Articles & Essays
Change and Ozone
and Streetscapes
Economic Development
and Education
Sustainability |
Community
in 17 Steps by Wendell Berry
“How can a sustainable local community (which is to say a
sustainable local economy) function? I am going to suggest a set of rules that I
think such a community would have to follow. ... Supposing that the members of a
local community wanted their community to cohere, to flourish, and to last, they
would: ...”
Bioregion |
A
Metamorphosis for Cities: From Gray to Green by Peter Berg
“A profound transformation is needed in the way cities are
conceived. This can't be merely an administrative reform or change in the design
of systems or structures because it needs to involve a completely new set of priorities
and principles. The future purpose and function of cities and the activities of city-dwelling
must become the focus of social and political consciousness on a primary level. The
first step toward reconceptualizing urban areas is to recognize that they are all
situated in local bioregions within which they can be made self-reliant and sustainable.
The unique soils, watersheds, native plants and animals, climate, seasonal variations,
and other natural characteristics that are present in the geographical life-place
where a city is located constitute the basic context for securing essential resources
of food, water, energy and materials. For this to happen in a sustainable way, cities
must identify with and put themselves in balanced reciprocity with natural systems.”
Bioregional
Association Now a Reality
“As the result of almost two years of hard work by bioregionalists
all over the continent, the BIOREGIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTHERN AMERICAS (BANA)
was formed to strengthen and amplify the voice of local bioregional groups in the
Northern Americas (the lands extending from the areas known as Alaska, Canada and
Greenland in the north, to the area known as Panama in the south, and the surrounding
islands and waters).
This new organization will provide services long needed by
the bioregional movement: supporting the creation and development of local bioregional
groups and continental gatherings; skill-sharing as well as collecting and disseminating
information on natural systems and bioregional philosophy and practices; representing
the bioregional movement to the public and the media.”
Bioregionalism
and Your Backyard
“In the Bay Area, there has been a redefinition of our
place as the Shasta Bioregion, and it is defined by the watershed that is created
by the Southern slope of Mount Shasta and runs to the sourthern end of the San Joaquin
valley to the south. Our water, air, soil, and biology are linked by geography, and
what affects any of these elements in the bioregion will eventually affect us.”
Reinhabitation
and Ecological Restoration: A Marriage Proposal by Freeman House
“Contemporary humans are not only the doctors, but we are
very much the patients, too. The roots of the word health are the same as the roots
for the word whole. The health of anything must be considered in the context of the
health of the whole, and we don't have the luxury -- the time -- to act as if ecosystems
and the human cultural responses that are an active part of them are anything but
parts of a seamless web of being. There is no separate existence.”
Ecology
and Community: The Bioregional Vision by David McCloskey
“Bioregions answer the question: decentralize to what?
What common ground can we return to? It cannot be either ethnic groups or the arbitrary
political units of states and imperial structures, but must be natural regions. What
kind of natural regions? Bio-regions. In an age when the very ground itself is being
pulled out from under us, there must be an ecological base to society, and therefore
the answer is: decentralize to bioregions.”
Bringing
Back the Human Place in Nature: The Revolution in Ecological Restoration
by Patrick Mazza
“Three decades later ecosystem thinking is common, with the
concept of ecosystem management becoming all the rage among natural resource agencies.
Now ecologists, particularly those who work on the ground restoring natural systems,
are drawing yet a fuller circle of inclusion, bringing the human community back into
nature. That was perhaps the most resounding chord of the annual conference held
by the restoration field's leading professional group, the Society for Ecological
Restoration (SER), which took place Sept. 16-18, 1995 in Seattle.”
Bioregionalism
in the Realm of Architecture by Mark Serhus
“I see bioregionalism as an emerging ideology that could
save us from our social and ecological ills. If we use the uniqueness and diversity
of the place in which we live and the ecological limits thereof to define our way
of life a newmore whole world will come forth.”
Bioregional
Management by the World Resources Institute
“A bioregion is a land and water territory whose limits are
defined not by political boundaries, but by the geographical limits of human communities
and ecological systems. Such an area must be large enough to maintain the integrity
of the region's biological communities, habitats, and ecosystems; to support important
ecological processes, such as nutrient and waste cycling, migration, and steam flow;
to meet the habitat requirements of keystone and indicator species; and to include
the human communities involved in the management, use, and understanding of biological
resources. It must be small enough for local residents to consider it home.”
Place-Based Knowledge and Science by
Bruce Goldstein
“Science is as indispensable to bioregionalism as it is to
medical practice: it informs the bioregional diagnosis of society's spiritual, cultural,
and ecological illness and enables bioregionalists to write their prescription to
restore ecological and cultural health. Yet despite this allegiance to science, many
bioregionalists have expressed reservations about scientific institutions, practices,
and even the basic epistemological foundations of science. As heirs to the back-to-the-land
and appropriate technology movements of the 1960s and 1970s, many bioregionalists
question whether scientific experts provide the only dependable source of knowledge
about natural and cultural processes (Aberley 1993; Snyder 1994; Haenke 1996). The
epistemological alternative that underpins this resistance to the exclusive authority
of scientific knowledge is "place-based knowledge" (see Appendix B for
a description of place-based knowledge). Leading bioregionalists call for the movement
to cultivate a ". . . grounded, authentic, local knowledge rather than abstractions,
diversity and decentralization rather than standardization and centralization"
(McCloskey 1996).”
