It Could Happen Here - Bioregionalism Ft. Saint Andrew

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

Saint Andrew joins us for a discussion on Bioregionalism and ecology. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Robert Evans, host of this podcast, to introduce today's episode, which is not my episode. It's Andrew's episode. Hello. How are you doing, Andrew? I'm good.

How do you feel about that introduction? I'm good. I think it could use some work, but we'll workshop it. Yeah, we never workshop anything. We just roll right ahead. Yeah, abolish work and all that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Abolish introductions.

You know, start in the middle. Why don't we just do that now? In Media Res Podcast. Yeah, we'll make every podcast like Finnegan's Wake, where the opening of the podcast is like halfway through a paragraph that the end of the episode starts. Everything will be a circle. Let's just, Sophie, I think that's the of the episode starts. Everything will be a circle. Let's just, Sophie, I think that's the new plan.

Okay. Okay. Andrew, what do you got for us today? Right. So today I want to talk about bioregions and bioregionalism. It's philosophy slash movement slash way of viewing things. It's a lot. So today we'll be exploring what it is, where it came from,

and the role I see it playing in our strides towards anarchy. But first, of course, we should really get some context. Bioregionalism. Have any of you heard of it, by the way? I have heard the term in relations. Bioregionsism have any of you heard of it by the way i have heard the term in bioregions yeah right right so it's actually a pretty recent um all things considered um it was coined as a term by a guy named alan van newkirk founder of the institute for bioregional research in 1975 and as a movement it really gained a lot of popularity in the late 1970s in the osox appalachia hudson river and

san francisco bay area regions um they had a conference in a prairie interestingly enough near kansas city in 1984 and they've also had conferences in the Squamish Bay region of British Columbia, as well as the Gulf of Maine Bay region on the Atlantic. And of course, with all these different people coming together, sharing all their different ideas, talking about cool nature stuff, they developed a sort of a platform which they outline in papers on subjects ranging from agriculture to forestry to art to economics to community so while it was a very north american focused um movement and philosophy at first it has also expanded to europe and australia and these groups there are hundreds of them all over um they get

involved with local ecological work like preservation and restoration permaculture all that and they also form networks so they would link on specific issues like water conservation or organic farming or tree planting and of course bioregional groups also get involved in attempts to make communities more self-sufficient by mapping and utilizing local assets. And well, as you'll come to see, bioregionalism and maps kind of go hand in hand in a way, because it really is about that sort of big picture looking at the earth and the environment and our place in it. So what is bioregionalism exactly? In essence, it's a philosophy based around the organization of political, cultural, and economic systems around naturally defined areas called bioregions. So what are bioregions? They are areas defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries, soil and terrain characteristics, flora, fauna, and climate.

Bioregionalism also stresses the determination of a bioregion is a cultural phenomenon and emphasizes local populations, local knowledge, and local solutions. and emphasizes local populations, local knowledge, and local solutions. Because humans are actually, surprisingly, parts of nature. Our cultures, our settlements, they arise from nature. They arise from the characteristics of the bioregions that we inhabit. So, I mean, that to me is a clear bridge between bioregionalism and Land Back. I mean, that to me is a clear bridge between bioregionalism and Land Back. And it also points to me the fact that while bioregionalism may be a fairly recent philosophy slash movement, its roots and the ideas it presents are nothing new. You know, I mean, bioregionalism posits that, you know, human societies must learn to honor our bioregions and the connections between them if we are to be ecologically sound.

And this perspective is really old news for the indigenous peoples who have maintained these lands and been stewards of these lands for thousands of years. I think that thinking in a bioregional scale allows us to establish regenerative and circular economies, effectively restore local ecosystems, restructure our systems using ecological design principles, and of course, deepen our cultural connections to the land we inhabit. That, to me, really stresses the importance of bioregionalism in our approach to environmental issues. Before I continue, I just wanted to say that for those who want to visualize, because I know this is a podcast, you can only hear my voice.

