Bioregional Resources
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Letter #1 Dear Friends, Nicola & Dario spent several hours with Patricio, Flor-Maria & myself last night planning an Eco-Bahia Support Group meeting for later this week. A group of 50 or so including both officials and barrio leaders, youth and worker sectors will divide into committees to support aspects of eco-city such as transportation, water, etc. They will also bring […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Eco-Gathering Report #3 Even when you know what it is, the government-provided shack village at Fanca for people who were made homeless by the mudslides and earthquake here is a powerfully stark and incomprehensible sight. All of the 50 or so rough-finished wood stilt and bamboo-sided dwellings are above your head and only reached by steep stair-ladders. They float peculiarly as […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador — Report #2 It’s unbelievable that a small city that was already visited last year by an El Nino about four times as severe as the worst one in previous recent experience could once again endure a hillside-saturating and road-swamping season, this time by La Nina. But it has rained almost every day, sometimes extremely heavily, for the last week. Concern […]
Report From Ecuador #1 It’s in the humid summerish 80s Fahrenheit here a few minutes south of the equator, with curtain-rippling breezes and light gray clouds. The small city of Bahia de Caraquez (named as though it was a whole bay in the ocean) is shaped like a thumb (with the part of the hand that holds it) jutting out into the Pacific on a […]
The great thing about watersheds is that they are the visible and sensual containers of our collective being. That visible and sensual part is very important. It’s really very hard to find ourselves in the trophic levels and energy exchanges that have come to define the ecological sciences. Watersheds are something we experience. We walk in them. We feel their winds and smell their […]
A natural system has semi-permeable boundaries that are constantly in a state of flux and flow. It is valuable to investigate the overall health to indicate how an ecosystem is affected by various human and natural activities, and to help humans understand the intricacies of the natural cycles that surround them. A “state of a system” assessment is an analysis of the present condition […]
Bioregionalism Meets Local Autonomy in Mexico reports on the November 1996 Turtle Island Bioregional Gathering (TIBG) in Tepoztlán, Mexico. She squatted over another woman lying on the grass beside the parking area. The blood red cloth holding back her black hair was exactly the same color as her blouse, a long black skirt matched her hair. She chanted and passed her hands a few inches […]
Introduction An indication that bioregional consciousness might contend with the highest level of officialculture in the United States arrived with a 1996 event titled Watershed: Writers, Natureand Community in Washington, DC. Convened by President Clinton’s appointed PoetLaureate Robert Hass, it brought a total audience of thousands to fill several auditoriums atthe Library of Congress and other venues for a week. They heard dozens of contemporarynature […]
A Metamorphosis for Cities is an article that outlined the blueprint for transforming urban areas to bring them into “balanced reciprocity with natural systems.” Subsequent work by Planet Drum Foundation in cooperation with the Eco City Movement in Ecuador stems from the vision this article described. [Excerpted with permission from Putting Power in its Place, edited by Judith and Christopher Plant (New Society Publishers, 1992)] […]
Bioregions is the precursor to Berg’s 2002 revision, Bioregionalism: An Introduction. This article, which originally appeared in the British periodical Resurgence #98 (May/June 1983), provides context for the evolution of bioregional thinking. It serves as both an introduction and a reference for bioregional thinking, with clear and concise definitions of bioregion and reinhabitation, as well as a simple analysis of why bioregions are important. * * […]