Page 203 [203]
FOOD SUPPLY AS A GLOBAL CHALLENGE 201
Compared to the approaches of other green movements (Monbiot 2007; Daly
2007; Smith, R. 2016; Baer 2019), permaculture rejects the central state and
regards political decentralization as one of the best social systems (Leahy 2021).
Due to the energy descent, the decentralization of food and energy systems is
inevitable; this creates an opportunity for political decentralization. Permaculture
aims to achieve this through grassroots organization and bioregional networking,
together with care for people (Leahy 2021: 195). One of the standard references
of the permaculture movement, the Designers Manual, aims to increase local
autonomy, because the more people are capable of satisfying their food, energy,
and housing needs locally, the more difficult it will be to impose economic and
political control over them (ibid.). Supporters of permaculture include some
anarchists and degrowth advocates who also propose rural self-sufficiency and
political autarchy (Kropotkin 1975[1899]; Schneider — Nelson 2019; Leahy 2021).
Bioregionalism
A bioregion is a geographically and ecologically definable unit which is also
culturally meaningful. From a geographical point of view, bioregions are usually
designated in the academic literature based on rivers’ catchment areas, but their
characteristic features also include topography, soil types, climate characteristics,
flora and fauna; in short, all the facets that hold an area together in an ecological
sense. Bioregionalism also makes attempts to identify the cultural unity of a
community living in a territory, including the political aspects. In this, it is driven
by the intention to create sustainable practical and conceptual frameworks for the
fabric of life around the planet.
Bioregionalism may contribute to scientific work aimed at the formation of
local food systems and the organization of food sovereignty on the scale of the
landscape in two ways. On the one hand, it assigns to the otherwise “empty” notion
of locality, important substantive — and specifically political — elements, thus
satisfying the strong requirements of sustainability. On the other hand, it also
provides tangible help to actual regional planning, which, according to experience,
often falls outside the purview of the academic literature.
Among ecolocalisms, bioregionalism represents a more radical form than usual,
insofar as it is also strongly connected to anarchist traditions with the idea of a
self-governing system of autonomous small communities. The principles of
anarchism — especially of eco-anarchism — play an important role both in the
formation of the community’s internal relations and in its operation, as well as in
the relations between bioregions.
What makes bioregionalism particularly important, in our view is its ability to
provide a generally applicable but not universalistic framework for local efforts in
which they can be combined in a form that can be interpreted politically in a
mutually reinforcing way. The objective of political action is to create a world in
which the principles of ecological sustainability, social justice and sovereignty
organize relations within and between communities. The most important tool for
this goal within the bioregion is what Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, in their
article, “Reinhabiting California” (1977), called “reinhabitation”. This term is the
manifesto of the movement. According to the original definition, it means the