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Nourishing a Bioregional Economy

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) region is typically defined to include Oregon and Washington, and British Columbia (Canada) and the northernmost section of California are often included, as well. The Pacific Northwest “bioregion”—an area defined by shared natural characteristics, such as watersheds, topography, geography, climate, or ecosystems, rather than by arbitrary human borders—also can be interpreted in different ways.

Moving forward effectively requires clarity about the limits of conventional finance – and the creation of new finance vehicles that honor the deep complexities of commoning and ecosystems at bioregional scales.

In a recent article I summarized arguments for reversing the trend toward globalization of economies and cultures, aiming instead for the flourishing of communities rooted in their bioregions (i.e., regions defined by characteristics of the natural environment rather than human-imposed borders). For readers receptive to those arguments, the fundamental follow-up question is, “How?”

We must move from a finance that demands private benefits at scale, as purely transactional and extractive, to finance systems grounded in particular places and cooperative relationships, all closely aligned with living systems.

The bounty brought by rainfall, fertile soil, and biodiversity cannot truly be expressed through quantitative proxies, prices, algorithms, or markets because this “wealth” doesn’t exist in static, objectified forms or essentialist identities

In the face of capitalist economics and states intent on asserting their dominance and control, commoners have a mindset that is more expansive, experimental, self-reliant and localist than the market/state dares to imagine.

Bioregionalism offers a practical, politically accessible space for addressing climate change, social inequality, the eclipse of democracy, out-of-control oligarchs, and capitalist growth. 

None of us gets to choose the era we live through or to control a whole lot about the world we live in. But we should strive to rise to the challenge of the situation we are confronted with, by doing what we can to make our communities, our country, and our world as livable (and worth living in) as we can.

The true strength lies in the careful combination of these tools into multi-layered, living systems—creating the conditions not just for protection, but for long-term flourishing.

Every act of care, every restored relationship, and every small step toward shared responsibility contributes to the future that is already taking shape. This is work we can keep doing, steadily and together.