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BIOREGIONALISM:
BUILDING A LOCAL SUSTAINABLE CULTURE
,.,
,
Joseph A. Jacobson
An essay submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Masters of Environmental Studies
The Evergreen State College
June 1992
This Essay for the
Master of Environmental Studies Program
by
Joseph A. Jacobson
has been approved for
The Evergreen State College
by
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Abstract
Bioregionalism:
Building a Local Sustainable Culture
Western civilized culture is a sinking ship, fouled
with political and economic holes in its very foundation.
It is time to bail out of the present paradigm, recognize
its flawed characteristics, and jump aboard the life
rafts of a new paradigm.
Though the life rafts are
small, there are enough of them, and they will carry the
passengers to safety.
Similarly, it is time to abandon
global-scale world politics, while working to restore
local culture based on ecological principles.
Our globalizing economy is about to founder under
the weight of its own ballasted bureaucracy, its shell
leaking like a sieve.
Without reprieve, more holes are
constantly being punched in the fragile hull of life
support systems, ranging from the ozone layer to the loss
of microbial life in the soil.
We can continue to
attempt to patch the holes, or we can decommission this
tired and sinking ship before it crashes at the bottom of
the ocean.
The human race is in a similar plight now as
powers of corporations and bureaucracies seem to be
assuring the crew that by patching the damages, all will
improve, and the human race will survive.
Analogies like this, however, are tenuous rationale
for proving one's point: in almost every case, the
analogy can be re-interpreted through other values.
stalemate is the result.
A
It is better to attempt to
provide empirical evidence, such as the number of pounds
of soil loss to produce a pound of a crop, or the area of
rainforest that is lost every day, or the disparity in
income between the wage owner and the CEO, or finally, to
count the number of people who starve because of
inequities of distribution of land and its resources.
The list of atrocities can go on and on, but we are all
familiar with them by now.
What can be done with this
mind-boggling complexity of huge, global chaos being
orchestrated by elite power groups?
Bigness.
Bigness of polity, economy, and society.
These are the roots of the problem.
And until these are
addressed, there is little chance that bandages will keep
the ship from sinking.
Bigness silences the voices of
common people, while it creates artificial and sanitized
needs for abstract economic theories.
It accomplishes
this by accumulating power centripetally to itself,
robbing people and land of their power.
The process of change, for saving this sinking ship
of humanity, or redesigning the ship, requires no new
special knowledge nor superhuman ethical beings.
Rather,
it is observance to small scale that will help us
remember our distant past, how our ancestors lived and
evolved into us.
This remembering resides deep in the
muscle-memories of all of us, but it takes a special
prodding for it to be revived.
We need to take the
wisdom of the past and blend it with the practicality of
the present to mold a future of self-reliant and
interdependent communities.
Attention to scale will
allow democracy to flourish in every place of work, every
town hall and council chamber, and every community
structure or function.
In addition to these concrete organizational
changes, more fundamental spiritual and cultural
transformations are called for to provide the base for
the theory of sustainable communities.
The spiritual
reawakenings to our connections and involvement in the
complete processes of nature will realign our affections
so that the necessary changes will, at best, completely
reorient our society, and at least, provide the spark for
steps in the right direction.
All these changes will be
authentic and seminal for the restoration not only of
natural systems but also of local human culture.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Chapter
1.
2.
Introduction....................................
1
Purpose of this Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
Re-inhabitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~·····
4
Living-in-place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
The Value of Bioregional Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
Introduction--The Value of Bioregionalism ....
8
Centraliz?.tion and Conununity Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Beyond Environmentalism ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.
Defining a Bioregion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . . 18
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Drawing the Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Components of a Healthy Bioregion . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.
In Defense of a Bioregion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Political Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Ecological Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Imagining the Potentials of a Bioregion ...... 37
5.
Philosophical Support of Bioregionalism ......... 41
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ..... 41
Decentralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Self-sufficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Complementarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.
The Bioregional Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
The Community Land Trust (CLT) ............... 68
Land Use and Ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Operating the Community Land Trust ........... 72
Food, Self-reliance and the CLT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
A Community Land Trust Scenario .............. 75
7.
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chapter One
Introduction
Bioregionalism is a movement stirring the hearts and
minds of people in all parts of the world.
It is a
movement to reconnect with the earth in harmonizing ways
that have been nearly forgotten.
Bioregionalism seeks to
"re-create a widely shared sense of regional identity
founded upon a renewed critical awareness of and respect
for the integrity of natural ecological communities." 1
Bioregionalists juxtapose ancestral memories with
contemporary gleanings from technology.
Bioregionalism's goal is singular:
to create and
maintain local cultures that are indefinitely sustainable
without degrading the natural systems that support all
life.
At this precipitous stage in human evolution, where
environmental crisis is the norm, bioregionalists aim to
slow down the juggernaut of ever-expanding and often
unnecessary technology, and remember origins and intimate
relationship with a specific place on the earth, a place
that we can call "home."
The bioregional vision provides a forum for discussing
1
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
June 16, 1984, p. 724.
"Bioregional Green."
The Nation,
ways to reconnect and rejuvenate our bodies and minds
with a living place.
For millennia, our ancestors have
lived close to the earth in self-governing communities.
Though not technologist, they had an intimate knowledge
of their surroundings and an ability to communicate with
and understand the forces of nature.
Today, we treat
nature as a commodity--for raw materials, recreation, and
as a receptacle for our wastes.
As we lay waste to the
environment, we diminish our chances for long term
survival.
Delay in making swift, fundamental changes
across the board in our ways of living on this planet may
result in a halt in evolution for many species, including
ours.
The fundamental changes amount to nothing short of a
shift away from the present dominant paradigm of growth
without end and technological advance without moral
limitations.
A new consciousness must ensue based upon
conserving the vast information that is stored in the
genes of the multitude of organisms that have evolved
through the past millennia.
Every species forced
prematurely into extinction is a lost evolutionary
encyclopedia for humankind.
It also leaves another small
hole in the web of life.
Bioregionalism attempts to understand that web of
life by attending to the organization and scale of our
communities.
Is there empirical evidence that the
2
present way we organize our society and try to live out
its ideology is not working?
On one hand there is
evidence to support the assertion that our present
culture is degrading life support systems (especially in
the case of the use of nuclear weapons); on the other
there are those who argue that technology can solve any
problem we create.
Perhaps the evidence is not yet
conclusive for humans to fundamentally change their
nature-dominating ways.
Will it take even wider
decimation of life and will the effects of distressed
ecosystems have to come knocking on the doors of the
elite for there to be quick change?
While the decimation
marches on, bioregional ethics offer tactics to reorient
our lives in tune with natural processes.
1. Purpose of this study.
In this paper, I will explore
the concept of bioregionalism as a path toward a
sustainable culture .
I will focus my attention and
analysis at the community level--the level at which the
tradition and spirit of decentralism can come to full
fruition.
I will also show that a community informed of
bioregional concepts is a mirror image of a sustainable
community.
I will offer snapshots into this alternative
paradigm by looking at the changes needed in our economy
and politics, and in our view of land.
In order to begin to address these topics, we must
3
discover and then define our place on the earth; in other
words, our bioregion.
We all live in some bioregion,
each one a geographic area distinguishable by its local
hydrological and geological characteristics that create
distinctive plant and animal life, and human cultural
patterns (especially as displayed by indigenous tribes) .
Bioregionalism is "a process of learning to recognize the
uniqueness of a place, and how this uniqueness instructs
the formation and function of local culture."
Bioregionalists propose a marriage of the knowledge
gained by living close to natural processes and
technological illuminations.
This marriage in turn
assigns tasks to the would-be bioregionalist that are
simple to define, though difficult to accomplish.
They
include the following:
A. Re-inhabitation.
This is loosely defined as learning
to "live-in-place" in an area that has been disrupted and
injured through past exploitation.
Ecological
revelations from scientific studies are the guiding
operatives that will help us to:
understand activities and evolve social behavior
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
4
community and ceasing to become its exploiter. 2
Shifting to a society where people become members of
the biotic community will require basic changes in
present day social directions.
Clearly defining the
boundaries of one's home is the first task . .
Restructuring local economic and political institutions
that support all members in the bioregion must follow.
B. Living-in-Place.
Living-in-place means "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." 3
Living-in-
place is the learning that comes from careful and
sensitive attention to hydrological, geological,
biological, and cultural cycles manifested at the local
level.
Living-in-place requires respect for the area you
call home.
Learning to live-in-place entails developing
respect for local knowledge.
Political boundaries--
county, state, province, or national--are irrelevant.
People are but channels for the expression of the
consciousness born out of the specialness and uniqueness
of a place.
"Welcome Home!" is the motto.
2
Berg, Peter.
"What is Bioregionalism?"
Vol. 8, No. Winter 1991, p. 1.
3
Ibid.
5
Trumpeter,
C. Scale.
One axiom crucial for the understanding of
bioregional thought is the importance and necessity of
drawing boundaries that define the complex, but
homogenizing interactions between individuals and the
land.
These interactions involve all members of the
biotic and abiotic community.
It is from this
perspective that we must learn to integrate our actions
and settlements into the functioning whole.
Most ecology books do not talk about the bioregional
level of integration with respect to ecological studies.
This is probably because the bioregional model considers
the incorporation of human culture into the landscape.
The standard schematic usually goes something like this: 4
Biosphere
Ecosystem
Communities
Populations
Organisms
Organ systems
Tissues
Cells
Subcellular organelles
Molecules
t
t
t
t
t
t
t
t
t
t
Decreasing
scientific
understanding
The bioregionalists would like to insert another
step between the ecosystemic and the biospheric levels in
the above diagram to explain the functioning of local
ecosystems which define one's nearby home.
4
The leap from
Krebs, Charles, J. 19 85.
Ecology: The Experimental
Analysis of Distribution and Abundance.
New York, New
York: Harper & Row. p. 11.
6
ecosystem to the biosphere is made understandable by the
bioregional level of integration.
Therefore, the issue
of scale is constantly on the mind and integrated into
the actions of the bioregionalist.
Only attention to
scale can truly offer a unity of action and a florescence
of purposeful guidelines that will result in a stable and
growing life-place.
Bioregionalism attempts to incorporate ecological
principles into the realm of human ecology in order to
understand how we may transform our economics, politics,
and culture to function with the ecological systems,
"bioregions," we inhabit.
7
Chapter Two
The Value of Bioregional Thought
1. Introduction--The Value of Bioregionalism.
The value
of bioregionalism is to take an honest look at the
results of our present economic, political and cultural
institutions to discern whether they help or hinder the
functioning of natural ecosystems .
If they hinder
ecosystem functions, then adjustments must be made.
Whole ecosystems are being degraded: witness the
annihilation of temperate and tropical rainforest; the
desertification of once fertile croplands; the
destruction of the great barrier reef and the list goes
on and on.
Lester Brown describes the deteriorating
condition of the environment:
Anyone who regularly reads scientific journals has
to be concerned with the earth's changing physical
condition. Every major indicator shows a
deterioration in natural systems:
forests are
shrinking, deserts are expanding, croplands are
losing topsoil, the stratospheric ozone layer
continues to thin, greenhouse gases are
accumulating, the number of plant and animal species
is diminishing, air pollution has reached healththreatening levels in hundreds of cities, and damage
from acid rain can be seen on every continent. 5
5
Brown, Lester et al. 1991. State of The World.
York, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. p. 5.
8
New
Clearly, this paints a picture of a natural world on
the edge of disaster.
