The ‘Dark Age’ of Environmentalism, Sustainability and Bioregionalism
By Jonas Hagen, for the Chronicle
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The World Commission on Environment and Development, which had been set up in 1983, published a report titled “Our Common Future” in 1987. Known as the “Brundtland Report”, it developed guiding principles for sustainable development as it is generally understood today, which stated that critical global environmental problems were primarily the result of the enormous poverty of the developing world and the non-sustainable patterns of consumption and production in the industrialized countries. The report called for a strategy that united development and the environment, commonly termed “sustainable development”, defining it as a “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Peter Berg, founder of Planet Drum Foundation, has championed a philosophy that takes sustainability and puts it into the context of local ecosystems. “Bioregionalism” aims to connect people to the geography, weather, plant and animal life of the place they live and allow them to live sustainable lifestyles. Speaking at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on 6 October, Mr. Berg said that the United States was currently in a “dark age” of environmentalism, with drilling for oil to begin in a wildlife refuge in Alaska and an increased energy production from coal-fired power plants. However, he added, this trend would pass and give way to a “new age” of pro-active environmentalism, where people would find common ground worldwide in pursuing sustainable ways of life.
Mr. Berg put particular emphasis on cities as the context of the way to sustainability. Recognizing that over 50 per cent of humans live in cities, some 70 per cent by 2025, he said that “Homo Sapiens” had become “Homo Sapiens Urbanis”, adding that China alone planned to build 100 new cities of 1 million people each over the next 25 years. Today, cities function in a way that creates an enormous amount of garbage and waste, inflicting great damage on the ecosystem. However, he said, people would eventually be forced to realize that economic sustainability could not exist without ecological sustainability. At that point, people will put the bioregion at the heart of their culture and practices, choosing more sustainable ways of life, including recycling garbage, walking and biking for transport, eating locally grown foods and putting local ecosystems into the core of education.
Bioregions are often defined by watersheds, or the basins where rainwater, rivers and creeks funnel into. Mr. Berg said that national and state borders are usually arbitrary and bioregions offer a more coherent area that takes into account plant and animal communities, allowing people to live in ways that are in harmony with the natural setting. He further said that New York City is part of the “Lower Hudson Estuary Bioregion”, which also includes New Jersey’s Hudson River coast, and mentioned Italy’s “Bioregione Bacino Fluviale del Po”, or the bioregion of the river Po, stretching from Milan to Venice.
Mr. Berg also spoke of the work of Planet Drum Foundation in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador, a city on the Pacific Coast that has chosen ecology and bioregionalism as a way of life. In 1998, it was ravaged by a weather phenomenon known as “El Niño”, when rain fell on the city for an entire year, causing large mud slides that wiped out entire neighbourhoods. The Foundation’s bioregional prescriptions for the city included planting indigenous “pajo macho”, or “tough grass,” to restore the hillsides devastated by mud slides and recycling garbage for organic waste for garden compost. The city also boasts an “ecology club” of 150 children between 8 and 16 years old. Further, the dominant form of transportation is bicycle using non-fossil fuel, while human-powered tricycles are commonly used to transport heavy goods.
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