01 · Bioregions: water, soil, life
Roots
Bioregionalism is the root of the tree of a regenerative future. A bioregion is drawn first by water, then by the soil and the life in it, then by the life on it. Culture, the way people learn to live in a place, is the top layer.
Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann wrote in 1977 that “the final boundaries of a bioregion are best described by the people who have lived within it.” I would have each bioregion stewarded by a council of elders, Indigenous elders where possible.
SourcesPeter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, “Reinhabiting California” (1977)/Joe Brewer, “Why must we design our bioregions?”, Resilience (2019)/Power and Seefeld, Bioregional Financing Facilities (2024, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)/One Earth, Bioregions 2023
02 · Sister bioregions and shared Indigenous knowledge
Mycelium
The mycelium is the network between the roots. Bioregions pair up as sister bioregions and share what they learn, the way cities twin. Sister cities grew out of Eisenhower's 1956 People-to-People conference.
UNESCO biosphere reserves already twin, one pair at a time, like Frontenac Arch and Champlain-Adirondack in 2019. Regions without active Indigenous communities draw on the global Indigenous community.
SourcesSister Cities International, our history/UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves/National Park Service, Frontenac Arch and Champlain-Adirondack twinning (2019)
03 · Nature-backed finance
Trunk
Right now the money runs the wrong way: $7.3 trillion a year in nature-negative finance flows, against $220 billion for nature-based solutions. Power and Seefeld's Bioregional Financing Facilities book names four vehicles that could carry it instead.
A Bioregional Trust for grants. A Venture Studio for new regeneration work. An Investment Company “legally mandated to serve the thriving of all life in the bioregion.” A Bioregional Bank that “can develop and issue a complementary or nature-based currency.” I want that currency's health to be the land's health.
SourcesUNEP, State of Finance for Nature 2026/Power and Seefeld, Bioregional Financing Facilities (2024, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)/BioFi Project
04 · Planetary councils
Canopy
Some problems only exist at the scale of the planet. Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman argue for “separate planetary institutions tasked with managing specific planetary problems: one for the climate, one for pandemics, one for biodiversity, and so on.”
I would elect one council per planetary boundary or risk, each with a measurable goal like 30x30. Capitalized by nation-states, they would need more power and might than the nation-states themselves.
SourcesBlake and Gilman, Children of a Modest Star (Stanford University Press, 2024), Introduction/Blake and Gilman, “The Third Great Decentering”, Noema (2024)/Planetary Health Check 2026
05 · Community-owned AI
Sap
Each bioregion gets a brain: an open dataset, public reporting, a public ledger of where capital goes, and a vote that holds representatives to account. Small models that speak the river's language, not one model that speaks for everyone.
Te Hiku Media gathered about 310 hours of te reo Māori speech from about 2,500 people in 10 days. Its Kaitiakitanga License puts the stakes plainly: “By simply open sourcing our data and knowledge, we further allow ourselves to be colonised digitally.”
SourcesMIT Technology Review, “A new vision of artificial intelligence for the people” (2022)/Te Hiku Media, Kaitiakitanga License/Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper (2020, ed. Jason Edward Lewis)