Bioregioning: the defining practice of regenerative cultures
“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” — Wendell Berry (2001)
“Bioregions define the appropriate scale for regional self-reliance, responsible environmental action and human participation in the community of life.” — Daniel Wahl (2001)
Ever since I first stumbled across the work of Peter Berg, Raymond Dasman and Thomas Berry on ‘bioregionalism’, while studying for the Masters in Holistic Science at Schumacher College in 2001, the basic insight that ‘right relationship’ between the human and the more than human world is defined by and co-evolved with the specific bio-physical conditions of place and region has centrally informed my work.
In ‘Design for Human and Planetary Health’ (2006) I developed a theory for scale-linking, salutogenic (health-generating) design centred around the bioregion as the critical scale of implementation. My second PhD supervisor, Prof. John Todd, co-founded the New Alchemy Institute (NAI) in 1969 — an institution that pioneered ecological design to develop “elegant solutions predicated by the uniqueness of place”. The biologists and ecologists of the NAI set themselves a clear focus for their scientific investigations into how to avoid the breakdown of the planetary life-support system:
The New Alchemy Institute (N.A.I.) begins its investigations and designs at the micro-scale, while at the same time maintaining a planetary perspective. Careful attention is paid to the important interconnections existing between different scales of organisation.
The N.A.I. will focus on systems of food production and energy transformation that do not require large investments, so that the designs may also benefit and be used by the less privileged.
The N.A.I. is looking for methods that will catalyse the gradual change from a materialist society to a society of information and biological understanding.
The N.A.I. has the intention to create designs that accentuate participatory solutions, which are capable of involving a large proportion of society.
The N.A.I will explore future bioregional strategies, which will integrate the more universal solutions of the first four points into the specific conditions of the local ecosystems.
The N.A.I. will investigate methods of integrating renewable energy use and durable materials into its designs, rather than rely on the use of limited substances and materials for short-term use.
These guidelines gain a new significance 56 years later — in 2025 — as the post-Bretton Woods international agreements are challenged, climate change impacts are escalating, and cascading social, ecological and economic breakdown, along with massive re-armament are inviting communities around the globe to pay attention to the rebuilding of community resilience, social cohesion, and participatory governances at the local and regional scale.
From Petr Kropotkin’s work on ‘Mutual Aid’ (1902) stressing the need for decentralised systems of production and consumption, as well as, governance, and the need for local and regional self-reliance in food production, to Patrick Geddes pioneering an urban planning approach that called for cities to be carefully embedded in the bio-physical reality of their region in ‘Cities in Evolution’ (1915), the re-emergence of bioregioning as the biologically appropriate dwelling pattern of our species in the Western cultural context has been slowly building for over a century.
Inspired by the French sociologist Frederic Le Play’s (1802–1886) triad of ‘Lieu, Travail, Famille’ — which Geddes translated to “Work, Place, Folk” — Geddes developed a new approach to regional and town planning based on the integration of people and their livelihood into the natural givens of the particular place and region they inhabit. He emphasised the need for a careful inventory of each specific region’s hydrology, geology, flora, fauna, climate and natural topography, as well as its social and economic opportunities and challenges, to be used as a basis of biologically informed town planning and education. As such, the Geddesian methodology pioneered the bioregional planning approach almost a century before the emergence of bioregionalism in the USA through the work of the Planet Drum Foundation in the 1970s.
There is infact a direct line of influence, as Geddes invited Kropotkin to his public education events of the ‘Edinburgh Summer School’ and showed him the ‘Outlook Tower’ as an example of public education about the nestedness of place from the local, to the regional, to the national and global. Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs were keen students of Geddes and both influenced the work of Ian L. McHarg. His book ‘Design with Nature’ (1969), PBS television series ‘The House We Live In’ and opening address for the first Earth Day in 1970 as well as the work of The New Alchemy Institute inspired the American bioregionalists of the 1970s and lead to the The North American Bioregional congresses in the 1980s and 90s (see my conversations with David Haenke).
Reinhabitation
After returning from the 1972 United Nations conference on the environment in Stockholm, Peter Berg reflected on how to reintegrated humanity back into the patterns by which life sustains life at the local and planetary scale. He was convinced that any process of “reinhabitation” needed to learn from the remaining inhabitory people of this world and their indigenous practices of custodianship for the places they dwell in. Together with Raymond Dasman and Allan van Newkirk he suggested that reinhabitation will require a deeper intimacy with the bio-physical realities of the specific ‘bioregion’ and watershed.
