Adaptive Bioregional Governance

Adaptive Bioregional Governance is a unified framework for establishing bioregions around the world. It resolves the tension between scientifically defined bioregions and culturally defined bioregions by creating a flexible, adaptive model that incorporates both. When we observe nature, we see natural complexity—a network of nested relationships and dynamics that exist in a fractal structure. Certain patterns repeat from one landscape to the next and express themselves uniquely in any given place. By acknowledging these varying relationships and incorporating them into a scalable model, we can establish a governance framework that accurately fits into any ‘place’ around the world. Adaptive Bioregional Governance can serve as a common lexicon for the bioregional movement and a foundation for systemic action.

Adaptive Bioregionalism

The Adaptive Bioregional Governance framework is an evolution from earlier writings, such as Nested Bioregionalism. It establishes three primary levels of bioregional organization that mirror the varying scales present in landscapes worldwide. These three levels of organization are Bioregional Nodes, Bioregional Hubs, and Bioregional Federations. Let’s break these down.

Bioregional Nodes

Bioregional Nodes can be considered the default landscape organizing structure in this system, based on the global ecoregions map by Resolve. Nodes are the ‘middle ground’ of organizing in this framework for various reasons. They are scientifically defined, based on ecosystems. For example, I’m writing this post from my home in the Southern Rockies of Colorado—a distinct ecosystem characterized by certain flora, fauna, hydrology, and climate.

Bioregional Nodes represent the extent of ‘likeness’ that a place contains. The similarity in ecosystem types organically creates a sense of place that, in many cases, serves as the psychological extent of what ‘home’ feels like. We automatically resonate with these organic, ecological boundary conditions and register them in our subconscious minds. When I drive down from the mountains to Boulder or Denver, the canyon passes serve as a transition between the Southern Rockies forests and the expanse of the Western Shortgrass Prairie.

Instead of Bioregional Nodes being the end-all-be-all of bioregional definitions, they are merely a starting point—a means of viewing the global map in a way that more accurately represents nature. Defining bioregions based on a map of artificial and arbitrary county, state, or country lines is a false view of the natural world. This alternative view of the world is a foundational reorientation to understanding place and tethers bioregionalism to a true organizational pattern of nature.

Bioregional Hubs

Although Bioregional Nodes and the ecoregions they’re based on have a sense of likeness and home to them, they’re still landscape-scaled areas—too large to really be considered ‘local’. Anyone can immediately think of a smaller, more discrete sense of home that they are local to. These are called Bioregional Hubs—local areas that are bio-culturally defined. Unlike the Nodes, which are based on scientific definitions, Hubs are local areas that incorporate both ecology and culture in their definitions. This is the smallest structure in the nested bioregional scale.

Many Bioregional Hubs can emerge within any given Bioregional Node. In other words, any bio-culturally defined organizing structure contained within an ecoregion can be considered a Bioregional Hub. These Hubs are not predefined like the Nodes; they are emergent based on the needs, goals, and organizational capacity of the local community. Ultimately, any place-based project work that is pursued happens at this local Hub level. It’s where the shovel hits the dirt. It’s where the tree is planted. It’s where the dam is removed, allowing the river to flow.

Returning to my example, my local community within the Southern Rockies could be considered the “Peak to Peak Bioregional Hub.” The aspects that define this Hub are a chain of mountain communities connected by a main road—the Peak to Peak Highway—that navigates across several smaller watersheds and valleys. Some human indicators of this Bioregional Hub are a local newspaper, community events, and service offerings that organically fit into the extent of this local place. This is the true extent of ‘home territory’ that you feel most local to.

Bioregional Federations

Zooming back out, the higher-order, emergent, bio-culturally defined areas that are larger than a Node are called Bioregional Federations. Federations contain or overlap with multiple ecoregions and are connected by larger ecological and cultural structures. Similar to Hubs, Federations are not predefined and are created based on the needs and goals of people coming together to organize for certain purposes that cross distinct landscapes. There are several expressions of Bioregional Federations.

The first and most common type is a Federation that connects multiple contiguous Nodes. For example, the “Colorado River Bioregional Federation” would connect the multiple ecoregions contained within the Colorado River Watershed—a vast area that spans a significant portion of the United States—centered around a large hydrological system. Another example is the prominent bioregional movement of Cascadia, which could be considered the Cascadia Bioregional Federation.

A different type of Bioregional Federation connects multiple ecoregions that share similarities but are not contiguous. Examples of this could be a “Coastal Deserts Bioregional Federation” or a “Global Grasslands Bioregional Federation” that connect and represent like ecosystems and the various Nodes and Hubs contained within them.

