Bioregional Organizing Strategies: Models & Scope 

 

The TRCC is a community of leaders and organizations that work at the regional and translocal scale in the USA, in support of regenerative whole systems transformation to build communities that are healthy, just, and sustainable. Since 2014, we have been using a regional overlay for choosing which organizations to invite as members and for supporting their work via gatherings and funding.  

 

We operate from a “grasstops theory of change” that invites us to think globally, act locally, and organize/coordinate (bio)regionally.  We see regions as being geographically small enough to support ongoing relationships among stewards of the local community commons (food, water, energy, etc), yet big enough to have the capacity to effect change at scale. Regional, translocal, and transregional networks build relationships, share best practices, and work together to leverage local resilience to reach large-scale impact (sometimes called scaling-across).  

 

To date, we have focused on three regions--the San Francisco Bay Area, New England, and the Pacific Northwest-- which were selected as a result of a set of personal and organizational connections that were already in place when we made the decision in 2014 to “ground our work” in this way.  If we have the capacity to do so, we would love to add more regions to this set, especially if they are away from the two US coasts.

 

Question(s)

• How does it matter whether the regions we are working in are “bioregions” versus purely politically/culturally defined ones?  What can New England teach us as a case study?

• What are we learning about how bioregional organizing can intersect in a generative way with organizing based on politically defined regions?

• What types of regional organizing models do we see eg central formal hub vs distributed?

• Assuming we have the capacity to do so, what bioregions should the TRCC add to the three we are already supporting?