One Earth has a pretty decent map of bioregions on their website so you could just google bioregions 2020 and it should come up they basically have like 185 bioregions on their map and well according to that map trinidad is part of bioregion nt21e and d standing for neotropic and e standing for east and trinidad is grouped with um south america and particularly the venezuela guyana's region for obvious reasons being that the orinoco and other rivers that come from the Amazon flow out to Trinidad's shores. So clunky segue, there are a couple different concepts that one might want to keep in mind when approaching or attempting to curate a bioregional understanding of the world. Of course, perspective and a bioregional perspective is important, and it's basically one that seeks to ensure that political boundaries match ecological boundaries, highlighting the unique ecology of the

bioregion, encouraging the consumption of local foods where possible, encouraging the use of local materials where possible, and encouraging the cultivation of native plants in the region. I will point out like from now that from what I've read about bioregionalism and the talks that i've seen there are definitely some you know liberal sensibilities some capitalist realism um in the way that some bi-regionalists talk about you know things like organizing our politics and our states and stuff around bi-gions. Obviously, you know, they are pushing things pretty far because they do talk about, you know,

going and really orienting our economy around, you know, bioregions and thinking in terms of that. But then at the same time, there's still like an almost passive acceptance in some of the readings that i've seen of catholicism you know i think that's pretty common in a lot of what i like to call almost radical um ideas and philosophies and stuff of course when i approach these ideas and these philosophies and stuff i always try to you know keep that anarchist analytical framework in my head understanding that you know these ideas uh are still being filtered through an ultimately like capitalist society in capitalist

world and so you're gonna want to try to navigate that and sift that out and really get the nuggets of gold within these ideas i don't see states um and i think y'all would agree with me being the path out of you know utter climate catastrophe um for those who have been reading Against the Green and Graeber's work, we know that states have been pretty equal-sided from their very inception. I think that if power regionalism would be effective, I think it would be best if it stayed away from that sort of statist conception.

They do emphasize localism as the political localism, but it's always within the context of, or it's often within the context of, like, the relationship between the local and the state and that sort of thing. Almost like a kind of, i don't know if i'm using this term correctly but like minarchism does that make sense was there some kind of was it some kind of like municipalism or something like that but yeah yeah we should probably talk a

little bit about like what what minarchism and municipalism are um just so people don't get kind of caught up on the terms um and particularly i think that like within uh a context of like the united states um municipalism is kind of an easier way to sell folks who may be more conservative on certain anarchist principles it's basically the idea of, yeah, strong community sort of control and autonomy as opposed to strong overarching kind of federal or state control over, you know, different communities. Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say, minarchism is kind of like a weird grab bag thing that's like, it's sort of like, yeah, it's, it's sort of like, okay, so you want to be an anarcho capitalist, but you can't because you're just smart enough to realize that you can't have

property rights without a state. So either the America state is the only thing it does is enforce property rights. And yeah, I think that's a slightly terrifying vision, but I think, but you know, it's,

it's, yeah, I think it's a bit more self. But I think, you know, it's... It's a bit more self-aware than the average anarcho-capitalist. Yeah, but, you know, this is... Yeah, and I think municipalism is less of a focus specifically on property rights and more based out of an understanding that strong hierarchical federal uh or even state level control um

generally winds up creating reach a lot of a significant amount of like regional um uh what's the word i'm looking for um inequalities um and and is responsible for a lot of like ecological devastation and whatnot this idea that you can have like like one of the things that you would have with an actual municipalist system is you wouldn't be allowed to operate a company like Koch Industries that's able to be based out of I think Kentucky but operate a series of refineries in the Gulf Coast that render large sections of that area uninhabitable because you would leave kind of uh control over what can be actually done in that area to the people who live there rather than being able to have um a corporation buy land there and have its right to pollute enforced by the state right that's kind of like one little example um there's municipalist the system in northeast syria and rojava is is sort of a municipalist system and one of the specifically libertarian municipalists

yeah because i mean there's a distinction between like municipalism more generally and libertarian municipalism. Yeah. We're, we're getting into the weeds a little bit here, but these are, these are like, that's kind of the basics of what those terms mean,

just so that people don't get lost when you, when you bring them up. Cause I think a lot of folks, you know, don't have necessarily that kind of, those definitions don't just pop up in their head when you use that word. Right, right, yeah. Fair enough.

I also mentioned that states have been ecocidal from their inception, so I feel like I should probably try and find that as well. Ecocide and ecocidal ism is basically um this idea that came out of the environmentalist movement um meant to point to the severe harm to nature the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems that's you know caused over decades by you know these companies and really by the system as a whole so it's often viewed through like a legal lens as in you know these um companies should be tried for their crimes um and as like for committing ecocide and that kind of thing because it's often viewed

like as like a legal like law should be put in place to classify ecocide as aocide and that kind of thing. It's often viewed as a legal, like laws should be put in place to classify ecocide as a crime and that sort of thing. Only a few countries have done that, like actually codified ecocide, but it is something that some environmentalists push to really raise awareness of as a crime against humanity and the planet.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I think it's also kind of important to understand with ecocide is that, like, there's a lot of focus, I think, in, like, left, like, environmental movements just purely on corporations and even if you go back to the like 100 companies meme just like 100 companies destroying the planet it's like well yeah like half like half of them are state-owned yeah and so you know yeah this is

