Bioregionalism

Bioregion denotes the conflux of cultural and ecogeographical features in human-defined territories. Bioregionalism has been promoted by geographers as a pragmatic research framework for understanding, and discovering solutions to problems within human-ecological relations. In many regards, bioregionalism is a comfortable fit for a discipline long concerned with the human place in larger ecological systems. Bioregional thought has a strong normative character, rooted in the North American environmental social movements of the 1970s. Essentially interdisciplinary, bioregional thought views communities of land and life as overlapping and internested. As a political philosophy, it proposes that political units need to be defined according to this combination of features and that decisions would be more socioeconomically and ecologically sustainable if they were taken at smaller, local levels than is the case in the present state-centric model. At the ethical level, it stresses attention to the human place within, and responsibility toward, the natural world.

The interdisciplinary nature of bioregional theory renders it suitable for addressing the complex challenges of developing sustainability. Indeed, bioregional approaches have spanned ecological science, conservation biology, social theory, geography, ethics, and political philosophy.

Criticism of bioregionalism has focused on its alleged lack of theoretical rigor, romanticism, or an unduly restrictive conception of place. Taking a holistic stance drawn implicitly from the epistemological insights of poststructuralism, bioregional scholars respond that all regions are continuous with one another; that no portion of territory on Earth is entirely discrete from the next. According to this view, global ecology, like landforms, is characterized by continuities and transitions. Similarly, there is constant cultural and economic continuity and exchange between both adjacent and (ostensibly) geographically separated human communities, all of which are simultaneously embedded in greater natural systems. The task of bioregionalists is to highlight the intensities within this continuity on which human politics may be based and ecology depends.

The following are some bioregional axioms:

• The cumulative impacts of industrial civilization on the biosphere are rolling back many of Earth's evolutionary achievements of the past several million years.
• The territorial assumptions inherent to the global industrial political system must be radically reformed.
• Decentralization to smaller units defined by a combination of ecogeographical and cultural factors is essential.
• Human politics must emphasize a commitment to place in order to promote the healthy human-environment interactions that are the foundation of healthy communities.
• Humans bear ethical responsibility toward the nonhuman world.