“A bioregion can be determined initially by use of climatology, physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other descriptive natural sciences. The final boundaries of a bioregion, however, are best described by the people who have lived within it, through human recognition of the realities of living-in-place.”
— Peter Berg & Raymond Dasmann
John Todd, who supported Maurice Strong in the organisation of the Stockholm conference, later became a founding member of the Balaton Group along with Donella Meadows, lead-author of ‘Limits to Growth’ (1972). The original vision for a network of bioregionally focused ‘Bioregional Learning Centres’ was developed by this group in the early 1980s (see Donella Meadows account here).
When Isabel Carlisle and colleagues started the Bioregional Learning Centre in South Devon in the UK in 2017 this vision along with the bioregional reflections that Kirkpatrick Sale, the author of ‘Human Scale’ (1980) and ‘Dwellers in the Land’ (1985) had written about the area during an extended stay at Schumacher College were important inspirations.
One of the many contributions of Kirkpatrick Sale to the evolution of bioregional devlopment is that he highlighted that bioregions should not me attempted to be mapped by rigidly defined boundaries as natural boundaries are less places of demarkation and more boundaries of encounter. This echoes the bioregional settlement patterns of the original custodians of Australia (for more listen to this conversation with Tyson Junkaporta on the ReGeneration Rising — Coming Home to Life podcast).
“The natural region is the bioregion, defined by the qualities Gaea has established there, the givens of nature. It is any part of the earth’s surface whose rough boundaries are determined by natural characteristics rather than human dictates, distinguishable from other areas by particular attributes of flora, fauna, water, climate, soil, and landforms, and by the human settlements and cultures those attributes have given rise to. The boarders between such areas are usually not rigid — nature works of course with flexibility and fluidity — but the general contours of the regions themselves are not hard to identify by using a little ecological knowledge.”
— Kirkpatrick Sale (1980)
The ancient and new pattern of habitation or ‘reinhabitation’ of our species during most of our evolutionary history has been one of careful custodianship of the ecosystems we inhabited and emerged from. Evidence from around the globe demonstrates that the co-evolution of human beings with their home regions often increased bio-productivity and abundance and to this date the world’s remianing biodiversity hotspots are to a major extent under indigenous land-care practices. The outstanding work of Lyla June in her recent PhD ‘Architects of Abundance’ (2022) documents some of this evidence for the Americas.
One could say that ‘bioregioning’ is our species long-term evolutionary survival pattern and hence a return to it may well be the most promising pathway our species can take through the tumultuous if not catastrophic decades ahead (see my conversation with Dennis Meadows on ‘What kind of regenerative future is still possible?’).
It is a historical fact that the life-span of nations and civilisations is by and large limited in comparison to the time scales of the human evolutionary journeys. One could even go as far as questioning whether these ‘power-over-structures’ which emerged with the onset of agriculture first as city-states and empires and later as nations are actually providing the adequate adaptive capacity for ongoing human evolution in periods of rapid environmental change. Bioregional settlement patterns by contrast take a ‘power-with’ approach to mutual aid in the human and more than human community. Bioregioning as a pattern of habitation is in fact one of the distinguishing features between degenerative and regenerative cultures.
Bioregioning is a practice, a journey of connection, learning, and action. Seeing systems is a vital aspect of bioregioning — a many-sided skill that asks us to both ‘work at the edges’ and ‘see the whole’. There is no separation between human systems and ecosystems, bioregioning brings them together. Nor is there privilege; of one kind of ‘knowing’ over another. Science and art, community action and policy-making go hand in hand. … bioregioning actions … are designed to build the skills and relationships needed to foster thriving, resilient places.
Bioregioning and reinhabitation are practices, while ‘bioregionalism’ describes a movement. One of my mentors, Satish Kumar, once said to me “every -ism creates a -scism”. This highlights that bioregionalism as a movement can be joined or opposed, while the pathways practice of bioregioning invites participation in the process of coming home to an careing of shared place and territory which can provide a higher ground beyond political devides or movements. It is not a theory to stand behind but a pattern of relationships to nurture and strengthen.