something like like with ecocide it's like yeah it's like it's not just corporations that do this it's you know it's it's the state as a structure it's the state as an institution it's the state as exactly yeah it's their agencies it's their sort of and that. It's the state as an institution. It's the state as... Exactly. Yeah, it's their agencies. It's their sort of... And that's what I try to like... What I realize is kind of important now. I guess this is kind of like slowly like shifting away from bi-regionalism, but that's fine. What I will say that I've tried to like um sort of put into practice is emphasizing that like

capitalism is not the only issue you know um like i notice people like try to separate capitalism on the state as if they could ever truly be separated even people who understand that you know anarcho-capitalists are misguided and that, you know, the state is necessary to maintain capitalism, there's some sort of like disconnect where there's like a whole ton of, you know, organization and memeing and all that about capitalism. And, you know, oftentimes these sort of efforts are like, particularly with reformist types and unions and stuff, they tried to mediate with capitalism through the state, you know, through the government, whether it be local government or federal government, whatever the case may be. What I really try to emphasize is that it's not enough to have a theory of capitalism. I think it's even more important to have a theory of hierarchy. Because I think it helps you to avoid getting into these sort of traps of class reductionism, for one.

But also recreating certain structures within your organizations. like, recreating certain structures within your organizations and in your efforts to change things, recreating the very, you know, circumstances you're fighting against. You can't, like, condense everything into one problem because, try as we might, it's not that everything is one problem. It's an interconnected mesh that binds all of our problems together. And you can focus on, you know, really big extensions of that mesh, but it still is kind of just a mesh.

And the mesh isn't the thing, but it connects to the edges of all of the things. And yeah, that type of ecology can be useful in even even relating to bioregions in terms of how they also connect with other territories and entities i think it also you know this is one of the sort of problems that you have if you know it's like okay so your plan is to take sort of sovereign state power it's like well you do it right but I mean the thing is if you you know you seize control of power of a state right your borders are essentially just like

where the state's war machine ran out of steam and you know and this becomes a enormous problem because like I mean if you look at the bioregional maps right it's like there's literally no way you could ever have states with these borders because yeah it's not like this it's impossible like you just you you cannot do it and you know what that means is that states are sort of necessarily going well they're

either going to be like a small fraction of a bioregion or they have multiple in them and that's another sort of that becomes a sort of logistical problem because, you know, like, if you want to look at, like, a lot of the worst sort of ecological sort of, like, human disasters, it's when you get states attempting to apply, like, you know, to environmental issues. Yeah, yeah, and more specifically, like,

it's, you know, they have something that, like, sort of works in one test environment, and then they broadly apply it across an enormous variety of areas and regions that have their own biospheres. And that stuff, that's like the fastest way to kill an enormous number of people. Yeah.

It's like forcing a jigsaw piece that obviously doesn't fit into a spot where you want it to but you're just breaking the pieces. I just want to say as well that that sort of, i mean at least the states are testing it right um i remember i can't remember the exact name of like the the sort of like ideology or whatever i think it was like this early soviet union probably one of y'all know the name this early soviet union practice related to like farming that they just applied over like a vast vast region end up with like a huge decrease in like food production i can't remember

the name of it laisenku oh yeah yeah yeah he just had this he had this theory and he was just like pushing it and yeah it led to some serious issues yeah and i think you know if we're gonna talk about like what's important about sort of bioregionalism it's you have to have if you're going to implement anything right you you know especially when you're trying to sort of manipulate biospheres you're trying to preserve biospheres you have to have local knowledge from the people who have been living in these biospheres for you know enormous amounts of time and that's something that states are really bad at and you know tend to actively suppress and it's something you know and i will say this there's there's there's a kind of like there's like a kind of neoliberal version of this stuff where

it's like oh we'll do no we'll have like local knowledge blah blah and then they're like well we'll have local knowledge uh uh but they that this will help them create market solutions and things it's like that also doesn't work and it's basically just like yeah but because that really like sits that doesn't sit well with me you know like yeah these sort of like you see like and you see a lot of liberals like doing it a lot these days where they'd be like doing the whole land acknowledgements thing and they'll be doing the um that thing where they would just like say that oh this is from so-and-so culture and whatever and then just like boom as 1999 yeah carry on with business as usual I learned this technique from so and so tribe

let me work as a consultant for your company and it sucks it's commodifying the thing and that both produces a warped replication

