Cascadia

One of the most encouraging recent developments has been the resurgence of bioregional thinking. About four decades ago, in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a huge public appetite for re-imagining the economy, eco-stewardship, and lifestyles around natural bioregions, but it gradually waned with the advance of neoliberal ideology. Now bioregionalism is emerging again, with much more force and sophistication.

A great deal of vanguard leadership, then and now, has come from activists, academics, and social innovators in the Pacific Northwest. They are often associated with the term Cascadia, which is the name they've adopted for the bioregion stretching from British Columbia and southeast Alaska to Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, and Northern California. The area encompasses more than 750,000 square miles of old growth rain forests, volcanoes, and wild habitats for salmon, wolves, bear, whale and orca – and 16 million people. 

Cascadia activism is part of a larger global movement that wants to reinvent markets, cultures and identities to sync with regional ecosystems. It's a bold, long-term effort to persuade modern societies to honor their ecological gifts and mindfully inhabit the distinctive places in which they live. It’s also about trying to transcend arbitrary political boundaries and global markets, building instead a world that revolves around a region's particular hydrology, weather, plants, and wildlife, and to develop economies, cultures, and ways of being that complement that landscape.

As the renaissance of bioregionalism gains momentum, I wanted to learn more, especially about the most promising strategies and challenges. I turned to Brandon Letsinger, a Seattle organizer who was founding director of CascadiaNow!  – an incubator of grassroots, community-centered projects – and more recently, cofounding director of the Cascadia Department of Bioregion.  Our conversation is featured in my latest episode of Frontiers of Commoning (Episode #54).