The re-emergence of bioregioning as a response to converging crises
While attempts in the early 2000s by organisations like the Bioregional Development Group which developed the one planet living approach, did not manage to set an effective counterpoint to the obsession with economic globalisations in the 90s and 00s (see conversation with Pooran Desai). Yet over the past decade we have seen a steadily increasing interest in bioregioning as a survival pathway for our species.
Among the many examples of how the bioregional regeneration impulse is literally co-emerging all around the world are:
- Planet Drum Foundation,
- Bioregional Learning Centre in the UK,
- the alliance of bioregional projects that the Regenerative Communities Network of the Capital Institiute brought together,
- James Quilligan’s work with the Global Commons Alliance,
- the cosmo-localism approach promoted by the P2P Foundation,
- the work of Planet Local,
- the 4 Returns Approach to large landscape regeneration as promoted by Commonland,
- the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People,
- the bioregional focus of the ‘Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems’ MOOCs and masters programme I helped Tobias Luther to establish at ETH Zürich,
- the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collective,
- the work of Bioregional Earth
- the Design School for Regenerating Earth
- One Earth
- the Cascadia Department of Bioregions,
- Resilience.Earth
- Bioregioning Tayside
- Aliança Mar i Terra
- Sinal do Valle
- Monviso Institute
- the work of r3.0 on bioregioning
- the South Asia Bioregional Working Group
- the Amazon Sacred Headwaters bioregional approach
- the work of the Really Regenerative Centre on the power of place
- the collaborative for bioregional action learning & transformation (COBALT)
- the BioFi (Bioregional Finance) Project
- The Legacy Project
- … and many more
In addition, the work of the Global Ecovillage Network over the last 30 years and Gaia Education over the last 20 years — two organisations what where set up with the core-funding provided by Gaia Trust through Ross Jackson (another member of the Balaton group) — has been supporting ecovillage communities around the world to act as ‘living and learning centres’ which helped people connect with living in right relationship with each other, their bioregion and the Earth.
Starting on April 21st, 2025, in collaboration with the Bioregional Learning Alliance is offering a 10 week online learning journey into the practice of bioregioning. The programme will introduce many bioregioning initiatives around the world and cover a diversity of highly relevant topics for anyone who want to join or initiate a bioregioning group in their home region. The course will be offered with simultaneous translation into Spanish.
Here is a short overview of the programme:
“This opening session will provide background on bioregioning, its current context, and an overview of the webinar series. Jane and Isabel, co-founders of the Bioregional Learning Centre, will guide you through the steps for activating a bioregion — from creating a Story of Place to mapping bioregional systems through a Learning Journey, intervening in those systems to drive change through project work, launching a multi-sector and multi-actor design process to build collective will, and documenting the actions along the way. They will also discuss bioregional governance, data, and finance.”
“Erika and Oscar will share their years of experience working with municipalities in and beyond the Garrotxa bioregion in Catalonia. You will learn how to activate the critical yeast, engage the critical mass, and enable the community to take ownership and responsibility for the stewardship of their place. They will present a framework with a regenerative perspective, empowering you to start your own bioregional process while ensuring all voices in your community are included through a decolonizing and intersectional approach.”
“Through movement and storytelling, we will use a pattern perspective to reconnect with our original human art of tracking and wayfinding within the patterns of the living world. Building on the disciplines of Tracking (pattern seeing), Living Systems Thinking (pattern thinking), and Permaculture (pattern design), we will explore how developing our pattern mind can help us see, plan, and act regeneratively in our lives, communities, and bioregions.”
Daniel Wahl will briefly reflect on the significance of bioregioning in the context of regional community resilience-building through the regeneration of social cohesion, local economies, and local ecosystems. He will also discuss the significance of the bioregional scale as the most effective approach for contributing to planetary health before introducing the ongoing work in Mallorca. Brad Robertson will share insights into the community-led marine stewardship and regeneration efforts of Save the Med. Joe Holles will highlight critical aspects of the work of Fundació Iniciativas Mediterrani in creating three place-sourced and context-serving associations focused on Palma, the Tramuntana mountain range, and the ‘Pla’ (the plains/rest of the island) over the last 8 years. He will also share his experience in the recovery of 250 hectares of ancient olive groves in the Tramuntana and how our collective collaboration contributes to the ‘Regenerative Renaissance Project’. Together, we will reflect on how the groundwork of building networks of trust and relationships based on shared care, love, and attention to place over the last decade and longer is now slowly coalescing into a bioregional approach for the Soller Valley, the Tramuntana Mountain Range, the island of Mallorca, and the Balearic archipelago.