and then it also kind of makes the original thing seem used in a weird way as well. Like it wasn't designed to be. Tainted, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm also reminded a bit of alienation and how we are just sort of separated from aspects of our actual humanity because of the structures

we live under right so instead of relating with the environment or relating with our culture or relating with other people we're just relating through like these commodities and these products and these, you know, just bastardized versions of things. And I think that is also something that sort of plagues, like, some environmentalists. In terms of this, there's almost like this subtle alienation from the nature that many many of them seek to preserve right where on the one hand yes you're trying to you know preserve it and protect it and that's commendable but on the other hand the way you're going about it is basically like antithetical to those schools because you don't have that connection with the nature that you're trying to help you know what i see like a lot of people not recognizing

is that you know humans are a part of nature right and this is another bi-regional concept, right? This thing called bi-regional re-inhabitation in being that, meaning that we must come home to the geographical and biophysical terrain we inhabit, understand its ecological uniqueness, and familiarize ourselves with the stories woven into the fabric of said land, its history, its peoples, its cultures,

its flora, its fauna. You know, it's only once we come home to our bioregions and to our ecosystems, to our places, that we can really work together to see its potential, to see how we fit into it, how we can facilitate its healing,

you know, bioregion by bioregion. Yeah, that definitely mirrors stuff I've been working on relating to that type of, like, cognitive dissonance that you're talking about and that alienation, not just from, like, human to human, but human to place. Because, yeah, we have, like, developed this, like, this commodified othered version of

nature that isn't actually what nature is um it's it's we've formed this thing that is separate from us which is not how we need to think about it because it should be we are all part of the same of of that same system we are not separate from it and we're not isolated from it or its effects. We are just another part of it. So it's about getting a sense of ecology with both your bioregion and then the biosphere as a whole and getting that ecology, which kind of will break down this notion of nature being an other. And I think because of the idea of nature being an other, that really kind of fosters our extraction that's led to our current problems because we don't view the problems affecting us.

We view them as affecting the territory. And if we're not the territory, then we can be safe. But that's not the case. Exactly. There's also... Sorry, go on. I think I may have talked about this on the show before but you know there's another aspect here which is that viewing humans is sort of like separate from like this abstract nature is how you get a lot of really bad

like racist environmentalism like i if you haven't read the trouble with wilderness by yeah croning the trouble with wilderness is one of the things that like if you study yeah if you do environmental studies at all like this is one of the first things they hand you and the reason they hand it to you is because it you know so like the the image of wilderness that we have is sort of like oh it's this like completely untapped thing and it's like well yeah okay so the reason the reason we have this image of like a wilderness with nothing in it is because there used to be people there and we killed them all yep or fortunately deported them yeah like when the europeans pulled up and stuff in north yeah yeah and it's specifically like untouched wilderness well and yeah those forests were literally planted and cultivated those

forests were i i think even more pointedly, it should be stated, those forests were a work of engineering that's on par with the pyramids at Giza, if not like massively in excess of it. They are a work of engineering that's every bit as impressive as any city ever built. And every bit is like intense and required as much knowledge and scientific understanding. required as much knowledge and scientific understanding people just all we had all of those people had died by the time white folks got there generally because of the spread of disease or just because of act like yeah like i think that's true especially in the east coast but with the west coast i think it's even grimmer because the west coast you and this this happened you still see this we're like a lot of like the american national parks were literally like like people would go in and ethnically cleanse the population that was there yeah and then be like oh hey look it's now wilderness this is now

and this this is like the origin of of the environmental movement it's all of these like just like the most racist people you've ever seen in your life like yeah people literal fascists yeah well and even even even before them like in you know like like early 1980s 1800s like late 1800s people like those guys the late 1800s yeah yeah it's like when when those guys are talking about like the purity of the wild like they're everything they think about the wilderness is also just about the purity of the white race and it's it's awful and and if if when when you start making that this like that's the separation between humans and nature, that's how you get these ethnic cleansing genocide forests. I've been reading this very good book.

It just started last night, and I think we're going to have the author on the show soon, Chris Begley. He's an underwater archaeologist, and he wrote a book called The Next Apocalypse that's about collapses throughout history and how they actually differ from the popular conceptions of them. And he actually talks about a lot of the stuff we talk about in this show. And one of the points he makes is that this idea of like lost cities in dark jungles and whatnot is based entirely on misconceptions, first of all, about like what jungles are. And then second on like these very Eurocentric ideas towards what lost means. Like he points out that every time there's been a lost city or civilization discovered, it's because archaeologists just like ask the people living there where the ruins were. And they're like, oh, yeah, it's like right over there.