Bioregionalists hope to articulate
a reorientation of politics, economics, and culture that
can convert our destructive powers into restorative
powers.
From the environmental standpoint,
bioregionalists question present patterns of community
design, land use, and water resource management.
Bioregionalist embrace the visions of placing the
human animal back into the landscape as an equal member
of the biotic community.
This realignment of the human
species into life-enhancing patterns may entail foregoing
inane forms of entertainment, problematic reams of risk
assessments, and unequitable distribution of the bounties
of nature.
Most centralized forms of management consider
only the present cultural, economic and political
options.
They are not charged with the task of evolving
true ecological communities.
Bioregionalism means moving away from the "rat
race."
The rat race is a race where we pit ourselves
against nature; it is a race of controlling nature and
its processes through technology.
We are still running
this race, hoping to overcome our self-made problems with
yet more technological solutions.
As we work to solve
our self-made problems, the fundamental ones go
unattended.
As a result, we run against, instead of in
harmony with, nature.
While we make negligible
9
improvements in improving the quality of the environment,
we remain blind to the requirements of healthy
bioregional ecosystem.
We get lost in marginal busywork,
while our dysfunctional society trudges on.
Now, it
seems nearly impossible to alter its course.
The bioregional movement reexamined the·
11
race,
11
and
has decided to identify with the turtle, who slowly, but
steadily (and thoughtfully) plods on.
In this way, the
turtle revels in the journey without focusing on the
glory of winning the race.
If there is to be any
correction in our path away from global degradation, it
will be along the path, not the finish line.
The turtle
teaches us that life's wealth is found in the
interactions with all the wondrous life forms along the
path.
What I am saying is that the pace of our
industrial societies is too fast, leaving many people
blind to the simple and meaningful constituents of daily
life.
Moreover, bioregionalists see the fragmented pieces
of a world wrought with degradation and inequities of
human and nonhuman elements.
The bioregionalists seek to
establish a balance in the form of a new society with
values and ethics that replace western liberal democratic
epistemologies of how we view the world and how we
interpret the data that our minds and senses receive.
The bioregionalist seeks to rediscover those screens and
10
filters ground and polished from the long history of our
race that help us perceive and properly interpret and
live in unity with nature.
Bioregionalists strive to replace the opaque glasses
that distort nature into a commodity with fresh (actually
age-old) glasses that view the world much differently.
Correcting our relationship with nature will entail some
departure from the practices of western ideologies as we
begin to build local cultures in a "geographic area
having common characteristics of soil, watersheds,
climate, and native plants and animals that exist within
the whole planetary biosphere as unique and intrinsic
contributive parts." 6
The goal of the bioregionalist is
to appreciate and learn from all the parts that function
in unison within a homogenous geographic area, or a
bioregion.
2. Centralization and Community Loss.
world of crisis.
We live in a
Despite the environmental protection
efforts of national governments since the first Earth Day
in 1970,
... the world lost nearly 200 million hectares of
tree cover, an area roughly the size of the United
States east of the Mississippi River. Deserts
expanded by some 120 million hectares, claiming more
land than is currently planted to crops in China.
Thousands of plant and animal species with which we
6
Berg, Peter.
Proceeding of the Ish River Confluence,
1987.
11
shared the planet in 1970 no longer exist. Over two
decades, some 1.6 billion people were added to the
world's population--more than inhabited the planet
in 1900. And the world's farmers lost an estimated
480 billion tons of topsoil, roughly equivalent to
the amount on India's cropland. 7
Each day brings a fresh crisis as we strive to move
materials from place to place to sustain community after
community no longer able to support themselves.
As a
city population grows, its independence declines.
More
food, water, air, building materials, entertainment,
clothing, and so on, must be imported.
This creates a
dependency that places the citizens at the brink of
perpetual impending crisis.
The systems of support the
citizens depend on are so sophisticated and intricately
connected to centralized powers that a calamity at any
juncture would disrupt the city dramatically.
It's like
a juggler adding more and more balls into the juggling
act.
Sooner or later, there will be too many balls to
juggle, or the juggler will tire from the constant
strain, and all the balls will drop.
Modern societies
are fashioned after the over-zealous juggler striving for
complexity when simplicity is sufficient; reaching for
more objects to juggle, when even the basics of human and
ecological needs are lacking.
Environmental mitigation,
economic growth, international competition and free
7
Brown, Lester, et al.
1991.
State of the World.
New York, New York: W.W. Norton. p. 3.
12
trade, and a hundreds other factors point the juggling
act toward collapse.
I liken the juggler to a community, or some version
of a community, that has mutated away from real community
interdependence and trust into assemblages of commodity
self-maximizers enslaved to their providers from without.
Centralized powers have forged the chains that enslave
citizens to uphold a global vision of an ever-expanding
technological world.
Wouldn't it be wise for a community
to discard most of the superfluous balls in their
juggling act, and depend more upon their own resources to
solve their problems in a locally informed manner--in a
way that creates a local culture in tune with the local
environment?
Some people feel one way to break the chain of
globalism is to link rural and urban areas.
Rural farms
would grow the food for the urban dwellers, while the
city would provide manufactured goods (tractors,
appliances, televisions, etc.) to the rural dwellers.
This seems like a good deal for both parties at first
glance.
If a place is to inform its residents of its
attributes and necessities--its soils, water, flora,
fauna, and land forms--then how is the urban dweller to
come to an understanding of the full processes of the web
of life when many of these elements come from far away,
both in terms of distance and experience?
13
How will the
person who is not in touch on a day-to-day basis with the
land, be able to become an active member in the health of
the bioregional community?
I think that each local community must function like
a self-sufficient ecosystem, providing its own needs in
the complex web of life connections it must weave.
Wendell Berry said,
The loss of local culture is, in part a
practical loss and an economic one.
For one
thing, such a culture contains, and conveys
to ~ucceeding generations, the history of the
use of the place and the knowledge of how the
place may be lived in and used.
For another,
the pattern of reminding implies affection
for the place and respect for it, and so,
finally, the local culture will carry the
knowledge of how the place may be well and
lovingly used, and also the implicit command
to use it only well and lovingly. The only
true and effective "operator's manual for
spaceship earth" in not a book that any human
will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands
of local cultures. 8
A bioregional community is a living place, a
complex web of animate and inanimate interactions that,
among other things, help create local culture.
Rather
than have a few cities of a million people, it is more
ecologically viable to build a million small villages
with local cultures that understand the expectations of
their bioregion.
In order to reorient communities along the lines
9 Berry, Wendell.
What are People For?
San
Francisco, California: North Point Press, 1990, p. 166.
14
of self-sufficiency, we must begin rebuilding and
retrofitting present cultures into new cultures that
will modify behavior to fit the local ecology.
This can only begin as people take control and
ownership into their own hands, and start making the
fundamental changes that are required.
We must see the
environmental movement as more than a special interest.
It must become integrated into our daily lives as we
learn to know and depend directly on the resources
around our homes.
We must become bioregionalists.
3. Beyond Environmentalism.
Recently, there has been a
backlash against environmentalism.
Out of work
loggers, politicians, industry, and pro-business
dynamos are the most vocal opponents.
The anit-
environmentalists may be feeling the pressure of
governmental intervention in what they believe to be
their "god-given" individual right to private
enterprise and land ownership.
Classic
environmentalism (that is, the struggle for saving
pieces of the environment while not addressing deep
societal or ideological change) is seen as the nemesis
of economic potential and individual accomplishment,
not by those imposing the laws, rules, and regulations,
but by the ones ruled and regulated.
Thus,
environmentalists accomplish marginal victories in
15
holding back the "total" annihilation of the
environment, yet simultaneously stifles the human
ingenuity and confounds the goals of community selfsufficiency.
For example, environmentalists use the
power of litigation and politics in an arena of
centralized power struggles to accomplish its goals.
Meanwhile, local culture takes a back seat role in
their own affairs.
Classic environmentalists are on the defensive,
struggling merely to stay at the heels of the constant
onslaught of a western ideology playing havoc with
environmental quality:
society's marginal improvements
in cleaning up the environment have not eliminated
degradation of the earth.
Meanwhile, the endless
studies needed for risk assessments and the nature of
cumbersome and bureaucratic lawmaking, allow for
temporary and tenuous policies that merely help our
culture cope with living in this world.
Compromises
and negotiations between environmentalists and
exploiters of nature present, at best, pockets of
segregated land, like museums, to remind us of the
magnificence of wildness; at worst, it ends in
stalemates that result in incremental losses until
there is nothing left to fight over.
The bioregional
movement is the shift away from the struggles at the
power centers of politics to the regeneration and
16
restoration of land and people at the local level--the
bioregion.
Beginning this shift first begins by
defining a bioregion.
17
Chapter Three
Defining a Bioregion
1. Introduction.
I want to view the process of
defining a bioregion in terms of all the participants:
humans who manipulate natural elements into purposeful
objects; animals who directly use the elements as found
in nature; and the raw elements themselves.
All
participate in the ebb and flood of energy cycling
through land, sky, and water.
It is necessary to
characterize all these elements in order to make the
decisions that determine how the human element will
function within the bioregion.
Animals cannot speak to
us, and neither can the plants and rocks (at least most
people cannot communicate with them) .
Therefore, we
need to gradually, but as quickly as we can, make our
way back to understanding the heartbeat of the land
under our feet.
By this I mean taking more time to
listen and commune with the earth.
This can happen if,
by design, we create communities that interact closely
with nature, integrating our day to day actions with
natural patterns.
Participation is the operative key word here;
18
participation not only in some general sense, but in a
specific sense of growing one's own food, restoring
plant and wildlife communities, and listening to the
voice of the earth.
More people participating in local
self-reliant activities will transform the centralized
media and government into locally-controlled entities
supported by the whole community.
The agenda of the
power bureaucracies--the creation of a stultifying
dependency that promulgates biased information, loss of
self-determination, and the impossibility of local
people providing even their basic human needs of food
and shelter--will disappear.
Ren~wed
local cultures
will begin to develop within every bioregion that gains
this freedom.
The process to get to know the geography of a
region can be taken in two steps:
first is through the
power of observation, the gifts of eye, ear, of taste,
smell, and touch.
This in turn is coded into the
memory that allows for a deep understanding of our
place in the landscape.
Second is the transformation
of the observations into social and cultural mechanisms
that will ensure the landscape's integrity.
Barry
Lopez explains the importance of observation:
For as long as our records go back, we have held
these two things dear, landscape and memory.
Each
infuses us with a different kind of life. The one
feeds us, figuratively and literally . The other
protects us from lies and tyranny . To keep
19
landscapes intact and the memory of them, our
history in them, alive, seems as imperative a task
in modern times as finding the extent to which
individual expression can be accommodated, before
it threatens to destroy the fabric of society. 9
These coded and remembered practices develop into
the necessary social and cultural mechanisms to assure
a healthy ecosystem through the generations, such as
preserving remaining wild areas, building sustainable
communities, and enhancing social equity.
I think what Barry Lopez says is that the
"expectations" of the land are known by those people
who live in its presence.
This first hand experience
is gained by living in close proximity to the
landscape.
If the memory of how to live properly in
each specific place is lost, then the fabric of society
will suffer because there will not be the continuity of
experience that can guide future habitation of the site
and guard against the "lies and tyranny" of improper
habitation; that is, interference in the landscape's
natural tendency for regeneration.
To really know the history of a landscape means
that we live in the landscape.
If we are to live in
the landscape, we must sense its richness, its
potential, and its limitations.
We must begin with
knowing its boundaries.
9
Lopez, Barry.
