How can Bioregionalism supplant the nation state as the natural unit of civilisation? Joe Brewer is living, breathing and teaching the ways we can work together with each other and the natural flows of water and life.
We know that the current paradigm is breaking apart in real time, but how do we become the light that shines through the cracks? How do we build ways of being that reunite us with the web of life, create new/old ways of letting value flow and become what humanity has been and could be: stewards of that massive, magical, heartbreakingly beautiful living system that is the web of life.
This week's guest, Joe Brewer, works at the leading edge of these ideas, testing out answers on the ground in communities of place, purpose and passion around the world. Joe is a trans-disciplinary systems thinker and Earth regeneration designer who has worked in everything from agroforestry work in Bioparque Móncora to starting a Waldorf Forest School (Sueños del Bosque) to co-founding a territorial foundation called Fundación Barichara Regenerativa and starting a trust to bring more local land into the commons. He was founder of the Earth Regenerators study group, which became Design School for Regenerating Earth, and is the author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth.
Increasingly, he's becoming a leading global voice on the ways we can return to a bioregional way of living that is, as you'll here, how we have lived for over 99% of human history. It's the way that makes sense, that can heal our relationships to ourselves, each other and the living web of life. The question, always, is how we make this happen? How do we shift our entire culture out of a world where lines drawn on maps are more real than the flows of a river, back to a place where clean air, clean water, clean soil are our priorities, the non-negotiable baselines from which everything else arises? How do we shift our concept of value flows away from the accumulation of stuff in a zero-sum game to a place where human needs are trusted and met? Joe has such heart-warming, inspiring examples of how this is happening around the world: on all 5 inhabited continents, there are groups making this happen. As Joe says, this is the work of now. It's urgent. It's also the single most inspiring thing we can do.
Bioregional Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-school
Design School for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-school
Joe's book: The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-pathway
Governance Futures https://governancefutures.org/
Elinor Ostrom's work on Governing the Commons https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/ostrom-governing
Sociocracy https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/
ProSocial World https://www.prosocial.world/
Joe on Accidental Gods Episode #127 https://accidentalgods.life/bio-regionalism-the-design-path-for-regenerating-earth/
Updated 12th July 2025 with a recent YouTube video from Joe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buoLfQtsK9k
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