Like we've known about this since forever. It was never lost. We just stopped living in that specific area. And the other thing he points out is that like this idea of a jungle as like a difficult and primeval place is ridiculous if you had to pick anywhere to be stranded in the world of in terms of bioregions you would pick a jungle like the amazon because it's pretty easy to survive there that's why people live there for so long yeah there's a ton of amazon the amazon was you know as we've discovered you know there were cities and stuff happening yeah amazon you know it was like a planted yeah there's food jungle like food

forests and whatnot is the term people use within the jungle like people set the people set the jungle in the amazon up to provide them with food in a way that isn't exactly isn't the same as like what we consider to be agriculture but it's absolutely a kind of agriculture and because people don't see it as agriculture just like oh that's just you know they were just running around the forest before we arrived you know it's like yeah no they had they had essentially built themselves a big smart house in in the middle of uh the woods that provided them with everything they needed with upkeep that we would consider minimal based on like what a lot of our european ancestors

certainly like did in terms of labor to keep farms going like if you compare i mean you could also talk about how like peasants in the medieval period probably worked less than a lot of people in the united states due to yeah like everyone works less than we period probably worked less than a lot of people in the United States do today. Yeah. Like everyone works less than we do now. But it's a lot harder to keep like a monoculture farm going than it is to, to keep a food forest going. Yeah. Cause I mean,

once it's established, it literally maintains itself. What was the name of the book that you were talking about just now? It's called the next apocalypse. And it's, it's very good so far. Chris Begley is the author. I think we're going to have him on next week.

But yeah, I've found it so far about a third of the way in. Very good. Awesome. I'll check that out. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. listen to nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast okay who wants to say we're back you just that's the intro now i know that's the exit and pivot you're welcome here we are awesome so yeah once we have like embraced our understanding that you know we belong to the land and not vice versa and must therefore pattern ourselves and our society's base and its

needs um you know that's when we get to that place of bi-regional regeneration which is another key concept of bi-regionalism and lastly there's the concept of bi-regional sensibility which was developed by mitchell thomas show and it's about developing the observational skills to observe the bioregional history to develop the conceptual skills to juxtapose the scale of the community

and the region and the ecosystem the bioregion all these different levels, the ability to think in terms of all of them, to develop the imaginative faculties to really, I would say, play with multiple landscapes and to develop the compassion to empathize with and work with both local and global neighbors, not just local and global human neighbors,

but also, you know, the flora and fauna living next door. There are a lot of different bi-regional practices happening all over the world. I did note that it started in North America, but I noticed a lot of the big projects are happening in, like, South America, you know, in Brazil, Sinaldo Vale, in Costa Rica Regenerativa, in Colombia Regenerativa and the Annapurna Pluriversity in the Himalayas as well and many others they're basically engaging in efforts involving applied education, regenerative agriculture systems mapping green belt restoration there's the you know the green belt project in africa as well and these are all efforts to

really understand and work with the bioregions that these people inhabit so just a few tips that i wanted to end this off with you know before we end things off um i always try to link um the things i talk about in some way to what people on the groups they're part of the organizations they're part of the communities they're part of can do you know as an action to strengthen their resilience or to develop you know autonomy right in this case it is to strengthen resilience and also to develop the vitality of the bioregion you inhabit so first of all i think it's important that we learn as much as we can about our areas and learn especially through action whether it be through cleanups you know observing the space around you whether it be through observing weather patterns um whether it be through looking at the way on hikes and looking at the way that the temperature changes

and the texture of the soil changes as you go up and down in altitude. I think it's also important to try to get involved with actions to restore natural features and to understand the place that those natural features have in the broader fire region of course there are lots of sustainable projects happening all over the world you know if they aren't in your area um be the change you want to see start one make it happen and really also i would say find ways to link projects for environmental sustainability and restoration with projects for human emancipation find ways to like support access to you know basic human needs within your locality to find ways to sort of because

when we speak of bi-regions and you know living within our bi-regions and so on so forth that's all well and good but if for example your region has to import a whole bunch of food all the time to support the population i think there needs to be ways to decrease that sort of import and to find ways to live sustainably within the area. Raise awareness, of course, as well about bioregional thinking, systems thinking, social ecological thinking, and yeah, just get to work, anti-work work, prefiguring the structures of a more horizontal, bi-regionally ethical and sustainable way of life.

And of course, disrupt the projects that get in the way of those goals. And I say that as tentatively as I can to avoid legal trouble. That's it. Take care, everyone. And be can to avoid legal trouble. That's it. Take care, everyone. And be kind to everyone. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. Danny Trails, and Step Into the Flames of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

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