Ideas, February, 1990, p. 44.
20
2. Drawing the Boundaries.
The process of drawing
boundary lines starts with overlaying various sets of
natural science data, including watersheds, animal
communities, vegetation types, geomorphology (e.g.,
tectonics), physiography (e.g., landforms caused by
waterways and glaciers), and other factors depending
upon what is appropriate for each bioregion.
Each of
these elements are the building blocks that
differentiate bioregions and thus help the
bioregionalist delineate boundaries.
One of the most common and simplest methods for
discovering a boundary line is to imagine the drainage
basin in which you live.
If you were to imagine rain
falling on the topography of the landscape, to what
common outlet would the water run?
Likewise, if a
pollutant enters a basin upstream, where will the
pollutant end up?
downsteam town?
fish populations?
Will it be the drinking water for a
Or will it enter an estuary to damage
These are some of the questions that
help define a watershed as a self-regulating catch
basin based on linked habitats and co-evolving natural
and human communites.
Watersheds thus represent both a unity of
landscapes from high ridges to low valleys and a
temporal wholeness found in the hydrological cycle.
21
A
watershed has two energies: the energy of gravity and
the energy of the sun. 10
earth down to the sea.
Gravity pulls water and
The sun evaporates the sea
water into clouds; gravity pulls it down again to the
land.
Similarly, volcanoes and plate tectonics return
the earth back to the land (again related ultimately to
solar power).
Water and earth are never lost, just
reshuffled through the bioregions.
Another methodology for preliminarily envisioning
a bioregion is to observe the physiognomy of the flora
in the landscape.
A forest will be recognizable as a
forest, perhaps for its multi-canopy appearance
(spatial effects) as well as its change through the
seasons and years as plant species move north or south
or even through geologic time as glaciers advance and
retreat (temporal effects) .
Likewise, a desert will
present recognizable differences based upon its plant
associations.
Somewhere between the forest and the
desert lies a zone of change, an edge, a boundary.
The
use of physiognomy is one way to begin the process of
recognizing and defining the boundaries of one's
bioregion.
The result of the overlays of natural science data
will begin to delineate bioregions with no reference
10
Warshall, Peter.
"Streaming
CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1976/77.
22
Wisdom,"
The
point for human occupation.
In order for the
delineation to prove useful for the human inhabitants,
further overlays must be superimposed on the natural
science overlays that allows for interactions between
all the players:
the land, animals, plants, water,
air, and people.
It is the human task to design
systems of sustenance that do not degrade the physical
elements of the landscape, both at the local level and
the watershed or bioregional level of influence.
By
combining natural science data about the land with the
human cultural information, both past and present, we
will start to define rough bioregional boundaries that
present similar challenges to all living creatures
within its borders.
When all the natural and cultural information of a
region is gathered and overlayed on a base map, a
distinctive pattern or "homogenity" begins to appear.
This homogenity will determine the web of live that can
survive in this habitat, given the specific soils,
climate, and water resources available.
So how does a "re-inhabitant" go about discovering
the local bioregion and drawing its borders?
First, we
must realize that a tremendous amount of information
must be collected.
Some of this information may not be
cataloged and will require the inquirer to begin
observing the landscape firsthand.
23
Some data will
cover great areas, such as geologic information, while
other data requires site specific observation, such as
plant associations (physiognomy) .
Second, we recognize that homogeneity is based on
a low variability of commonly-shared characteristics.
This is turn defines a bioregion.
That is, a majority
of areas within a bioregion will represent the
characteristics chosen to define this particular
bioregion.
This method is based on regional patterns
reflected in combinations of spatial and temporal
characteristics, including climate, mineral
availability (soils and geology) , flora and fauna, and
physiography.
The resulting ecosystems will assemble
these characteristics into distinct patterns of
homogeneity.
This idea of homogeneity, which is the crux of a
bioregion definition, involves all the participating
life forms
humankind.
(and non-animate elements) including
The human element becomes one of the
characteristics that define a homogeneous region.
For
the bioregionalist, homogeneity includes a synthesis of
human culture and all other non-human life.
3. Components of a Healthy Bioregion.
If we accept the
premise that homogenous bioregions will offer specific
building blocks and constraints to lifeforms within its
24
borders, then we must also see that a great diversity
will arise from a collection of bioregions.
A
bioregion as defined in the last section (Drawing the
Boundaries) can cover both a vast area or the local
drainage basin.
Therefore, a bioregion can be defined
in terms of a small stream drainage basin or a major
river basin, depending upon the human cultures that
inhabit the bioregion.
Thus, diversity between
bioregions will also lead to diversity and richness of
all species within a bioregion.
We have witnessed the disappearance of indigenous
tribes from probably every inhabitable bioregion on the
face of earth.
We are left with a global, human
monoculture conceived by political dictates, while
diversity of natural systems and human culture (defined
by ecology) is squeezed out at the bioregional level.
If a collection of diverse cultures is desirable,
then it seems that self-managing communities must be
encouraged, just as diverse ecosystems are evident
across the face of this and all continents.
Homogeneity, then, works well not only for defining an
bioregion in the physical sense, but also as a guiding
force in cultural development for appropriate human
settlement on the land.
In order to cultivate
diversity of human cultures, we would have to take into
account the many factors that delineate a bioregion.
25
We must find ways to interact with ecosystems without
degrading them.
In other words, we must function
integratively with ecosystems within the bioregion.
The next question to ask is:
diversity in cultures?
why do we desire
Humans are not immune to the
laws of evolution and adaptation.
For millions of
years, we have been going through this process.
Thousands of different cultures had evolved in separate
bioregions, adapting to the thousands of different
environments which have presented the raw materials for
building sustainable cultures.
The theory that diversity leads to stability is a
debated subject within the field of ecology.
Elton
suggested the following evidence in support of this
theory: 11
1. Mathematical models of simple systems show how
difficult it is to achieve numerical stability.
2. Gause' laboratory experiments on protozoa
confirm the difficulty of achieving numerical stability
in simple systems.
3. Small islands are much more vulnerable to
invading species than are continents.
4. Outbreaks of pests are most often found on
cultivated land or land disturbed by humans.
5. Tropical rain forests do not have insect
outbreaks like those common to temperate forests.
6.
Pesticides have caused outbreaks by the
11
Elton, C.
The Ecology of Invasions by Animals
and Plants. Methuen, London. 1958, p. 138.
26
elimination of predators and parasites from the insect
community of crop plants. 12
The simple and intuitive reasoning of diversity causing
stability is not, however, born out in the experimental
investigation.
The experiments are performed within
just a couple trophic levels and with only a few simple
organisms, like bacteria, Paramecium, or predatory
protozoa. 13
Similarly designed experiments are not
possible to perform in the real world, especially in
the most complex ecosystems like tropical rainforests.
The hallowed tenet of community ecology that
describes a causal relationship between diversity and
stability is not presently able to be invalidated.
Thus, I accept, intuitively, the fact that an oldgrowth forest ecosystem will be more stable than a
monoculture of corn or soybeans grown in Iowa.
Since we now can say that this forest system will
survive perturbations better than the corn field, and
will do it in a self-managing way, can we make some
statement about diversity within the human species?
First of all, we should recognize that humans are not
as easy to understand as bacteria or paramecium.
12
The
Krebs,
Charles,
J.
1985.
Ecology:
Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance.
York, New York: Harper & Row, pp. 582-3.
13
Ibid., p. 583.
27
The
New
question that I originally posed, and one that the
bioregionalist must consider in designing communities,
is whether we can extrapolate from ecological
hypotheses to sociological conclusions about cultural
diversity.
I will attempt to do so.
If you take a look at a species that inhabits many
places on the face of the earth, in vastly different
bioregions, you will find that the species has the
ability to adapt to local conditions, and take on
characteristics quite different from its relative in
another region.
This adaptation can result in a new
species (in the case of evolution on an island) or in
genetic varieties within the same species (known as
ecotypes) . 14
The lodgepole pine is a good example.
It is the
only conifer that is native to both Alaska, Baja
California, and points in between.
There are three
varieties of this pine: Shore Pine, a small crooked
tree found along the coast in the north; Sierra
Lodgepole Pine, a tall, narrow tree growing from
southwest Washington to northern Baja; and Rocky
Mountain Lodgepole Pine, also a tall, narrow tree but
with long needles, found in the Rocky Mountain region.
These three varieties are the same species that
have adapted to their local environmental requirements
14
Ibid. , p. 9 0-91.
28
by developing diff.e rent forms, needles, cones, and even
fire retardancy, as in the case of Rocky Mountain Pine,
which disperses its seeds when the heat of a forest
fire cause the cones to open.
Similarly, humans have adapted physically to
different environments.
The Eskimos of the far north
developed a thicker layer of fat to help keep them
warm; the people of Africa adapted to intense sun and
temperature with the color of their skin.
All these
adaptations were in response to varying environmental
factors found in different regions.
This is the
natural way that all species act in accordance with the
natural world.
This results in a diversity of the
human species.
But this needs to be carried one step further for
the human species.
If we take a look at the cultural
adaptations and differences in different regions
throughout the world, we also find diversity.
Cultural
diversity must coevolve with ecosystem diversity since
humans are part of the whole.
I assume that the different demands of the
physical environments was the driving force in cultural
adaptations as well.
Since diversity in cultural
patterns has been the norm for thousands of generations
of our species, it becomes irrelevant to ask if
diversity is desirable: it just happens, naturally.
29
Since cultural diversity happens naturally, and the
diverse cultures of the past have survived for so long,
it follows that the human species is stabilized by
diversity.
That is, the abundance and distribution of
humans would not tend toward extinction.
If one
culture died off, it would not jeopardize the whole
species.
Today, the situation is quite different .
We may
have wide abundance and distribution, but many of those
people are dependent upon a centralized provider.
One
species, the homo sapiens economicus variety, is
dominating the whole globe.
This one variety has
become so influential, it has the capacity to destroy
the whole human species, as well as a multitude of
other species types.
Thus, the human species is part of diversity at
different levels:
at the level of the community,
interacting with many other species; at the level of
the bioregion, forming more or less similar human
cultures based on the similarities within the
bioregion; and at the global level, in developing a
mosaic of cultures based on dissimilar physical
constraints.
30
Chapter Four
In Defense of a Bioregion.
The globally-conscious persons might think that
redefining boundaries to smaller units according to
ecological principles will return us to barbaric
tribalism or myopic parochialism.
is that a world
~ithout
Their major argument
borders, in essence a "One
World Family" or a "New World Order," should be
encouraged in order to eliminate the political fallout
of nation against nation in constant struggle or war
over their boundaries.
Bioregionalists counter by
offering the following political and ecological
arguments .
1. Political Argument.
There are three problems with
identifying political conflict as a boundary
conflict. 15
They include cause and consequence,
conflation of nations with state, and ignorance of
scale.
First, consider the cause of political conflict.
15
McCloskey, David.
1989.
"On Ecoregional
Boundaries." Trumpeter, Vol 6, No. 4, p.127.
31
It seems to me that the boundary around one's territory
can only come after its inhabitants have learned how to
live in that area.
The bioregional hypothesis
describes small units of settlements that can live in
harmony with the land.
The consequence, therefore, of
boundaries would be inclusive instead of exclusive.
That is, those who live in one distinct bioregion would
have no need to dominate other bioregions.
This means
that the boundaries would not serve as a source of
conflict, but as a natural limit to activities of its
encircled residents.
Conflict over boundaries would
more likely be over arbitrarily-drawn, politicized
borders, such as are drawn after wars.
