"Bioregioning" is a way of acting and mobilising people in their locality. See how they do it in South Devon

We are very interested in the idea of bioregions as “citizen action networks” - mappings of assets and resources, human, urban or natural, that can begin to exert their own powers and agendas about their own development. It’s a very systemic way of thinking about your part of the world - and its focus on strengthening people’s resilience against shocks and discontinuities is very germane at the moment.

We’ve covered a lot of different angles on bioregionalism, but we’re very happy to share some of the thinking on it from Isabel Carlisle - one of our system-thinking Elephanteers (see video here), and director and founder of the South Devon Bioregional Learning Centre. The video above is a very clear primer on how you might map out your own bioregion - who you recruit, what you get them to do - by setting up a “learning journey” with local people.

Isabel appears again in the video below, partly in conversation with Eduard Muller, whose interview about Costa Rica reconceived in a bioregional way we ran a few months ago. This is a great, informative and crystal-clear exchange about the arguments needed to persuade citizens of bioregionalism’s worth, compared between two considerably different cultural and social settings.

Here’s the useful blurb from the video above, with some interesting added links:

The future resilience of our communities across the globe is a whole-systems challenge in the face of whole systems change (climate change being one of those lead systems).

This webinar focuses on two scales of transformation, one at the regional scale in the southwest of UK and the other at the national scale of Costa Rica.

We begin with the story of the Bioregional Learning Centre in South Devon, England, who have been supporting a whole region and multi-sector response for the past four years and is now moving in the next phase of the work. Isabel Carlisle talks about assessing the baseline for action and explore what is needed for seeding multi-level shifts towards resilience.

Eduard Müller then introduces his work in developing a Roadmap for Regeneration for the nation of Costa Rica. The road map is a process to define the national strategic commitment to regenerative development (political outcome) that would support the co-production of a high level regenerative development plan as a living document that is deeply informed by the voices of the territories, all local communities and indigenous groups, and those most often marginalized or excluded; and dedicated funding streams for regeneration committed from government agencies, private sector, foundations, and academic sector.

While ambitious, this effort in Costa Rica is being viewed very closely by other countries and networks such as Common Earth, a partner of the Commonwealth of Nations. This webinar features an introduction by Michael Quinn Patton, lively dialogue between both Isabel and Eduard facilitated by Glenn Page who illustrates the alignment with the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation.