Agraria_Journal_WINTER_2022

16 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 BIOREGIONAL REGENERATION Agraria’s Past and Future BY MEGAN BACHMAN In the midst of our present existential crisis over human- caused environmental changes, many are exploring how to live differently . Specifically, how do we live with less harm to our environment and to all its inhabitants, both human and non-human, while fostering the regenerative forces of nature to heal? Fundamental to that inquiry is a seemingly simpler one: Where do we live? Ultimately, we live in relationship to a set of resources that come from somewhere and wastes that go somewhere. In an era of ecological overshoot and pollution, establishing patterns of living within less-than-planetary boundaries is paramount. But how, and at what scale? The concept of bioregionalism — and now bioregional regeneration — offers an answer to this question. RE-INHABITING OUR BIOREGIONS Any given place can be layered with political, historic, demographic and ecological identifiers. Environmentalists in the 1970s sought to highlight the importance of the latter with the term bioregionalism, a view where watersheds, wildlife, geology, soil, climate and other natural features define the boundaries of a place. Coincident with their use of the term was the charge to get to know one’s place more deeply and, ultimately, to “re-inhabit one’s bioregion” in more sustainable ways. In contrast to vague appeals to live simpler, or greener, the nascent bioregional movement more clearly explicated how local living depended upon a close relationship with one’s own region, which itself had unique resources and limitations. Bioregional planning would necessarily involve the realignment of the needs of a given population with the supplies available in their area. It also involves a shift of consciousness from living on the planet to with the planet. Despite the successful organizing of several Bioregional Congresses and other grassroots environmental awareness efforts, mass society continued its industrial march, especially as globalization, fueled by cheap oil, accelerated. Policymakers and the public no longer saw their regions as places where material resources could be directly sourced and used, instead focusing on how local resources (people and nature) could be leveraged for financial gain in global markets. The result was both an over-exploitation of local resources and an increasing dependence upon resources from elsewhere, such as oil from the Middle East or coal from West Virginia mountaintops, with compounding environmental, social, and geopolitical harms. Environmentalists, peace activists, and others in the early 21st century critiqued the deteriorating situation especially in the wake of the Iraq War, the fracking boom, and rising concerns over climate change. A subset of the environmental movement began promoting localization, a powerful vision, but with nebulous geographical distinctions. Without an attendant bioregional framework, debates arose over “how local is local” until local became misunderstood and then co- opted, as other terms before it had been. Yet bioregionalism may be a clearer and more pragmatic vision for living within ecological limits. It involves a scale small enough to respond to democratic organizing yet large enough to allow significant economic and cultural shifts to take place. While the movement has grown slowly as a whole, in part since a national structure is anathema to its values, progress has been made in some bioregions, such as Cascadia, the Ozarks, Kansas, and the Hudson Valley, to name a few. Bioregional organizations have also helped cultivate a bioregional consciousness, or identity, among their participants. Such a mindset beautifully blends a planetary awareness of our complex challenges and a hyper-local