Second, the rise of nation-states provides for the
buildup of resources necessary for massive violence
between territories .
Nation-states are thus able to
suction a great depth of natural and human resources
into unsustainable warlike activities against other
regions and the environment.
By encouraging self-
reliant bioregional cultures, we are discouraging
boundary conflicts since the inhabitants are not
requiring the resources from distant bioregions.
Third, by removing the bioregional boundary
defined by nature in favor of a global and monocultural
world-order, we would be inviting centralization on all
fronts--standardization, bureaucratization, and
32
technical rationalization:
standardization by
instituting monocultural and monolithic models for
society; bureaucratization because of the preponderant
size of the administration needed to implement the
standardizations; and technical rationalization as a
result of having created a gigantic society that is
dependent on technology just for day-to-day operations.
We will be rationalizing actions that are not truly
making headway in solving environmental disasters,
rather only staving off collapse of human and natural
ecosystems.
The scale of the globalists is necessarily not
devoted to the natural processes of one bioregion.
If
one area is exhausted, then the global enterprise
simply looks for greener pastures that can replace
their own exhausted resources.
country is a good example.
The founding of this
The elite class of Spain
needed more wealth, and so had to turn to new lands to
exploit.
This form of imperialism is continued today
by international corporations and nation-states.
Imperialism destroys local cultures, community
homogeneity, primordial ties of kinship, and the
integrity of the earth's diverse species, habitats, and
resources.
The best proof of this assertion is found
in examining the small scale of native cultures
throughout the world.
Most of them had built-in
33
rituals that tended to preserve the wealth of the
landscape with little degradation.
What is needed to ensure the fate of nations and
the Earth is to decrease scale: to decentralize to
smaller regional communities so as to localize
inevitable conflict, and keep them from
endangering the whole irredeemably. 16
Thus, it is the bioregional adherence to the importance
of natural boundaries that alleviates political
conflict while encouraging diversity.
"Without a rich
diversity of peoples and places, species and habitats,
there can be no freedom, no right to be for species,
persons, or communi ties. " 17
This freedom or "right to
be" is a biological principle that recognizes the way
separate organisms express their distinctiveness in a
setting of diversity.
In order for the human animal to
have the political freedom of self-governance,
available places must be available for taking root on
the land that encourage ever-changing diversity of
peoples, regions, and their conflicting traditions.
2. Ecological Argument.
Nature is multi-dimensional.
The land has boundaries, transitions (edges), and
limits.
To ignore the natural boundaries of the land
is to lose its instruction in helping us to understand
16
Ibid, p.l28.
17
Ibid.
I
p.128.
34
the places we inhabit.
We need to recognize the exchanges that
characterize and differentiate ecosystems.
The
boundary between ecosystems, and indeed, between all
entities, whether it is cells, organisms, communities,
persons, or cultures, is less a barrier than a
permeable membrane which regulates energy and
information exchanges through the boundary to maintain
or generate life processes. 18
At the biospheric scale, the atmosphere,
lithosphere, and hydrosphere endlessly cycle air,
earth, and water, creating fronts,
zones and streams
which meld fluid boundaries into living, building
blocks.
The bioregionalist observes these harmonious
elemental relationships, and tries to find ways to
least disrupt it, or better yet, to fit into its
rhythms.
A boundary consists of continuous and flexible
borders that mark the transition to another ecosystem.
This border or margin
... sets a frame to perception, identity, and
action, and links us, in turn, to larger contexts.
Borders set out the terms of relationship joining
the "within" and "without." The bound is the
limen or threshold, a door through which we come
and go. 19
18
Ibid.
I
p. 12 8 .
19
Ibid.
I
p. 12 8 .
35
The bioregional boundary carries the power of a
line that brings together multiple ecosystems into
bioregions, which in turn form the biosphere.
Bioregions on each side of the border line receive the
same natural global cycles.
For example, the
mountainous ridges, found aplenty in the Ish River
bioregion, serve as pivotal borders that unify
adjoining bioregions: the ridge divides while it brings
together the ecosystem and acts as both a periphery of
a single bioregion and the center of two bioregions.
Bioregional boundaries are defined by the
ecological characteristics of soil, watershed, climate,
native plants and animals, and human occupancy
patterns.
It is a region of geography that is first
determined by the natural sciences, and finally, by the
people who have actually lived in that place.
Hence, a
bioregion refers . to a homogeneous physical place and
the ideas that have developed on how to live in that
place.
Analyzing regions by their geographical terrain
and "terrain of consciousness" is, in a sense, a modern
invention borrowing from the science of ecology.
Since
most people around the world have become detached from
the land and their ancestor's memories of the land, we
now need to start from scratch, in a sense, to
rediscover how to live with rudimentary processes and
36
products of nature.
It may be useful to survey how
much we as individuals and communities know of selfreliance (that is, living ecologically) in the natural
systems we inhabit.
Once we have made this
reconnaissance survey of our skills to live in this
native place, we must learn to "re-inhabit" our home:
Re-inhabitation means 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 behavior that will
enrich the life of that place, restore its lifesupporting 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 become its exploiter. 20
To become a "member of a biotic community" is at the
heart of the science of ecology, where all elements in
the ecosystem determine function and structure.
3. Imagining the Potentials of a Bioregion.
It may
assist us to imagine that all people and their
structures are removed from the land; asphalt parking
lots covering prime farmland, malls selling unnecessary
and out-of-the-bioregion products, airports, freeways,
20
Berg,
Peter.
"What
is
Bioregionalism?"
Trumpeter, Vol. 8, No. 1, Winter 1991, p. 6.
37
skyscrapers, and so on.
This needs to be done so that
we can realize or imagine the full potential of the
land without the exploiting practices of humankind.
People need to have intact ecosystems in order to
fulfill their people-hood, and to grow with the rest of
nature.
In many areas of the world, there is no
evolution taking place, rather, development is leading
toward accelerated extinctions.
Therefore, it makes
sense in the method of science, to first look at the
foundations of all life, scope out its potentials and
influences on the human animal, and then attempt to
insert appropriate human systems back into the
landscape.
Imagine what would happen in this hypothetical
scenario if humans were gone.
Seeds would be brought
in by bird and wind to start regenerating the land.
Life processes would have a vast open landscape to
pioneer and reclaim.
Rivers would run free, fish and
animals would move into niches and populate themselves.
Eventually, in a few hundred years, the once simplified
(biologically speaking) human system of concrete would
be a stable, complex, and magnificent forest that would
represent the biological capability of this bioregion.
At this juncture, humans are reintegrated back
into the landscape intent on blending into the patterns
characteristic of this stable ecosystem.
38
The goal
would be to have minimal effect on this regenerated
forest ecosystem, while finding ways to adapt
culturally to the new home.
This would give the people
a true opportunity to create a society that heeds the
carrying capacity of the land based upon a stable and
complex natural system.
This regenerated forest system would resemble an
old growth forest.
Its stability and high productivity
would teach us how to design our settlements in such a
way as not to upset its complex balance of organisms.
This would mean that we would have to adopt "old
growth" mentality ahd strive to align ourselves with
ethics that support this forest system.
In other
'
words, we would have to live more interdependent with
this local ecosystem, and recognize the carrying
capacity of the land.
I think it is crucial to act out this scenario in
order to reacquaint ourselves with the vision of the
best of all possible biotic richness that this or any
land can produce if given the chance.
We have the
option of being satisfied with a degraded and stunted
environment or striving for an abundant and thriving
ecosystem.
We have to get beyond the thought that we
must work only with the ecosystems that are remaining.
Instead, we can "let the original face of the place
shine through--rivers, mountains, and valleys,
39
coastlines and plateaus, sea and sky." 21
In listening
to the spirit of these revived places, we will be able
to pay closer attention to their special character, and
their stories.
21
McCloskey, David.
"On Ecoregional Boundaries,"
Trumpeter, Vol. 6, No. 4., p. 130.
40
Chapter Five
Philosophical Support of Bioregionalism
1. Introduction.
The bioregional paradigm mirrors the
structures of governance found in natural ecological
communities.
Ecosystems function best when left alone,
without interference, or management by people.
Moreover, it is unnecessary for humans to take a
dominant role in determining ecosystems function.
Thus, our political systems should be reflections of
the forest, prairie or desert ecosystem "without
coercions, without organized force, without recognized
authority."u
There is no final authority in nature,
only the random interactions of all ecosystem elements
working cooperatively to build a richer ecosystem.
The chaotic processes of nature do not exhibit
centralization, hierarchy, or homogeneity within the
ecosystem.
So why should we include these principles
in our form of governance?
Lest we think that this is
simple-minded, naive, or utopian hopeful thinking, we
should remind ourselves that the vast majority of human
22
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 90.
41
organization over the past two million years have
embraced decentralist political self-governance.
The
modern nation-states which reduce people to
experimental units for statistical analyses performed
by the machinery of the state, and whose biased
conclusions favor the interest of the few and enforce
policies and rules for the many, have only occurred in
the past two hundred years or so.
In the final
analysis, the best government may be no centralized
government, as born out by societies through time
immemorial.
As Kirkpatrick Sale puts in his important
book Human Scale:
Examples of societies that have lived, and
lived long and well, without the trappings of
the state are surprisingly common, once one
begins combing through the scientific
literature.
In fact they are so common,
occurring right throughout the Indian
societies of both North and South America,
through much of North Africa and almost all
of the great region from the Sudan to the
Kalahari, and throughout the islands of the
South Pacific from Sumatra all the way to
Polynesia, occurring among patrilineal as
well as matrilineal societies, settled and
pastoral as well as hunting and nomadic,
large and scattered as well as small and
cohesive, isolated and ingrown as well as
confederative and cooperative, occurring in
such variety and profusion that it comes to
seem from the anthropological evidence that
this is indeed the basic natural organization
of human societies. As British
anthropologist Aidan Southall has said about
the historical spectrum, "People with state
42
organizations were exceptional."B
What Sale suggests is that perhaps our national
governments, which have successfully homogenized
diverse societies into disneyland outposts, are not in
the best interest of the human animal for utilizing
his/her potentials that our long specific evolution has
given us.
We need only remember the training ground of
our tribal past to see our potentials today.
Bureaucracies have failed because they have not
encouraged equality for all people, respect for
ecological wisdom, or decentralized decision-making.
They are only bandages that help our industrial society
cope with the troubled world we have created.
We have
all the knowledge and skill right now to turn this
planet into one huge garden of Eden, but the political
will is missing.
We have gotten our societies into
such dysfunction and despair, that to get us out of
economic disaster in the short run may entail long term
environmental degradation.
Some headway has been made in curbing the steady
march toward environmental degradation.
Environmental
laws and regulations enacted to mitigate the harmful
and undesirable ecological damage accompanying
practically all our actions to support our communities
23
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Human Scale.
New York, NY:
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980, p. 456.
43
are not founded on ecological wisdom.
They are not
capable of integrating the complex webs of life because
of the following reasons:
1) The laws generated are not self-managing rules
of conduct, but meant to control the actions of many
individuals through policing, fines, and threats from
above
2)
The laws are only addressing the symptoms and
not the causes, thus placing human primacy above human
interdependence with the natural world, and
3)
The rules are not themselves a natural
outgrowth of human-scale societies and therefore cannot
propose human-scale solutions.
I think that one needs to remove oneself from this
urgent moment in order to envision a comprehensive view
and understanding of the problem.
In order to do this,
it helps if there are models throughout the history of
humankind that can offer solutions to present
predicaments.
