach 50% of the hexagonal surface anthropized, but we are already there” explains Guillaume Faburel, teacher-researcher, at La Relève and La Peste
One of the determining criteria: the way of moving. The whole goal of the bioregion is to do without fossil fuels, directly impacting the modes of transport which must become softer again with walking, cycling, horse-drawn carriages and public transport. And above all: re-escape our societies.
As utopian as it may seem, this idea is spreading all over the world. As part of the Post-Urban Ecological Society (of the network of territorialists), Guillaume Faburel coordinates the movement of bioregions so that people of good will do not leave with their suitcases without asking fundamental questions and "without abandoning anyone to the concrete hell, especially the working classes” .
France divided according to its natural regions
An international movement
Currently, there are about ten bioregions being designed all over the world, beyond Cascadia. In France, they are located in the Bassin de Thau, Belle-île en Mer, the Cévennes ( the Long Valley collective ), Macônnais, the Périgord Vert, the Drôme Valley, or the Vésubie Valley. But there are also in Brazil, Quebec, Poland, Spain.
“At best, the bioregion will bring together the very eclectic initiatives existing in the territories, often already places of historical effervescence which some have been able to use the term. We proceed to a census and cross-referencing of experiences of food and food production, a reflection on urban exodus because many young people are already returning or aspire to come to the countryside. Brazil is getting organized thanks to schoolchildren around the most fragile and precarious people, whom they connect and carry through land recovery. They have organized themselves collectively to support groups or families who would like to leave the cities,” explains Guillaume Faburel for La Relève and La Peste
To anticipate the urban exodus, the NGO Rizomar has been established since June 2020 in the countryside, in the Serra da Mantiqueira region, a mountainous formation in southeastern Brazil. The location is strategic, in the geographical middle of the triangle of the three largest cities in the country, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, about 5 hours drive from each.
Movement born 2 years ago and bringing together some thirty organizations, the movement for a post-urban ecological society links these initiatives and has launched a Call for the creation of post-urban bioregions , "intended for any person or collective wishing to think and design its ecological living environment in a sustainable way” . All these initiatives will be presented and discussed during the Post-Urban Bioregions Seminar on September 14, 15 and 16 in Villarceaux, France.
“The principle of bioregion makes it possible to support the urban exodus that we observe today. It is part of a process of individual empowerment, empowerment and anticipation of the shocks we are already experiencing and those to come. Creating bioregions is a way of anticipating these shocks in order to best accommodate future climatic and urban migrations, ” explains Jean-Christophe Anna for La Relève and La Peste.
Knowing how to grow your food is the first step towards autonomy
The use of the term post-urban often refers to the imagination of a collapsed society, with an individual evolving alone in the middle of a city in ruins. The question then arises of what to do with the techno-industrial heritage present in the territories.
“Even within the collective, not everyone is yet in agreement on the size of the city, which is becoming problematic. We see the world through the city, it is the modern civilizational epic of the human who will live in the city. Two lines stand out, however: first, those who believe they can reclaim the infrastructures and systems created in other climatic regimes, but these polluting mega-machines will have to be reduced. We already have the examples of Cleveland, Bogota, or Havana. The other point of view, which I share as a researcher, is that rather than fragmenting from within, we should now radically dismantle, find other uses, recycle, reallocate, reuse reinforced concrete and asphalt that will have been broken.details Guillaume Faburel, Coordinator of the movement for a post-urban ecological society, for La Relève and La Peste
“Today we have 20% of cities which are in phases of decline with 10% of cities losing population. Cities also die, necropolises exist, cities in history have also experienced phases of shrinkage. We must not be afraid of it, we confuse the poison and the remedy. Urban worlds have made us dependent, bioregional worlds want to make us autonomous” he concludes
The Department of Bioregion was honored to be featured in a new article by Laurie Debove printed on August 10th 2022in the French publication Succession and to be included in the book “Generations”. Read the full article and in the original French here: https://lareleveetlapeste.fr/les-bioregions-une-geographie-alternative-pour-un-repeuplement-des-campagnes-plus-vertueux/