The final type of Bioregional Federation is a smaller bio-cultural area that doesn’t contain entire Nodes but importantly crosses the boundaries of two or more ecoregions and contains multiple Hubs. For example, the “Front Range Bioregional Federation” in Colorado is a bio-culturally recognized area that covers certain places in the Southern Rockies and the Western Shortgrass Prairie, but not either entirely. It contains multiple potential Hubs, such as the “Peak to Peak Bioregional Hub,” “Boulder-Denver Bioregional Hub,” and the “Fort Collins Bioregional Hub.”

Resolving the Tension

This Adaptive Bioregional Governance model is designed to resolve the tension between culturally defined bioregions and scientifically defined bioregions. There’s no need to ‘choose a side’ because, like many things, the truth lies in the middle, and incorporating both is essential. The various aspects of ecology are critical to defining bioregions, but the act of ‘defining a bioregion’ is inherently for human-centric purposes. Nature does not need bioregional definitions; we do.

It’s important not to place too much emphasis on existing human cultures in the process of creating bioregional definitions because most of our human cultures are inherently against nature, actively built in dissonance with the natural environment, creating systemic problems that the bioregional movement aims to solve. Too much emphasis on human cultures is what created the arbitrary state and country lines in the first place, cutting ecosystems in half and leading to mismanagement and extraction of the environment to everyone’s detriment.

Adaptive Bioregional Governance creates space for both ecologically defined and bio-culturally defined bioregional definitions to emerge, along with their different goals and desired outcomes. Bioregional Nodes are useful as a default starting point because they express a natural boundary condition of nature and the various cultures and communities that associate with that ecoregion. Bioregional Federations and Bioregional Hubs are useful emergent bioregional structures created by humans and serve different purposes than the Nodes. Over time, Federations and Hubs will become more useful than Nodes because they more accurately express the relationships between humans and the natural environment.

Practical Use

Understanding the nested relationships between Bioregional Federations, Nodes, and Hubs is a valuable tool for sense-making around place as we orient ourselves into a new era of global coordination to address the climate crises and build resiliency in our communities and landscapes. The varying scales of bioregional expression have their own purposes and functions that inform appropriate actions that any group may take when organizing and using the framework.

Bioregional Federations, representing the largest extent of bioregionalism, are formed for action at the scale of multiple landscapes. This could involve major fundraising efforts, political influence, and large-scale climate action plans that require a higher degree of coherence between different cultures and ecologies.

Bioregional Nodes, representing the highest order of ‘like environments,’ are formed for action at the scale of a single landscape. Because it’s a single landscape with similar ecology, it may be formed for education, moderate fundraising efforts, and coordination between the various Hubs present in the Node.

Bioregional Hubs, representing the most local sense of ‘place’ and ‘home,’ are where actual projects happen. Due to their smaller nature, they’re not ideal for large-scale fundraising or high-level political action but are perfect for the actual use of funds on the ground level, implementation of regenerative projects, and ongoing stewardship of the landscape. They can also be a powerful force for local political action.

Place-Based Governance

Ultimately, these nested relationships of Adaptive Bioregions are designed to take the form of legally incorporated, organized governance bodies. In the same way that we have national, state, county, and town governments (which are supposed to) manage resources for their given areas, Federations, Nodes, and Hubs are designed to become better governance bodies. Unlike their ecologically divorced state counterparts, these bioregional governing bodies are grounded in ecology and can serve as the foundation for a fundamental reorganization of culture. They can be formed to manage and allocate capital (from various Bioregional Financing Facilities), manage and steward natural resources, and support the development of regenerative bioregional economies.

The bioregional structure that initiates a project—whether a Federation, Node, or Hub—serves as the default governance body for the project. The nested, overlapping bioregional structures then serve as a ‘backup’ to the initiating, primary governance body, providing critical stewardship redundancy to ensure that the land or project in question is stewarded in perpetuity without a lapse in governing bodies to support it. Any of these adaptive bioregional structures can host a variety of different governance models. We at ReCommon developed the Regenerative Community Land Trust model to fit into this bioregional framework, but it is by no means the only approach.

Adaptive Bioregional Governance is designed to be a framework that leads to landscape-scale regeneration and resilient community development. It’s a system that allows any bioregional group to find the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of size that is grounded in ecology and culture and meets the scope of their group's purposes and goals. Our hope is for this model to be widely adopted, forming a common language and understanding about what a bioregion is, how to define it, and to support the emergence of a coherent, nested bioregional network of resilient communities.