As we struggle with imminent ecological collapse, extreme climate events, communal violence, and political destabilisation across the globe, there is an urgency to find alternative and holistic solutions. There are powerful people’s movements across the globe aimed at upholding indigenous communities and principles, ecological restoration, and grassroots stewardship of natural systems (to name a few), where advocacy meets action and we collectively generate pathways towards protecting our planet. As we seek reconciliation between modernity and indigeneity and build a system that serves the planet and people in a wholesome way, there is a need to relook at territorial boundaries as well.

Bioregionalism, which relooks at territorial dynamics and boundaries, offers compelling pathways towards re-connecting human communities to our habitat. This understanding can activate forms of local interdependence, resource management, and nature stewardship. This is also a step towards resilience and adaptation, devolution of power and bringing agency back to the grassroots. 

The panel discusses how bioregionalism and the understanding of bioregions can support communities and governments in strategies for resilience and adaptation, disaster mitigation and management, food and climate security, reviving livelihoods of care, safe wildlife migration, and ecosystem protection. Working at the scale of a bioregional unit can create interdependent and grassroots-centric governance systems and can serve to rebuild the relationship between people and the planet and a new narrative for how we inhabit the planet.

The reality is that we cannot escape the debilitating effects of the era of instability we now find ourselves in. People engaged in livelihoods of care, be they farmers, fishing communities, shepherds or foragers, are at the forefront of the cataclysm that is undeniably unfolding. How may these communities, who have traditionally been the stewards of the land/coastal waters, be empowered and uplifted? How can people who engage in livelihoods of care find support through governance mechanisms that ensure land rights and movement rights? Bioregionalism addresses these issues and centres around the fact that people, animals and all living beings (ex: fungal networks, butterflies etc.) and systems (eg: rivers, wind etc.) engage deeply with the territory and require uninhibited movement within the territory to remain healthy and for the ecosystem to retain health. Colonially imposed territorial boundaries serve to disrupt the natural flows of the living system which includes people. With this in mind, the discussion shall touch upon ways to negotiate current boundaries with bioregional ones in ways that create peace and stability.

While global movements are critical to stop the culture of ecological harm we find ourselves in, restoration, resilience and adaptation must be decentralised and built into communities. Bioregionalism provides powerful pathways towards this goal.