Inspiration will come from various
disciplines to form a cohesive upwelling of supporting
ideas for remaking society, for concrete and practical
thoughts.
Sale calls these thoughts the bioregional
laws of polity.~
2. Decentralism.
The ecological theme suggests that
there is not a centralized power of any one group
either within a species or between species.
24
Ibid., p. 91.
44
All
members in a biotic community behave according to the
guiding central laws of nature, not the "command"
powers of any one species.
This spreading of power to
small and widely dispersed units has also been the case
for the human animal through all history.
The
anthropological studies show that tribes have
functioned best at a population of about 500-1000
people. 25
Up until this century, few cities exceeded
1 million residents.
The question of centralized, governmental power is
only a fairly recent phenomenon reaching back a couple
thousand years B.C.
Before this date, and even after
this date in the majority of cases, people worked their
governing problems in small groups because they lived
in smaller units.
With the face to face contact and
intimacy not prevalent today, societal norms could
naturally monitor and subvert any abnormal behavior of
individuals in the tribe.
Looking again to the study of ecology, we see
species that are basically looking after their own
benefit and survival, not in terms of establishing
power over other species, but in establishing their
territory and defending their offspring and niches.
This is not the same as seeking command and rule over
25
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 129.
45
more resources than necessary.
Predation is but a
continuous dance of life and death, of feeding and
being fed, of eating and being eaten, of participating
in the endless cycling of energy and matter through the
natural systems in which they live.
This is not power
in the way people agglomerate resources and enslave
wage earners to labor in exchange for subsistence
remuneration; not democratic by a long shot.
Similarly, human patterns of decentralism, of
visceral urges to separatism, independence and local
autonomy are the norm.
According to Harold Isaacs,
professor of international affairs at MIT, the innate
human drive toward decentralism and dissolution of the
large societies has been shown throughout history and
continues to be the natural tendency:
... that declines could take a long time and falls
long overdue, but that these conditions could
never be indefinitely maintained. Under external
or internal pressures--usually both--authority was
eroded, legitimacy challenged, and in war,
collapse and revolution, the system of power
redrawn. 26
What Isaacs seems to be saying is that even if a
society seems overwhelmingly successful, like Rome or
the United States, it may be due for a crash.
The
reason, he asserts, is that there is a natural tendency
26
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 94.
46
toward dissolution of authority and power within a
society.
Even in our age of globalization of culture,
economy and politics, Isaacs sees empires and nationstates breaking down into autonomous clusters.
He
notes:
What we are experiencing, then, is not the shaping
of new coherences but the world breaking into its
bits and pieces, bursting like big and little
stars from exploding galaxies, each one spinning
off in its own centrifugal whirl, each one
straining to hold its own small separate pieces
from spinning off in their turn. 27
The bioregional vision, therefore, draws lessons
from past and present examples of the decentralization
of institutions and diffusion of power.
The vision
recognizes that authority and control must remain
within the community.
Distant authorities do not
respect bioregional affections that build local
cultures.
Decisions affecting any community should
start from the bottom-up, and probably be solved long
before reaching out of the bioregion to national or
global decision-makers.
Based on tribal patterns of self-governance the
world over, Bill Mollison describes what general
behavioral patterns can be expected with increases in
human population size:
27
Ibid .
47
1
•
1-3 people:
Executive decision, least
meeting time, greater pressure to act, fast
changes possible, fast replacement of key people.
•
4-6 people: Good volunteer or cooperative
group work, or work group for special single
projects; good size for work exchange systems.
•
7-20 people:
Function well only in social
conditions; can be a recreational group or team,
but at 7 or so, a chairperson is needed and
decisions are slow and frustrating, often creating
dissent.
•
30-40 people: Acknowledged as the minimal
group of people in which most human functions can
be covered, and who (if well chosen) can cope with
almost any type of problem.
•
40-200 people: Rarely found as a group or
settlement, but a good size for a regional
organization.
•
200-300 people:
the basic number for genetic
variability; such a group can, by careful
breeding, maintain their numbers as a tribe and
allow for some losses to disease.
Probably the
minimal human village size (called a hamlet).
•
300-400 people: About the limit at which
people know every other person by name; thus,
about the limit of "identity." This the largest
satisfactory size for educational or learning
systems if personal attention is valued.
Acknowledged to be the upper limit for successful
cooperatives for real participation.
•
400-5,000 people: Usual upper limit of
federations of tribes; a good size for a
bioregional group or subregion. Also, a village
size limit.
Cliques, theft and cheating common
and possible; hierarchies are needed.
•
7,000-40,000 people: Towns, large
bioregions. Chinese communes start about here.
This number is not satisfactory unless broken into
small cooperatives and villages.
Crowds and very
large audiences can reach this size, and can be
difficult to control if aroused.
It is about the
upper limit for any real control by strict
hierarchical systems.
48
•
40,000-10,000,000 people: Cities; mainly
disorganized on every level.
Effective anarchlE
and crime, and social isolation in many areas. 8
The important point of Mollison•s study shows a general
tendency toward unmanageable complexity in social
problems as the populations grow.
While the society
tries to solve the problems they create, the real
problems are put on the back burner or ignored entirely
until the national debt is paid off, people are put
back to work, or the 50 billionth MacDonald•s hamburger
is sold and digested.
Following the ?ottom-up approach to organizing and
managing our societies, then, we can see according to
Mollison•s way of thinking that the close-knit village
of up to 1,000 people is best able to make decisions
for themselves.
They will know best the environment in
which they live, and since the human settlement is
informed first by its physical environment, governance
will begin here.
According to the bioregional view of
human settlements, this well-informed government will
do the best service for its inhabitants; even if the
decisions are not of the best caliber and cause some
disruption of either people or environment, the damage
will be localized and attenuated by the size of the
28
Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practical Guide
for a Sustainable Future.
Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 1990, p. 531.
49
village.
Sale maintains that the bioregional form of
governance found in the decentralist division of power
is best suited for the job demanded of 20th and 21st
century societies:
It [20th century government] promotes liberty by
diminishing the chances of arbitrary government
action and providing more points of access for the
citizens, more points of pressure for affected
minorities.
It enhances quality by assuring more
participation by individuals and less
concentration of power in a few remote and
unresponsive bodies and offices.
It increases
efficiency by allowing government to be more
sensitive and flexible, recognizing and adjusting
to new conditions, new demands from the populace
it serves.
It advances welfare because at the
smaller scales its is able to measure people's
needs best and to provide for them more quickly,
more cheaply, and more accurately. And, because
of all that, it actually improves security
because, unlike the big and bumbling megastates
vulnerable to instability and alienation, it
fosters the sort of cohesiveness and allegiance
that discourages crime and disruption within and
discourages aggression and attack from without. 29
3. Self-sufficiency.
Assuming self-sufficiency in
tribes or families living in nearby bioregions, we
expect to see people depending fully on their region's
natural endowments.
They would have little need for
war with neighboring tribes.
If conflict did break
out, the stakes would be limited, and would not
adversely affect huge populations.
Cultural diversity,
~ Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 97.
50
each dependent upon their bioregion and interdependent
with other bioregions would tend toward cooperation in
the same way that the complex and diverse elements in
ecosystems cooperate.
Sharing the same bioregion, they naturally share
the same configurations of life, the same social
and economic constraints, roughly the same
environmental problems and opportunities, and so
there is every reason to expect contact and
cooperation among them. Even, for some specific
tasks, maybe even confederation among them--but of
a kind that need not mean diminished power or
sovereignty for the community, but rather enlarged
horizons of knowledge, of culture, of services, of
security. 30
Just where the cooperation tails off, or becomes
superfluous to the functioning of either bioregion is
unclear.
Within the same bioregion there could be
mutual benefit for neighboring tribes to cooperate
without disregarding ecological constraints, but as the
distances between bioregions grows, the coherence and
commonalities of their particular physical environments
would differ.
The sort of issues that any community of
communities (that is, a bioregion) deals with,
including water and waste management, transportation,
and food production, would also be somewhat different.
Thus, interdependence and cooperation is important
between communities physically close to each other.
30
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985. p. 95.
51
However, interactions between bioregions and even
larger geographic regions must be able to pass certain
ecological and sociological tests:
the transfer of
goods and services must not entail a waste of energy
and the benefits must accrue equally to all bioregional
communities involved.
In addition, the goods and
services exchanged must not be able to be produced
locally as well as meet basic human needs.
The two
areas of trade between bioregions that come to mind
that meet these criteria are communication and
information networks.
The ecological constraints that determine the
limits of trade between regions also define the extent
of self-reliance of communities.
Shann Turnbull offers
the following distinction between self-reliance and
self-sufficiency:
Self-reliance: the ability of a community to
produce its basic food, clothing, shelter, and
energy and earn sufficient external income to pay
for external goods and services to maintain an
acceptable standard and style of living.
Self-sufficiency: the ability of a community to
exist at an acceptable standard of living without
any external exchange of goods and services. 31
Turnbull's definitions are focussing on two points:
one, determination of an "acceptable standard of
31
Bennello, C. G., Swann R., Turnbull, S. Building
Sustainable Communities.
New York, New York: The
Bootstrap Press, 1989, p. 132.
52
living," and two, the willingness to participate with
out-of-community income or goods and services .
Whether
a community is self-reliant or self-sufficient will
depend on many factors, including the natural and human
resources available within the community, the values of
the members of the community, and the degree to which
the community has been able to wrestle back economic
and political self-determination from state and
national levels.
Daly also offers his view on the
degree of self-reliance achievable.
He notes:
Since economic self-sufficiency is not an
absolute, it is possible to think of rather small
communities having considerable economic selfdetermination without supposing that they could
supply all their needs.
In this country at the
level of the states a large degree of selfdetermination would be possible with a
decentralized economy. 3
I agree with most of what Daly says, but I believe that
he did not fully consider the part about selfdetermination at the state level.
To begin with, the
bioregional model does not recognize the "state" as a
viable unit upon which to base self-reliance or self determination. The reason is that the state is defined
by politics, not ecology.
Since the human animal is
dependent upon the richness of ecosystems, most all the
resources should be available locally to sustain our
"acceptable standard of living."
32
Even at a meager
Daly, H.E., Cobb, J.B.Jr.
For the Common Good.
Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1990, p.l74.
53
standard of living, the citizens of a politicallydefined state will not be assured of the necessary
natural resources for self-reliance or selfsufficiency.
I would, therefore, rather embrace the bioregional
reasoning that 1) bioregions do exist and are definable
with real though flexible boundaries; 2) standards of
living are relative to the resources available within
the bioregion; and 3) local economies would be more
stable than economies based upon trade.
Sale sums up
the value of self-sufficiency:
There is not a single bioregion in this country
even at the georegional level, 33 that would not,
if it looked to all its natural endowments, be
able to provide its residents with sufficient
food, energy, shelter, and clothing, their own
health care and education and arts, their own
manufactures and crafts. 34
Every bioregion will have some elements in
scarcity relative to the global supplies now available.
For example, some bioregions may not have a source of
metal ·.
Modern society could not persist without the
various metals--for conductance of electricity, framing
for skyscrapers, metal tools, gold fillings, and a
33
The georegional level is defined by Sale as the
smallest division within the bioregional model based upon
a distinct physiographic feature such as a watershed,
mountain range, or valley.
34
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 75.
54
million other uses.
Doing without this precious
commodity boggles the mi nd, and may even send the
budding bioregionalist back into mainstream thought.
On one hand, we can look backward to what life would be
like without the inventions of technology; on the other
hand, we can look to creativity springing forth from
necessity.
