Bioregional Learning Centers
Description
Donnella Meadows:
"“Bioregional Centers are where information and models about resources and the environment are housed. There would need to be many of these centers, all over the world, each one responsible for a discrete bioregion. They would contain people with excellent minds and tools, but they would not be walled off, as scientific centers so often are, either from the lives of ordinary people or from the realities of political processes. The people in these centers would be at home with farmers, miners, planners, and heads of state and they would be able to both listen to and talk to all of them. The job of these centers is basically to enhance that capacity to solve problems in ways that are consistent with the culture and the environment. The centers collect, make sense of, and disseminate information about the resources of their bioregions, and about the welfare of the people and of the ecosystems.... They are able, insofar as the state of knowledge permits, to see things whole, to look at long-term consequences, and to tell the truth. They are also able to perceive and admit freely where the boundaries of the state of knowledge are and what is not known. Above all, the job of these centers is to hold clear and true the context, the values, the ways of thinking, through which all development plans and resource management schemes proceed.”
(https://ecolise.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Bioregional-Governance-Training-Guide.pdf?)
Examples
Sarah Queblatin, Sara Silva et al. :
"Bioregional Learning Centers are opportunities to engage people in a bioregion to come together and develop their bioregional regeneration plans. This is also where functions of governance can be held through activities that foster collaboration. Activities such as meetings, workshops, events, and exhibitions can nurture the weave of connection across diverse stakeholders in a bioregion, whether through formal or informal events. Creating a hub for people to converge to imagine a new reality is one of the ways to activate collaborations.
Some examples of bioregional learning centers
... in Europe and UK are that in Devon, UK by the Bioregional Learning Center, and in Catalonia, Spain by the Bioregional Observatory of La Garrotxa activated and nurtured by Resilience Earth. Both use their centers to engage locals in co-inquiry and diagnosis. Similar to what Donella Meadows envisioned, a bioregional learning center should contain people of all practices and not be walled off as a scientific center. Instead, it would “be at home” with farmers, miners, and heads of state offering a place for listening and engaging.
In Asia, the Forever Sabah Institute offers workshops and activities that engage the Malaysia Borneo’s stakeholders in protecting and restoring their watersheds. The spaces held for convening together allow for reflecting and visioning. The ecovillage model of Bangladesh Ecovillage Development in the Sundarbans engages a place-based approach in bioregioning to address climate vulnerability through ecosystem restoration-based livelihoods.
Some ways of disseminating learning and exchange are not necessarily held in one place in a structure but also apply other forms of learning. The Design School for Regenerating Earth held online by Joe Brewer uses an educational approach to sharing knowledge and practice for those wanting to form bioregional regeneration projects. Jenny Anderrson, co-founder of Really Regenerative, holds learning journeys through her Power of Place workshops.
The Bangladesh Environment and Development Society design their initiatives as ecovillages as learning centers to engage local stakeholders in restoring the Sundarbans through mangrove restoration and other forms of ecological livelihoods.
The Pamumuno Lab of Green Releaf, with partner universities, worked with climatevulnerable cities in the Philippines and is currently preparing for a permanent learning site for permaculture as part of a bioregional learning center. This center will be a learning space to train communities in preventing and responding to climate disasters. It is aimed at engaging the leadership of grassroots farmers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and indigenous peoples they trained after disasters who will share their knowledge to other frontline community leaders.
While there is a fluidity to defining bioregional governance through Bioregioning, this training guide will refer to two regional experiences to offer a structure to the dynamic process of shaping a design plan of action and learning.
One is the experience from Europe through ResilienceEarth founders Erika Zarate and Oscar Gussinyer (2023) in applying bioregioning to Bioregional Governance based on the framework of Carol Sanford. Also here in this training guide are practices and principles from Asia, shown through the action research with the development of this training material led by Sarah Queblatin, founder of Green Releaf and Living Story Landscapes. We are also weaving learning through partners and resource persons involved in the case studies featured in both regions, such as the United in Diversity and the the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania and Asia, with support from Alam Santi."
(https://ecolise.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Bioregional-Governance-Training-Guide.pdf?)
Discussion
Joe Brewer et al. :
"A BLC is a real-world place (located in the geography of a given bioregion) that enables a different way of living in place (a shift in consciousness). It's an organized structure (both centralized and decentralized, as there may be many field sites associated with a main site) as well as a psychological and social space through which we (re)learn how to live in our life place (bioregion). It brings together the grassroots with local leaders. It welcomes all – across cultures, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds – and embodies "home" in the fullest human and more-than-human meaning of that word. A BLC anchors, informs, connects, and inspires.
In a time when there are increasing urgent and immediate needs – like damages and recovery efforts from severe weather events like a tornado, hurricane, or ice storm; people and other living creatures who are sick from more prevalent diseases; people who don't have enough to eat or a place to shelter – why should creating and funding a BLC be a priority?
A BLC can certainly help with responses to immediate needs in the face of a crisis. But a BLC is the one place in a fragmented, siloed world that, at its core, takes a big-picture view. It operates at a higher level as a Rapid Regeneration Responder (RRR) to create long-term translocal robustness (local connected into global). As global systems unravel and we struggle with wellbeing, meaning, direction, and what "makes sense," a BLC can help us focus in on what really matters. A BLC answers the big question, "How do we live in this place now?" As we regenerate our bioregion, we do our part toward regenerating the entire planet. As BLCs in various bioregions share learning and support each other, we create translocal robustness for a new world.
In Bioregional Learning Centers, there must be ways to retain and pass on practical knowledge about native species, understanding how to build homes in the local climate using locally-sourced materials, comprehension of what it means to have sustainable food systems in a particular place, complexity thinking, prosocial skills, and incorporation of the performance arts that cultivate sacred relationships with local ecologies in respectful and persistent ways… Bioregional Learning Centers around the world also need to learn from each other. — Joe Brewer, Co-Founder, Design School for Regenerating Earth
Whatever complex landscape you're living in, there's a need for humans to organize all their learnings and knowledge about the history and the evolution of that place. A BLC integrates physical, ecological, and cultural/spiritual considerations. It has inward-facing aspects (e.g. community building, trauma healing, land skills) and outward-facing aspects (e.g. sharing knowledge with other bioregions, dreaming into a future). The BLC is the literal and figurative entry point for everyone to learn about a place and how to care for it – not only people who live in the place, but also newcomers and visitors. It organizes a learning ecosystem that coherently integrates everything taking place in a bioregion within larger planetary processes.
So, BLCs are the enabling structures for humans to live into the story of Bioregional Earth. And a BLC in a given bioregion is also the anchor structure for (re)learning how to live in and regenerate that place. It brings together education, research, community building, regenerative practices and, most important of all, storytelling in the mythic, intergenerational sense. Why are we here and what do we do here?"