View source for Agricultural Sustainability for Bioregionalism in the San Francisco Bay Watershed


'''* Report: Agricultural Sustainability in the San Francisco Bay Watershed: A Pilot Study in Bioregionalism. Coordinated by Patti Ellis, David Cunningham, James Quilligan et al. Biocapacity Research Team of Economic Democracy Advocates, 2018'''

URL = 

=Description=

"This is a study of the agricultural sustainability of the San Francisco Bay
Watershed. We recognize that many groups are actively working to develop
alternative indicators for sustainability. We embark on this study to see if
calibrating biocapacity may offer the kind of impact valuation for agriculture
which does not exist in the market economy and its system of metrics.

Essentially, [[Biocapacity]] is the dynamic balance point between the number of
organisms within a given area and the amount of resources that are needed to
support them within this area. Thus, agricultural biocapacity indicates the
degree to which the population of a bioregion is greater or lesser than the
food that is available from the bioregion to feed it.

By combining scientific reason with place-based knowledge, culture and
history, biocapacity provides a baseline for sustainability by showing how
different interventions will effect different outcomes. This allows
communities to develop evidence-based guidelines for organizing their own
resource sufficiency while regenerating the ecology of their life-places."


=Excerpts=

==On [[Bioregionalism]] in the Bay Area==

"Gradually, this eclectic group of naturalists began to call their field
“bioregionalism” (bio is the Greek word for life; regere is the Latin word for
a place to be managed). So, bioregionalism is essentially the idea of lifeplace
— a way of extending the life of a community to the life of the
biosphere through the ecological renewal of a particular area. The new
bioregionalists wanted to combine local knowledge, beliefs and values with
the unique characteristics of the climate and topography, the soils and plants,
and the animals and habitats where they lived.

These ideas spread across the United States, but San Francisco was the
epicenter for this people’s movement. They called on citizens to stop running
away from the problems of industrial economy to better understand the land
around them, the limits to its resources, and how this could help meet the
needs of the diverse species who live there, including homo sapiens. Their
vision was the development of new social and cultural relationships within
the context of geographical communities.

Bioregionalism was a unique perspective for addressing major environmental
challenges on a human scale. It acknowledged that solving large ecological
problems by ‘thinking globally’ is much too disempowering for the average
person. Although ‘acting locally’ is clearly the practical first step, it operates
on too small a scale to impact environmental governance. The activities of
localization simply don’t generate enough political power within small
communities to stop centralized governments and markets from exploiting
these decentralized life-places for their own ends.

The bioregionalists explained why there are so few decision-making
organizations or networks at regional levels, where harmful ecological
problems could be most effectively addressed. They showed how history and
economics had prompted leaders to draw artificial local, state and national
borders that seldom conformed to the ecological zones which overlap with
them. Hence, natural boundaries have little correlation with our present
political, economic and social boundaries and their institutions. To be sure,
many ecological problems — involving personal and collective choices and
action, as well as their cumulative effects on human lives — cannot be
resolved within existing political jurisdictions. Ultimately, we become
inhabitants s"eparated from our own habitats.

How is cooperation over resources even possible if our geographical borders
cannot be redrawn to protect and manage the environment? An engaged
movement for a more ecological society cannot succeed without some kind of
graphic image of the bioregional boundaries which are hidden from view.
Such a map would focus on a region’s hydrology, geology and physiography,
but also reflect its culture, history, present land-use patterns and climate."


==From the Conclusion==

"Based on our research, most of the region will exceed
its biocapacity to produce food for its growing population within two or three
decades.


Industrial pollution, climate change, sea level rise, invasive species, water
diversions and loss of wetlands are threatening enormous swaths of human
habitat. Before 2050, the prodigious agricultural production of the San
Francisco Bay Watershed will fail to produce sufficient quantities of
agriculture for its population due to uncertain rainfall, flooded coasts and
inlets, depletion of aquifers, topsoil loss, an export-led business model and a
lack of cooperative dialogue among its political subdivisions.

Our study indicates that locally-produced calories have more monetary and
ecological value when consumed in the same life-places where they are
produced. Yet as long as the San Francisco/Oakland/Hayward MSA
continues to import agriculture from elsewhere, the community will be
impacted by rising food prices. Importing food into the dense population of
the Bay Area will be possible until its food suppliers — foreign, domestic
and regional — face their own supply limits for finite energy and raw
materials and the breakdown of their own their fragile infrastructures.

When the Bay Area becomes too severe a strain on the bioregion itself, the
reversal will be rapid. The external dependency on food will collapse and the
capacity of the entire San Francisco Bay Watershed to sustain itself will be
overtaken by extreme costs in food, water, energy and housing.

Why do we exploit our ecosystems instead of restoring them as life-places for
habitation? This was the basic question raised in 1968. Now, ironically, San
Francisco’s ‘back to the land’ diaspora could turn into a mass evacuation
from the region as its resources continue to decline and its self-sufficiency
falters. How this existential crisis is addressed in the San Francisco Bay
Watershed — and in bioregions everywhere — will determine the ecological
future of all life-places and our sustainability as a species. The question then
will be, not how sustainable but how inhabitable is my own bioregion?

Still, if there’s any area that can break down the barriers between people and
their land-place, integrating the human community with the ecological
community, it’s the Bay Area — the spot where modern bioregionalism
began and remains a vital part of the cultural memory. Community members
are the very organisms that depend on environmental resources for support.

Now we must learn how to restore this dynamic balance. The issue is not if
we have the will to do this, but how soon can it be done?"

=More information=

Contact:

* JamesQ@EconomicDemocracyAdvocates.org
* PattiE@EconomicDemocracyAdvocates.org


[[Category:P2P Accounting]]

[[Category:Thermodynamic Efficiencies]]