Trying to substitute local materials for
distant ones is one bioregional imperative; knowing
when and how much to trade with other regions another.
It is only through self-reliance born out of the spirit
of decentralism that communities and bioregions can
gain the economic and political autonomy that best heed
the requirements of both natural and human ecosystems.
4. Complementarity.
The decentralist nature of
organisms that I have posited must be balanced by
another natural law that is allowing these
centrifugally-driven individuals or populations of
individuals to function together to form distinct,
definable ecosystems.
The organismic ecologists hold
that communities are "integrated units with discrete
boundaries. " 35
The individualists hold that
communities are not integrated units but collections of
populations that require the same environmental
35
Krebs, Charles J.
Ecology: The Experimental
Analysis of Distribution and Abundance.
New York, New
York: Harper & Row, 1985, p. 458.
55
conditions. 36
This individualistic school of thought
seems analogous to non-discrete bioregional boundaries
that define distinctions between regions.
I am concerned here with the interactions between
species occupying niches throughout the ecosystem.
Ecologists define "hetarchy" as distinction without
rank, 37 as opposed to hierarchy's division of power
and importance.
For example, in a hive, we find
complementary roles among foragers, fighters, egglayers, builders--without the sense of dominance or
primacy with any one occupation.
Any stratification in
animal populations does not conform to our definition
of organized and institutionalized fixed orders or
ranks.
Tribal societies also displayed this "distinction
without rank" characteristic.
There was rarely any
stratification found in these societies. 38 Customs and
taboos thwarted the formation of anyone coming to power
over others, though divisions of labor according to the
sex, strength, spiritual tendencies, or skill did
exist.
These roles complemented each other and
harmonized the community. The needs of the community
36
Ibid.
37
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 98.
38
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 99.
56
could be met with local talent and little hierarchy
from the outside.
All citizens, no matter their
position, were afforded equal status among their
colleagues, though individuals would be free to reach
for their own level of success:
The man adept at hunting seals, the woman favored
as the singer of lullabies, the elder given the
knowledge of magic, the grandmother wise in the
healing power of herbs, the youth capable of
leadership in battle--these are all important
people and highly regarded, but they do not
generally accumulate power to themselves as a
result of their prowess, are not given positions
on a ladder of command and dominance. 39
The bioregional polity has no place for hierarchy
and political domination.
Communities would have the
ultimate control in apportioning, in some balanced
fashion,
the tasks needed for self-reliance.
All the
members in the community would be treated as valuable
citizens having their special and individual abilities.
Scaling down the size of the work parties allows for
avoidance of bureaucratic inefficiency while embracing
the dictates of ecology.
Citizens would perform
necessary functions without leaders, ruling committees,
or bureaucratic intervention.
This type of grassroots organizing would require
all citizens' full interest and involvement.
This may
seem like an unlikely achievement given the non-
39
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p. 100.
57
participatory state of affairs now prevalent in today's
societies, but that doesn't mean communities can not
change.
Communities must become more participatory
through complementarity if the community is to rely
upon itself for its basic human needs.
When
communities are dependent on outside forces for their
basic needs, they fall prey to the goals of
governmental and corporate entities that have little
accountability at the local level.
Perhaps the use of the word "community" needs more
clarification.
Daly describes his definition of
community with the following four criteria:
1. Membership in the community contributes to
self-identity.
2. There is extensive participation by its members
in the decisions by which its life is governed.
3. The society as a whole takes responsibility for
the members, and
4. This responsibility include respect for the
diverse individuality of these members. 40
Daly goes on to say that a community can embrace
relative degrees of the above criteria, and still be
called a community.
I maintain that Daly is ignoring
the reality of the millions of disenfranchised people
in this country alone.
Furthermore, I assert that a
community at the national scale is impossible and oxy40
Daly, H.E., Cobb J.B. Jr.
For the Common Good.
Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1990, p.172.
58
moronic.
Energy spent on trying to make a nation feel
a sense of community could be better spent on assuring
that bioregional groups have the tools to live selfreliantly.
In strict biological terms, a community is "any
assemblage of populations of living organisms in a
prescribed area or habitat."
Colloquially, thoughk we
use the word "community" when we speak about a town,
city, or any construct of haumn engineering.
even speak of the college community.
We can
we are thin king
only of the human population and their buildings,
roads, and acitivities; nto the assemblage of many
kinds of organisms living together in a prescribed
area.
I surmise that we are able to make this
translation in heman terms only because peoplee act so
individually (at least in our western culture) , and so
can erplace the diversity of other species with the
pluralism of modern societyies.
we then begin to lok
like an agglomeration of speartate living organisms,
each one prusuiing its special interests in the
community.
I prefer to accept Sale's definition of community
as a:
... the more-or-less intimate grouping either at
the close-knit village scale of 1,000 people or
so, or probably more often at the extended
community scale of 5,000 to 10,000 so often found
as the fundamental political unit whether formal
59
or informal. 41
I argue that Daly's criteria for a community can
only be met at the level described by Sale, and not the
national or global level.
A community requires
personal and interpersonal relationships which
physically can not be met over large distances.
There
is a certain scale that limits our ability to relate to
another individual.
Bill Mollison thinks that the responsibility to
change lies with individuals:
... changes in people come about by education and
information, and when enough people change, then
political systems (if they are to survive) may
follow, or become as irrelevant as they now appear
to be in terms of real solutions ... for this
reason, the place to start change is first with
the individual (oneself), and second in one's
region or neighborhood. 42
In the meantime, assuming a community is striving
for the small and politically-efficient scale, its
members will make it their business to care about the
entrenched political institutions that thwart
fundamental change.
For example, if specialists
outside the community are needed, then participation of
the community members will know what specialists to
41
Ibid. , p. 94
42
Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practical Guide
for a Sustainable Future.
Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 1990, p.509.
60
trust.
Political responsibility in this country has
always rested with the aristocracy, right from the
beginning with the founding fathers.
These leaders
thought they knew best for the country, and clearly
thought it prudent and essential to keep the power of
political decision-making in their domain.
Today,
local regions are dominated and drained of effective
power of self-governance by the efficiency of
centralization and bureaucratic control.
This
efficiency that is supposed to represent the people of
the United States instead alienates its citizens,
evidenced the lack of voter turnout in local and
national elections.
It seems ludicrous for a country
as large as ours to rely on so few to represent us.
Jim Dodge explains the ineffectual scale of the United
States government:
The United States is simply too large and complex
to be responsibly governed by a decision-making
body of perhaps 1000 people representing
220,000,000 Americans (1981 figures) and a large
chunk of the biosphere, especially when those 1000
decision makers can only survive by compromise and
generally are forced to front for heavy economic
interests (media campaigns for national office are
expensive) . A government where one person
represents the interests of 220,000 others is
absurd, considering that not all the people voted
for the winning representative (or even voted) and
especially considering that most of those 220,000
people are capable of representing themselves.
I
think people do much better, express their deeper
qualities, when their actions matter.
Obviously
one way to make government more meaningful and
61
responsible is to involve people directly day by
day, in the processes of decision, which only
seems possible if we reduce the scale of
government. A bioregion seems about the right
size: say close to a small state, or along the
line of the Swiss canton system or American Indian
tribes.~
5. Diversity.
diversity.
An ecosystem usually tends toward
As the system grows more diverse, the
myriad connections supporting the life forms becomes
more complex.
For example, if one species is removed
from a tropical rainforest--say a species that inhabits
one very small area--not much of the overall health of
the ecosystem may suffer.
On the other hand, remove
one species from a delicate and dry sonoran desert, and
the effect will likely be more dramatic.
Sale tells
the story of the eminent British biologist J.B S.
Haldane being asked by a group of distinguished
theologians what he thought best characterized the
supreme being.
Haldane answered "An inordinate
fondness for beetles."
What he was hinting at was the fact that of the
million or so animal species identified so far, almost
half of them--400,000--are beetles.
This fact of
nature alludes to its propensity for diversity.
Is it
really necessary to have that many varieties of
43
Dodge, Jim.
"Living by Life: Some Bioregional
Theory and Practice." The CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter
19 91, pp. 8- 9 .
62
beetles?
The point is that the natural life-building
processes tend toward whirling species out into the
world to make a home for themselves in their niche,
which means evolving to meet the specific requirements
of varying habitats .
This should be true for the human animal, and in
fact, it has been true through most of the evolution of
our species.
Our species is unique on this earth.
Though we have lost some of the brute strength of other
animals, we have made up for it in other ways such as
learning to :
... climb trees and swim rivers, to run across
prairies and swing on vines, to hunt and forage
and to plant and nurture , to work alone life a
hawk and in bands like wolves, to communicate
intimately like honeybees and signal over great
distances like porpoises, to know the world by
smell and by three-dimensional sight, an acute
sense of hearing, and a delicate sense of
touch."~
The way that humans have organized society into
hunting bands, and later, tribes, clans, and villages
has increased human cultural diversity.
Even to this
day, in a 20th century sort of way, the communities
that build diversity into their structure--in economic
and cultural terms--will survive and grow.
The problem
with the type of growth that passes for stability is
that it is short-lived because it is not based upon
44
Sale, Kirkpatrick.
Dwellers in the Land.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1985, p.l05.
63
..............,
ecological principals that provide the staying power of
human activities.
And though it seems like there is
amazing diversity in the city, a more comprehensive
view shows that the trend is building toward uniform
and monolithic cultural, economic, and political
spheres.
For example, in a supermarket, you will
likely find 40 kinds of boxed breakfast cereals, 30
kinds of packaged cookies, 20 kinds of toilet paper, 10
kinds of tortilla chips, and 5 kinds of dental floss.
Now, do we really need all these choices?
any of these products?
Do we need
And to top this off, there is
another supermarket across the street with the exact
same products.
Though the diversity seems tremendous
here, in reality there is a paucity of diversity, since
all the products are but convolutions of the same
thing, with the same ingredients, for the same
purposes--competition and profit.
Modern industrial
culture seeks uniformity, interchangeablity and
conformity in the name of efficiency so that those who
control the most resources, labor, and capital will be
able to slightly alter this month's cereal box for a
new and improved model next month.
In the end, the Pepsi-fication of the world would
like to manufacture:
whole nations given over to a single product,
cities to a single industry, farms to a single
crop, factories to a single article, people to a
64
single job, jobs to a single motion. 45
By contrast, the bioregional polity would r 1
the opposite direction, motivated by true divers :
that matched the endless permutations possible w:
the human imagination.
Particularly, the divers
bioregional politics would mirror the challenges
presented by the natural lay of the land, its mo1
slopes, its riverine enclaves, its quiet embayme1
The people inhabiting these different regions wi ·
the same bioregion would be part of a coherent WE
would require cooperation between the flatlander
the hill folk, the urban and the rural, the upst :
rancher and the downstream farmer.
Similarly, political diversity would reflec ·
bioregional differences.
In accepting diversity
regions, we must accept, even welcome, the diver.
ways of self-governance.
It is possible that
conflicting political systems would develop within
bioregional constraints, but given the politics that
come from a respect and sense of belonging to a
r,~~ a
from aiming to live with the mysteries of the la:
affections of the citizens in one bioregion woul
toward building partnerships with neighboring
bioregions despite practical differences.
45
Ibid., p. 106.
65
Chapter Six
The Bioregional Community
1. Introduction.
models.
Land is a commodity in western economic
Under the model, land ownnership is viewed as an
inalienable right.
clan law. 46
This concept was foreign to tribal or
Land was viewed by tribes and clans as a
product of a creator, and therefore, something that could
not be owned.