Comprehensive politics of ecological transformation
by Patrick Mazza
“So what is the story here, local and global? It is almost
easy to comprehend, though because the message is difficult many shrink from the
task. To a growing degree, the fruits of science and technology are becoming more
powerful. Those who control the technology are accumulating vast and concentrated
powers that translate to political, economic and social control. They have formed
a global system centered in states and corporations that is displacing or submerging
virtually every competing form. Resistance is coming from both traditional cultures
and those in modern culture who realize that concentrated power stunts human development
and destroys biological life. But the onrush of the juggernaut increasingly suggests
that we will have to go through much devastation before the we succeed in making
deep and systemic changes. It almost appears that only the blows of highly visible
failure can displace the system's grasp.”
Planetary
Sustainability: The Neighborhood Connection by Patrick Mazza
“Among those who peer into the future there is increasing
agreement that global ecological sustainability will be the key issue of the 21st
century. An issue tied to virtually all others, achieving sustainability can seem
an overwhelmingly huge task. Yet for building a system that lives in harmony with
the earth, some of the most effective actions available are at the neighborhood scale.
Global sustainability is directly connected to building a
new kind of neighborhood economics, one that makes the most efficient possible use
of what is present in the neighborhood, from land and buildings to human skills and
solar energy. At the heart of this new economics is the principle of positive feedback,
closing holes that drain energy out of neighborhoods by creating all kinds of new
relationships and connections within neighborhoods.”
Bioregionalism and Community: A Call to Action by David
Haenke
“Local community is the basic unit of human habitation.
It is at this level that we can reach our fullest potential and best effect social
change. Local communities need to network to empower our bioregional communities.
Human communities are integral parts of the larger bioregional
and planetary life communities. The empowerment of human communities is inseparable
from the larger task of reinhabitation -- learning to live sustainably and joyfully
in place.”
Civic Renewal |
Air Quality |
The
Air/Water Connection: PM10 Estuary Newsletter - June 1995
“‘Maybe we can give the public one more reason to stop driving
so much,’ says Geoff Brosseau of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association,
referring to growing awareness that cars don't just pollute the air, but also the
water via road runoff and atmospheric fallout. The emerging linkages between air
and water quality have got people like Brosseau examining pollution sources outside
their immediate spheres of influence.”
Biodiversity |
One in Every 8 Plant Species
Is Imperiled, a Survey Finds by William K. Stevens
The New York Times, Page One, April 9, 1998
“The new listing of threatened plants is one more piece of
evidence that ‘a whole chunk of creation is at risk,’ said Dr. Stuart Pimm, an ecologist
at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in producing the report.
While 1 plant in 8 many not seem like much, Dr. Pimm said,
‘that’s what’s threatened now, as a consequence of what we’ve done so far; but all
the evidence is that the destruction is continuing at an accelerating pace.’
With 4,669 of its species judged to be threatened to one
degree or another, the United States ranked first, by far, among all nations in total
number of plants at risk. That is 29 percent of the country’s 16,108 plant species.
But Dr. Stein said the United States’ situation looked comparatively
grim only because plants were probably better surveyed here than elsewhere.
‘I don’t believe the U.S. is worse off than other countries’
he said. ‘If anything, I think the U.S. has taken a more active interest in plant
conservation.’”
Red-tailed Hawks in Glen Canyon Park by Jean
Conner
“One of my neighbors stopped me on the street the other day
to tell me about seeing a red-tailed hawk catch a pigeon late in the afternoon in
Christopher playground. The sun was low in the West. He saw the hawk come swooping
in from the canyon with the sun behind it and grab one of the pigeons from the roof
of the recreation center. That pigeon had hardly any chance at all. It sat there
dozing in the sun, probably full of junk food it had scavenged from the Diamond Heights
shopping center. It would have needed to look directly into the sun in order to see
the hawk.”
Inspiration Point: Restoring Native Habitats
by Sharon Farrell, Marc Albert and Janice Cooper
“The native insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals
of San Francisco all evolved over the span of thousands of years with specific species
of native plants. Since plants are the original source of food and shelter in this
food web, restoring native plant communities provides the nectar, seeds, leaves,
and stems to feed wildlife, as well as habitat for nesting and egg-laying.”
Energy, Climate Change, and Ozone Depletion |
Food and Agriculture |
Hazardous Materials |
Human Health |
Parks, Open Spaces and Streetscapes |
Solid Waste |
Transportation |
Water and Wastewater |
Economy and Economic Development |
A collection of articles about The Natural Step
“The Natural Step is an international movement dedicated
to helping society reduce its impact on the environment and move toward a sustainable
future. Begun in Sweden in 1989 by cancer researcher Karl-Henrik Robert, The Natural
Step developed by building a consensus among prominent scientists, which can be summarized
as four system conditions for sustainability:
The Natural Step used these system conditions to formulate
an innovative and successful training for business and industry. More than 25 of
the largest corporations in Sweden have used The Natural Step training to modify
operations in accord with the system conditions for sustainability.”
The Community Currency
Alternative by Miyoko Sakshita, director of the Berkeley Region
Exchange and Development (BREAD), a community currency project.
“There are over 1,000 local exchange programs worldwide --
more than 30 local paper currencies in North America and at least 800 Local Exchange
Trading Systems (LETS) throughout Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Local exchange
systems vary and evolve in accordance with the needs and circumstances of the local
area. This diversity is critical to the success of the local currencies. The following
examples demonstrate the effectiveness of some projects.
In Ithaca, New York, the community prints its own paper money
-- a legal scrip. It is valued in hours, based on the trading of labor, but it is
commonly thought of as $10 per hour (the average wage for the area). When people
sign up to trade in Ithaca HOURS they agree to exchange some goods or services in
the local money.”
Environmental Justice |
Municipal Expenditures |
Public Information and Education |
Risk Management |