About Our Work
Joins us and learn how to see together to connect and accelerate positive change.
Our Bioregions
We all need healthy local food, reliable sources of renewable energy, efficient and affordable low-carbon transportation, clean water, and access to health care. A Bioregional Learning Journey is about asking new types of questions, and learning how to craft a way of life by seeing remarkable innovations, breakthroughs as well as barriers and roadblocks.
Casco Bay , U.S.A.
Casco Bay Bioregion within the Gulf of Maine (one of the most rapidly warming systems on the planet) our major focus here on seeing, connecting and accelerating the “green shoots” of transformative change – and what better metaphor that surrounds us in the coastal ecosystem – are the amazing seagrass meadows and tidal wetlands and from there – everything is related from the relationship to food systems and wastewater treatment – to transportation/mooring buoys dredging/even cruise ships.
Tayside Bioregion, Scotland
We helped to launch this initiative a few years ago and they have a rather amazing energy forming called Bioregioining Tayside – which is a community led effort to realize the bioregion, remember the primacy of natural systems in survival, reconnecting with those natural systems, re-orientate human activity to promote resilient environments and livelihoods and restore the natural systems on which we all depend. I’m heading there later this month to further define a bioregional digital twin project that will link Casco Bay and Tayside in the development. There are huge opportunities for Law Students – as well as others (undergrads and graduates) across USM – we have great stories of contributions by both.
Westfjords, Iceland
We have developed strong relationships with colleagues across the Arctic through the UArctic Thematic Network – and have focused on the Westfjords in Iceland and coastal adjacent habitats such as seagrass meadows in Iceland. Here’s a brief video of a Bioregional Learning Journey to the Westfjords – The focus here is also on coastal ecosystems – but given the DRAMATICALLY different context to Casco Bay – the focus is on more rural issues depopulation, consolidation of municipal authorities, dramatic absence of wastewater treatment and the explosion of adventure tourism across the Westfjords.
Osa Penisula, Costa Rica
Part of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Bioregion = 2% of the worlds biodiversoity under massive development pressure – here’s a Story Map of a 3-day Learning Journey to the Osa Peninsula we led in March. This is bilingual and led by amazing young leaders in Costa Rica – who are thirsty for the integration and how to link narratives and numbers to tell transformative stories.
COBALT Bioregional Learning Journey
Featured components of a COBALT Bioregional Learning Journey include
Embracing Indigenous Wisdom
We embrace the wisdom that has been documented and shared by our Indigenous colleagues who have been living in this land for time immemorial. For example, we learn more about a typical “Wabanaki Food Year” a living knowledge of what what was gathered. See below for an example and if you are interested in some further reading, “Notes on a Lost Flute: A Field Guide to the Wabanaki.”
Transformations
We explore the transformations needed for systems change at a bioregional scale including diversification and specifically the linkages between agriculture and aquaculture biodiversity that is linked to biodiversity knowledge.
Everyone Lives in a Bioregion
These are unique life places across the globe that have distinct and unique natural characteristics such as soils and climates, native plants and animals as well as unique social and cultural patterns. Indigenous peoples have inhabited particular places for thousands of years, evolving a way of life remarkably well adapted to the local conditions and cultural identities, languages, and diets all are interrelated to their bioregion.
Navigating the Future
We are convinced that humanity has the collective wisdom to navigate the times ahead and to adapt by creating a more liveable bioregion for people as well as for the rest of life with which we share. Regenerative design expert Daniel Christian Wahl – the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures had a wonderful conversation with Glenn Page about the design of this Learning Journey, here’s a link to the video.
Local Collective Action
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change and RESPONSE must be both local and global. Learning Journeys are a form of local collective action, as an exploration into what is possible locally, within a distinct bioregion, that could be more beneficial for human life and well-being.