As the church or king-emperor gained
dominance over tribal societies, the tribal citizens lost
control of land to the church or king who dubbed
themselves as representatives of the creator, and
therefore owners of the land.
Subsequently, land became
a title that could be sold to individuals, states and
companies.
The value of land ownership became
intricately connected to the accumulation of power.
Those who could control the land and its life forces
could also control masses of people.
This drive for the
amassing of land areas has continued into modern times;
it is driven by greed beyond basic, reasonable human
needs.
Now that western society so firmly embraces
46
Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practical Guide
for a Sustainable Future.
Washington, D.C. : Island
Press, 1990, p.545.
66
private ownership of land as an inalienable right, what
can be done to make a transition to another paradigm?
In this chapter I present the Community Land Trust
(CLT) as a transition to the vision of land stewardship 47
inherent in the bioregional community.
I also discuss
how it benefits the greatest number of members in a human
community while providing for diverse and sustainable use
of the land.
The bioregional paradigm seeks to re-institute
tribal wisdom of connectedness to the land.
This
paradigm means transitioning out of present destructive
habits, such as moving productive land into large-scale
commercial development projects that both benefit too few
people and impoverish the landscape.
A more beneficial
use of land would be to provide access for stewards who
would produce their own shelter and food, while
preserving sensitive habitats as functioning ecosystems.
In becoming trustees (not owners) of land put in
community trust, the trustees could better heed the
tenets of ecosystem theory: that natural communities of
organisms tend toward complexity, diversity, and
interconnectedness.
The CLT is one method in the
47
Land stewardship is defined as re-establishing
the
human relationship
to the
environment
in a
responsible manner, using inherited natural resources
productively, yet preserving their innate attributes
forever. Stewardship is both an individual and community
commitment.
67
bioregional community that provides the framework for reinhabiting the land in alignment with ecological
sensibilities.
I will flesh out this skeletal view of a CLT by
discussing its following characteristics: the high and
sustainable productivity associated with local control of
resources; the benefits to the local community; and the
"decommoditizing" ability of the CLT.
I will explain
some of these topics by offering a hypothetical scenario
of a small town placing its city property into a CLT, and
show how this would benefit all members of the local
biotic community.
The other topics will be discussed as
well.
2.
The Community Land Trust (CLT).
A CLT is a
democratically-structured nonprofit corporation with an
open membership which attempts to guarantee the
legitimate aspirations of private ownership while
considering the needs of the local community.
As I have
defined in previous chapters, the local culture that
practices self-reliance will necessarily be acting in
accordance with ecological principles.
They will be
preservationist, conservationist, and restorationists all
rolled into one.
A CLT provides the opportunity for
people at a local and grassroots level to learn the
skills and knowledge necessary for operating a
68
sustainable bioregional community.
The CLT takes a bioregional step toward recognizing
that land should not be viewed as a commodity.
Mollison
explains the reason:
Our own lifetimes are, in terms of soils, trees, or
climate, as ephemeral as snow flakes.
For a little
while, we have the use of the earth, and our time
here is bounded by birth and death. Thus the very
concept of land ownership is ludicrous, and we need
only to use what is needed for the brief time that
we are here; even birth and death are small events
in a total life pool continuum. 48
Mollison's statement implies that our lives as humans are
not above the laws of nature.
We are part of the dance
of ecosystems, one species that still needs to discover
its useful place.
I maintain that the role of the
civilized person in today's world is to play a part in
the great ecosystem recovery that needs to take place
everywhere on this planet.
This work does not need to be
done always through environmental and social change
organizations, but through personal effort as well-through community transformation, and through attention
to living with the wealth of one's bioregion.
Through the CLT, the individual right to exploit
natural resources is replaced by a commitment to rebuild
our community's natural heritage into gardens that mimic
ecosystem complexity and richness.
This commitment does
require remaking some part of our consciousness that
48
Ibid.
69
demands a ownership of and domination over, the earth.
Though the CLT requires some shifts in landowner
consciousness (to promote land reform), the changes are
not so revolutionary nor so far from western ideological
tenets as to prove impossible.
Indeed, the community
land trust has already met with some success in the
United States.
With encouragement, this new form of
community trust would benefit the land and help bring
about the much needed radical and complete transformation
in our ways of viewing land.
Some of the values crucial
to the success of the community land trust, already
firmly held by members of society, include:
1) the importance of private initiative (equity in
the community land trust accrues to the individual for
improvements on the land)
2) the concept of stewardship of land is already
held by other organizations in society, including the
environmental movement and farmers
3) the encouragement of self-reliance and local
control of natural resources, feelings now strong in many
rural communities, and
4) the recognition that communities should have
control over their own lives.
In earlier chapters, I spoke of bioregionalism as
blending ancient truths with modern insights.
These four
statements recognize older values that regard land not as
a commodity to be bought and sold, but to be revered,
cared for, and even worshipped.
70
They also point the way
toward building coalition between bioregional proponents
and established environmental and social change
organizations.
3. Land Use and Ownership.
The departure that land
trusts make in regard to ownership of land are based upon
traditional philosophies of the commonality of land,
while use of the land is a concept that dovetails well
into the western liberal democratic mind which believes
in personal initiative.
The CLT allows for individual
use of land, transferable through inheritance.
The economic implications of individual use coupled
with common ownership are important since it enables the
community to capture the "unearned"
(described below)
income of land values for the public good, while
individuals benefit from their personal improvements on
the land.
For example, as noted previously, increase in
land value occurs as a community builds more
infrastructure to serve the land in question.
The person
or corporation holding title to the land benefits
directly from the community•s effort by an increase in
the value of the land.
This owner can then resell the
land at a profit, having "captured" this increase in land
value without personally having "earned" the increased
value.
Thus, this land is said to be held
"speculatively."
Developers will have no interest in
71
r
land in trust since increases in land value accrue to the
community at large, and not to individuals for profit.
However, the individual does benefit from his/her own
efforts and improvements on the land, what is termed
"use" value.
If that individual (who has been leasing
the trust land) makes improvements on the land such as
buildings or improved soil fertility, then he/she is
compensated in the event he/she moves from the site.
In
summary, use value accrues to the individual while actual
land value accrues to the community.
The CLT also has the ability to compete favorably on
the normal real estate market by purchasing land
directly.
The mortgage is then paid by the residents who
lease the land from the land trust organization.
The
only people who lose out in the deal are the individuals
and corporations who would seek to accumulate land not
for the purposes of stewardship, but maximization of
profits, like any commodity.
Additionally, the land
trust has the ability to accept land as a gift or
bequest.
4. Operating the Land Trust.
The CLT is an appropriate
vehicle for combining the ideas of conservation and
development that fit into the bioregional model.
Sustainable development means increasing the yield of
degraded systems to mimic yields found in natural
I
...............
systems.
Stewards in the rural land trust have the
opportunity to use the land for productive purposes while
enhancing the capacities of the land.
One way to
accomplish this is to design site-specific plans for
perennial gardens that mimic the structure and functions
of the natural local ecosystems.
For example, in the
Pacific Northwest bioregion, a multi-canopy, multi-crop
food system could mimic the old-growth forest system.
In
the desert bioregion of Eastern Washington, plants that
tolerate and mimic the arid steppe plant guilds would be
more appropriate and sustainable with regard to aquifer
recharge, and any other constraints of that bioregion.
Thus, while land held by a community trust is being
restored and revived, the residents are able to build
economic security by integrating human needs into the
landscape.
Each lessee that upholds the ecological
covenants written by the CLT will accrue "use" value,
while providing a future economic base for community
stability.
6. Food, Self-reliance, and The CLT.
The leasing
arrangement of the CLT produces an income that is
responsive to the market if a farm in the local area
should come up for sale.
Once the farm is purchased, and
appropriate land use covenants are drawn up, farmland can
remain farmland, and not be either in the grips of
73
..............
developers or laying idle as a backdrop to a wealthy
development (through development rights transfer) .
A
farmer could then afford to farm without the expenditure
of land purchase, but with the comforting thought that
any effort expended in improving the soil or farm
infrastructure would be saleable upon retirement from
farming.
When the farmer is ready to sell development
improvements, the land trust covenants allow for a smooth
transfer to another farmer who purchases the improvements
and takes over the lease.
This small scale operation fits into the bioregional
vision of local community production of local needs.
The
CLT that has a land base is able to set up food
production systems that both mimic natural ecosystems in
conservation of energy.
For instance, a forest is a set
of interconnected processes that tends to self-regulate
as it builds for the greatest yield.
The forest does not
need to import materials beyond what natural cycles bring
into its grasp; these include water and nutrients from
the sky and rivers, plant and animal migrants, and solar
energy.
Given these constraints, ecosystems evolve a
structure and function that displays a richness of
production.
By designing our food production systems for
self-reliance, we will be mimicing the only sustainable
model we have--natural ecosystems.
74
3. Community Land Trust Scenario.
Suppose a rural town
in the northwest wishes to revitalize its economic and
cultural heritage.
The townspeople realize that a
dependency upon outside supplies for food and materials
(lumber for building housing, etc.) makes their community
vulnerable to distant and uncontrollable forces:
increases in the price of imported food and gasoline,
dependency on non-local credit infrastructure, trucking
strikes, etc.
It therefore behooves a town to become as
self-reliant as possible in a way that benefits its
citizens and the local ecology.
The townspeople wish to
reinhabit the land by harmonizing with the capacities of
the land to support human and non-human life.
They place
the entirety (both public and private) of their town
property into a CLT.
About 70-80% of the area would be
reserved for forestlands with 20-30% remaining for
farmlands, open space, industry, schools, etc.
They do
this in order to steward their local resources in a selfreliant fashion.
This community land trust scenario, having set aside
large tracts of land for the benefit of the community,
will allow sustainable use of the land.
Prior to the
community land trust, ownership was in small parcels,
each not suitable for long-term management strategies and
sustained-yield practices--even if the owners were
interested in this type of management.
75
Most property was
held for the speculative increase in the value of the
land as improved infrastructure (roads, power, sewers,
etc.) increased the value of the land without the owner
doing any work to earn the increased value.
However,
this hypothetical community knows that the community
itself provides the services and improvements that
increase the surrounding land value.
Therefore, the
community members decide that all citizens should benefit
from increased land values.
Many problems will be alleviated from the wise use
of land by the community, including saving farmland and
openspace, designing restoration of wild corridors,
protecting groundwater recharge areas, setting aside
public access and recreation areas, and the beginning of
sustainable community design.
All these problems can be
addressed by the community members as they exercise their
democratic control of their own resources for community
benefit.
Foreign development for the primary benefit of
outside corporate interest will not be allowed in this
community land trust town.
With all land now in this
hypothetical community trust, speculative schemes will no
longer line the pockets of a few landowners.
Local
people become both the stewards and beneficiaries of the
activities on the land.
The loss of prime farmland is a good example of
encroachment of development dollars.
76
Land that used to
be available for farming is now becoming high priced, and
the only people who can afford the land are developers or
people with enough money to have a place in the county
without stewarding the full benefits of the land.
Covering up the biological wealth and natural diversity
is not the bioregional way to learn about the capacities
and attributes of a bioregion.
The town's land can now appropriately be managed by
ecologists who understand the commitment of the citizens
to maintenance of their bioregional richness.
Wise land
use plans can be. designed with the intent of increasing
the biotic wealth, while learning the limits of human
activity on the land.