“This “follow-the-money” session asks: Who is doing this work — and getting paid for it? What can we learn from them? One starting point: many funded activities already align with bioregional principles, even if they go by different names — such as regional or rural development, ecological restoration, natural farming, food system transformation, or landscape design. We will hear from practitioners engaged in bioregional work, even if they don’t all use that term.”
“The Buckminster Fuller Institute is working to support commons-based, shared infrastructure for bioregional resilience and regeneration. In this session, we will explore existing and emerging tools and processes that can support bioregional initiatives in sensing, mapping, knowledge systems, planning, governance, and finance.”
“Learn how to create a collective identity from a bioinspired systemic perspective, fostering connection and collaboration among all bioregional actors. The internal indicators of a bioregion differ from the external outcomes we seek in the world, making it essential to incorporate an internal biomimetic perspective into bioregioning. This session will showcase examples from Colombia, highlighting innovation and the wisdom of connectivity from the Global South.”
“This session brings together indigenous Hawaiian and other multidisciplinary systems of knowledge and practice, featuring examples from Hawaiʻi Island. We will explore how learning with and through a key species in the bioregion — such as the hala tree (Pandanus tectorius in Hawaii) — can serve as a bridge between indigenous knowledge, scientific disciplines, the arts, and land stewardship, fostering mutual flourishing. Additionally, we will share insights on how supporting traditional stewards of culture and land helps regenerate Hawaiian foodways while promoting the flourishing of aloha ʻāina — a deep, reciprocal love and care for the land and sea, which sustains all life.”
“As creative practitioners, artists have honed capacities for storytelling, for making the invisible visible, for understanding the language of cultural values, and for being adept at systems thinking and fostering connectivity. These are essential methodologies for enquiring into the story of place and how it functions. With contributions from Burrenbeo, this webinar will introduce the Burren region as the context for three socially and ecologically engaged case studies: the MFA in Art & Ecology programmes at Burren College of Art, along with PhD candidate Katerina Gribkoff, and the Creative Climate Action project The Time Machine, as presented by Maeve Stone of Cracking Light Production.”
“Based on many years of working with bioregional development in Costa Rica and many places, Eduard Muller will walk through the diverse strategies for defining the limits of a bioregion, based on social, political, and geographical-ecological characteristics. In addition to discussing culture, identity, and the formation of governance structures (from the viewpoint of the Global South), the session will explore how to establish regenerative economies for inclusive development. Examples of regenerating conditions for life through land management practices, including regenerative agriculture and holistic grazing, will also be presented. Lastly, the session will explore how to build capacities across bioregions to co-create solutions.”
By now we have over 100 people from 6 continents signed up to join this international learning community. Do consider joining the Bioregioning in Practice series or any of the other offers in support of people wanting to engage in the ancient and new practice of bioregioning. It is through this practice that we can reconnect people to each other and to their place. It is a practice of coming home to life to rediscover what it means for humans to live in right relationship with the wider community of life upon which our common future depends.
“The solution is simply for us as humans to join the earth community as participating members, to foster the progress and prosperity of the bioregional communities to which we belong…. Such a bioregion is a self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-educating, self-governing, self-healing and self- fulfilling community…. The future of the human lies in acceptance and fulfilment of the human role in all six of these community functions. The change indicated is the change from an exploitive anthropocentrism to a participative biocentrism.”— Thomas Berry (1988)
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Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl is one of the catalysts of the rising reGeneration and the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures — so far translated into ten languages. He works as a consultant, educator and activist with NGOs, businesses, governments and global change agents. With degrees in biology and holistic science, and a PhD in Design for Human and Planetary Health, his work has influenced the emerging fields of regenerative design and salutogenic design. Winner of the 2021 RSA Bicentenary Medal for applying design in service to society. Awarded a two year Volans-Fellowship in 2022. He is the co-host of the ReGeneration Rising — Coming home to Life podcast, and co-curated the Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems programmes at ETH Zürich. He has collaborated with Gaia Education for the last 20 years.
