The last installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment calls for system-wide changes on a never-before-seen scale. This effort is a direct response to that call. It is part of an initiative to
form a global network of bioregions capable of regenerating the Earth at the rapid and widespread scale now necessary.
In Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability [2002], David Holmgren argues
for the need to organize at the Bioregional level.
“The bioregional movement, which is closely associated with both permaculture and
indigenous cultural resurgence has raised awareness of the need to identify geographically
governance boundaries that reflect natural systems, especially river catchments.”
Bioregionalism, emphasizing life-affirming regenerative design, offers an emerging
model of how an alternative collaborative framework can be built, fostered, and maintained.
Joe Brewer, author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth and founder of the Earth
Regenerators network visited both the Roaring Fork Valley and the North Fork Valley last
November to explore activating bioregional-scaled regeneration in the area. As a result, four
of us in the Roaring Fork Valley, with many years of collective organizing experience and
extensive relationships with area leaders, have begun an activation process to ignite this effort.
Thus far, we have convened two small group sessions of regional leaders of organizations and
agencies whose mission is to steward and repair the land and water. We are listening for and
tracking what is already happening, what are possibilities for weaving existing efforts, and
where are the gaps in what we collectively acknowledge is needed for more rapid and
landscape-scaled regeneration. We are looking for strategies that will cause the largest
regenerative impact on the region.
This effort uses the sound biological and socially regenerative framework of the
Commonland group, as well as the guidance of the Prosocial movement and David Sloan
Wilson’s work to foster new kinds of collaboration based on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-
winning social research. One of the main supports of this work is to start with and include the
land as a central player in the process.
Our effort mirrors the Cascadia bioregion’s effort to convene 100 small groups of 6 ppl – a
Prosocial strategy to foster deeper relationships and the potential for more creative and trusting
collaboration since this initiative, is inherently pioneering and will involve unprecedented co-
operation. Other nascent ideas include a Bioregional Regeneration Summit, mapping regional
larger-scale regenerative efforts, and building the Prosocial context for this work.
Your support of this effort will cause the strategies to emerge that have the greatest chance of
bioregionally-scaled regeneration, and for vital learning key to the success of these efforts
across our state, country, and globally.