With the economic incentive of
gain from land prices eliminated, ecological truths can
be upheld by prudent use of the land.
For instance,
forest ecologists can determine how much growth a forest
produces each year.
This will guide the harvesting of
trees and other materials from the forest:
we must not
remove more than the annual growth of the natural system.
To remove more than this level is to degrade and simplify
the forest, which eventually impoverishes the dwellers in
the land.
Ecologists recommend that about 5% below the
annual growth rate be left to rot on the forest floor, 49
thereby regenerating the soil that is the base of a
~ Quote from Jeff DeBonis at a talk he gave with
Gary Synder and Richard Nelson at The University of
Washington in March, 1992.
77
healthy plant community.
As the forest is growing in health and productivity,
so too will the townspeople grow.
Employment will rise
in this intensively-managed collection of ecosystems.
One person for every 300-400 acres will be needed to work
in the woods cleaning and thinning out trees so the
forest will benefit from the extra sunlight.
This
scenario of a managed forest system (and the agricultural
land for that matter), must be seen as a comprehensive
plan for the needs of the people and the other life forms
that inhabit the area.
If there seems at this point to
be too much meddling and management by the human
component, it is by design--a design that purposely
directs us to encourage the greatest yield from the
system by consciously becoming part of a local living
landscape. 50
Of course, this yield grows with time as we
work with natural processes that become more complex and
intricately compounded with interlocking webs and
associations of species.
Weed trees that were thinned or cleared can be
reused for local benefit, creating more work
(cooperatively managed, of course) and self-reliance of
50
Mollison, in his book Perrnacul ture: A Practical
Strategy for a Sustainable Future, defines system yield
as "the sum total of surplus energy produced by, stored,
conserved, reused, or converted by the design. Energy is
in surplus once the system itself has available all its
needs for growth, reproduction, and maintenance."
78
basic human needs.
Energy could be produced (firewood,
wood chips), along with paper (pulpwood), biomass for
cattle food, and versatile plants like hemp (for animal
food,
fiber, medicinals, land restoration, and paper).
Additionally, the local industries utilizing these raw
materials would set the stage for more worker
cooperatives, locally owned and operated.
Wise management of the community forest lands will
create a sustained-yield harvest system that will result
in higher quality lumber and thus longer-lived and higher
quality wood products.
The exponential rate of
involvement for the community residents would continue to
rise as multiple functions and uses are devised for the
forest products.
Saw mills would be needed for supplying
the wood industries that would spring up to process the
products of the forest locally, including cabinet and
furniture making shops, futon production facilities,
plywood mills, and boat shops. 51
Lest it sound like the
region is turning into a mass of wood processing
industries, keep in mind that foundational ethics and
comprehensive plans will have been prepared for a
sustainable use of the town's natural resources.
51
This
We should keep in mind that each bioregion will
have different natural endowments with which to build a
local economic base.
Thus, wood industries would be
found in forested areas, while other plant and adobe
materials will serve the needs of people in, say, the a
desert bioregion. Tribal societies have creatively used
local resources; we can relearn to do likewise.
79
mandated foundation calls foremost for the enhancement of
the land's diversity, not its degradation.
From this
foundation, we proceed with small and local industries
that encourage opportunity for full meaningful work,
while distributing equal benefits to all residents, with
little, if any, of the benefits exported for capital
accumulation.
Besides the forest land (which is the zone of least
influence in the human co-opted town area), land suitable
for farming and orchards will be freed from the
speculative market, thus allowing local fertile land to
produce most of the town's food needs.
additional work.
This will create
Knowing the sources of the food, and
how it was grown, will encourage interest in gardening
that will spread to community gardens where neighborhoods
will band together to produce a good deal of their own
food.
Taxes assessed through the trust will translate into
sustainable development as better services, roads, and
schools unlike the non-community land trust village,
where only the homeowner-taxpayer is burdened with
development costs.
Improved services in turn increase
employment and result in a healthier living standard for
all community members.
With the town in land trust, appropriate and
rigorous land uses could be adhered to--which means that
80
housing is not built on prime forest and farm land, and
sensitive areas are reserved for wildlife.
There would
be no land held for the speculative market, hence no
individuals hoarding unearned income from increases in
land value.
Also, housing would be lower since the
lessee (99 year renewable lease) would not have to factor
in the price of the land.
Local residents would have
first option at the purchase.
Environmentally-nurturing
covenants would be part of the lease contract for the use
of the trust land, and anyone not adhering to the
covenant, that is, causing a degradation of the land,
would lose their lease.
Coupling the science of ecology with alternative
economic and land policies, it is entirely possible that
such a scenario would happen if the human race could
realize the urgency of the situation.
The trick is to
make a gentle transition in the way we view our
connection to the life forces that support us.
One
surefire way to educate ourselves and participate in this
experiment is for communities to strive for self-reliance
for the bulk of their needs.
Residents will
bene~it
by
increased cooperative work, more community spirit, young
people staying in their home town, and a revitalized
community that bases its human economy on enhancing the
landscape according to ecological principles.
The two steps that have occurred in this
81
hypothetical scenario are 1) the "decommoditization" of
land by its removal from the speculative market and 2)
the "decapitalization" of land. 52
Capital markets
(including banks) will no longer be needed to buy local
land, freeing up the capital for other kinds of
investments such as mortgages on new housing, and new
industries appropriate for bioregionally-oriented
communities, such as passive solar energy, waste
recycling and recovery (composting: human, plant, and
animal), biogas generation, and so on.
Further uses of the capital could go toward the
often neglected, though crucial, spiritual needs of a
community introducing new modes of education, forging new
ways of revering all forms of life in the community, and
bringing more ecological awareness into traditional
religions.
As inflation, unemployment, and environmental
degradation grow in and around communities, these
visionary reforms of land ownership and control may
become more attractive for a majority of the community
members.
It is only fair that everyone who participates
in planting and nurturing the seeds of self-reliance
within a community's boundaries should harvest the bounty
that life has to offer--bounty in terms of access to
52
Bennello C. G, et al.
Building Sustainable
Communities. New York, New York: Bootstrap Press, p. 24.
82
healthy land for spiritual renewal, meaningful and secure
work, and applications of local ownership and control.
The vision inherent in the bioregional community
agrees with the three laws of a bioregional polity
outlined in the previous chapter: the laws of
decentralism, complementarity, and diversity.
This
hypothetical example of the implementation of a
bioregional community on a large scale allows communities
to decentralize from preponderant levels of foreign
control.
It also demonstrates how decentralized
communities can begin to rebuild human cultural and
ecological diversity.
The land trust is a new approach to land tenure that
advocates just redistribution of private land for public
conservation and stewardship uses.
We must also go
beyond conservation to restoration, which helps complex
natural ecosystems evolve toward complexity and
diversity.
Land, in this new, though age-old, vision, is
held in trust for the community's good.
The bioregional
community will allow a commonwealth of activities that
uphold bioregional sensibilities of living with the local
landscape in ways that enhance rather than continually
degrade natural and human systems.
83
Chapter Seven
Conclusion
Is it natural to think that the natural endowments
of a land should be the building blocks for.creating
human communities within that bioregion?
To answer yes
to this question means that many densely populated
regions of the earth are not in accord with local
constraints.
Today, we do not want to feel constrained
by nature, but only by our own ability to invent ways to
supersede natural laws.
But it is impossible to overcome
some laws, such as the finite resources that are
available for economic growth.
economic terms is
~ot
The idea of growth in
instructed by ecological
considerations, especially the idea of limitless growth.
Our economy depends on continued growth, but how long can
an economy grow using the earth's resources?
The terms sustainable growth and sustainable
development currently are synonymous.
Herman Daly,
senior economist for the Environment Department at the
World Bank, says:
... the earth ecosystem develops (evolves), but
does not grow.
Its subsystem, the economy,
must eventually stop growing, but can continue
to develop. The term "sustainable
84
development," therefore makes sense for the
economy, but only if it is understood as
"development without growth"--that is,
qualitative improvement of a physical economic
base that is maintained in a steady state by a
throughput of matter-energy that is within the
regenerative and assimilative capacities of the
ecosystem. " 53
The bioregional economy fits with Daly's idea of
steady state economics.
And what more appropriate place
to practice "development without growth" than at the
bioregional level, where nature as teacher is close to
home, and where our interdependence with ecosystem
processes is keenly felt?
If we want to begin working toward a sustainable
culture, we need to change our perceptions of the natural
world.
We need to think not so much of "going back to
the land," rather how to develop an intimate, conscious
relationship with our place; call that place our home for
the long run; and include a rich and ceremonial life in
our interactions with nature.
If we work on these tasks,
then we will be on our way toward living "according to
the same deep, ancient, and perennial sources of
knowledge as native and indigenous peoples always have,
but in the present, under the present conditions, no
53
Daly, Herman.
"Sustainable Growth: A Bad
Oxymoron," Grassroots Development, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1991,
p. 39.
85
r
matter where we live, even in the largest cities.
n
54
The changes that need to come about for the
restoration of natural ecosystems and the ecologicallywise use of the landscape are possible.
Bioregionalism
does not suggest revolution, nor administrative or
legislative acts.
Rather, fundamental change will come
gradually and inevitable for a society that seeks a
balance with nature and within itself.
Sale notes:
It is only by the long and steady tenor of evolution
that people will ease themselves into such a society
as the alternative futures gradually come to seem
senseless and the bioregional prospect becomes the
only sane choice. 55
Sale seems confident that the human race will discover
its erring ways in dealing with nature, and be eager to
use practices that blend what our ancestors knew with
corroborations through ecological studies.
The rational
and the ritual must come together to understand the
complexity of the human experience on this earth.
The
bioregional truths help us in reordering:
... all our existing establishments: politicallegal, commercial-industrial, communications,
educational, and religious. At present all of these
establishments are involved in the devastating
impact of industrial society on the natural world.
The human arrogance they manifest toward the other
natural members of the life communities remains only
slightly affected by the foreboding concern of the
54
Haenke,
David.
Bioregionalism:
Beyond
Environmentalism. Personal Paper, January, 1991.
55
Sale, Kirkpatrick. "Bioregionalism: A New Way to
Treat the Land." The Ecologist, Vol. 14, No.4, 1984, p.
172.
86
future expressed by professional biologists and by
others who have recognized that the imminent peril
to the planet is not exactly the nuclear bomb, but
the plundering processes that are extinguishing
those very life systems on which we depend. 56
Berry expresses the concern that our industrial society
tends to abide blindly by the tenets of an mechanized
world view, which eradicates ecosystems to sustain
itself, or, at best, mitigates its own destruction.
Bioregionalism lays down the foundation for a resacralization of nature.
It is a movement of people
working to build a parallel society which ignores central
governmental laws that are not relevant for people
involved in creating equitable cultures based on local
self-reliance.
The ethics of bioregionalism go beyond
the surface structures that I have discussed in this
essay, for even if we do achieve bioregional selfmanagement across the face of the earth, we are still in
danger of producing endless goods for endless consumptive
cultures.
We must go beyond the economic realm for
answers on how to live in harmony with all other forms of
life.
As Mollison says,
"We should always tend towards
minimizing the spread of people and their works on the
face of the land ... for it is the ultimate grace to give
room on earth to all living things, and the ultimate in
56
Berry, Thomas .
The Dream of the Earth.
San
Francisco, California: Sierra Club Books, 1988, p. 170.
87
modesty to regard ourselves as stewards, not gods." 57
57
Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practical Guide
for a Sustainable Future.
Washington, D.C.: Island
Press, 1990, p.558.
88
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